Disclaimer: I haven't been reading this thread so far.

Sometimes life feels like it has negative value: like there's an emotional hole, and you just feel bad, intrinsically, not for any reason, unless maybe you can find something to fill that hole with, some reason to live; and the possibility that the hole might be infinitely deep and never be filled brings on a terrifying despair, like it could never have been worth anyone ever living in the first place and it's unfortunate that the universe exists at all.

On the other hands, sometimes life feels like it has a positive value: like you have the emotional opposite of a hole, you're just overflowing, and you just feel good, intrinsically, not for any reason, unless something is happening to run your wellspring of joy dry and wear you down, but that of course like all things will be finite so you can bear through it and maintain hope of things inevitably getting better eventually, even if it's going to take a long time.

Neither of these are the "correct" view of the world. They are both just states of mind. But the latter is obviously the more enjoyable state of mind. And the question, "why live", only makes sense at all in the former state of mind.

So don't bother trying to answer the question "why live?" It can't be answered, because the question is meaningless. Instead just try to get into the state of mind where you see how the question is meaningless, and where there instead seems to be the (equally meaningless, but much easier to ignore and move past) question "why not live?"

Just leave your retirement savings in the S&P 500 or some target date index fund or bonds. — BitconnectCarlos

An index fund is a kind of mutual fund which is a kind of hedge fund.

The is/ought divide cannot be overcome, but that is no loss to ethics, because the “is” side is just as subject to the problem of infinite regress / agrippa’s trilemma as the “ought” side is, so even if we could ground “oughts” in “ises” (nevermind that that would destroy their ought-ness anyway, which is why we can’t) we’d then face the same challenge grounding those “ises”.

Which is not to say that both reality and morality are completely subjective and that no opinions on either can be rationally judged as more or less correct than any other. It’s only to say that on neither topic can we demand absolute proof from the ground up before saying that holding an opinion on that topic is warranted.

Instead, on both sides of the divide, we must resign ourselves to perpetual uncertainty, but there is still hope in that that uncertainty can also be perpetually diminished, by constantly weeding out competing answers that are in one way or another problematic. Logical inconsistency is one obvious type of problematicness, for example.

If we are to take “reality” and “truth” to mean something related to the world as it seems that it is to our senses, all of our senses not just any one person’s, then (verifiable) disagreement with (anyone’s) empirical experience is another reason to disfavor some “is” claims versus others. That leaves us with a framework of critical empirical realism in which to work out the details of what is real.

And if we are to take “morality” and “goodness” to mean something related to the world as it seems that it ought to be to our appetites, all of our appetites not just any one person’s, then (verifiable) disagreement with (anyone’s) hedonic experience is another reason to disfavor some “ought” claims versus others. That leaves us with a framework of liberal hedonic altruism in which to work out the details of what is moral.

The alternatives in either case are to either abandon all hope of ever being warranted in holding an opinion of either type, consigning ourselves to have no clue whatsoever about either what is real or what is moral; or else to do as you say, and take some things to just be axiomatically real, or axiomatically moral, as principles of faith beyond all question... and in doing so abandon all hope of ever improving our opinions, if those unquestionable axioms we pick turn out to be suboptimal choices in some way or another.

All of life is founded on getting something for nothing.

We don't "earn" the sunlight that powers the world.

Rather than "reparations" for past crimes committed against whole peoples (genocide, slavery, ruthless economic exploitation, etc.), we should defund the class -- the ruling class -- that perpetrated the wrongs in the first place (and they are still at it).

Defunding the ruling class (through expropriation and public ownership of their wealth) would allow for the kind of economic redistribution that could help. — Bitter Crank

:100:

Also, if we just help people in proportion to their need, disproportionately needy demographics (e.g. black people) will receive a disproportionate amount of help automatically, to exactly the extent that they are disproportionately needy, and only for so long as that is the case.

Do you think they realize they’re not thinking critically? — Pfhorrest

No, not if they are not thinking critically. — Janus

So people who are not thinking critically may nevertheless think that they are thinking critically.

So merely thinking that you're thinking critically doesn't guarantee that you are in fact thinking critically.

If we asked both you and the aforementioned imaginary neonazis whether each of you hold beliefs grounded in good evidence, and whether each of you are thinking critically about those beliefs and that evidence, both of you would say yes about yourselves, and no about the other. If words meant what you say they meant, both of you would consequently say that your own beliefs were common sense, and the other's were an ideology.

...

I don't know why I'm letting myself get bogged down with arguing this angle with you. It doesn't matter whether "ideology" really means what you say it means or what I meant by it. All that matters is that you understand what I meant when I used it earlier. I think you do, and this conversation about my choice of words is entirely beside the point. Substitute whatever word you want in place of "ideology" in my OP, whatever the superset of "ideology" and "common sense beliefs" is, whatever your general word for "worldview" or "set of beliefs" or whatever you want to call it is. You must understand by now what it was I meant, and quibbling over the phrasing is just a derailment.

One can use the notion of social constructs without endorsing constructivism, just like one can use science without endorsing scientism. In rejecting constructivism, I am not at all rejecting the employment of social constructs in the description of social behavior. I am merely against the claim that all of reality is merely a social construct, and thus that there there can be no mere attempts (however fallible) at description of a universal reality that are not implicitly pushing some prescriptive agenda.

Social constructs are actually defined in a sense by their unreality: to say, for example, that money is a social construct, is to say that there is nothing intrinsic about gold, or seashells, or any other token of currency, that makes it really money, that could be found in a thorough description of the gold or shells or whatever themselves. Nothing is really money in any universal sense; things are only subjectively accepted as money by some people, and to say that something is money (to some people) is really to say something about the people (namely, that they will accept the thing in trade), not about the thing itself, but phrased in such a way as to project what the people think about the thing onto the thing itself.

That is undoubtedly an indispensable concept for describing many social behaviors, but to say that all of reality is merely socially constructed is consequently to deny that there is anything really real about reality, or at least to refuse to even attempt to talk about it, or to believe that others are genuinely doing so, insisting instead that all that can be discussed is the things that people think about it, and how that effects what they think they should do.

In any case, moral claims are not attempts at describing reality in the first place, so constructivism doesn't properly apply to them at all. Just interpreting moral claims as descriptions of reality gets you to effective moral relativism (inasmuch as nihilism is tantamount to relativism) already. Then applying constructivism to descriptions of reality on top of that would get you to some weird paradoxical view where moral claims are attempts at describing reality and attempts at describing reality are all just hidden moral claims in effect.

If they learn to think critically they will. — Janus

Do you think they realize they’re not thinking critically?

Do you think those we disagree with realize that their evidence is bad?

Do you deny all possibility that despite your best efforts, at least some of your evidence could be bad?

And what solid evidence do they have for their belief in your thought experiment. None, I'll warrant, and for me that's the very essence of ideology; strong, even fanatical, beliefs without any actual evidence to support them. — Janus

I don’t think there is any good evidence to support such beliefs, which is why I don’t believe those things, but no doubt they would point you at things they think are good evidence.

Constructivism claims that all assertions of supposed facts are in actuality just social constructs, ways of thinking about things put forth merely in an attempt to shape the behavior of other people to some end, in effect reducing all purportedly factual claims to normative ones. That is to say, in claiming that all of reality is merely a social construct, such constructivism reframes every apparent attempt to describe reality as actually an attempt to change how people behave, which is the function of normative claims.

On such a view, no apparent assertion of fact is value-neutral: in asserting that something or another is real or factual, you are always advancing some agenda or another, and the morality of one agenda or another can thus serve as reason to accept or reject the reality of claims that would further or hinder them. This is simply the flip side of the same conflation of "is" and "ought" committed by scientism: where scientism pretends that a prescriptive claim can be supported by a descriptive claim, constructivism pretends that all descriptive claims have prescriptive implications.

Constructivism responds to attempts to treat factual questions as completely separate from normative questions (as they are) by demanding absolute proof from the ground up that anything at all is universally factual, or real, and not just a normative claim in disguise or else baseless mere opinion. So it ends up falling to justificationism about factual questions, while failing to acknowledge that normative questions are equally vulnerable to that line of attack. Thus such constructivism is tantamount to cynicism with regards to factual questions, inevitably leading to ontological relativism.


An objection to relativism is thus a reason to object to constructivism.


In terms of moral relativism, there are three different senses of the term "relativism" discussed in the field of ethics:

-One of those three senses, called "descriptive relativism", is merely the view that there are in fact disagreements about what is or isn't moral. I am not against that view, and I agree that there are in fact disagreements, quite obviously.

-Another sense, called "metaethical relativism", is the view that in such disagreements, nobody can possibly be any more or less correct than anybody else, that there is no way of resolving such disagreements. That is the kind of view I am against, in that it claims that there simply are not universally correct answers to moral questions, only different opinions, none better or worse than any others.

-The third sense, called "normative relativism", holds that because nobody can possibly be any more or less correct than anybody else, we morally ought to tolerate differences of moral opinion. While as already stated I disagree with the premise that nobody can be any more or less correct, I am nevertheless broadly sympathetic to the view that we ought to be rather tolerant of disagreement anyway.

Though philosophers do not usually give them names, I think we could usefully distinguish between a similar three different senses of ontological relativism, or relativism about what is real.

-One of those senses would hold only that there do in fact exist differences of opinion about what is real; and with that I would agree, just as with descriptive moral relativism.

-Another sense would hold that in such disagreements, nobody is any more right or wrong than anybody else; and with that I would disagree, just as with metaethical moral relativism.

-A third sense would hold that because nobody is right or wrong, we ought to be tolerant of disagreements; and like with normative moral relativism, I would disagree with the premise of that, but largely agree with the conclusion: though it's possible that in disagreements about reality, someone is right and everyone else is wrong, we should generally be tolerant of such differences of opinion.


The reason to be thus tolerant about differences of opinion, whether those are factual or moral opinions, is precisely because to do otherwise would lead to relativism. Universalism (of which the moral realism you contest is a species) logically demands freedom of opinion, unless it's also going to completely abandon criticism and take refuge in some kind of dogmatism. Unless someone's word could make it so, which it can't, to claim that something is universally right entails that any claim about what specifically that is might be incorrect, precisely because there is more to the claim than just an expression of subjective opinion.

I suspect it's really the dogmatism you're against, and you think that relativism is the only alternative to it, but it's not. You can be both universalist and also critical. That's a no-brainer nowadays when it comes to claims about reality: all of the natural sciences are founded on a critical univeralist approach. It's kind of exasperating that so few people can even contemplate the possibility of it when it comes to claims about morality.

But are others here for those same purposes? — baker

At least one of those for most people, I would expect. They either think they have something to teach other people, or they have something they hope to learn from others. Possibly and ideally both.

Do you believe there are people here who come here to be taught by you? — baker

Not me in particular, but there are plenty of OPs asking questions, and those people obviously hope to learn the answers to them from someone or another, and I’d like to help in that way whenever I can.

The topic of this thread is not specifically about this forum though, BTW. I was thinking more of political conversations with non-philosophers out there in the wild.

It's about what's actually being done to cheat the principles that basically everyone agrees upon, or at least pays lip service to; that's what most needs to be addressed. — Janus

Consider a group of people who believe that all Jews are conspiring together to commit white genocide and that it would therefore not be murder but righteous self-defense to gas them all to death. They superficially agree with the rest of us about all the important common sense principles — they’re trying to stop many wrongful killings, murders, of innocent people, by committing some killings themselves sure, but righteous killings against would-be murderers. They just disagree with us about the little details about the facts of this particular situation: whether there really is such a Jewish plot, etc.

Does that make such Nazi ideology “not an ideology”? Because if so, it looks like there are no ideologies, because everyone thinks their moral outlook is grounded in generally agreeable moral principles (“common sense”) that others just don’t see the implications of on the facts of the current world, or else disagree about those facts.

Here's the thing: What do you want to accomplish with debate or discussion? — baker

To learn, and to teach.

Those on the farther parts of the spectrum are those who show little sign of having anything to learn from and little hope of being teachable. Those on the closer parts are those with whom one can most effectively have a mutually educational conversation.

What I read about AMC was that the lender they owed had the option to convert the loan balance into stock holdings instead, and as the stock price shot up they elected to do so (and presumably plan to sell it before it tanks again and collect their money back that way), thus relieving AMC of the debt.

I don't understand why you would want to lose the valid distinction between ideologies and the common sense ethical principles to be applied in everyday life. — Janus

Because what you call "common sense" someone else may call "crazy nonsense", and vice versa. It sounds like you and I broadly agree on what is common sense, and of course I think that we're actually right about that and that people who wildly disagree with it are seriously wrong and, as you say, should be resisted. I'm not saying that every point of view is equally (in)correct; I'm not espousing relativism. I'm just saying that every point of view is a point of view.

The distinction you're making between "common sense" and "ideologies" sounds like a distinction between "facts" and "beliefs". Beliefs are things that you think are facts. There are some actual facts that are not dependent on them being believed, but the people who think that those actual facts are the facts thereby believe those facts. Other people believe differently. Saying it's a belief doesn't say whether it's a correct or incorrect belief, even though some beliefs may be correct and others incorrect. Beliefs aren't non-facts by definition. Facts are the things it is correct to believe, but those beliefs in the facts are still beliefs.

What word would you prefer to use instead of "ideology" to mean one's "big picture thoughts about how things ought to be", regardless of whether those thoughts are the correct ones ("common sense" as you'd call it) or not? I.e. what's the umbrella term encompassing "common sense" and "ideologies" in your taxonomy? What are those both types of?

Anyone know why these frenzies might hurt brokers? — Kenosha Kid

My understanding is that the problem lies entirely with margin trading, which it seems was Robin Hood's bread-and-butter. When trading on margin, the trader orders the purchase of a security without having (the entirety of) the funds to pay for that security already in their account. The trader does have to deliver those funds eventually, and I gather that with "app" brokerages like Robinhood it maybe initiates a payment transaction right away (I'm not sure, I've never used anything but a real bank, but that's the impression I pick up of these apps), but that still takes time to reach the brokerage's clearing house, even if it's an "immediate" payment (because those somehow still take days to fully clear). Meanwhile, the broker makes the security purchase immediately, with their cash on hand, to grab it at the price it was at that instant instead of whatever price it was when the payment eventually reaches them. In between making the purchase and payment arriving, the broker is basically loaning the trader money.

So lots of people making lots of trades on very volatile stocks means the broker is making lots of loans to people buying those stocks, secured by collateral of very unstable value (the purchased stock, which they can liquidate if the money doesn't show), and meanwhile they're also having to issue immediate payouts to those who are selling that same stock (on the other end of those trades; every purchase is also a sale). So as the price soars, but unstably, the brokerage has to spend increasingly much of their cash on hand on other people's behalf, increasingly unsure if they will be able to collect on the collateral if the money they're owed by the buyers doesn't show in time.

That's why they made purchases require 100% margin (basically, you have to supply the cash up front, no lending to you). It's probably also why they made shorts require 300% margin (because when they've got a lot of loans out backed by these volatile stocks, they really can't have anyone tanking that collateral unless they're also putting a bunch of other money into the system that the brokerage can use to keep things running until everything settles).

We certainly may agree on some points in this, but this is where we disagree — Janus

We're only disagreeing about terminology, and since this is about the terminology I used in my OP, you are not free to disagree about what I meant by that terminology. You can disagree about whether that is the best terminology for the things that I meant, but not that I meant what I meant by it. You can use that terminology to mean different things than I did, but if you do then you're talking about something different than I was. In which case anything you say is non-sequitur as a response to anything I said, and you haven't commented on the actual topic at all, but rather on what you thought the topic was due to a miscommunication, that I have since cleared up (unless you still actually don't understand the different way I'm using those words, rather than just disagreeing with the appropriateness of the use of them in that way).

I'd just like to be clear that nowhere am I advocating disrespecting anybody. Even group 5, I think, still see themselves as good people holding their views for good reasons; they're just ones to whom communicating the problems with those reasons and the consequent problems with their behavior is nigh-impossible. The whole point of the rest of the spectrum is to distinguish other degrees of disagreement as even less bad than that: that it's not just "us" and an unreachable "them", but there's shades in between, who deserve to be treated differently than the "unreachable them", the latter of whom I don't even think are in principle unreachable or some kind of inherently evil, but just... really, really hard to get through to.

I suppose some banks might be persuaded by the market expectations of the companies performance to give loans to the extent market capitalisation is a measure of that — Benkei

Right, that's what I'm talking about. I once worked for a penny-stock company and their whole business strategy seemed to be to look promising enough to boost their stock price enough to convince investors that they're worth lending money to actually do that promising stuff with.

Distraction
Pro vs anti abortion
Real issues: Why do women feel they have to have an abortion or put off having kids to keep up with their career trajectory? Why do we believe women should have a stable marriage and finances before having kids rather than say having kids young and living with her parents to help raise the kids then start a career when the kids start school. Why can’t most families live on a single income anymore? What are all the factors driving down wages and driving up cost of living? How much wealth is enough to raise well adjusted well educated children? Why do parents feel the need to start saving for their kids college before they even get pregnant? Why are we willing to accept that kids need to go to college if it costs more than starting a small business? Why are women unable or unwilling to access/use birth control? Is birth control failing? Do the current birth control options have too many side effects? — Megolomania

This is basically the position of most pro-choice people: we should increase access to birth control and decrease the circumstances in which women would fear to become mothers, so that fewer people want to have abortions; but those who need them, can still get them. The so-called "pro-life" (anti-choice) side generally favor policies that lead to an increase in circumstances where women would want to have abortions (because they're in circumstances where they wouldn't want to have kids, but they got pregnant anyway), and then deny access to them, instead blaming the women for their promiscuity.

Distraction
If your child likes things of the opposite gender they might be transgender and you must respect that.
Real issue
What gender roles and stereotypes are valid and which are arbitrary? Why not just do away with the arbitrary gender norms and let people be themselves without gender being the defining factor of their identity? Who is profiting from the proliferation of extreme gender roles? ( toy companies, clothing companies etc..). — Megolomania

This is actually a misunderstanding of the whole transgender concept, which is not just about adopting the sociological gender role and presentation of the opposite sex, but about a psychological discomfort with one's physical body.

What you're saying is basically the misunderstanding that drives TERFs to thinking that "the trans agenda" is counteracting feminist progress. (Not that I'm accusing you of being one, just noting that you misunderstand in the same way that they do. I think the language of "transgender" really contributes to that misunderstanding, and I suggest a disambiguation of it to solve that problem).

Fascism is a specific ideology, or set of ideologies. It's not just any authoritarianism. Different visions of society can all have a similar drive towards being enforced by absolute authority, but that doesn't make the visions the same. — Echarmion

Thank you.

I think the “horseshoe theory” of political spectra can be better understood as that authority breeds hierarchy and hierarchy breeds authority, so whether you pursue equality at the cost of freedom (state socialism) or freedom at the cost of equality (anarcho capitalism) you end up losing both (state capitalism, i.e. fascism).

The problem with unenlightened’s post is that the axis of state socialism to anarcho capitalism is only “left-right” in a newer distorted sense. The original left was the direction toward freedom AND equality both, and the fascism that both state socialism and anarcho capitalism collapse to is squarely in the corner of the original right.

This doesn't help Gamestop in any way. They've already issued those shares and received the notional value. Any premium being paid goes to the seller. — Benkei

Does it not protect Gamestop from potential liquidation? Like if the total market cap of GME drops below the total assets of Gamestop that will incentivize the shareholders to call for liquidation of assets to cut their losses, no? Thus putting Gamestop completely out of business. Propping up their share price in turn prevents that, no? (Also, don’t companies borrowing power usually hinge on share price too?)

if hordes of dummies lend margin — Benkei

Is it not RH, rather than the dummies, who would be doing the lending? And in requiring 100% margin, RH is basically refusing to lend toward the purchase of

a volatile and shitty stock — Benkei

which yeah, sounds reasonable to me.

I’m as skeptical as the next socialist of big capital, but I’m even more skeptical of the skreechings of 4channy people who call themselves “autists”, and though I admittedly don’t know a whole lot about this topic, from what I’ve been reading it sounds like they know even less and are just furious about normal reasonable procedures.

In addition, long stock positions will require 100% margin

As I understand it, that means that you must have 100% of the purchase price on hand, i.e. you may not borrow to purchase; not that you are required to borrow to purchase.

short stock positions will require 300% margin until further notice

And this should mean that it’s more difficult to do what the hedge funds were doing, because it requires that you have 300% of the purchase price on hand to short it.

I read of some people having RH force the sale of GME stock on their behalf at one point, but I haven't seen much traction on that story so I don't know how trustworthy it is. — StreetlightX

From what I was reading earlier to make sure my understanding of margins was correct, that’s normal practice when someone buys something on margin and then it tanks below the required maintenance margin percentage (e.g. if you buy $2k of something with only $1k of cash, i.e. at 50% margin, and then it tanks to only $1.5k in value, if your maintenance margin is 33% then your holdings of that will be liquidated to cut the losses of the money you borrowed from the brokerage to purchase it).

Did you mean fdrake? I — StreetlightX

Whoops yeah, similar avatars (both mostly white with the mod badge) confused my tired brain.

So, was what Robinhood etc were doing earlier something more than just requiring 100% cash on hand to buy? Like, you couldn't buy it at all, even in cash? I thought it was the latter but then my brokerage's notice plus @fdrake's mention of margin earlier makes me wonder if wasn't just that.

I noticed my brokerage limited purchase of those stocks to a 100% margin requirement, i.e. you have to actually have the cash on hand to purchase them, you can't borrow it, but otherwise you're free to buy.

Is that all the other brokerages like Robinhood etc have been doing, or have they been limiting it even further?

@StreetlightX I see you mentioned margin above, but it sounds like you're saying the opposite of what my brokerage seems to be saying? I would think that if anything it would only be big institutional investors who would have margin on which to buy (though Googling it right now it seems like some margin is a pretty standard feature of every brokerage account?), and the requirement from my brokerage seems to be that you cannot buy on margin, not that you must buy on margin.

It’s already here in California, with stops scheduled for Alaska, Hawaii, Midway, Kiribati, and New Zealand.

I haven't actually read this thread, I'm just making a joke.

In case you missed it, the joke is in misreading "can God do anything?" as:

"is it the case that there is some x such that God can do x?"
(like "jeez, can't this God guy do anything at all?")

rather than the obviously intended

"is it the case that for all x, God can do x?"

God can do anything, therefore he can divest himself of his omnipotence if he so wishes. And one way to do that would be to create a thing too heavy for him to lift. — Bartricks

:100:

As the root user of my computer, I can modify anything about it... including user permissions... including removing my own permissions to do things.

If there were an omnipotent God, he would be like the root user of the universe, and as such could do anything, including limiting his own -potence.

No, God can't do anything.

Because to do is to be.

And God don't be.

Those pragmatic, common sense and decent values are not strong opinions or ideologies but necessary values if your aim is to achieve social harmony and fairness. — Janus

I think that you take “ideology” and “opinion” to mean something different and much more pejorative than I do. To “have an opinion that such and such” is just to “think that such and such”, as I mean it. For that opinion to be strong is just to not be on the fence about it: to be really sure that such-and-such. An ideology is just a comprehensive set of opinions, usually normative opinions: it’s your big picture thoughts about things, usually about how they ought to be.

So if you think (as I do) that there ought to be social harmony and fairness, and that a variety of things are necessary toward that end, and you are very sure about all that, then that corpus of thoughts you hold are a set of strong opinions, an ideology. People like us who agree about those things see each other as group 1.

I see plenty of people who agree with most of the things I think ought to be, but do so without having really thought through why, they just agree with what whoever they think are good people think. Those are our group 2.

Then there are people who aren’t exactly opposed to those things we think, but they’re not solidly opposed to those who think otherwise either, they haven’t made up their minds yet. Those are our group 3.

Then there’s the people who were once group 3 and could have been swayed to our group 2 but instead were swayed the other direction. Those are our group 4.

And then there’s those who just don’t share the same values or means of reasoning or anything like us as all, who come to conclusions that are the opposite of what we think are those pragmatic necessities toward good ends, either because they’ve somehow come to value completely different ends or because they for some reason can’t see the pragmatic necessity that we see. Those are our group 5.

Because they are not based on ideology but on pragmatics, common sense and decency. — Janus

In other words, good reasons.

I'd submit that in its usual use and here "being objective" in the sense of "trying to minimize one's personal biases to achieve a more collectively consistent perspective" is a much better description of "objectivity" than "possessing objective knowledge". — Pantagruel

I’d go one step further and say that the “objective” in “objective knowledge” or “objective reality” or “objective morality” just means that same thing: unbiased, divorced from any particular point of view, consistent with all points of view — which is not the same thing as consistent with all opinions, else it would be impossible for anyone to ever be wrong about objective things.

The fascist left — unenlightened

The who what now? Contradiction in terms.

index investing: people invest passively in an fund trying to copy the index, which then means that the most risen stocks are bought — ssu

You probably already know this and just misspoke, but it's not the "most risen" stocks that get bought more, it's the stocks with highest market capitalization, which is the product of share price and number of outstanding shares. Phrasing it as "most risen" makes it sound like the faster a stock goes up the more the index funds buy it, but if it's a penny stock with almost no market capitalization, even a huge percent increase in it will make very little difference in the overall portfolio of an index fund.

It's much like a pyramid scheme. Each person is willing to pay more than the last because the next will pay yet more, until they don't, then the pyramid collapses. The last tier lose but everyone before them wins. — Kenosha Kid

If you're talking about index funds here like ssu was, then this collapse doesn't happen, at least not overall. The fund is just following the market at a whole, by investing proportional to market capitalization. If one overvalued stock collapses, that reduces their amount of market capitalization, and so proportionally increases the fraction of market capitalization of all the other stocks in the portfolio, so the fund reallocates money from the collapsing stock to the others.

In this way index funds perform definitionally as well as the average investor, but with none of the expensive overhead of actively making decisions on which stocks to invest in, resulting in greater overall profit. So long as the market as a whole is doing well, the index fund does well.

Interestingly, this incentivizes index fund investors to root for the collective benefit of all participants in the market, not the victory of any one over the other, and so in this way the best investors under capitalism in a way mimic some aspects of socialism:

Secular children were more likely than religious children to judge the protagonist in such fantastical stories to be fictional. The results suggest that exposure to religious ideas has a powerful impact on children's differentiation between reality and fiction, not just for religious stories but also for fantastical stories. — Judgments About Fact and Fiction by Children From Religious and Nonreligious Backgrounds (2014)

Related anecdote: I was raised in a very loosely religious family, and exposed at a young age to Christian original fiction that seemed to me just like any other fantasy literature, equally real or unreal... and as I grew up and outgrew Santa Claus, etc, I shifted all the religious stories into that same category of well-meaning “lies for children”, metaphorical fictions for pedagogical purposes... and then was shocked to realize by my adolescence that so many adults actually believed that these fantasy stories were real.

I'm pleasantly surprised to see Isaac of all people being my staunchest defender here, but yeah, he's basically said everything I'd want to say in response already. Thanks Isaac.

One thing that I found helped me a lot when I was going through some really awful existential dread about death and the end of the universe etc back in 2019 was to remind myself that mood is an important contributing factor to health and longevity, so not thinking about those things that make me feel awful is actually doing something to help fix the problem. Taking your mind off it isn't irresponsibly avoiding the problem, it's actually part of making it better.

I would have a category for 'totally different or incompatible' for the genuinely religious and traditional. It's not that I think they have bad intentions (5) or that they are duped or misinformed (if they consciously affirm their faith) (4), but that they have a totally different and incompatible way of thinking about ethics and society. — ChatteringMonkey

If they’re well-intentioned just for bad reasons, that would put them in group 2. E.g. if you’re a socialist atheist and a socialist Christian agrees with you politically but for religious rather than rational reasons, they’re group 2 to you. OTOH a prosperity theologian would be group 5 to you: they really wholeheartedly and devoutly believe something that is completely contrary to any good reasons you can think of.