DreamerofDays

That went from zero to apocalypse very quickly.

I think you’ve been chasing the news dragon too long and too hard. Past a point, it doesn’t make you more informed, just… sadder. More given to misanthropy and despair.

We’re here, and we’re not all bad. Most of us want the same things: health, happiness, love, and camaraderie. We want those things for the people we care about— sometimes more than for ourselves.

The vast, vast majority of us are just people. We get caught up in things, and we forget it sometimes, but that’s a people thing too. And so is helping— when tragedy strikes, or those times we create tragedy, people are also the ones running toward the danger and uncertainty to help save those who cannot save themselves.

All meaning is constructed meaning, and, to quote Shakespeare, “there’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

We decide, collectively, and as individuals, what is positive and what is negative. We invent for ourselves, whole cloth or adopting from our elders, meaning in life, the universe, and everything.

That doesn’t mean they are without worth. The world is altered daily through the things people imagine. Money is an invention, its value existing in the collective imaginations of those who use it. Maps are not the lands they represent, but their cartography influences where people live, work, and travel. Numbers and maths are inventions— languages invented to describe the universe and its movings, but the universe moves without needing to know them…

… nevertheless, with those invented languages we orbit distant planets with artificial satellites, and create the wonderful bit of nonsense that allows us to communicate here.

We choose to find meaning in the world, and then we choose the meaning we find there. Ultimately everything else can be winnowed away, but that. I believe we have value because I choose to believe we have value, and I weigh the good of the world with the bad because I actively choose to continue to see both. It isn’t easy all the time, and it doesn’t have to be one way or the other. But it’s what I want for the world, and what I want for me.

That seems like a convenient excuse for him to bear less, or none of, the guilt for his actions.

Does Agent Smith have autonomy?

Another way of thinking about it:

Numbers offer a sense of scale. As numbers go further left from the decimal, they get bigger and bigger. Likewise, as they go right from the decimal, they get smaller and smaller.

If I’m looking with just my eyes, I can see big things without issue, but as things get smaller and smaller, it becomes more and more difficult. Eventually, I can’t see the next smallest thing at all.

But we know that smaller thing is there— I can use a magnifying glass and see things slightly smaller than I can unaided. With a microscope, I can see smaller still.

So I can see the entirety of a leaf, know where it begins and ends, even though I can’t, unaided, see the details of all its cells. Likewise, you can see the entirety of the line you drew, it’s just that you lack precise enough tools to measure it with perfect accuracy.

so I just feel like I should be able to live my life and not have to worry about all this. Why can’t I?

Are you seeking permission or explanation?

It is also freed from its original form by being nearly eighty years removed.

I don’t have the time to stay angry forever, let alone against an organisation several generations removed from its foundational sins.

People have never lacked a willingness to be violent

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

We are very good at finding reasons to hate each other. When someone supplies reasons themselves, we are even better at it, and all too willing to let the objects of our hatred be the models for our behavior toward them.

There’s a sense of fairness or justice in doing so, but it isn’t accurate. Frequently, it’s an attempt at viscerally making us feel better. It’s “fair” in the sense of giving everyone a share of a shit sandwich. But justice is getting rid of the goddamned thing and giving people sustenance.

There are times when violence to bad people is unavoidable, but that is best solemnly done— it is a failing we accept that we might have an opportunity to do better next time.

I don’t choose who deserves to be killed and I don’t choose who deserves to be stabbed.

I do choose to think that maybe, maybe we can imagine not killing or stabbing anyone. Even pieces of shit who wouldn’t pay us the same courtesy.

But perhaps you’re right, and we’re all a bit more like Derek Chauvin than either of us would like.

That’s a lynching. Calling it anything else is cladding yourself in moral costume.

If there were a system where no one was ever convicted of something they didn’t do, maybe I would entertain the idea of the death penalty. As it is, how do you make up for 47 years of false imprisonment? I don’t know, but at least an attempt can be made. The same cannot be said for someone who has been executed.

A living exonerated person has a chance for some kind of a life which, to be honest is the point. Whether or not we can make up for the time lost is less important than the person getting an opportunity for self-determination with whatever time they have left.

To the cases more akin to Chauvin’s where there can be no doubt, another cluster of argument leads me away from the death penalty: that we should not model our behavior on the worst of us in choosing punishments for them, and that the State should take lives only when absolutely necessary. If a person committed a murder, seemed likely to do so again, and we had no reasonable means of preventing them, then it would make sense, as a form of damage mitigation.

Then again, this is leaning into the “pre-crime” area, punishing people for things they might do but haven’t yet. So… yeah, it will never not be fraught.

In this thread: a lot of people who are (low key?) pro death penalty

The last sentence feels a little “perfect being the enemy of the good.” Outside of wanting purity of intention, what is the issue here, if the result is people being helped?

Management, certainly. Some specific bits, though, that may or may not fall under that umbrella:

• Comparatively high price tag.

• Short lead-in time to the change.

• Shambolic communication with devs, mods, and users at large.

Most users, I would wager, would have been fine with Reddit making money off of their data. That’s the tacit contract most of the internet runs on— you provide me a space and a framework, I allow you to monetise what I do there. It’s when those monetisation decisions start to hurt my experience being there that problems arise.

For me, what is much, much worse is the dismissal of such a large outpouring of discontent from the community. People are willing to put up with a lot they don’t like so long as they feel heard.

We felt heard by the mods, and heard by each other, but Huffman, the face and voice of the company, offered instead minimisation, condescension, and calumny.

I would imagine the admins will just revert the deletion. Their hands are tied by law in a number of places regarding a user deleting their own data, but a sub might fall into a grey area they feel legally safe to revert.

The admins pay their rent doing what the execs tell them to do. Much as I would like for a system where the moderators also got compensated for their work, not being so lends them independence from the platform, and allows them to be more responsive to their communities.

I get why some of the admins are doing it, but “just following orders” has never been a good look.

Sorry for using your comment as a springboard to soapbox. >_>

Maybe they will replace the volunteer mods with people who get paid for their labor.

/s

Look at those goalposts go!