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
@DavidBruchmann You're confusing branches of government, though.
A criminal pardoning himself has nothing to do with democracy. It's a function of the executive branch, not the democratic legislative branch.
Pardoning is an executive function. It has nothing to do with democracy.
@rameshgupta You're confusing different branches of government, though.
The different branches operate differently because they have entirely different functions in the US government.
@TruthSandwich@toad.social
@lovelylovely Well the problem is that a lot of people voted for Biden taking a chance on him, and he has not done the job very well.
I don't think it's hard to understand why people saw that he screwed up and are deciding now that they don't want to vote for him again.
@PamelaBarroway so why not vote for anybody else in the primaries?
The choice is not just Biden versus Trump. Vote for somebody better.
@KarunaX but different people with different opinions of the UN don't necessarily start from the same approach of consulting the UN charter itself.
So again, regardless of the UN charter, this is still a point of contention that makes an enormous amount of difference.
@0xamit keep in mind that any instance is free to do this at any moment.
Threads would be no more free to monetize content than any other site in the federation. In fact, it'd probably be less free since it would have so much attention on it.
The point is that when you're putting content on here, be aware, that it is probably being monetized one way or another.
There is no built in safeguard against that.
@freemo I don't think most people in the US see it as celebrating indigenous people.
@MediaActivist I don't think that thesis lands, though.
Fediverse is engineered to focus not on users but on instances, if anything reinforcing authority in the hands of those operators.
It COULD have been anarchistic, but engineering choices were made, so that it's not.
Boy people let themselves get obsessed over the mythology surrounding Elon #Musk.
It's not good for them, and it's like, people taking an alternate reality game waaaaay too seriously.
Anything that doesn't fit their plotpoint is clearly part of the in-game conspiracy.
@_dm they weren't sued for their public speech.
I couldn't care less about Musk, and it really seems like people obsess over him.
It only makes it look more unhealthy that people get so obsessed over the troll that they accept easily debunkable stories like this.
@dangoodin
@_dm yep, so if we're talking about the lawsuit then we need to talk about what's actually in the suit, since that's what matters to the suit.
And it SHOULD matter to all of us if the allegations are true, that MM was misleading the public.
That's worth looking into for the general good.
@fraying if you read the complaint, no, that's not the root of the issue.
It says #MediaMatters specifically created accounts to follow only inflammatory content and companies, and the complaint also provided evidence that this is extremely rare.
So the root cause wouldn't be that there's a ton of Holocaust denial, but that Media Matters engaged measures to go out and find some, and even then had trouble finding enough to make the sensational story it wanted to tell.
Well, if you think Twitter is THAT influential, then for goodness sake let's keep good people on there to influence in positive directions!
@_dm that's not accurate, though. The complaint wasn't for reporting on antisemitism on Twitter.
The complaint was about Media Matters publishing reports that mislead the public on MM's own methodologies and experiences on the website.
Heck, the complaint itself recognized the bad content. That's not at issue here.
@tomjennings some of us aren't obsessed with Musk, and that's the difference.
I don't give a crap about the troll, and it would probably be good for yourself, and society in general, if we stopped giving the troll so much of the attention he craves.
@dangoodin don't think of it as supporting Twitter. It's really not.
Think of it as them using the communication tool most effective at getting their messages out and informing the public.
It simply has nothing to do with Twitter itself. It's all about communication, nothing more.
But even if voters aren't rational or informed they are still at the root of the process, the necessary piece of the machine that fuels all of the rest.
It's missing the key part of the picture to ignore the voters at the center of the whole thing.
If anything, the rest of these qualities around how voters operate represent openings by which to fix other parts of the system, but only if you recognize voters in the first place.
Say you think voters are all open to being bribed for their votes. Great! Get to bribing to push for a better tomorrow.
Or ignore voters and let others set the way as they see fit.
@TheConversationUS
@KarunaX but these rhetorical questions have real world answers!
You say it's the UNSC that's preventing the UN from doing more good, but should the UN lose funding it might not even be able to do the good it does now.
And so the UNSC isn't preventing the UN from doing more good. It's enabling the UN to do more good than it would have otherwise.
The other thing is, you mention the cause of failure of the system, but that relies on how a person gauges success and failure, what the person sets the goals as.
Many people simply have different ideas about what the UN is for in the first place, and particularly what the UNSC structure is supposed to be doing.
That disagreement of purpose is itself a pretty serious problem.
@prawned@iceshrimp.social
I was disappointed by this approach as through it #Mastodon doesn't so much empower a user to shape their own experience as it asks someone else to shape that experience for them, guessing what the user wants it to be.
It's backwards, IMO.
@spreadmastodon
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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