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
There's just not much to see there. That is how the government is supposed to work, if you don't want to do the job you quit. So it's not really a scandal or worth spending much time talking about.
This is government functioning as intended. Not much else to say.
@AnarresProject Well it's not Musk doing things but rather the heads of agencies and departments who have that authority to do those things.
Yes, employers get to manage their employees. That's how it works.
@CptSuperlative I just think it's really funny that what you are saying echoes goals of MAGA types.
They flat out say that one of their goals is for states to be more independent, and so I guess it's working.
@sun you say that like taxes weren't part of the original deal
@AnnaAnthro this is the same sky is falling rhetoric that was so debunked during Trump's first presidency.
I don't know why anyone would believe it now after seeing it fell to come to pass back then.
@bit101 cool!
I support any effort that promotes that sort of thing.
Although, there is an issue that it has to be societal, not just technological. It's not enough for smart engineers to build the system, we have to have non-technical consumers convinced to look for it and use it.
It just makes me think about how end-to-end encryption is a long-solved problem, technologically, but socially it's still not the standard.
Anyway, here's hoping! But I'm not optimistic, unfortunately.
@karlauerbach No, you have it exactly backwards!
No I'm not talking theory at all. I'm talking that there are substantial procedures that the US government has for addressing the complaints that people are bringing up. We don't need any sort of constitutional amendment, we have plenty of room for Congress to act, for example.
In fact, most of these very substantial, extremely non-theoretical procedures do go through Congress. Whether we elect people that use those procedures or not is a different matter, and it's up to us to hold them accountable for what they do in Congress.
This isn't theory. The Constitution as it is, without needing to talk about amendment, provides pathways to resolution, so there is no crisis. It's just voters voting for representatives to hopefully do what we expect them to do.
And if they don't? Well the Constitution gives us that power to vote against our interests if we want to.
@W_Lucht to be sure, this is every administration, and the US system of government was designed specifically to keep those tendencies in check.
In fact, the US system of checks and balances relies on administrations being so self-interested so they can keep the other branches of government from running amok.
In terms of game theory it's actually kind of brilliant.
@W_Lucht having recently spent quite a lot of time engaging with healthcare and retirement in the US, the stories about not having it are pretty overblown.
Really, it's more that so many in the US choose lifestyles that are harder to stay healthy and retire through.
It's a different set of values. It's a very personal matter what set of values you prefer.
@barrygoldman1 each instance operates independently here, and they trade content with each other, but there's no guarantee that any particular instance is going to trade any particular content with any other.
Most importantly, the people running some instances configure them specifically not to trade content with others. So everyone on this platform is under the thumb of their instance operators.
So you might not see replies from other servers because either the other instance is configured not to send you replies or your instance is configured not to accept them from the other.
And that's not even getting into technical malfunctions.
If you're so reliant on political decisions, well, that was probably a bad thing to rely on in the first place.
Sounds like these tribal organizations made bad choices in the past if a political shift so undermines things they are relying on.
There's a drum that I've been banging for a long time, that we really needed to normalize things like digital signatures for authentic reporting, where everybody involved would sign the content to confirm that it's legit. It would create a digital chain of custody, in a way, that we could validate.
I even had friends in journalism outright push back against that proposal. They had their reasons, none that I found compelling.
And so we are now getting to the world that I've been fearing for a while, when AI can generate content and we can't really be sure what is and is not human validated. We never put in place the norms that would help us check authenticity, and now we are entering a world authenticity is going to be more and more suspect.
Anyway, yeah posts like these just make me think about how long it's been that I've been seeing this coming and wishing we would take steps to protect ourselves from its implications.
Well here we are.
Again, the reason we are not in the constitutional crisis is because the constitution provides mechanisms to address where we are today. We are still within the rulebooks.
It doesn't matter whether we like it or not, whether we prefer it or not, whether we like such and such a policy, whether such and such is outdated, any of that.
Like it or not, the current state of affairs is within the rulebook, so there is no crisis.
No, #Trump isn't causing a constitutional crisis. The Constitution has mechanisms in place to address everything that's happening here. There's no crisis, there's just a need to apply the constitutional order.
But, I just keep thinking that #Democrats yelling constitutional crisis must be referring to their own crisis wherein the Constitution just doesn't provide them with the tools to impose their political preferences on the country after voters rejected them.
It's a crisis of party, not of Constitution.
They should put forward better candidates than this.
Keep in mind what you're saying: if it hasn't budged in 80 years, then it doesn't seem like a very useful vulnerability. If it hasn't made inroads in that many generations, then that doesn't work.
So no, this isn't about the United States refusal to address racism. This is about a political norm, a durable political structure, which is a very different thing.
If you want people to vote differently then you need to understand why they're voting the way they are, and that's not about racism, clearly, if nothing else based on what you said about how long it's been that people are voting that way.
@breakfastmtn I would simply counter that it doesn't really matter where you preach to the choir, it's still not going to be productive.
And like you said, often it plays into the hands of Trump supporters.
@mekkaokereke Well keep in mind that for a lot of people it's not about attacking groups I don't like, but about this sense of applying the rule of law fairly.
To be clear, I'm not saying that's a correct description of what's going on, I'm saying that's how a lot of people see it.
Like you said above, people didn't learn. Well this is what people need to learn, how other people see things so that we can understand and then engage with them.
Regardless of how you or I see it, a lot of people see Trump as restoring fairness and rule of law. And they need to be engaged on those terms.
@amyfou I mean it's all stupid. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
If you take a job that relies on the political winds, Don't be surprised when the winds don't go your direction.
@interfluidity The main thing is that the US government was on a course towards something the people didn't want. At the least this interrupts the course towards something bad.
We can talk about a course towards something better later, at this point people just wanted to stop going in a bad direction.
First, Do no harm.
A lot of people are missing at the moment that the safeguard against unconstitutional actions is NOT through #SCOTUS but through the Congress, and more importantly, through voters electing representatives who will react to unconstitutionality appropriately.
SCOTUS has no enforcement power against the Executive Branch. That was left to the Congresss.
Both SCOTUS and Congress can and should judge the President in different ways, but at the end of the day, it's up to the people we elect to Congress to react to whatever has been found about what the president has been doing.
Far too many congresspeople shirk their duties by pointing fingers at the other two branches when they're the only ones with the actual power to act, and that's critical to the US system.
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
