AceTKen

joined 2 years ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] AceTKen 30 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I didn't read him as saying that though. They are not stating that capitalism is better, they are stating that human greed will attempt to corrupt every system.

There have to be safeguards in place to stop the greed. And yes, there might be safeguards within one anarchist collective (which anywhere else would be known as "laws"), but not another one that gets greedy and wants to take over your collective and has bigger guns.

Fighting against greed is an ongoing project no matter what political system you are under. Switching systems does not miraculously solve this.

[–] AceTKen 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Shit. I didn't read your comment as a joke initially and almost had a mini-rant about how we know if a server 3 provinces away is down for 5 minutes and go into a red alert.

That was dumb of me. Carry on.

[–] AceTKen 18 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Pretty piss-poor "24 hr. service" from OVH. We're an MSP and will make sure to steer clear of them for future projects.

Glad to see everything back however!

[–] AceTKen 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Man, I love Spider-Man, but this looks super rough. The jokes are horrendous.

[–] AceTKen 2 points 2 months ago

Data - Don't Sing

Murders. I don't want to spoil any more than that because it has a twist.

[–] AceTKen 1 points 3 months ago

Yeah that's a really good example, this entire comment right here. Don't do this.

[–] AceTKen 20 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Just FYI, as per their own terms you can cancel up until it ships.

[–] AceTKen 20 points 3 months ago

This is a damn good question that I would also love an answer to!

[–] AceTKen 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Not great. Sort of lost my will to post after a bunch of experiments over at [email protected]

If I post pure questions in the weekly thread, generally one or two people respond. Political or not, it doesn't seem to matter.

If I post questions with some opinion added, people respond more frequently to those (even if I do not believe the opinion), but we get scads of aggressive comments and downvotes which buries the thread quickly.

To top that off, if I respond in other threads in Lemmy, I get people digging up the weekly threads (or responses therein) and trying to use those as ammunition against me. It's super disheartening.

[–] AceTKen 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Hispanics have a very high population of religious voters and many of them don't believe in abortion. For many religious people, even if they disagree handily with everything else the Republican party does, they will not vote Democrat because of the abortion issue.

There was a pretty large research study and a bunch of podcasts on it.

[–] AceTKen 2 points 4 months ago

Grabbed the podcast! More detail never hurts. Much appreciated.

[–] AceTKen 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

usufruct

So... reading the Wikipedia article on it for more info, it doesn't seem to place any limits on what you can own. It simply lets you makes allowances for others to use something of yours. It doesn't seem to mention forfeiting unused property in the least.

It's basically just being a landlord, but with other stuff, no? I'm not following how this isn't corruptible unless there's something I'm missing.

 

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

No, it's not a joke. I'm frustrated and I'm probably not choosing my words carefully.

This community has had steadily falling engagement - our last 3 weekly threads have had a grand total of 1 (excellent and well-articulated) response, and the number of topics not generated by myself (or the other mod) since the inception of the community has also been 1.

Very few people want to actually talk. From what I've seen, the masses want the same things that they wanted on Reddit:

  1. Memes
  2. Articles they don't read (but will bitch about endlessly) that reinforce their opinion
  3. Angry responses to someone (who may be trolling) that reinforce the current politics of the reader (that they couldn't have given a fuck about a few years ago until it became heavily politicized)
  4. Shitty easy jokes
  5. Personal politics circlejerking

I hate that I can see a hundredth point-free meme post and view 200 replies on it. I hate that it's just the same talking points being strawmanned over and over again in every thread. I hate that any point outside common groupthink is downvoted to oblivion and buried instead of discussed.

The reason I'd like to back away from Lemmy seems to be the same reason I started this community: we need more people who can articulate points, and less downvoting, but it doesn't seem to be getting better.

Maybe one day, but today is not that day. Lemmy needs to mature in more ways than one.

5
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by AceTKen to c/actual_discussion
 

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This weekly thread will focus on current political divisiveness occurring nearly worldwide. I'd post links, but I feel that everyone knows what I'm speaking about.

This issue has been especially prevalent in American politics as of late, but it is felt nearly everywhere.

Some Starters:

  • What do you feel has caused it? Add proofs if possible.
  • Once caused, what has added to it and why?
  • What can be done to ameliorate the issue, if anything? On a personal scale or a national one.
  • Can it be remedied or is civil war the only option?
9
submitted 11 months ago by AceTKen to c/actual_discussion
 

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread we will focus on Activism, both positive and negative.

Here is the definition we will be using, so please make sure your argument matches.

Some starters:

  • What would you classify as effective forms of activism?
  • What are ineffective forms of activism?
  • How does a group know when their mission is achieved? What if the mission is ambiguous or changes over time?
  • Do you feel they stop too early or too late?
2
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by AceTKen to c/actual_discussion
 

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be trying something new. We'll be focusing on the age old question "If you could change one thing positively in the world what would you change?"

Difficulty Level: (Pick your difficulty, let us know what you picked, and stick to it)

  1. Go wild.
  2. You can't harm others.
  3. The change has to be somewhat realistic or believable.
  4. If I could convince 1,000,000 people right now, it would work.
  5. If I could convince 100,000 people right now, it would work.
  6. Souls Mode: If I could just get motivated, I could do this myself.

(Also, let me know if these "fun" weeks are welcome here, or just stupid)

19
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by AceTKen to c/actual_discussion
 

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Linux. I know that Lemmy is VERY biased towards Linux and FOSS, but I'm curious what non-technical people feel about it and what your thoughts are.

Some starters:

  • Have you used Linux? If so, what was your experience like?
  • Would you run it as your primary system? Why or why not?
  • What would it take to get you to do so?
  • Do you feel it's a solid option?
  • Are there any changes that you'd think would benefit consumers and aid with adoption?
16
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by AceTKen to c/actual_discussion
 

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Capitalism / Economic Systems. Here is the definition we will be using so everyone can use the same terminology. If your argument does not use that definition, we ask that you reframe so that it does so that everyone can work within the same framework.

Here are some questions that should help kickstart things:

  • Is capitalism effective? Is it good, or as evil as some Lemmy instances will have you believe?
  • Are there better alternatives, and why are they better?
  • How could we realistically move toward those alternatives?
  • Is there anything you do not understand or would like to discuss about Capitalism / Economic Systems?
3
(ARTICLE) Racism In D&D (www.polygon.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by AceTKen to c/actual_discussion
 

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion). You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

I dislike this article. It's a little old now, but there are several things blisteringly wrong with this idea at its heart.

Purely for example, if you read a book on dragonflies and take offence because you see racial similarities between whatever race a person is and dragonflies, that's an issue with you, not the source. You are relying on your opinion on what the source says. Since opinion varies per person, you should not dictate policy based on opinion. It's an insurmountable hill to cater to whatever opinions are since opinion will always change - it's an unsound basis for any form of logic.

Let's do a thought experiment:

If a trailer-dwelling white person in the USA reads about the Vistani, and takes offence because they also live in a trailer, sees that as a negative, and assumes the Vistani are a potshot at him, is he right to be offended and call for a ban?

If a nimble Canadian POC (which is also a terrible term as it literally applies to everyone on the planet) reads about Elves and assumes they're talking about him because he also happens to know how to use a bow and is skinny with a lithe frame, is he correct in calling for a ban? What if he sees being nimble as a negative for some reason (because positive / negative characteristics are opinions and what people see as negative is not objective)? What if he sees it as being racist by saying the source is calling ALL Elves nimble and therefore good at sports? "But they stereotypically have a different skin colour!" I hear you saying. So do Orcs. That argument applies here and if you can't square that circle, then the logic falls apart utterly.

Personal identification with aspects of characters in a source material are not cause for alteration. You are an individual; you are not a group. Grouping people into camps based on visible traits or histories is a disgusting habit.

Treat people as individuals and racism dies. Treat people as groups and call out the differences constantly and you'll have people fencing themselves in while calling themselves inclusive.

12
(WEEKLY) Gender (self.actual_discussion)
 

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion). You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

This week's Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Gender. Here is the definition we will be using so everyone can use the same terminology.

Here are some questions that should help kickstart things:

  • Why do you feel it started entering public consciousness in regards to humans about 15 years ago?

  • Was it needed?

  • Did it do what it was intended to do?

  • Are things better or worse now in that specific area?

  • Is there anything you do not understand or would like to discuss about the idea of gender?

9
(RULES) What is this community? (self.actual_discussion)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by AceTKen to c/actual_discussion
 

First and foremost, let me say that I appreciate you actually engaging in a real discussion on Lemmy!

WHY?

This Community was made in response to the rest of Lemmy and the way many otherwise interesting discussion threads fall apart into downvoting, groupthink, and burying of posts composed by people asking for clarification or looking to understand the reasoning behind things.

We don’t like people making baseless accusations; we defend people on all sides when people are wrong about their opposition. We don't appreciate it when people think they know what others think and project incorrect (and often evil) bullshit on each other. We dislike people being wilfully wrong because their group fetishizes a certain angle of the truth instead of the boring reality of the situation.

It is important to maintain solid reasoning and conclusions, not just one or the other.

Ideas and discussion are important. We don’t feel we can get out of the current slump we’re in with political discourse unless we are able to clearly articulate ourselves and discuss the world we're all living in.

DO:

  • Be civil. This does not mean you shouldn’t challenge people, just don’t be a dick about it. Disagreeing with reasons is fine, mocking or insulting someone is not.
  • Upvote interesting points and things that are well-articulated, even if you may not agree.
  • Upvote when you see others correct themselves or change their mind.
  • Be prepared to back up any claims you make with an unbiased source that you've actually read.
  • Be willing to be wrong. Admit when you are incorrect or spoke poorly. If you are the OP of a thread, feel free to edit the main post, and add an edit to the end to show your opinion has changed.
  • Be a “Devil’s Advocate” if there's no opposition and you can see some arguments for the other side you'd like to see addressed. You do not have to believe either side of an issue in order to generate solid points on a view.
  • Discuss hot-button issues.
  • Use bracket tags in the title to show the kind of post you're making (see below), and try to use the disclaimer if it's your style to help those coming in from outside the Community who may not understand it.
  • Add humour, and be creative! Dry writing isn’t super fun to read or discuss.
  • Post any rule, formatting, or changes here that you would like to see.

DO NOT:

  • Call people names or label people. We fight ideas, not people here.
  • Ask for sources, and then not respond to the person providing them. This means you're not here to better yourself or the discussion, and it's rude to waste someone's time by challenging them and then just walking away.
  • Mindlessly downvote people you disagree with. We only downvote people that do not add to the discussion.
  • Be a bot, spam, or engage in self-promotion unless explicitly allowed by the mods.
  • Duplicate posts from within the last month unless new non-trivial information is surfaced on the topic.
  • Strawman.
  • Expect that personal experience or your personal morals are a substitute for proof.
  • Exaggerate. Not everything is a genocide, and not everyone slightly to the right of you is a Nazi.
  • Copy an entire article in your post body. It’s just messy. Link to it and maybe summarize if needed.

SUBMISSION RULES:

All main posts should append a bracket tag to the front to describe the topic type:

  • (WEEKLY) Will be reserved for Mods as it will be used for the pinned featured weekly topic thread.
  • (CMV) Change My View can read like a rant or some scattered thoughts on a topic that the creator is looking to challenge themselves on. You must start with some initial reasons along with some thoughts on how those reasons led you to feel the way you do. If you can articulate things that would or wouldn't change your mind, please add those as well. If your mind is changed, we ask that you place a link to the post that did so at the end of the main post as an edit.
  • (OPEN-ENDED) for a general prompt to show that you're looking to see what people think. A good place to seek answers to questions that you haven't thought of yet.
  • (ARTICLE) for a link to an article to be discussed. Please link the main source, not a news link already talking about the source and give a few initial thoughts.
  • (STEELMAN) is discussion on hard mode and is the opposite of a strawman argument. This is someone making as close to an iron-clad argument as they can for a side or an opinion and challenging you to poke holes in it where you can. These should come with sources already.
  • (OTHER) is, for now, what we call everything else. I think we covered most of it above, but just in case, there's OTHER.

We would encourage you to also have our Disclaimer bolded at the front to help show how we're different to those coming in from browsing New or All posts which should hopefully help curtailing the drive-by downvoting that was so common in our early days:

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

And finally, none of these are so set in stone that we can't change them. If you want to see adjustments or changes, let us know here or in Private Message!

5
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by AceTKen to c/actual_discussion
 

So now that we've been around for a week or so and have tried to populate things with some controversial topics, how would you like to see this Community grow and change?

Should I add post guidelines? Maybe adjust the pinned thead?

Should I change the rules at all?

Our disclaimer is currently:

Remember: Up / Downvoting in this community is not an agree / disagree button. We upvote good or constructive conversation and downvote off-topic posts or badly-voiced opinions. If you disagree, you respond like a human in good faith and prove out your position.

Should the disclaimer be changed? It's primarily for people wandering in from viewing All threads (instead of just their subscribed ones), or for people on phones who never read the sidebar. It is there to show, in point form, how we operate to people who don't come to us purposefully.

Are there any topic you'd really like to see covered?

Are there any other Communities we should do a link swap with that have a similar ethos with?

Are there types of threads you want to see less or more of? More descriptors?

I'm open to any and all good ideas!

10
(Open-Ended) New Political Parties? (self.actual_discussion)
 

Remember: Up / Downvoting in this community is not an agree / disagree button. We upvote good or constructive conversation and downvote off-topic posts or badly-voiced opinions. If you disagree, you respond like a human in good faith and prove out your position.

The amount of "left-right" entrenchment seems to be at an all-time high and increasing.

No matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on, what would it take to get you to vote for a new party?

Would implementing a better electoral system that would eliminate the two-party see-saw and allowing for more granularity in candidates help (See Single Transferable Vote or STAR depending on the type of election)?

Do you have other solutions to this issue?

7
(CMV) "Doing your own research." (self.actual_discussion)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by AceTKen to c/actual_discussion
 

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

I have found that many people "doing their own research" are only searching for confirmation to their beliefs, and also seem to have a misunderstanding about what "research" actually entails.

If you're a rational thinker and you believe you have a source that makes a good point, you'll simply link that source directly, and maybe even explain how it supports the thing you believe. However, if you're a conspiracy theorist who only has bad sources that can be easily disproven, you'll become wary about linking to those sources directly or trying to explain what they mean to you, lest someone in the discussion completely blow your argument apart and laugh at you.

That's why the imperative appeal to "do your own research" has developed - whether intentional or not, it's a tailor-made strategy to protect bad sources (and bad thinking) from criticism. By telling people to do their own research rather than being up front about your sources and arguments, you try to push people into learning about the topic you want them to internalize while there are no dissenting voices present. It's a tactic that separates discussion zones from "research" zones, so that "research" can't be interrupted by reality.

People who actually have good points with good sources don't need to do this. It's only the people who are clinging onto bad, debunkable sources (or simple feelings) that need to vaguely tell people to "do their own research". The actual scientific method is "help me disprove this theory. Only when we all fail can we consider this theory good enough for now, but we will continue looking for other theories that explain things better, and then try and disprove those too".

No researcher tells another researcher on a level playing field to do their own research. They say, "What have you found? Let's discuss it." This is the way progress is made. There's a reason we're calling all this the culture wars and not the new renaissance.

Hell, even culture war is generous branding. It's people living in reality against a loose coalition of people who just generally don't like them because they've been trained to by the moneyed interests who have spent the last 30 years building a propaganda machine to weaponize them for political and financial gain.

The truly strange part is that the research you do as a civilian does not matter. If you somehow got a degree and ran an absolutely bulletproof years-long study in CURRENT THING, the people telling you to "do your own research" would be exactly the people who would not believe you because it would go against their preconceptions. They don't care about research, they care about belief.

Looking things up online that conform to your viewpoint is not research, it is a means to entrench yourself.

Let's Do An Experiment!

Right. So by your downvotes, I see that you don't understand why the scientific method necessitates disregarding personal experience. Let's show you an extremely simplified but basic example:

Let's say that a person believes that cats simply do not exist.

Oh, they've seen cats before, but they think they're just really small people covered in carpet and refuse to believe any evidence to the contrary.

Everyone else knows that cats exist; we know there is something wrong with this person.

Regardless, the person decides to do an "experiment" to prove it. They walk into their living room, glue carpet to their spouse, and then claim victory. They then document it stating that in their personal experience, they proved the one cat they found in the area was just a person with carpet glued to them. They gather support online, and publish it in a for-pay journal. The article is never peer-reviewed because the person refused to tell of their methodology, but people repost the "study".

If science operated in a fashion that the "do your own research" people felt, then we should all believe this person.

Just because a single person has never seen a cat, or chooses not to acknowledge cats, doesn't mean that factually cats do not exist. Even organizing a poor experiment and claiming they have done "research" does not make them correct. The burden of proof is still present, and a poor experiment is often blown apart in the scientific community or unrepeatable. This is why peer-review without an agenda is incredibly important.

If everything someone "saw with their own eyes" were true, then ghosts, aliens, demons, every God that has ever been worshipped (even though they preclude each other), mythical creatures, and countless other things are all true. All of them. That, or there is a flaw in the logic you are using.

Also, to most of the people here who will no doubt not read this as it may challenge your world view - plugging your ears and screaming as loud as you can to drown out the world does not make truth vanish.

Being insulting, blocking, or downvoting doesn't mean that you're correct.

I like to believe that people can be reached and the only outcome isn't just shit-throwing matches and all-out war. However, if you're not willing to debate in good faith, then there is no debate.

You have lost at the outset by not being willing to be incorrect.

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