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.

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”.

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.

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?

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)

Believing this account outright is just as foolish as dismissing it outright.

There’s a reason “the first casualty of war is the truth” is a cliche— it’s because it’s very hard to know exactly what’s going on when there’s so much chaos and impetus for people to push agendas.

I have some assumptions I’m confident about, but those are fairly broad, and based on the nature of what happens in any war. Specifics I’m trying hard to slow-roll my reactions to and full acceptance of— I’ve seen way too many news stories about active situations be proven in part or in whole false, and most of those aren’t in war zones.

That link suggests differently:

Following Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza-strip in 2005, the Philadelphi Accord with Egypt was concluded, which authorized Egypt to deploy 750 border guards along the route to patrol the border on Egypt’s side. The Palestinian side of the border was controlled by the Palestinian Authority, until the 2007 takeover by Hamas.[3] The joint authority for the Rafah Border Crossing was transferred to the Palestinian Authority and Egypt for restricted passage by Palestinian ID card holders, and by others by exception.

I think this is ignoring the seas of dross that have fallen away in the past. There have always been bad movies, and unoriginal movies, some of them doing quite well at the box office(used as a metric to show that people were showing up to see them). We don’t hold a lot of them in popular memory because we don’t watch them anymore, and what’s left from those eras are the movies of sufficient quality or resonance that we continue to watch them.

The system has a number of issues that are well trod, and certain pitfalls which are inherent, but hanging a lack of quality or unoriginality entirely on capitalism is overselling it.

I would posit that a lack of moderation, or a form of monomania is a bigger culprit here. Too much focus on the business side can stifle creativity, but too much focus on the creative side can result in sprawling, unfinished messes. With too much focus on safety we can be stigmatised from action, but with too much focus on action we can lose our humanity in favor of feeding the gears of progress.

This accounts for the bean counters, but doesn’t grant them the power of being the one true reason for everything being bad.

To the best of our knowledge, they still won’t care about the other creatures in the web going extinct. We don’t have any evidence of animals global or species-wide conceptualisation. This doesn’t make it right, just that anthropomorphising animals and animal thought isn’t a good argument.

But you’re right— no creature exists in a vacuum. The decisions we make matter, and having this abstract conception of the world gives us a moral obligation to be stewards of it. Some of that stewardship is about restoring and preserving what exists in the wild. Some of that stewardship means honoring the bonds we have made and the responsibilities we have taken on to animals we have domesticated. And some of that stewardship means acknowledging that our constructed environments have also become the homes and habitats of wild critters.

This is all to say— we need to do better, but no good answer will be simple, and nothing comes without consequences.

Forced migration, which this would be, is a bad idea, as has been born out repeatedly through history.

• if it’s to many countries, it splinters communities.
• if it’s to just one country, few are open to taking even small numbers of people in, let alone five and a half million.
• if one was open to it, none have the infrastructure in place to receive so many people.
• people get attached to land, and the idea of it.

To that last point, that land is not interchangeable, and any assumption that it is is remaining ignorant of some of the desires of the parties involved.

I could go on, but I don’t think that would add to discourse. This is a hard problem, renewed with every moment of violence. I don’t believe we should expect any of the grievances each side has stacked up to be let go of without honouring their non-violent desires.

I think the answer lies in between our statements, as absolutes have an absolutely thin margin for accuracy.

Intrusive thoughts are a thing, and they introduce thoughts of violence in pacifists, and racism in the tolerant. We don’t get these ideas because we want them or believe in them, and, from my perspective, giving them voice grants them power or legitimacy they never would have had otherwise.

But this could be an exception to your position sitting in a cutout you assumed in the expression of it.

Eh… I think I might care about somebody suggesting nuking the entire area. Not all ideas are created equal, and not all ideas are worth expressing.

Criticism, constructively made, helps avoid bad ideas, and makes good ones better. But you don’t always know the better way when you see a bad one— I don’t need to know how to build a boat to know a screen door won’t float.

Part of the problem is one side having a desire for autonomy, and limited, at best sense of self-determination. Robbing them and the state they have grievance with of both their autonomies and capacities for self-determination doesn’t seem like a good answer to the problems they both have.

A lot of the internet survives by pattern and habit. Pattern, habit, and the hope, founded or not, that things might get better with a site you’ve been using for years.