#solipsism

[messydiabolical]

"Drell can mentally escape into old memories. It came in handy on the bad days". -Feron, on Hagalaz

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Social media without socializing

I'm coming to COLORADO! Catch me in DENVER on Jan 22 at The Tattered Cover<, and in COLORADO SPRINGS from Jan 23–25 where I'm the Guest of Honor at COSine. Then I'll be in OTTAWA on Jan 28 at Perfect Books and in TORONTO with Tim Wu on Jan 30.

From the earliest days of social media, social media bosses have been at war with sociability. To create a social media service is to demarcate legitimate and illegitimate forms of sociability. It's a monumental act of hubris, really.

It was ever thus. The founder of Friendster decreed that people could only form friendship bonds with each other, but could not declare themselves to be "friends" of everyone with a common interest. You and I could be friends, but you couldn't be "friends" with a group called "bloggers." Each member of that group would have to create a reciprocal friendship link to see one another's feeds.

Way back in 1999, Larry Lessig taught us that "code is law." By encoding these restrictions into the feed, Friendster's programmers were putting limits on the kinds of relationships that could be formed using the service. But Lessig's law (code?) is often overidden by an even older principle: William Gibson's 1982 maxim that "the street finds its own uses for things."

Friendster told its users how to be friends with one another, and Friendster's users treated Friendster's management as damage and routed around it. They created accounts with names like "New York City" and whenever anyone friended that account, it friended them back. Users hacked their own way to form "illegitimate" friendships based on affinity into the system:

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2003/08/17/the_fakester_manifesto.html

As social media turned into a billion- (and then a trillion-) dollar business, the urgency of the struggle between how social media bosses demanded that we socialize and how we wanted to socialize only got sharper. Mark Zuckerberg doubtless thought he was covering all his bases when he tossed a casual "It's complicated" to the pulldown menu for defining your relationship status, but that's because he doesn't understand how complicated all our relationships are:

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/07/10/facebook-complicated-relationship-status/

For Zuck, crisply defined relationships were things that he could do simple math on in order to target ads, make recommendations, and sort users into categories. When you need to treat relationships as elements in a series of discrete mathematical operations, the fact that relationships are intrinsically, irreducibly qualitative is a serious bug. So Zuck did what computer scientists usually do when they want to do math on qualitative variables: he incinerated all the qualitative elements by quantizing them, and then did math on the dubious residue that remained:

https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-qualia/

Zuck's biggest problem isn't the ambiguity of your social connections, though – it's that they exist at all. Think about it: Mark Zuckerberg personally makes or loses billions of dollars based on how much you socialize with your friends on his platforms. If your friends engage with you in ways that are low intensity and easily concluded ("How'd you sleep?" "Just fine." "That's nice."), then he loses. If, on the other hand, you and your friends get into protracted, intense interactions, he gets to show you so many ads and make so much money.

Your friends are a problem for Mark Zuckerberg to solve, and (to his undying chagrin), you and your friends stubbornly refuse to organize your relationships around Zuck's financial imperatives. You just wanna hang out in the rhythms that are part of any friendship – sometimes intense, sometimes casual, often sporadic. I mean, honestly, if you're going to insist on just having normal friendships, how the hell can Mark Zuckerberg post the kind of growth his shareholders expect?

This explains much of the drive to transform Facebook from a platform that shows you the things your friends post to a platform that mostly shows you things that "content creators" post. Your friends aren't motivated by the dangling possibility of viral dollars if they get you to "engage" with their posts, but for content creators, your engagement buys the groceries and pays the rent. By swapping out your friends and replacing them with people who are highly motivated to "engage" with you, Zuck gets a lever he can yank to get his users to arrange their conduct in ways that goose his growth.

In other words, Zuck lured you in with the promise of having pleasurable online conversations that matter to you; and now that he's trapped you, he wants you to break up with your friends so you have more time to watch his community access cable station.

It also explains Zuck's passion for filling his platform with botshit, and his plan to solve the loneliness epidemic by giving you chatbots instead of friends:

https://fortune.com/2025/06/26/mark-zuckerberg-ai-friends-hinge-ceo/

For Mark Zuckerberg, all people are just shitty chatbots – chatbots that won't follow orders. He wants to be able to point us at one another in the hopes that we will simply prompt one another into endless chatter, with endless scrolling, and endless ad insertions. This works great with chatbots, not so well with people:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtNagNezo8w

After all, Zuck doesn't really believe most other people exist. Read Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams's tell-all whistleblower memoir about her years at Facebook and you'll quickly realize that for Zuck, people are statistical artifacts, not co-equal beings worthy of moral consideration:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/23/zuckerstreisand/#zdgaf

Billionaires are plagued by solipsism. Not believing other people exist is a great aid to billionairedom, because it lets you amass your fortune without scrupling over the population-scale misery you're inflicting on the way:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/18/seeing-like-a-billionaire/#npcs

For Zuck, AI is the most exciting technology in history (even more exciting than the Metaverse, if you can believe it!) because it might give him the world he dreams of: a world without people, or, at very least, a social media network without any socializing:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/05/fisher-price-steering-wheel/#billionaire-solipsism

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/19/billionaire-solipsism/#sirius-cybernetics

[suliqyre]

The more isolated you become, the more difficult it becomes to see the world outside of you. Greater and greater isolation means that the relevant part of the world shrinks until it contains no one but you. In this tiny world, you are in control, you are the arbiter of truth, and you determine what is real and what is fake.

As your interactions with others gradually cease, you stop participating in their shared reality, which means the norms and truths of that reality stop applying to you. Even the natural world, which seems to impose certain conditions on your existence, can be mostly avoided or at least mitigated through technologies that allow you to separate yourself from nature. When all of your basic needs can be met without interacting with anyone, then your isolation has become total. Your new world has a population of one, and its form is whatever you give it.

Read more...

[philosophybits]

What the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The world is *my* world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of *my* world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

[kenyatta]

But can’t I imagine that the people around me are automata, lack consciousness, even though they behave in the same way as usual? — If I imagine it now — alone in my room — I see people with fixed looks (as in a trance) going about their business — the idea is perhaps a little uncanny. But just try to keep hold of this idea in the midst of your ordinary intercourse with others, in the street, say! Say to yourself, for example: “The children over there are mere automata; all their liveliness is mere automatism”. And you will either find these words becoming quite meaningless; or you will produce in yourself some kind of uncanny feeling, or something of the sort.

- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1958)

[radiantrebellion]

Bilmirəm, sizdə də olub, ya yox. Bəzən insanın içində qəribə bir hiss yaranır. Elə bil hər şey yerindədir, amma nə isə çatmır. Küçədən keçən insanlar, danışan səslər, toxunduğun əşyalar, qısası, hər şey bir anlıq qəribə dərəcədə uzaq görünür. Sanki sən buradasan, amma dünya bir az kənardadır. Bu anlarda ağlımıza gələn düşüncələr "Solipsistik sindrom" adlanır və bu da təməlini "Solipsizm" fəlsəfəsindən götürür. Ədəbiyyatda buna "təkmənçilik" də deyilir.

Bu fəlsəfədə “mən”dən başqa heç bir reallıq yoxdur və bu reallıq yalnız subyektiv deyil, həm də abstraktdır. Yəni həqiqətən konkret bir dünya da yoxdur. Var olanlar, varmış kimi görünənlər yalnız mənin təsəvvürümün məhsuludur. Hər şeyin mərkəzində “mən” dayanır və hər şey yalnız mənim tərəfimdən qəbul edildiyi müddətcə mövcuddur.

Fəlsəfədə təkmənçilik iki sahədə işlənir:

Varlıq bilikləri: Yalnız özüm varam, mənim xaricimdə heç nə yoxdur.

Bilik nəzəriyyəsi: Yalnız öz “mən”imi bilə bilərəm, xarici dünyadan heç bir şey bilə bilmərəm.

Bu yanaşmaya görə, “mən” hər şeyin çıxış və əsas nöqtəsidir. Tarixi olaraq Descartes və Driesch kimi filosoflarda bu fikirlərə rast gəlmək mümkündür.

Bəzən deyilir ki, Tanrı belə bir yalnızlığı özünə rəva görmədiyi üçün kainatı yaratdı. Yaratdıqları onun əksidir, onlarda özünü görür. Doğrudur, ya da deyil, hətta var, ya da yoxdur, bu ayrıca bir müzakirə mövzusudur. Lakin söhbət yemək yeyən, ac qalan, yuxusu gələn, aciz, tək, zəif, sadəcə ətdən, sümükdən, karbon ərintisindən ibarət bir canlıdan gedirsə, xüsusilə də bu canlı başını çırpana qədər ağacı, içinə düşənə qədər quyunu, mədəsi guruldayana qədər aclığı və göz qapaqları öz-özünə yumulana qədər yuxusuzluğu yalnız özünün görmədiyini, hiss etmədiyini və ya şüurunda əks olunmadığını iddia edirsə və hər inkar etdiyi, hər keçən gün onu bir az daha ümidsizliyə, qəbul edilməyən dərin məyusluqlara aparırsa, üstəlik, bədən qidalanmasından hər gün bir az da sağlamlığını itirmiş zehni qaranlıq koridorlarda tək-tənha dolaşmağa məcbur olursa, bu, guya “ali” olan bir sindroma çevrilir.

Əlbəttə ki, elm solipsizmi çürütmək üçün istifadə edilə bilər. Biz real dünyanı düşüncələrimizdə və abstrakt olaraq qəbul etsək də, bu, xarici kainatın mövcud olmadığı anlamına gəlmir. Elm sübut edib ki, düşüncələrimiz kimyəvi və fiziki proseslərin nəticəsidir, yəni çox da abstrakt deyildir.

Üstəlik, təsəvvür edək ki, biz soliptistik. Bunu hardan bilirik? Bunu bizə təsvir etdirən nədir? Bizə tabe olduğunu düşündüyümüz hər “şey”(varlıq), diqqət edin, “şey” dedim, nədir? Özümüzdən belə şübhə etmək üçün əvvəlcə şübhə duyacaq bir varlığa (özümüzə) ehtiyacımız yoxdurmu? Əgər yoxdursa, bu eyni zamanda biz də yoxuq demək deyilmi?

[piecesofapuzzle]

"if everything in this world was all created in my head then you're the best thing i have ever imagined."

[nights-nonsensical-ramblings]

okay so I do not believe the theory that any of the humans are actually secretly an npc, BUT I would not blame any of them if after the reality break Caine pulled some paranoia starts to creep in.

It makes me think of a philosophical concept the good place introduced to me. Solipsism, the belief that only ones mind is sure to exist.

The Good Place tackles how this concept is quite a selfish one because the character following the belief thinks everything around her is just her brains dying dream and so she can mess around and do whatever to whoever. They can’t convince her that it’s real with evidence, all that can be easily dismissed as her brain keeping up the scenario. Instead they stop her pushing people into pool by saying “if everything’s fake why not be kind. Just in case it is. And if you acted kind to something that is fake, what’s the harm?”

but it isn’t that side I’m thinking on for tadc. It’s getting to that belief. Caine turned their reality around and they can’t even trust the comfort they used to that he can’t mess with their minds. And his npcs are getting more and more lifelike.

And perhaps the conclusion will be the same (for most of them anyway) that, they can’t 100% confirm the others are real humans but they may as well keep being friends, just in case. And if they really are npc’s well gummigoo was a good friend and what person hasn’t had a plushie or figurine they love and treat with true kindness even if they know it’s a fake being