Opinionhaver @ Opinionhaver @feddit.uk

A contrarian isn’t one who always objects - that’s a confirmist of a differ

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It's not really politics I'm looking to discuss. At least not exclusively.

As a non-native english speaker this headline format bothers me to no end. I guess the intention is to make it shorter but I simply just find it confusing.

I not only block political communities here, but I also filter out every post containing terms related to current political events or specific political figures. While I might touch on topics that are political by nature - like the Israel-Palestine conflict - I rarely engage directly with politics in a broad sense.

For example, yesterday I tried making a post about the concept of "sigma males," where I even preemptively acknowledged my doubts about its scientific validity and criticized how it tends to frame even negative traits in a positive light. Yet all the responses I received were ridicule, personal attacks, and accusations. Apparently, I overlooked the fact that the term "sigma male" acts like a lightning rod for a certain kind of person - people who completely disregard the actual question and just start spewing hatred and negativity.

I’d really just like a place where I can indulge in my cold and analytical, autistic topics of interest with other like-minded people. I don’t even mind disagreement - on the contrary, I enjoy it, as long as it’s done in good faith.

What exactly is your problem here? Do you not have even a drop of self-awareness to realize that you’re now acting exactly like the kind of person that made me want to find a community free of people like you in the first place? You’re being a textbook example of someone who just can’t stay on topic and insists on making it about the person asking the question rather than addressing the question itself.

My comment history is open for anyone to see what kinds of topics I like to explore. I’m not going to start listing them here, because that’s not relevant to my question.

You want a completely theoretical discussion where people cannot point out to you that you aren’t flawless either.

This is just yet another completely baseless ad hominem accusation which both isn't true nor in any way related to the topic at hand. I don't understand your insistence on making this about me. Like I said: I'm not interested in discussing people.

r/samharris, r/zombiesurvivaltactics and r/suomi are the subs I miss from reddit. I'm not aware of not having addressed any other questions you've posed to me.

And there it is. I wonder what really triggered your post?

This is exactly why I’d like to find - or create - the kind of community I described above. These kinds of accusations, even when implicit, don’t bring any value to a conversation. I’m looking for a place to discuss ideas - not people or tribes.

DayZ, Minecraft, Cities: Skylines, Age of Empires 2 Definite Edition, Grand Theft Auto 5

6.9Gb on my Dropbox

it really is a much nicer place to be than reddit

I can see how that would be the case for a certain type of person - perhaps even the majority - but interestingly, my personal experience has been almost the opposite. The people here tend to lean in the same political or ideological direction, and they’ve become extremely sensitive to any ideas that seem to go against their worldview. They’ve dealt with so many bad actors in the past that the moment someone starts making the kind of noises that trigger their alarms, it becomes almost impossible to engage with them meaningfully. You quickly end up having to defend yourself against preconceptions formed simply because you’re willing to touch on a sensitive topic.

I think the contrast within the userbase here is actually sharper than on Reddit. There’s a large number of incredibly decent, mature, and thoughtful people - likely due to the higher average age - but there’s also a surprisingly large group of extremely vicious activist types who will dogpile on you the moment you say anything even halfway critical of their cause, or not critical enough of what they oppose.

Based on my experience trying to have deep and sometimes difficult conversations here, I’ve come to believe that if such a community did exist and gained even a bit of popularity, it would likely result in a large number of the currently active users here getting themselves banned from it. In the end, it might just be a small group of users left - the ones actually interested in playing fair. I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing, though. You really don’t need that many people to have insightful discussions. Often, even one person is enough, as long as they’re approaching it in good faith.

Moderation would definitely be an issue, though. Dealing with the worst offenders is easy - it’s the gray areas that are challenging. The space wouldn’t just need to be heavily moderated; that same standard would also need to apply to the moderators themselves.

It's crazy how it sometimes feels like it's no longer enough to simply not like something - instead, one has to make actively hating it a part of their identity. People get conditioned to be triggered by certain keywords, and it doesn't seem to matter what is said afterward or what the nuances of the particular case are - they've already decided how to react.

It's actually somewhat effective in my experience. Another thing I've recently started doing is calling out mean comments. Nobody wants to think of themselves as a mean person but it's quite difficult accusation to argue against when the evidence is right there in front of their face.

The discussion wasn’t about them being insistent on grandkids - it was about you being insistent on inheritance. If you think they’re being unreasonable, then it’s worth recognizing that your own insistence might be just as unreasonable.

You’re not obligated to have children - just like your dad isn’t obligated to leave you an inheritance.

False dichotomy - Assuming that because someone doesn’t agree with one viewpoint, they must fully support the opposite. Framing the issue as if there are only two mutually exclusive positions, when in fact there may be many shades in between.
Strawmanning - Misrepresenting someone’s argument - usually by exaggerating, distorting, or taking it out of context - so it’s easier to attack or refute.
Ad hominem - Attacking the character, motives, or other traits of the person making the argument rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself.
Reductionism - The tendency to reduce every complex issue to a single cause - like blaming everything on capitalism, fascism, patriarchy, etc. - while ignoring other contributing factors.
Moving the goalposts - Changing the criteria of an argument or shifting its focus once the original point has been addressed or challenged - usually to avoid conceding.
Hasty generalizations - Treating entire groups as if they’re uniform, attributing a trait or behavior of some individuals to all members of that group.
Oversimplification - Ignoring the nuance and complexity inherent in most issues, reducing them to overly simple terms or black-and-white thinking.

That’s why I keep making new accounts every time the last one hits around 1,000 comments. I already recognize quite a few users here who’ve only written around 3,000 comments total - so by that metric, if I’d just kept using my first account, I’d probably be instantly recognizable to a ton of people by now.

They'll not going to be around forever so they want to know you'll be able to look after yourself.

Samsung Galaxy XCover 6 Pro and early 2015 Retina MacBook Pro 13"

Artificial intelligence isn’t synonymous with LLMs. While there are clear issues with training LLMs on LLM-generated content, that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the kind of technology that will eventually lead to AGI. If AI hallucinations are already often obvious to humans, they should be glaringly obvious to a true AGI - especially one that likely won’t even be based on an LLM architecture in the first place.

There’s one single thing in the entire universe that I’m absolutely certain of - something nothing could ever change my mind about: the fact that it feels like something to be. That there’s qualia, subjective experience. I could be a simulation, a brain in a vat, or something else entirely - but it’s undeniable that it is like something to be whatever “me” is. Everything else is up for debate.

Now, sure - there are things it would take a lot to convince me otherwise about, but I’m also not married to my ideas. I don’t attach my identity to them. I’ve been wrong before, and I’m almost certainly wrong about plenty of things even now. I don’t reject ideas just because I don’t like them. There are uncomfortable truths in this world, and not believing them doesn’t make them untrue. Even politically, it would be statistically absurd to think one side is right about everything and the other side is wrong about everything. It’s a mix. The challenge is figuring out where you are mistaken.

As for the examples you mentioned - homosexuality and transsexuality are human-made labels, ways to describe patterns we see. But like all labels, they’re rough generalizations. The differences between individuals even within these groups are vast - so much so that it starts to put the usefulness of the label itself into question. Personally, I’m just me. Tomorrow I’ll be a slightly different version of me. I don’t even fully identify with who I was yesterday - let alone some rigid label that society wants to stick on me.