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
@wjmaggos I agree with recognizing that it works, although there are complaints ranging from efficiently issues through feature issues that I think arise directly from that web-based foundation.
Just to name one thing, complaints people have about difficulty in migrating between instances can be mitigated but never truly resolved simply because the web server approach binds users to servers, and there's really no way around that.
@gkmizuno I'll say it again but I fear we are going in circles:
There is no paradox since the court found that the situation you describe is not legally possible. There cannot be an insurrectionist in office the way you describe because the law would not recognize the person as an insurrectionist in the first place.
No, not nullified. Just because the judicial branch lacks authority doesn't mean the other two branches can't apply the amendment.
From Congress refusing to accept EC ballots listing Trump for the sake of the 14th amendment through executive agencies refusing to recognize Trump's authority due to the 14th, the amendment is certainly not null.
It's just that the court found that the state court lacked legal authority to make the determination which the still existing 14th amendment still provides to the Congress to give that power to the court should it wish.
It is BECAUSE the 14th is still in force, not null, that the Supreme Court recognized congressional ability to write such legislation.
@gkmizuno correct, the question before the court was more open ended, whether the state court erred.
And the court found that yes, the state court was in error because it lacked the legal authority to conclude that Trump is an insurrectionist with regard to ballot access and the 14th amendment.
And so, without the legal finding of being an insurrectionist, there's no paradox of an insurrectionist being in office, because legally the person would not have been found to be an insurrectionist.
The person in office is simply the person in office, as far as the law is concerned, again regardless of what you are I might think about whether the person is or is not an insurrectionist.
But it's the resolution of the situation you're thinking of.
Well for what it's worth, my opinion, just an opinion, is that the platform was held back by engineering decisions that came out of a web server world, where everything was focused on servers instead of users.
If you look at the technologies underneath ActivityPub, it looks like developers grabbed a bunch of off-the-shelf web technologies and cobbled them together. Lots of http and webfinger and web certificates, etc.
They could have started more from scratch, but this is the direction they went, and for better or worse, it's going to be a server oriented platform because it was built on server oriented technologies.
I think it was a case of having a hammer and everything looking like a nail 🙂
@McPatrick ps: let me add that this kind of thing happens in legal proceedings all the time
It's just standard for the us legal system, not some special carve out for Trump.
@McPatrick Well if you want to approach it from that direction, what the Supreme Court found was that no court has the legal authority to determine whether Trump is an insurrectionist for purpose of the 14th amendment.
So technically, it couldn't make that determination if it wanted to, because it found that it took lacked that legal authority.
That's not quite how it works, really the court just didn't answer the question because under the way US courts work they can't answer questions that they don't have to answer, and they didn't have to answer that question given their ruling.
Like you said, they didn't answer the deeper question. The reason they didn't answer it is because it WAS the deeper question and the answer to the shallow question resolved the matter before them.
However, yeah technically, even if they wanted to go to the deep question they couldn't have because they found that they legally couldn't.
@wjmaggos It sounds like you might be talking about the actual rollout rather than the protocol itself, which is kind of a different issue.
The AT protocol is decentralized even if nobody takes advantage of that feature. So it could be theory versus reality, and I'm talking about the theory, even if in reality right now the network isn't particularly built out yet.
But speaking of the protocol, as I recall one difference is that, the way you frame it, your mobile doesn't have to talk to A relay. It can talk to multiple relays, as many as it wants, it's in control. The control over who to talk to is distributed down to your mobile.
AP puts everything at the instance level. Your mobile has to talk to your instance, no other instance. And not multiple instances. Your mobile is bound to your instance.
With AP your mobile is really just an extension of the instance. With AT the relays work for the mobile.
@McPatrick No, that's a long-standing principle of how courts in the US work.
It's a long-standing principle that courts should not touch issues that they don't have to touch in order to resolve the question before them. They didn't have to look at the underlying question because they were able to answer the major question without going there.
There are other complications that would have come up had they looked at that underlying question, but suffice to say, it's just how the US courts work.
@McPatrick it's kind of a legal shortcut.
Rather than take up court time resolving something that arguably is something for courts to handle, a thing like age verification is handled by state officers because it's anticipated that serious disputes will be so easily resolved and far between. So they built in a shortcut just to get it done with.
Technically, yes, any dispute about a nominees age could go through the rigmarole of court hearings and evidentiary hearings and due process and on and on, but they figure those cases should be so easy that they'll just use this shortcut instead.
But a question like is this person guilty of insurrection is much less straightforward, so it doesn't get the shortcut. It still has to go through courts.
It's a difference of practicality due to complexity.
@gkmizuno The resolution to the paradox comes from noting that you're begging the question.
This is the core of the quotation that I think you quoted above.
IS an insurrectionist holding office? That itself is the question. Without the legal determination that somebody is an insurrectionist, legally there isn't an insurrection is holding office, even if you are I personally believe that person to be an insurrectionist.
As far as the law is concerned, there's no problem with that person in office, because they have not been legally found to be an insurrectionist, so no paradox.
@exchgr regulatory changes made it more accessible to more people, so with those lower barriers to entry or people found it more valuable.
@Hyolobrika Definitely.
And so I'm really transfixed on the idea that we need to educate people better in pretty much all walks of life, whether it's how to engage with government or how to engage with technology.
Knowledge is power! 🙂
@wjmaggos Well the other half of the ax that I grind is that I wish Fediverse developers had much more of a focus on end users, on letting end empowering end users to shape their experiences the way they want so that different people can use the same platform in different ways.
We do see some of that with, for example, picture posting sites existing alongside the microblogging sites. Different interfaces just have to figure out how to handle different types of content coming across.
But taking it a step farther, this is why I emphasize ActivityPub being not so much decentralized as centralized around instances. That is a constraint that prevents this platform from being as flexible to different users.
And I think ATProtocol seems more decentralized and more flexible so that more users can have different sorts of experiences all on the same network.
In a way it's like how web traffic and email all coexist on the internet. If you decentralize more control you can have more different approaches to the experience.
@jamusb@mastodon.sdf.org No, because Presidents don't have the authority to declare dictatorship
@jchyip Well, almost.
The Constitution sets limits on who can take office, but it doesn't set limits on our choices. I can choose my dog to be president, but that doesn't mean my dog can actually issue executive orders.
This is a detail but a critical one.
@gkmizuno but I repeat myself 🙂
When I want to know what the Supreme Court says I read what the Supreme Court says, and that also includes being pretty skeptical of positions and claims that the Supreme Court did not take up.
Often enough justices write things in their dissents that are just plain wrong, leading to the court not taking them up. And so what is written in the dissent Is just as questionable as something Conway wrote.
We have the ruling in front of us. We can see what it says for ourselves. The dissent is functionally little more than questionable commentary for us.
It's a really important point that different people use social media differently and expect different things out of social media.
The reason I think this point is so important is because too often users will think the system works one way and expect it to work that way when in reality it's working a different way.
That applies here. You bring up the idea that most of what we do on social media is targeted toward the public, and platforms like Twitter and Mastodon seem very focused on that mode, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
However, a user that expects more privacy and less targeting toward the public might find themself surprised if their content is much more public than they were expecting.
So that's why I grind that ax pretty regularly.
@christianschwaegerl but we can read for ourselves that it's wrong.
The ruling does not close the door on a circumstance where an insurrectionist does something, but rather it focuses on the question of determining insurrectionist in the first place. Once an insurrectionist has been determined, the majority ruling doesn't stop any action consistent with law.
The minority opinion is wrong. The whole court was correct in not taking up the incorrect opinion.
@gkmizuno I'm mainly interested in listening to the Supreme Court when I want to know what the Supreme Court said.
I think your quotation is pretty apt. To the extent that it disagrees with Conway, I'm going with the quotation.
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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