volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@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.

@TNLNYC they did use it.

The problem is that they didn't all agree that they would all back the result of the vote, and so it didn't matter.

Ranked voting can help you figure out the candidate with the most support, but in this particular case they mathematically need almost unanimous support, and ranked voting can't help with that.

@spaceflight I think a better way to put it would be that they identified a potential problem, but more study will be needed to determine the actual environmental impact.

As in, here's a thing. What's the impact of the thing? Not sure yet, but at least now we know to go look.

@bazkie I'd say if anything at that point it's more along the lines of social expectations of polite behavior rather than responsibility.

You know, it's polite to hold a door or say hello to your co-workers in ways that promote a good working environment.

Part of the problem is that when you start talking about things a person didn't do you're also comparing their behavior against a standard that they might not even be aware of.

You know, if I do something then I can point at the thing I did and know that I did it. But, if there's something you would have liked me to do? Well, there could be an infinite list of things I didn't know that I didn't do 🙂

There are a whole lot of complications to the idea of holding people guilty for things they didn't do, and that's the practical, beyond the logical issues that themselves raise all sorts of issues with our conceptions of the world.

@Jimijamflimflam