Yeah, I’ve been increasingly cynical about this kind of thing. I wouldn’t say that I’m against developing carbon capture technologies, but I am immediately suspicious of anyone who suggests it as something that could help against climate change.

If you’re one for video essays, you might enjoy this, if you haven’t seen it already. https://youtu.be/uCuy1DaQzWI

Yeah, I agree. Like in this case, I’d argue that the “common sense” approach to crime is the punishment model that’s prevalent. The measures that failed are common sense when you understand how the prison system actually works, but I don’t know how common that knowledge is

I am perplexed by you, but I am glad that you have something that makes you happy.

“They go low, we go high” is a phrase I associate with the Obama era.

“(But sure, Ebola needs our DNA in the sense that otherwise we wouldn’t be alive. But so do nuclear weapons in order to kill humans.)”

For me, the fact that Ebola is an RNA virus made the meme more absurd and funny, in a “cut off your note to spite your face” way

I don’t know how much the UK collectively regrets Brexit yet. I come from a heavily Leave voting area and it was depressing as hell being a part of the vote count. Leave, Leave, Leave, Remain, Leave, Leave, Remain. Now in the most recent election, Farage’s Reform party got a concerningly high vote share, especially in areas like where I come from.

I was glad to see the Tories go, but I can’t be too happy about the UK election when I consider Reform. I think back to how UKIP were like at local government level. They’d campaign on absurd promises like “we’ll slash council tax and increase public services funding. Lots of things are possible if we get rid of those fat-cat Labour councillors”. Then they’d get enough councillors that they could cause real harm to their constituents by obstructing progress; it helped their cause to make the Labour majority council look bad. They could promise the world because they knew that they were never going to get enough councillors to change much, so they could blame their utter failure to do anything useful once elected on Labour (in my area at least. Apparently the same playbook works in Conservative majority areas too)

Brexit was unambiguously a political disaster. Many of the people who voted Leave have been actively harmed and I can’t even feel any schadenfreude at them because they haven’t connected the dots there. Like, I see people having their faces eaten off by the leopards they voted for, and they’re going “this is really hurting. See, this is why we needed the leopards eating faces party”. It’s honestly heartbreaking to witness.

If I wanted an autistically over-literal answer, I’d either ask myself (or come to Lemmy)

Stochastic parrots is an excellent phrase.

This is only tangentially related, but I’m reminded of a thing from Plato where he was complaining that communicating through writing was a bad way of doing philosophy. His concerns weren’t just around communicating ideas between people; he was even opposed to writing as an introspective tool to help a person think through their ideas, or make notes to come back to.

"And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.”

• Plato, “Phaedrus” ^([citation needed])

It’s interesting because I don’t think he’s necessarily wrong about the skill atrophy angle of it. It’s just a question of to what extent we need those memory skills in the modern era.

My occult phase was from a different angle: I really enjoyed immersing myself in something I didn’t have to explain or justify objectively, where I could just enjoy the vibes and not think too hard.

I think of it as analogous to how some of the people who are most into being submissive in a BDSM/sex context are people who seem the opposite of that in their careers/regular life. The contrast is a relief.

My PI: “Oh, we don’t use that microcentrifuge, it will ruin your results” Me: “Oh damn, how long has it been broken for?” PI: "No, it’s not broken. It’s cursed "

I thought this was just exasperated hyperbole, but nah, there’s a lot of superstition here.

Even if you’re competent at arithmetic in school, those skills can definitely atrophy. I say this as someone who’s unreasonably slow at basic arithmetic despite being an ex-mathlete; I got complacent because I’ve been learning and using graduate level maths, so I thought that would keep me from getting rusty. Nope — it turns out that basic arithmetic that you’d use in daily life is a different “muscle” to the kind of maths you use in academic research (which is obvious in hindsight)

I can’t imagine how much I’d be struggling if I didn’t have a good foundation to be starting from

Yeah, that kind of mocking is a direct attack at me, and I honestly like it because I feel like my weird achievement hunting is definitely mockable (especially because I already know how ridiculous I am and thus will not change in this respect)

The modern world runs on plausible deniability, especially the tech world

I have to believe in a future where people look back on this from a world with less hatred in it than it currently has. I want to give the perpetrators of hate as little plausible deniability as possible.

I have to believe that even though looking back on history didn’t seem to help us avoid this situation, that there will be people in the future who are wiser and empowered to make better choices for them and their communities.

It’s a fantasy, and I honestly don’t care if it’s unrealistic. It’s what I need to believe to keep going. I need to believe there can be something better after this, regardless of whether I’ll get to experience it.

I know I’m just one person, but your experiences are important and imo, necessary for women’s liberation (and human liberation more generally). I’m not going to say “you should share your experiences” because I get how exhausting it is to be challenged on basic shit all the time and that means commenting can be akin to self harm if overdone. I guess I’m just trying to expand that 1% of non-assholes into a larger percentage.

I say this as a cis woman whose feminism has gotten a hell of a lot more intersectional in recent years, in part due to trans friends. Knowing trans women in particular has helped me to feel more at home and happy in my own gender (femininity and its relationship with womanhood is complicated). Having lived as a guy for a chunk of your life no doubt means that your lived experience (especially with respect to gender) is messy and complex, but that’s great, because the world is messy and complex. At least, it would be great, if more people were open to listening to you when you share. I’m sorry that you have to do the cost:benefit analysis before commenting — that part is something I can relate to.

It does help, thank you.

Is outrage all that new? It strikes me as evergreen

I liked this comment. You wrote with the nuance and balance that I strive for. Thanks for sharing

I agree that it’s not quite the same, and I’m finding it real interesting to ponder how that happens.

This comic and this comment section have been pretty thought provoking. (Heads up, this is overly abstract speculation from here): For example, here’s a mathsy diagram This is a commutative diagram, and I’m not at the level of being able to explain it properly, but part of it is the idea of equivalence, the fact that there’s two routes from A to D that are equivalent.

I’m thinking about this sort of analogous to what we’re seeing in the comic and these comments. Like, the base experiences we’re talking about (being spoken over when you’re trying to share your experiences, for example) are fundamentally shared experiences, but the manner of experiencing them is different, because it’s coloured by our own positionality (of which gender is a big part of). I think sometimes though, it’s like discussions don’t work because we get separated — some of us at B, and some at C. Like, it does matter that our experiences are different, but also, there’s a sense in which it doesn’t, because we need to head to the same place anyway.

I don’t know what converging on D would be in this analogy. Solidarity perhaps? Which would, I suppose, involve recognising that the route you’re on is different to the route other people are on, and that it’s possible to be heading to the same place. I’m not sure, this is quite abstract, but you said the word “meta” and that seemed to catalyse this thought, so here’s this comment. You’re welcome/my apologies