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
@Wen No, I'm interested in hearing from you.
You say I missed something, so why not tell me what you think I missed.
I have an entire bookcase full of physics textbooks here, but what do YOU think?
@Lassielmr I think the best way to consider the SOTU speech is to ignore any sense of ideology or philosophy or statesmanship or anything like that.
The guy is having trouble in the polls among his own base, so he decided to use this giant platform to target specific audiences to try to win their favor, regardless of anything rational or realistic.
So he might be all of the things you list, but in this particular speech, none of that mattered he was just trying to pander to a particular group of voters, who themselves might be out of touch and all the rest 🙂
It was very unbecoming, very inappropriate for the event, but the people who would care about such things the most already won't vote for him no matter what.
@Wen Well then, enlighten me, Don't just say nah uh.
@Aethelstan but to me that's where the rank and file of the Republican party wants to go.
I CONSTANTLY hear Republican voters talking about loyalty, which is absolutely not my cup of tea, but that's the direction the party has gone. Folks like Nikki Haley, for example, were pummeled by both mainstream commentators and in discourse between common voters specifically because she was perceived as disloyal.
The us versus them, we're on a sports team, be loyal to the team sense is very strong in the party these days, so it's not surprising that party leadership would need to change to respond to that shift.
@Wen no.
Different people can use different amounts of water and electricity to do different amounts of work, so measuring work by those is disconnected.
In the context of Bitcoin the useful measure of work is probably operations per second, FLOPS.
If one really wants to measure work, that is. It's not a very useful thing to measure in this context.
I think @dajb knew it was an analogy. He was pointing out how problematic the analogy really is.
The idea that folks would treat the platform as sacred--and many do--absolutely brings up issues of inclusion and diversity and accessibility.
It's to project your personal opinions on the system and impose your perspective on others, demanding that they conform to your own values.
You worry about "I do whatever I want here" but the other side of the coin is "You don't do what I don't want you to do."
People leave corporate platforms to escape that sort of thing. It's shame to see it here, just with a different master.
@tomw often it's not about corporate appologism but rather worry that the EU would be WORSE.
It's not that the person wants the corporation to have the power. Its that they don't want the EU to have it.
The new boss might be worse than the old boss. Doesn't mean the old boss was any good, only that the new one isn't.
@nileane I mean, maybe the average person really is surprisingly dumb?
We see examples of that left and right, and heck, that people buy into dumbed down narratives is itself evidence of that.
It took dumb people to buy the dumbed down rhetoric used by Brexiters!
@Aethelstan RNC leadership gets a good deal of attention and airtime in popular conservative media circles, though.
It was especially high profile after the 2022 elections fell so far short of Republican expectations and conservatives were struggling to find someone to blame.
This has nothing to do with principles or policies. It's pure pandering and shifting winds of public perception.
After all, Trump was for McDaniel until he was against her.
@phani I'd say the issue of instance admins overexerting their authorities over users' feeds is a much larger and more important issue that needs to be challenged head on, outside of the question of post length.
So many left platforms like #Twitter specifically to get away from that kind of meddling in news feeds, so it should be highlighted when it starts to show up here.
I always promote the norm of empowering users to make such decisions instead of leaving it to #Fediverse admins, giving users the tools they need.
It's a cultural question, and all we can do is try to nudge the culture in the direction we think is better.
@Wen but that's simply not the case.
The increase in work only happens if the coin increases in value. If the coin decreases in value then the work decreases.
It goes to highlight how much people misunderstand how the system works, from its core.
Apparently this is a website demonstrating #Fediverse / #Mastodon and #BlueSky interactions all being intermingled as they engage with the post.
I'm not sure exactly what's going on, but at first glance it's pretty interesting to see.
https://nerdy.dev/this-site-now-supports-at-protocol-mentions-and-interactions
@fisunov Oh! Right. I guess both email features are referred to as forwarding.
I suppose off the top of my head forwarding like that is handled by clients and not the protocol itself.
Your instance would still be in charge and would pass content along, transparent to ActivityPub, just as an email server passes email messages along.
So that sounds like the reasonable solution to the problem.
If a user doesn't want long posts, let them avoid long posts.
That leaves the rest of us free to enjoy those, and we all get the experiences we want.
@Wen the story of Bitcoin burning vast amounts of power is false, though, based on a misrepresentation of how Bitcoin works.
We really need to stop promoting that narrative.
Yes, it gets clicks for websites, but it's not actually true.
Bitcoin can operate on a car battery and solar power. THAT's what Bitcoin burns.
Other people trade extra power for Bitcoin because it's proven so valuable to them, but that's not Bitcoin's fault.
It's like blaming art for the amount someone might pay for a Picasso.
Bingo.
And it's important to keep this firmly in mind so we can learn the lesson and avoid repeating it in the future.
I mean, #twitter was fairly awful. It had a terrible interface, it was constrained, it promoted slogans and echo chambers over conversation... I think a lot of people remember it with sentimentality.
But to the point here, Twitter was never the public square, and folks who misunderstood ended up caught off guard when the private service provider acted like a private service provider.
Recognizing that reality helps avoid repeating the cycle.
If one wants a public square, then they need to push for a service that's actually public.
And better than Twitter, while we're at it.
volkris
boosted
@annaleen I can understand the meaning of losing Twitter for many people, who made their living by connecting there.
However, Twitter was as public as X is today, meaning it wasn't. It never was yours nor "ours". If it was actually public, it could not have been sold to Musk in the first place. The means of its past owners just aligned more with yours, by incident.
@quixoticgeek it's not blindness to the harm of cars but recognition of their benefits.
We balance the risk vs reward with such systems, and that includes the tremendous value that cars bring us.
@Free_Press it's not that he's removing non-loyalists but that the party has been faltering, losing support, and based on election results, Trump seems to have the strategy to regain public appeal.
It's not ideological but prudent.
A new management team being hired when the old one failed.
@Aethelstan I mean, democracy brought us Trump.
He's acting only under the framework of democracy.
The RNC lost the support of the people, so democracy chose this new direction to regain it.
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
volkris's choices:
