Cryptocurrency is a scam. Not just certain coins, but the whole concept. It’s nothing more than digital tulips.
JavaScript is a bad language, but what’s really bad about it is not the language itself but the ecosystem of libraries and tools. Getting just about anything to work is a huge struggle. Rust is much easier to use.
Cryptocurrency is a scam. Not just certain coins, but the whole concept.
And anyone investing into crypto is literally stealing from others. The people who made thousands of dollars on the crypto hype are not lucky - they literally stolen the money from someone down the line. Someone who probably needs them more, because it’s the stupid people who will be stuck with worthless coins at the end. It will eventually be a zero-sum game. The only thing you can do with crypto is to sell it to someone else at a profit. It has no use or value. And it’s a miracle that people are still willing to buy it at such a price. And since it has no inherent value, every time you sell it to someone at a profit, you are literally scamming them, or someone else.
Because there will eventually be people loosing literally millions of dollars, stuck with a worthless stash of crypto they can do nothing with. Their only option is to hype up others, scam them some more and hope that they will buy it, so they can steal their money and let it be their problem.
Anyone making profit on selling crypto is evil and should feel bad about it. Because the thousands of dollars he made on it may as well be someones life savings they couldn’t afford to loose, but did. People should realize this, and not glorify the lucky individuals who got set up for life by getting in on it early enough.
Once the crypto falls for good, there will be many lives ruined. And a lot of people will be defending it, “you should have sold earlier, just like I did”, that’s how they will justify it. No, it’s not about selling earlier. Everyone who made a profit at selling crypto is responsible for it, and should be reminded that it’s his fault. And every one of those lives ruined was the price for the profit anyone has made by selling crypto. And we need to keep reminding them as much as possible, when this happens.
I tend to disagree with the “Not certain coins” part. I’d say “Most coins” because some coins like monero are the only ways to purchase stuff anonymously online. Other than that… Yeah, I pretty much agree.
To purchase illegal stuff, I think you mean. The fact that cryptocurrency facilitates crime is not a selling point. At best, it’s a necessary evil. At worst, it’s a reason for cryptocurrency itself to be illegal.
No, I do not mean illegal stuff. While it makes it possible, no, I do not mean to purchase illegal stuff. It would make it just as good as cash. I just want digital cash instead of what we have now which is unecessarily trackable to the point that they know what you bought and then show you ads according to what you bought.
The image generation AIs just barely figured out how to draw hands and the LLMs recently forgot how to do 2 + 2, and you think we’re a few years out from AGI?
that’s cute. it couldn’t draw the ugliest dog 2 years ago.
The only thing stopping us from having AGI right now is that GPT-4 hallucinates too much to use it in a task engine. Like, slightly too much.
this can and is being improved drastically. the next iteration will likely be the last one needed. Repeating chained calla to a language model in a structured way to break down and organize problems into smaller problems for other instances to work on is the way to go.
Super Heroes are so fucking dumb. I always hear how they have broken powers like moving faster than light, traveling trough time, resisting galactic-size explosions, outsmarting supposedly smart aliens or gods and all that, And then you read a comic and they’re struggling to fight a dude in a banana costume or something retarded like that
There are very few actual atheists - if any. Most “atheists” I’ve encountered are just edgy non-practising Christians. And I bet that goes for other parts of the world with other religions, too.
You might be in some kind of bubble or assuming a lot about strangers based on your own experiences. Lots of people authentically and personally choose to be atheists after being raised within some kind of faith and coming to the conclusion that it is not something they believe in. Others like me were simply raised without the influence of any religion and it all just seems absurd. It’s not being edgy or any kind of performance, perhaps it was for some people you’ve known, but I imagine for most it’s a personal choice (or lack thereof) that they have no reason to tell you or anyone else about or broadcast in any way because the entire enterprise is meaningless to them and really just isn’t something they even think about very much.
If you had this stuff shoved down your throat as a kid, it’s still there - no matter what you choose to believe in your adult life. It’s very easy to decide what you believe when you’re relaxing on your sofa… but that might not matter when you undergo events that are psychologically traumatic. It’s called a regressive state - a term I actually picked up reading the torture manuals the CIA used to train it’s death squads in Latin America. There’s a very good reason you have people from these “prosperity gospel” scams hanging around drug rehab centers and mental asylums - it’s just so much easier getting their claws into people when they’ve undergone such traumas and are vulnerable. I’ve lived long enough to have experienced it myself and watched others experience it - it’s not pretty. It’s scary, because it implies that we are not as much in control of our own psyches as we’d like to think we are, and that’s perfectly understandable.
I’ve been musing on this a bit. Like, what is it REALLY like in someone’s head, spiritually, if they literally grow up with a non-monotheistic religion?
I read a lot of books, esp. sci-fi and fantasy which are prone to messing around with all sorts of things including religion, but I haven’t actually read a good one that really “demonstrated” what having a polytheistic or animist spirituality is like.
Maybe taking a look into eastern asian cultures would be close enough? A good portion of their mythos treat gods as powerful beings that can fall from grace and be defeated. Also, in Chinese Taoism, humans responsible for great deeds can ascend into godhood
Most of India might also provide a very good look into how people who grew into a polytheistic society act and think about their own spirituality. Japanese Shintoism might be the closest look into an “easily accessible” animist look
really? From the outside looking in, it looks like most Christians are atheists just putting on a show because it’s expected of them. Its the only logical explanation for otherwise rational people buying into that twaddle
Really? Because I’m pretty sure I’m not a Christian.
This narrative that atheists and agnostics are just christians that chose not to believe in God to be able to sin is far to common, and super inaccurate. I have (multiple) atheist friends who were once evangelical Christians with no plans to commit sin, in fact their life plan was to be an apologist. Ever since leaving Christianity non of them have done or have planned to do anything that would widely be considered immoral. (Most now consider their previous plans involving very manipulative techniques to be very unethical) Most atheists that have left Christianity did so because they found it increasingly hard to convince themselves (and the threat of hell is a very good reason to keep believing) that an old book and it’s contents, that frequently contradict experimental observation, should be the center of their life.
Hmm, I respect your point of view but suspect that it is shaped by your experience. Here’s my stereotypical thought: I wonder if you’re in the USA. Because to many of us in other parts of the world, y’all are insanely focused on religion. It is not like that everywhere.
I consider myself an agnostic (don’t believe in a higher power), but when confronted with insistent christians I readily pivot into atheism (that a higher power does not and cannot exist).
It seems to me that many of those who are seen as atheist are “merely” agnostic, and this misinterpretation stems from a fundamental(ist) “if you’re not with us you’re against us” belief system.
People are really entitled when it comes to copyright, just because they like something they think it’s okay to steal it, just because “it doesn’t hurt anyone”, an while in some cases that may be true, they act offended when something is behind a paywall or when an artist or company try to limit access to a piece of media. The author and the copyright owners are in their right to do whatever they like with any song/movie/show/book, and people shouldn’t be mad because someone limit access to something they rightfully own. Imagine if your neighbor comes walking into your house and steal food in your freezer because they say “they’re a fan of your food” that’s fucking stupid. Stop bitching about not being able to consume like the pigs you are and try to produce your own things instead.
they’re not stealing food, they’re copying something that can be copied unlimited times for close to zero cost. no one is deprived of a physical product
It still a tangible income you deny to the author. Go to a book store and read an entire book right there, and see if they don’t kick you out just because technically you didn’t seal a physical object.
Go to a cinema and record the movie to see what the staff says, of to a music store and record and entire album in your phone, lmao how people can’t get the simplest of concepts
The lengths people will go to defend piracy is pathetic. You’re stealing. Just own it. No, it’s not the same as robbing a physical good. Yes, you’re still taking something that isn’t yours.
The idea that you can “steal” an idea from somebody is so idiotic I can barely express it.
You’re not stealing anything when you copy!! Nobody is deprived of anything! If I make a piece of artwork and post it, and somebody copies it to their computer, I didn’t lose anything!!
Nothing material is lost, but if you’re charging to see said piece of artwork and that dude who saved it on his computer shows it to other people you’re loosing money. And don’t come with the excuse that if they’re weren’t going to pay for it in the first place you don’t loose money, because that some cheap argument to get something free, i would like to see entering a store and grabbing a book and reading it completely, then saying that you weren’t meaning to pay in the first place so the author didn’t loose any money, they will kick you out inmediatly.
First off, I’ve sat in many book stores and read magazines and books and never once had anybody kick me out or object.
Second, do you really think that all the people walking past a stadium where a paid concert is happening are thieves because they hear the music from the outside?
Third, they aren’t “losing money.” They’re just not making money. Its theoretical money, it doesn’t exist. If I told you I’m selling my old smelly socks for $10,000 and you refuse to buy them, I didn’t lose any money at all. You didn’t steal $10,000 from me by not buying what I wanted you to buy.
Is it “stealing” if you read a book and then tell your friend all about it and they don’t buy the book because they don’t think the story sounds compelling? Is it “stealing” if you buy a book and then let your friend read it without buying their own copy? What if you buy a book, read it, and go online on your blog and give the book a bad review, and hundreds of people that read your review now don’t go and buy that book? Did you “steal” all those potential sales from the author by giving your honest opinion on their book?
Lol, the copium. If you pirate digital goods, you are stealing. Just own it. It’s not the same as physically robbing a store, but it’s still theft. We don’t have to feel bad for the mega corp making less money, but I also don’t have to buy your bullshit excuse for doing it
Lol, way to address my points. It’s “theft” even though nothing is lost, taken, or destroyed by anyone…Sure…
I can imagine you calling the police frantically outside of a stadium reporting a “mass robbery in progress” because dozens of random people walking by are hearing the copyrighted music without paying for it haha!
Intellectual property is like a unicorn, it’s imaginary and mythical. You can’t poach a unicorn, and you can’t steal IP, it’s just that simple.
Bullshit. What happens if everyone steals it? Is that cool for the creator? I’m sure they won’t feel like anything was stolen from them since you can’t physically hold it
I have a dog named zeety, his eyes are small and beady.
I just wrote that original poem. I’m charging $1,000 for anybody who wants to read it. You’ve read it now, so you’d better pay up. Don’t you dare rob me of my right to that $1,000!
I accept crypto payments, you can pay in installments of $100 per month if you need. I’ll be expecting you to pay up immediately. You’re not a hypocrite, are you?
Let’s see how serious you are about the things you claim to believe. That poem is my intellectual property according to you, and you are a thief stealing it from me if you don’t pay what I demand for it.
Let’s make this interesting, you pay me $1,000 for that poem, I will post screenshots verifying that I donated every dollar to various open source projects, 100% dead serious, I won’t keep a single cent of it.
Screw it, if you just pay $100 for that poem, I’ll donate 100% of it to various open source projects.
Lol, no. I’m not paying for that poem. You just published it on a public forum. Besides, I don’t want it. I’m not going to copy it or distribute it. If I want what you made and you put a price on it, I either pay for it or go do something else. Your example doesn’t make any sense and I’m not going to sit here and explain it to you any further.
I’ll leave it here. IP doesn’t exist. If it’s digital it should be free. Follow that to its logical end and maybe we arrive at the same reality.
The thing is… They are ideas. I belive that you should not put a price or any restriction to an idea. It is like, “oh I found a mathematic proof for something and I will sell it”. You are basically stagnating an entire sector of human discovery because of your selfish endeavour to make more money. If we are talking about physical stuff, like hardware parts and the amount of work that should be ammounted to it, then yeah, people should pay for physical stuff. How are these people are gonna get payed? You can pay them if you are making hardware that runs these ideas and pay them through hardware sales. Otherwise, donations and public media funds. The system only benefits those who host the ideas and not those who make the ideas themselves. They should get most of the credit and a public media fund where we all pay for access to media will be the best way to ensure good work will exist.
There is no moral consumption under capitalism. A lot of people think they agree with that. But simultaneously also seem to realize that they aren’t going to change the status quo. So they don’t try. It’s actually that there’s no morale consumption under capitalism but I have to do what I have to do to survive so here we are.
I don’t know really. That’s part of the problem. I sort of feel like we of the 99% should burn it to the ground and start over but the problem with that is humans are kind of a blight. We consume everything we can and always seem to be looking for the most convenience and the path of least resistance. Taking a look at all of our societal problems and fixing them as a whole really is what needs to happen because everything is interconnected. But the scope is overwhelming. It may still be an unpopular opinion but I think doing away with organized religion in every place it doesn’t belong would be a start. But only if we’re willing to make logical decisions about how to move forward and govern our society secularly. There are a lot of smaller countries that are doing quite well with fixing their societal issues. But even they still have troubles.
That’s a misquote: it’s “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism”. It’s basically saying that you, as a consumer, cannot legitimately make ethical decisions when buying, because the entire system is built on being exploitative, and thus any decision you make cannot be ethical because the choices you have are already the result of exploitation by the time you’re making the decision.
A good example is the “going green” fad: it does not matter which consumption choices you make, because your choices are effectively irrelevant. You spend a little bit more money for the “green” product, and that money will go directly to megacorporations that are exploiting and polluting on a scale that so outstrips your ability to combat it. Thus, your “more ethical” choice did absolutely nothing but fund the exact same polluters and environmental exploiters as if you had not made the “green” choice in the first place.
And on top of that they’ll use any trick they can to make themselves appear to have changed their ways. Buying up vouchers that pledge to protect trees that were never in danger in the first place. Creating fresh water plants in places that need them but don’t do anything to combat the pollution they make in other places where more people are affected or more wild life. The whole green washing thing is an incredibly lucrative scam.
I honestly look at it the other way round. Child slavery is a foregone condition in a capitalist society. It’s a giant pyramid scheme in that it is similarly unsustainable. Eventually poor people can’t carry the weight of the production. And when they are priced out of the market they become ungovernable because they become desperate. Children are easier to control by adults. So of course to make up for what we can’t any longer get adults to do we’ll get children to fill those gaps. And children aren’t adults so they don’t have to be paid as much. And eventually don’t have to be paid at all. Just given food and maybe clothing and some shelter.
Perhaps that’s very defeatist of me. But we’re seeing that in some states in the US. Kids working at meat packing plants and fast food places. And of course desperate people who have to provide for their families will make hard decisions. It won’t happen all at once. But it’s going to keep trending worse and worse.
Capitalists (millionaires and billionaires) very obviously do not think of themselves as being the dystopian factor that destroys society. I think that’s because they live this fever dream where they will be able to dance on the avalanche. Like … They think there will always be new investors, always be capital, always be returns, and profit, and dividends. But that money and that production and that labor has to come from somewhere. And it’s a finite resource. Which means that eventually it will dwindle. Right now there are people working 2 or 3 jobs. Getting 4 hours of sleep a night. At what point do they meet other people, find someone to have a relationship with? At what point do they have a family? Have children? Raise children? In the future will they have 4-5 jobs? Where does it stop?
The defeatist in me wants to downvote you. The optimist in me also wants to downvote you. The currently aware bit of me reminds me that this isn’t reddit, and downvotes aren’t a thing here. The rest of me is upst because there’s a non-zero chance you’re right, and the entire world would be better off.
It’s not unusual. The joke is the political spectrum is a circle. You go far enough to the left - you meet the far right.
In the end both Bernie and Trump are populists (in both senses: offering solutions that people want and proposing simplified solutions that are unrealistic)
During Covid in Germany the anti vaccine protest coalition was made up of fascists and hippies.
Even though he is a socialist (which I hate) I believe he genuinely cares about the issues he says he cares about, unlike almost everyone in politics right now, Bernie is honest. Donald Trump, well he gets shit done and is politically incorrect, he has the courage to say things that many politicians don’t have the courage of addressing (a similarity between both Bernie and Trump). And Bernie has not changed that much on terms of his policies, he supported gay men and women when it was unpopular (I loved this big time!), he says what he thinks about the Saudis and no one,not even trump has the courage to do this, he is a brave man in the truest sense. I love Bernie more than Trump for that reason. But yeah, both are populists, both are unlike anyone who I have ever seen, I really wish Bernie was president for at least one term, Hillary B Clinton and the Dems cheated him out of his rightful ticket. So fuck Hillary and fuck the democratic party establishment, also fuck Joe Biden too while we are at it. For someone who make a big deal out of the Jan 6 disturbance, Dems are perfectly capable of and are willing to steal elections and throw the will of the people into the dustbin.
Because they’re both populist, if you don’t care about the policy it’s easy to like both trump (pre elected, if you still support him after, you’re either willfully ignorant or brainwashed) or Bernie
I’ll bet $1 million that you voted for Hillary in the primary then gaslighted all of the Bernie supporters that were absolutely outraged after the convention.
Considering your claim has already been disproven mathematically I don’t think you should be sitting in judgement of anyone’s intelligence. For fucks sake you think Medium is a good source?
Spiva’s comment is referencing the fact that traditionally the party did choose the candidate. This was the case until the 1950-60s depending on the party. There’s no law requiring an open primary and parties can do as they wish. If you had any understanding of US political history this wouldn’t have been a surprising quote but here you are.
How does math come into play when the party tallying the votes is literally allowed to cheat?
Al Franken disobeyed the will of his constituents as a superdelegate and voted against them. I could go on and on all day about my lived experience in 2016 and people EXACTLY like you, gaslighting me, telling me that my lived experience was false and I somehow misremembered it.
I am not even going to waste any further time on you, shitlib.
I feel like it’s best to ease people into illusionism rather than hit them with a statement like “consciousness isn’t real”, which they will almost certainly misunderstand and reject if they aren’t versed in the philosophy of mind (hence why it works well for this thread). As a teaser, I like the statement, “You are conscious, but not in the way you think you are”, i.e. their consciousness is not phenomenal in character. What that means exactly is a lengthy discussion, but it gives an opportunity to emphasize the aspects of consciousness that actually matter and to potentially offset things like moral status over to them. For most people, morality hinges on phenomenality, so you have to replace it with something before they can accept illusionism (in my opinion).
There is the morality angle, the feeling that one must be dismissing the moral relevance of suffering if suffering is not actually experienced, but the far more common objection is about foundational truth. For that reason I think beating around the bush will probably lead to misunderstanding; if consciousness is accepted in any sense, then surely part of what is accepted is that knowledge of direct experience supercedes all other beliefs in terms of truthfulness and cannot be denied? Surely it is still from this that all other beliefs inherit their truthfulness? But no, I am rejecting this hierarchy, it’s a tautology based on a false intuition. Even though I laid it out plainly, there are multiple responses here that seem to assume that I must not have even meant quite what I said.
For one, if we ever invent teleportation, everyone can stop worrying about whether they will actually come out on the other side in terms of continuity of experience. If there is no such thing to begin with, it is an irrational concern. Death as any kind of endless void can be acknowledged as a false abstraction and disregarded. We can stop looking for magical quantum tunnels in the brain etc. to explain “hard problems of consciousness” because all those paradoxes are resolved by accepting that consciousness isn’t real. We can stop worrying about when/how/whether AI might become conscious and stop trying to inflict our curse on it.
You just described having experiences that aren’t created by the outside world, but are instead created by your brain (an object in the outside world). But you’re still having experiences.
Not a dancer myself, but I’d venture a guess that the kind of person who dances a lot’s main goal is not to look smart, but to have fun and/or employ a time tested and outrageously effective means of attracting sexual partners.
Exactly this. It probably varies from person to person, but tapping my foot when listening to music at a computer in rythm with the song, or just noding my head slightly makes me way more invested into the song. Doing anything in sync with music is satisfying - that’s why games such as Beatsaber or BPM - Bullets Per Minute are sooo satisfying to play - if you don’t get dancing, I recommend giving BPM a try.
And dancing is basically the same. You don’t do that for others, but to enjoy the music more. And especially with drugs or alcohol involved (because it usually erases any kind of self-consciousness and focus on how you look, so you can focus just on the music), it just feels so great.
And as for ballroom dancing - being so well in sync with someone in addition to the music is an amazing experience. It takes time and requires a stable dancing partner, but once you eventually sync with eachother and know the steps well enough that you don’t have to think about it and it just flows, it’s an experience unlike anything I’ve had with a second person. And my dancing partner isn’t even my girlfriend, but just a friend.
One comparison I can make is what I had during highschool, where I’ve wasted several years literally only playing League of Legends with my best friend for all of my free time. We played ADC/Support, and after few hundreds of hours we were so synchronized that we would could instinctively react to each other without thinking or talking about it, and it was a really weird experience. And really interesting, I’ve never experienced something like that with anyone else (before I started dancing, that is), and it’s such an unique connection of minds and thinking that it’s an amazing experience.
this is something that has always bothered me… I never found the appeal in that and, of course, was pressured by social circles to join in on clubs and similar. this just feels like the most stupid waste of time, as I can’t find any enjoyment on it, and when I watch others doing it they surely look weird and lost in a way. specially the ones I know personally and can attest to their intellect and rational.
eventually I stopped joining them but it kept intriguing me. after reading about it and having long conversations with friends, my conclusion is that this is some left over form of primitive sexual bonding that predates complex speech and became instinctual, a la some “mating dance” ritual. particularly, some more enlightened male friends see that as a “necessary evil” to have sex while others simply never gave me a clear answer (probably don’t ask themselves much and just abide by the social rules). the only thing I could pull from females has been a dismissing “I just like to dance”.
so much so that I could (anecdotally at least) observe very repeatable patterns such as: single couple that eventually meets in a party then stops going, girl that simultaneously loses interest in their partner and gains interest in clubbing which ends up in “someone new” popping up, etc.
as for myself, I can’t really explain the lack of drive. I know for sure I’d rather communicate using actual language and not be in crowded, dark places moving my body aimlessly, faking enjoyment. needless to say, this stance heavily lowers one’s chance to mate, as the whole paradigm revolves around it (at least outside of the dreadful online dating world). so sometimes it can take years for me to develop a new relationship after one has ended. fun fact is that every single one of my girlfriends loved to dance, some even took classes on artistic styles and whatnot.
Not every problem a group of people have is because of “the system” or any other excuse other than that group has zero culture or care to improve while every other minority community in America thrives by second generation. While this group regresses further into chaos every generation.
Except where actual safety is concerned, all information should be public. That means Individuals, businesses, authorities, governments, etc, should not be able to hold any information privately, it should all be freely available to everyone. There only private information is what you can hold in your head.
Anyone who thinks about this idea for more than 30 seconds decides it is a really bad idea. I honestly believe that true information freedom will also free the human race, and that is the unpopular part. Everyone seemed to think I’m naive but people are just frightened kids and secrets are their first line of defense.
And I guaran-fuckin-tee theres something in your life that if someone started blabbing, and you were told to get over it, you’d lose your fucking shit over.
I’m sure there is, but how much more careful would you be if you thought everyone would find out what you get up to? Thing is embarrassment is temporary, so is humiliation. People either grow to be way more tolerant or they will suffer.
Anyone who thinks about this idea for more than 30 seconds decides it is a really bad idea
That’s because of all the problems your idea would cause. Identity theft would run rampant, stalking would become easier than ever before, tracking people down would just be one search, etc. I mean you truly did bring up an unpopular opinion, I’ll give you that.
Indeed. But you’d also stop yourself doing stupid stuff for the same reason. Also keeping those stuff private is a social convention. Sex talk should be more public anyway.
Other people have pointed out more types of information that has good reason to be confidential, but we should also acknowledge it would be a huge investment of effort to do something like this. Organizing, storing, updating, and sifting through all this information when it would so rarely be useful is already too much effort for the benefit even disregarding other concerns.
Thanks for the unpopular opinion though, it is an interesting change to consider as a thought experiment.
We already spend a lot of effort keeping data private, and also making data accessible. But I don’t expect all information to be put in a big database for everyone to see. The point is, no one can say no when asked for data.
I grew up in an abusive home where the very people who were supposed to be closest to me and love me the most would take completely benign things and weaponize them.
Once you’ve seen someone take genuinely, truly innocent things and use them to brutalize you as severely as if you were actually doing wrong, you realize the rest of humanity–who mostly have fewer ties to you than blood family–can easily do that too.
A world where you have to have everything hanging in the open hands weapons to those who are sociopathic enough to see that system and immediately game it for their own self-benefit.
Tricky one. Abuwe of individuals by withholding information would be much harder. Everything they do effectively goes public. It will be obvious they are gaming a system. What we have now is far worse.
If this happened due to suddenly everyone being able to read each others thoughts unfiltered and without the ability to block others out from your own, it would be amazing. However power corrupts and I don’t think there is an utopian situation where abuse would not happen in a society where information is given up voluntarily.
My unpopular opinion is that too many people give way, waaaaaayyy too much attention to “correct use of gender pronouns” and they should all just stfu.
I understand why that is a big deal for trans people, because they make their gender the defining aspect of their character. Something I consider a mistake, nobody’s main defining characteristic should be their gender.
I’m sure some people have made the mistake you are describing, but I doubt it’s only trans people who have made this mistake.
As a trans person, I would like to make my gender an aspect of my character, like most people get to do. I am more than just my gender, but my gender is a part of who I am.
It does feel good to be validated about my gender, but I’m not worried about people getting my pronouns wrong. I know it can be confusing and people don’t mean anything by it if they make a mistake. It’s hard to describe the intensity of the joy I felt once, when I was validated about my gender by another person. So, I will say it doesn’t surprise me if some people decide to express their gender a lot once they are finally able to.
but I doubt it’s only trans people who have made this mistake.
I know, I thought about mentioning the typical male red pill idiot who has to remind everyone he’s totally hetero every 5 minutes, as they’re what my mind thought about as a comparison, but I thought that’d be in bad taste.
Gender pronouns exist mostly because our society ties so many societal norms to gender. If people weren’t sexist animals, it wouldn’t really be a problem.
We can add the people who have their sexuality as their only character trait and need everyone to know.
I don’t need to know that you are lgbtqi+. If you want to tell me that you have a partner and they happen to be the same gender or such then good on you for finding someone to love. Fucking amazing how the world works and you went against the odds and all that.
However.
I don’t need you to remind me that you are pan every 15 minutes.
make their gender the defining aspect of their character
The vast majority of cishet people (if not all) make their gender the defining aspect of their character - so why should trans people be any different?
…is what you really want you need to start with cis people and not transgender ones, correct?
Dunno about you, but nobody I deal with in RL ever implied something among the lines of "refer to me as ". There was only one case of an ex-boss of mine who always liked to “joke”: “you can mistake my name, but never mistake my gender!”, but he was the exception
nobody I deal with in RL ever implied something among the lines of "refer to me as ".
Most likely because they’d never experienced someone referring to them by the wrong gender. You can be pretty sure that if someone started doing so, they’d have something to say about it.
Which is what the other commenter was trying to communicate to you. Gender is already a key component of most cis people’s personality - the way they think about themselves, the framework they use to make choices, and the way they want people to relate to them - but it’s not noticed as such, because it’s “normal”, so no-one comments on it and they don’t have to act to assert it.
I worked with a guy who complained about the company allowing employees to put their preferred pronouns in their email signatures. He said that while he was an “ally to the LGBTQ community”, he thought pronouns were a way to create further division.
So I started using she/her while referring to the guy in emails.
He didn’t like it. And he didn’t understand the irony of demanding that I stop. He also didn’t understand the irony when HR told him that the easiest way to fix his issue was to declare his preferred pronouns.
Long story short, I still get to refer to her as she/her.
I’ve been told that gender is like a suit: if it fits you, you barely even notice it, but if it doesn’t fit you, it will bother you constantly until you do something about it.
But let me put this metaphor out there–if someone shows up in the ER and their leg is badly broken and there’s blood everywhere and the bone is sticking out, it is logical to triage that and take care of it first. But if lesser injuries are being taken care of instead, it’s logical and appropriate to raise a fuss. The person fussing about their broken leg isn’t really making it their entire personality no matter how strident and loud they are–they are simply in urgent pain and need the problem attended to.
Given plenty of trans folks end up suicidal, which is the mental health equivalent of a major physical injury, it’s logical and appropriate to try to shed light on what’s happening so it can be corrected. That can seem like the community is being “loud” or that an individual is “making gender their core characteristic”. But it’s more that that is the thing that is currently hurting, so it moves people to try to stop the hurt. Once things have evened out, there’s less need to be loud about it, and it will naturally fall into place as a background aspect, like any other facet of a person.
This is generally the case when ANY minority is “making a fuss”–it’s happening because there’s pain that needs to be attended to. A wound that needs healing.
I’ve seen more than one “well meaning” person online get upset about how this or that minority is being loud with a tone they don’t like.
The thing is–if a person is in pain, they’re not necessarily in a mental spot to perfectly frame their arguments just for you, in exactly the tone you need to be able to hear them. Someone in pain can be pretty harsh and mean-sounding, and it’s important to recognize the times when YOU are unburdened by that pain and thus have an easier time of being “logical” than the other person who is currently crying out in pain and sounds “harsh”.
Basically: have mercy on other people, and understand some harsh things they say because they are in pain, and that you, too, would probably have your discipline fail at some point if you went through something just as harsh.
It makes sense, but I feel like complaining about gender pronouns specifically is more akin to whining loudly about a small finger cut, while the leg is still broken.
I understand that they go through hell, as the majority lose any sort of social safety net: friends and family, and are generally shunned upon by society at large. That shouldn’t happen and I understand that the problem is cultural first and foremost, people hate being told their worldview, the stuff they learned, is wrong.
Still, your insight was something I didn’t take into account. For that, I thank you. Maybe this is also the only fight they have the power to fight. Small and maybe even petty, but that’s all that’s within their reach.
I think you’re close to understanding WHY then the trans community is such a stickler about pronouns
Let me give you an example that may further close the understanding loop for you.
I moved from US to Scandinavia. This place, despite being always described as heaven for the queer community … is, on the surface, entirely devoid of them. You hardly ever notice. There is hardly ever any discussion, politics, or fuss. You struggle to spot queer couples on the street. There just isn’t a loud community shouting about queer and trans issues on the street. When you spot queer or trans folks they are just people doing their daily life.
Why? Because they are not under attack. When a community is being attacked it becomes tighter, builds rituals and ways of living that identifies members of the group. It becomes louder and with a uniform voice on the political scene. Because the coordination and loudness is necessary for their political goals- of not being attacked.
(I guess groups not on the defensive but on the offensive would do the same. I guess you have to look at the goals to understand which is which.)
But here’s my point - in conditions where the trans community is treated with respect, they again become free to NOT make their life about bathrooms and pronouns.
And thus - I argue pronouns are such a hot topic because trans folks are being deliberately misgendred as an attack by their political opponents.
Pronouns should only be considered in the academic field as pronouns will never come up in regular conversation. Even if it does, the ambiguous “they” should be accepted as it’s a non-gendered term.
Oh wow, your first paragraph will certainly get you in trouble in certain circles - but, more importantly, your second paragraph is as excellent a defusal as I’ve ever seen.
Exactly, the only reason people fear automation is due to capitalist relations where people are forced to work in order to live because the purpose of work is to produce further wealth for people who own capital.
However, this problem doesn’t exist in a socialist society where the purpose of work is to produce things everyone needs. If production of these things can be automated then it just means less work and more free time for the people.
No communists see AI as the enemy. Communists see AI being used to support the ruling class and harm the working class as the enemy. But I feel like communism has always talked about automation liberating workers from labor.
No, communists do not see AI as the enemy. Communists see the capitalist system as the enemy. We’re all for technological progress as long as technology is publicly owned.
The problem isn’t AI. It’s AI outside of a communist society. AI in a capitalist society results in people losing their whole careers and having no way to survive. It would result in people in many diverse fields all over the country starving since your money is tied to your career.
“My opinion of what is important is more important that anyone’s personal experiences.” I agree the world getting hotter is critical. I do not believe it is the only critical issue we face. For this reason, it’s good if these problems are delegated to the people who can deal with them most effectively instead of ragging on everyone that they just don’t care like they should.
I think this is actually the popular opinion. I believe that no one person can deal with every single issue the world has, and it’s not selfish to choose what actions you do take to help the world. Not everyone can put the energy in to save the dolphins. But if that’s your calling, you should go for it, and not judge someone for not putting the same level of energy in as you. It’s not hiding your head, it’s focusing your energy to be more effective. Passion is needed to make the change needed. It’s okay to choose your battles.
Either I understand you and don’t agree, or I don’t understand you and therefore you don’t know where I stand on this topic, so you don’t know how far apart we stand. What part do you think I don’t understand, or would you rather dismiss me?
My message was to someone else. I’m guessing it was deleted or something, I don’t know. I’m very new here. I can see why it would appear rude, so if it matters I’m sorry about that. I’m not sure how I am engaging without good faith… that would imply I’m not interested in considering someone else might be right and I might be wrong. I consider that every time I engage someone in conversation.
As you said, you didn’t have to engage, and so for your answer I am grateful. Have a good day, and for what its worth I hope more people start personally finding the planet to be their calling. It’s a good one.
Add comment