volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@amiya_rbehera so I'd say, yeah because E2E encryption flourished so well on email.

But that encryption on AP is one level worse? Because now I guess we are picturing public feeds full of gobbledy cook with people publicly publishing undecipherable crud, just filling the whole experience with unreadable crap.

This is why that doesn't work.

@spmatich Well, part of the reality is that sometimes the attacker makes it explicit, they say they will attack the certain group, and it doesn't really matter whether that grouping is based on a religion or hair color or last name or anything else, if an attacker declares that they will be coming after your group and then proves it by coming after your group and then declares that they will continue coming after your group... Well, it doesn't really matter whether it's about religion or not.

If there is a proven threat that seems likely to kill a whole bunch of people based on their own warnings, it's reasonable to say killing the threat would save a lot of lives.

So that's the unfortunate situation.

It's a trolley problem. Do you actively kill a few people to in the end save a whole lot more people?

@moira I honestly still have no idea what you're talking about.

@amiya_rbehera but that's exactly part of the problem that I'm trying to point out, that mastodon is based on protocols that are inherently opposed to things like end to end encryption.

ActivityPub is at its core kind of opposed to any of those privacy protecting features. And that's a big problem!

@ionica so as a scientist myself, in my opinion the thing that we really wish science communicators would stick with is actually communicating the science.

Maybe that's the first rule? Either way, it's very much not being followed.

So many of us are so frustrated because we find science communicators communicating things that are literally the opposite of what we have found, and that is just... It's infuriating.

I really think we need to stick with the first rule of science communicating should be to communicate the science, and we need to just keep repeating that first rule until it actually sticks.

I don't care what somebody is deeply interested in exploring if they are misreporting science.

This is people's entire reason for working and living that is being misreported, and until we get that straight, I just don't think anything else is priority.

@moira "Standard Prank Telephone Call Number 4" what?

What in the world does that mean?

@spmatich Oh, you're missing my entire point here.

My entire point is that religious identity has nothing to do with it. And I think you're getting hung up on that when that is not the situation at all.

It sounds like you are focusing on religious identity in an equation where religious identity is entirely beside the point of a group of people identifying a threat thinking that they can address the threat and in the process minimize death and suffering.

Notice that I said nothing about religious identity in that equation.

I'm not acting like peace isn't important. In fact, I am acting as if peace is the entire goal. What is the way to gain peace when there are factors intent on opposing. peace?

There are no easy solutions in that kind of environment.

@spmatich unfortunately, in reality, sometimes the only way to stop a person from killing a bunch of other people is to kill that one person.

To put it bluntly.

In such circumstances it sure would be nice to have another option, but sometimes that's just the choice the world gives you.

So it's a trolley problem, if you're familiar with the philosophical concept, except in this case, the one in the target of the alternative trolley path is the one who set up the situation in the first place.

@amiya_rbehera I think the privacy issues around Mastodon/AP would really limit where it can be practically applied

@spmatich but if you know the source of your threat and you can eliminate that source, then the fact that you were attacked certainly matters as it proves the danger of the source and also informs whether or not peace can be promoted by eliminating the source promising future attacks.

@afouxenidis at this point, Gaza officials have a pretty questionable track record with their claims though.

@haikushack@mastodon.social I mean to be lazy is to be human.

But then that's the point. There's a human behind every use of AI to help make art.

@haikushack@mastodon.social but people did create the art.

Every bit of AI art represents an instance of a person using the AI as a tool to create art.

It's like being against paint brushes because paint brushes can't feel so the art the paint brush creates is to be rejected.

No, the mistake is viewing the paint brush as acting on its own, just as the mistake here is viewing AI as acting on its own instead of being an extension of a human.

@jricole keep in mind that the Republican Party consists of different groups with vastly different, even contradictory perspectives, just united into one party by tenuous overlaps of consensus and overlap in practical convenience.

So it's not really a contradiction. It's just that different people in the same party can have very different ideas about the world, even if this party is the best for them to be aligned with for the moment.

Off the top of my head, one great example of that was this study I saw finding five distinct groups getting together to elect Trump that included one group of American isolationists and another group promoting global trade and international engagement.

They had exactly opposite core values, but the Republican offering served them both better than the alternative.

@evan does it count as offering to testify against them if he has offered to testify but is so out of touch with reality that he doesn't realize he's not doing them favors?

Like, if he thinks his testimony would help them because he just really doesn't know how any of this works?

@PhotoSniperFox That's about the state of things, but it's getting way too little attention.

@JenWojcik ha! Sorry.

I'm just a big fan of RCV.

Serious business! ;)

@JenWojcik they did use ranked choice voting, or at least there are reports that they went through the procedure of dropping the lowest ranked nominee until finding a consensus candidate.

The problem is that they don't need just the most well-supported one, they need a nominee that can gain near unanimous backing in order to overcome the math of the situation, and RCV can't help with that.

@acwhite Well, a technicality, remember that anyone who votes present is not counted as a vote against a nominee, so a nominee can lose more.

But yeah, it's a step closer, just like if I start walking east right now I'll be taking a step closer to Europe, but I'm almost certainly not going to get there.

He'll take the next step. There's a little optimism in my mind that this will overcome the mathematical realities of the situation.