You know what? Fuck it. It feels like we have all the dystopia of a cyberpunk reality without any of the cool shit. Fuckin’ might as well make some super babies. What’s the worst that can happen? Inequality unprecedented in all of human history? We already have that. Make some juiced up baby Einstein mofos. Maybe one of them can figure out how to unfuck everything.
Yeah, I’ve been wondering about this lately. I’m starting to think that the platform itself requires too much tech literacy to use and understand to ever be appealing to anyone other than highly tech-literate individuals. While I’d like to believe there’s enough of us out there to build rhobust communities around non-tech topics if this is true, I’m starting to worry that there just aren’t.
For all it’s flaws, Reddit was always very simple to understand and interact with, and it seems like the fediverse is just inherently more complex. Even if that’s not true, it’s going to FEEL true to anybody new since virtually all the active communities are peopled by the tech-literacy 1%
“The people in the trees” lives in my head rent free, but not 100% in a good way. Huge SA trigger warning (not pervasive in terms of time spent on the topic, but yeah, if you are AT ALL squeamish about that sort of thing, give this one a pass). But it is quite unlike anything else I’ve read and stuck with me in a way other books I randomly grabbed at the library with no context generally do not. Left me very much questioning how I view people and the world and how easy it is to allow monsters to hide in plain sight.
The flames of hell they seemed so high
When I could barely see over the pew
I was only a boy when they told me that lie
But lord it felt so true
And that’s a hell of a thing to do to a kid
Just to teach him right from wrong
You can burn in hell for the rest of your days
Or you can choose to sing along
Found this song on shuffle during a drive and had to pull over to cry out some religious trauma.
I’ve seen the term “cognitive surrender” being thrown around for this and I think they’re two very nice terms to describe what’s happening to our society right now
Intent SHOULD matter most here. Generally that’s true. I’ve also seen some folks go apeshit on people for using the wrong terms while the person speaking was actively trying to use the correct terms but just isn’t up-to-date. People of all groups, nationalities, genders etc can be dickheads, even when I agree with them broadly politically
I miss slapstick comic strips!
Bump for red rising
I’m partial to Charles Darwin with this banger from 1861
But I am very poorly today and very stupid and I hate everybody and everything. One lives only to make blunders.
To this day I hear “Diarrhea Jane” instead of “Diary of Jane”
I think this is basically true. Though it’s an interesting topic Here is an interesting bit of research
Early and often. I used to be one of those people who would just never admit if I’m wrong, grew up with them for sure. Learned it’s WAY less stressful to just admit the moment you realize you’re wrong.
That said, I use devils advocating to figure out what my actual opinions are, so I will argue positions I’m not 100% sure of pretty adamantly. Always seems to throw people when we debate for 20 minutes, me passionately defending my stance and then at the end I’m like “huh, yep. You right.” Most people think I’m fucking with them or something and keep trying to argue and I’m just like “yep, 100% agree”.
I see people say this all the time. I think you’re PROBABLY right, but also I don’t think we have anywhere near enough of an understanding of how consciousness works/emerges to say that axiomatically.
I feel like AI fan boys AND AI haters are both sitting there comparing Human consciousness to AI. One side says the pathway exists, the other says it doesn’t, but IMO we need more info, because we only really know how one of those two things (the generative AI) even works. Maybe it’s more similar to our brains than we think! Who knows? Till we do I view both sides with a lot of skepticism.
True, but from what I’ve read, virtually all mosquitoes don’t bite people. You can wipe out the 1% or less of the ones that do without significant environmental impact since the things that eat mosquitoes aren’t choosy about which ones so you really are just reducing their available food by like 1%, and even some of that will probably be backfilled by other species of mosquitoes since the ones that bite people don’t only bite people.
Different take: be afraid of death. When I’m driving I’m afraid of crashing into the other cars. I don’t obsess over it, but a healthy fear is a good thing. Fear is not intrinsically bad, and some things are scary and that’s okay as long as that fear doesn’t rule you
It’s really hard to acknowledge privilege. Everyone says “I worked HARD for what I have, I didn’t get it because I’m privileged”.
This misses the point though. You can be extremely privileged and work every bit as hard as the least privileged person on earth, nobody is questioning those people’s work ethic. The point isn’t that they didn’t work hard for what they have, it’s that other people are working JUST as hard and getting fucking NOTHING. Less than nothing. I’ve pointed this out to conservatives and more than once been met with confused silence because this is not the straw-man that fox news told them to punch at.