MonkRome @ MonkRome @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

I'll take a stab at this one. A lot of educated people stop thinking the second they see a study that confirms what they believe. It is the anthesis of what science is supposed to be, examined constantly. But people intertwine their ideological framework with science and pick and choose which studies they believe and which they don't. For some people, their belief in science is indistinguishable from someone else's belief in religion, and often nearly as harmful to society. There's tons of common knowledge rooted in science that turns out not to be true, but because of people's faith in science instead of skepticism, people will believe anything backed by science, irrespective of whether it's true. Laypeople have a hard time interpreting what they learn from science and remaining intellectually curious.

Even scientists can often be incredibly dogmatic. When Ignaz Semmelweis showed a mountain of evidence that washing your hands prevented passing infections to others he was ostracized by the medical community, despite there being way too much information showing he was right, he was ignored non the less. People tied their ideology and ego into believing he was wrong. Had people listened to Semmelweis sooner it could have saved countless of lives, some speculate millions. Semmelweis died from infection because the doctor treating him didn't wash their hands...

There is no such thing as a good religious person

I've known extremely religious people that were very kind to everyone around them, only focused on doing good in the world, and never pushed their beliefs on anyone else. "Good" and "evil" are very reductive and simplistic terms. Good people can have beliefs that are not good for society and they are not completely defined by that. If we go to that absolute then there isn't a good person that exists. Pretty much everyone harbors beliefs, irrespective of religion, that when examined may be detrimental to society, they just don't know their own blind spots.

I mean lets not pretend it's risk free, it raises blood pressure, causes headaches, can trigger arrhythmia in those at risk, etc. As far as drugs go it is probably the least risky, but it's not like it comes with zero health impacts.

I think people want to do things they are not allowed to. They will go through the effort to find a way. In a lot of states that legalized Marijuana, its use went down after legalization. Once it was normalized, some people lost interest. I think the opposite happens when you make it illegal, you're basically making it cool again. This isn't just drug use, it's with a lot of things, if you forbid it, people will suddenly want that thing more than they did before. Religion comes to mind. Authoritarian countries that want to stamp out a religion or all religion often cause a religious resurgence. There's nothing quite like being told you can't do something to make you want to do it or visa versa. People are naturally oppositional.

I keep hearing this and yet when I'm in Europe the amount of people smoking seems to go from tiny to slightly less tiny. Sure there are more smokers, but it's not a significant portion of the population anymore in most places. I just traveled all over France, which I thought was famous for being a smoking country and I noticed how seldom I was even around a smoker. Outside of Belarus  I don't think smoking is even that significant anymore in Europe.

People vastly over estimate the danger of riding a bike. It's comparable in lethality to getting on a highway in your car, slightly less lethal in most places, but slightly more dangerous for non lethal injuries, iirc.

That's not my understanding about how modern arranged marriages most commonly happen in the Indian community. For the most part it isn't really that different from a blind date that your parents arranged and participate in overseeing. Many people go through several arrangements before they find someone suitable to marry. Also many people work within both the westernized system of dating and the arranged system until they find a partner. For the vast majority of modern arrangements both parties have broad latitude to back out.

Only in the most conservative and extreme households do people receive coercive pressure to marry against their will. You'll find that more in rural India than among expatriates.

Also many men and women still prefer the arranged system as they find dating cumbersome, awkward or time consuming.

The reason you should accept other cultures is partly because of how much ignorance and presumptive reasoning your carry into you decision making process...

Tupac was also political, he wasn't just some artist. He's like if Killer Mike was 50 times as famous. I think you're right about how death transforms someone's legend, but I think Tupac was set to be as famous as Snoop Dogg is now. Accept with the political drive to be a cultural revolutionary. I doubt he would have faded into history like he was ja rule or some shit.

You don't pass bills with 1 vote. Coalition building is a necessary part of democracy. If you don't believe in coalition building, you don't actually believe in democracy...

I agree it should be fixed, but our present legislative branch is incapable of taking on that kind of progress, they can barely wipe their own ass. If that's the best they can do I think it is still better than doing nothing at all. "ploy to win votes" is another way of saying doing what people want, or what they are literally paid to do. It's funny to try and propagandize that into a negative thing.

Accept it's been the case for decades, this isn't just lately. The republican party in the modern era has like 10 times the convictions than the democratic party.

"You can only help people if everyone gets the exact same amount of help", is the dumbest argument on the planet. And I'd challenge you're premise that blue collar works are paying for white collar workers to go to school. With progressive taxation, really it is upper middle class and wealthy people that are paying for that school regardless of education background. Very little of that money is coming from the blue collar workers that aren't brining in a lot of money. If $2 of Joe the cashiers taxes go to paying for education but $20,000 of random rich guys taxes go to bettering education, I really don't think that is such an unfair system like you make it seem. The lack of a debt burden on a large subset of society ends up benefitting everyone, including the janitor or cashier.

I feel like that misses a lot about how politics work. Someone just getting into office is often far too ineffective for us to allow our system to be run by first and second term legislators. First term legislators are often fairly useless because they are still learning the job. I'm not saying there is no solution to that, but it would have to be coupled with massive reform around the support mechanisms for our legislatures. You think the federal government is slow moving now, just wait until everyone in office has no idea how to do their job.

Edit: Also as others have pointed out, you'd also be terming very competent legislators along with the corrupt ones. I think people overestimate the amount of corruption in the legislative branch, due to the media creating a confirmation bias. For every evil corrupt piece of shit, there are 5-10 people you've never heard of just doing what they think is right (even if you don't agree with them).

Edit2: maybe a better solution is a dementia/Alzheimer's in person test given to all legislators past 65 every year, evaluated by a 3 doctor panel. If you fail the test, you're legally prevented from running and forced to resign if in office. If removed the political party impacted gets to appoint the replacement, otherwise if there is no political party (true independent) the executive branch of that state gets to appoint replacement.

I don't disagree with you entirely I was pointing out that using absolutes with Jews is fraught with contradictions. I wasn't necessarily trying to support the person you responded to. Even within the framework that they were rules to follow there is an extremely wide variety of interpretation. And while I agree with your messianic assessment, as an atheist Jew that remember a tiny amount, I also think gatekeeping a religion is sketchy territory. Most fundamentalists don't believe any other sect is truly part of their religion, hard to draw lines using the perspectives of people that have a clear in group mentality. To me, if you say you're a Jew, you're a Jew, I have no reason to challenge the claim.