volkris @volkris@qoto.org
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
@mattblaze who said anything about philosophy?
This is really about rhetoric and political science. This is 100% about real world choice of words.
Philosophy doesn't enter into it.
The moment a person feels gaslit they're going to shut down and your argument is not going to be convincing.
Again, maybe your goal is not to convince. That's fair. The choir will still eat it up.
But if you do want to reach some people with misguided beliefs, then you have to reach them where they are.
@MattFerrel the overwhelming majority of Republicans voted against the wackos in their party.
It wasn't Trump but congressional Democrats voting as a bloc that amplified the voices of those extremists, requiring Republicans to set aside their preferences and seek approval of those ideologues.
It's not good, but it was the predictable outcome of the Democratic voting strategy, given the rules of the House.
@graydon I mean... the authoritarian DID win.
@mattblaze it's a mistake, both factual and rhetorical, to say there is no evidence instead of saying the evidence is scant and uncompelling.
It's like, yes, there is evidence that the world is flat. It's poor evidence and the overwhelming body of evidence and analysis debunks it. But it exists.
If one wants to engage with someone who has questions about the election, they're going to be immediately shut out once they deny that the evidence exists.
At that point they're clearly gaslighting and won't make any progress.
Although, if the goal is just to preach to the choir or signal tribalism, have at it.
"Since no other civilized country on the planet has massacres like this, Johnson is implicitly arguing that the problem isn’t the human heart, but the American heart."
I think that's actually the issue.
And it's why gun legislation won't help.
I take it the author put this out there as the gotcha, but no, it's the actual, reasonable conclusion.
We've already seen the failure of gun legislation. We already went through the process of seeing the impact of new laws for years. They didn't work.
The American heart just is really more prone to malfunctioning like this guy.
@Aethelstan zero, since the Speaker has no authority to shut down government.
I know so many media outfits and politicians are spinning these wild tales, but they're counting on us not knowing rules and laws, sometimes really complicated ones, that make their tales into impossible conspiracy theories.
@jrm4 well, we can always go to the extreme: so many people think Musk is ruining Twitter, so what if his goal is to ruin Twitter?
What if that was his goal all along?
If people are right AND that was his goal, then it would mean he's experiencing wild success.
Personally, I don't think it's being so ruined, but it is being changed, and since I don't know his objective I can't say whether those changes are working toward that objective or not.
@Alan well that was my argument before, that your claim was clearly wrong, but now there's the addition that your argument of going back to ancient history to say something about what's being made today is pretty out there.
@jrm4 but we can't see into the conference rooms where engineers are making longterm plans or boardrooms where pitches for the future of the platform are being made to secure the financial side.
And we can't see into Musk's head to see what he's picturing for ten years down the road.
Yeah, we can make guesses, but they're only guesses since so much of that is actually invisible to us.
@jackiegardina I'd say folks asking that are falling into the pattern of begging the question, assuming the answer to the very question on the table and approaching it that way.
There were some really high stakes questions to be answered, so a lot people worked on them.
Unfortunately, the general public was told that the answer was one way, when it wasn't.
Tesla secures $100 million deal from BP
@DNPFred@mstdn.social well mainly the US needs to stop blocking cleaner electricity.
US regulations make it very difficult to make that change.
Tesla secures $100 million deal from BP
@darnell can't say Musk is failing at X if we don't know what his goal was.
He might be very successfully heading toward something we're just not expecting.
@Twitter_expat@mastodon.world well, it stinks that Hamas propaganda gets so much attention, but the difference is that one is an ongoing campaign while the other is a one-off event.
@QueerInTheCountry@mas.to how about we stop building Trump up, playing into his hands, by acting like he's at the center of the universe, as if we give a crap about him when we eat cheesies/cheetohs?
I'll eat them because I want to. I'm not rebelling against the guy I really don't give a damn about.
@Imoptimal you have that backwards.
The more those platforms integrate with Fediverse, the more of us they can monetize. They would GAIN all of us, not lose their own users.
Remember, every single thing you post here can be sold for profit even easier since it's broadcast without even terms of service for the companies to worry about.
But the ActivityPub protocol is inefficient and expensive to implement on scale.
It might very well be the cruddiness of the design of this platform that's saving it from the future you're concerned about.
@jrm4 the problem is that we don't know what Musk's end goal with Twitter is.
You can't judge how effective someone has been unless you know what they're aiming for.
It seems clear that Musk wants serious changes for Twitter, and we see a lot of changes there, but without seeing inside his head and knowing the goal we can't know if the changes are going in his direction.
I don't personally think he's a mastermind, but that's a different issue.
@Rush to put it simply, every instance with more than one user is a centralized collection of users.
And there are plenty of instances with more than one user.
@3dogcouch maybe.
Keep in mind that the sort of outfit who breaks and pushes this sort of story have a reputation for not telling the whole story, for pushing a sensationalized narrative to get clicks.
So it's hard for us to say what the legal status really is since we don't have all of the info.
@me again, that it's even a question in the first place is part of what makes the difference.
Would mastodon.social defederate the Coca Cola instance? MAYBE the answer is resoundingly no (though it might be yes), but when the marketing department is meeting in a conference room and this possibility even comes up, that's something they never had to deal with when they contracted for normal webhosting services.
So it's a difference that's negative if anything, and that needs to be appreciated.
There's no way "Well, we might be defederated" is a positive consideration. There's only downside with it, even if you and I believe it's unlikely from that one instance.
Beyond that, it's not so unlikely from other instances!
So I can understand why this is offputting to companies.
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
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