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.

So long as we are anecdotal, that has not been my experience.

Judgments along observance lines, and people thinking those in some denominations are crazy or lesser, but I haven’t seen it drawn on those lines.

Generally the same kind of a thing you’ll find in any religion, or any fandom for that matter— those who are more observant or more dedicated may say the less observant/dedicated aren’t doing it right; the less observant/more casual may say the more observant/dedicated are crazy.

This is a fundamentally dseems like an argument than in your post, and more or less is just an argument against any sort of progress or innovation. “We got by without ____ for many years, so what benefit could they offer us?”

If communication is intended, then the speaker or writer has a responsibility to make an effort toward being accurately understood. That effort involves using forms, formats, and punctuation that is old and well established, as well as more novel elements of them.

They also say to do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life. They say lots of things, many of them contradictory.

I think your advice of intentionally setting aside time is wise, though. I believe that too often we take for granted that things will just happen, and also overestimate the chilling effect of “not being spontaneous”.

Would they have a right to indiscriminately spray water into the air in public spaces?

It is not unreasonable to ask a person who smokes to have some reasonable restrictions on where they smoke.

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?

People who make their politics their personality appear at both ends of the spectrum.

Being loud and given attention, they can be the only example of “leftists” some people knowingly interact with.

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.

Eh, there’s also a decent chunk of non-native English speakers who might have a harder time with written sarcasm, and Poe’s law, I don’t doubt, accounts for more.

I don’t have their numbers, but this isn’t the first place I’ve seen similar quoted. First one I found through some friends’ discussion was this, which puts us, at a quick glance, at around a third of last year’s total(still plenty bad).

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.

Technically, if you’re visiting the Big Bang, aren’t you home already in space?

To use the old words: “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature”

If the model realized at scale repeatedly results in the same or similar effects, maybe there is something wrong with the model.

(Be those inherent mechanical flaws, flaws of ignoring parts of human nature, flaws of a model designed to work in a vacuum, or flaws of intricate and fragile necessary rules)

To your first point, the nature of communicating right now, particularly on the internet, means there is no room to have two different voices:

You can’t have an “inside voice” (communicating to those who already agree with you and reinforcing micro-cultural support) and an “outside voice” (communicating with everyone else, potentially finding or convincing new supporters); every statement is heard by everyone and is, de facto, outside voice.

And that’s only for people who would otherwise care to differentiate— the overall culture views conflict as a virtue, and so rewards people who “tell it like it is,” ignoring the fact that you can tell it like it is in ways that don’t maximize belligerence and alienation.

I hold similar views(obviously), but I find something comforting in it. Like, rather than living in a ruined paradise lost by us or our parents, we live in a complicated world where we share the work of trying to make something better with our ancestors.

(Of course, we also have to figure out how to do that, and, in a complicated world, that can be challenging and lead to conflict)

More likely it was when they were kids and without adult responsibilities, or narrow/whitewashed views of the past(as from stories and shows from before their birth)