wolframhydroxide

@wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Slay Girl⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s all fine and well as an internal idea why you don’t want to have kids, but when anti-natalism became a “thing” that started attracting like-minds it became another group of insane people online pushing their anti-society ideals

  And lastly, mostly, the idea quickly attracts people who just hate children and that’s something we need to fight with all our might as a species.

  You said that anti-natalists dislike when their beliefs are challenged, but the first thing you do is concede that point and start talking about your personal perspective on the history of anti-natalism. I’m trying to present as close as you can get to a logically-valid anti-natalist argument, but it seems like your personal experience with people you perceive to be anti-natalists has tainted your ability to engage with that perspective. Claiming that an idea attracts crazy people is just an anecdotal ad hominem, not an actual issue with the idea. If you want to talk about why you perceive it to attract crazy, antisocial child-haters, then first establish that that is the case and suggest what it is about the idea which makes such an attraction dangerous. Fascism isn’t bad because the worst people rally around it. The worst people rally around it because of the things which make it bad, such as the ease with which those in power in a fascist state can exploit the weak for personal gain.

  It appears, to me (though it is ambiguous, so let me know if I’m off-base), that you believe that the biggest danger of anti-natalism is in the potential of population decline. If a significant portion of the population agreed with an anti-natalist argument, such that they actually did believe it was morally irresponsible to have a child, I contend that the problem which must be solved is not their exposure to anti-natalism, but the things which caused it to be a convincing argument, namely the fact that the future of a child born into this world is a deeply risky bet, due to the reasons I’ve listed and more. I don’t think that people taking a rational cost-benefit analysis of a situation is a problem. The problem would be the situation.

  In fact, it seems like (again an implication, so correct me if I’m wrong) you are concerned that an anti-natalist would try to forcibly prevent people from having children, but such an action would increase the suffering of those alive, and the actor would be morally culpable for such an act. As such, if you are, instead, suggesting that anti-natalists believe in forced sterilisation or otherwise, then I think that it might not be the anti-natalists projecting their own problems onto the world.

  All that aside, I still think it’s a narrow perspective, because unless you know something I don’t, we don’t know if there’s an alternative to existing and experiencing things, I mean… you’re going to die, and you will be dead forever. If you’re a teacher you should know the basic ideas about the universe and how everything appears to be probabilistic in nature. Eventually, after all the stars die and a number of years pass that make time meaningless, it will eventually all happen again. In some form or another. The universe will always be experiencing itself, not having kids now just means that conscious experience is going to express somewhere else, some distant configuration. It happened once already, and few things in nature are singular.

  As an earth and space science teacher, why yes, I DO know some things about the cosmos. For instance, I know that the “big bounce” theory (everything repeating) is only one of many potential interpretations for the future of our universe, and is by no means the most popular among astrophysicists, since it appears inconsistent with a universe in apparently-accelerating expansion. Far more likely is heat death or the big rip, which would make all effort to come before existentially meaningless, unless some method of information transfer outside of our universe or beyond our current understanding were to be achieved. It’s a good thing that none of us will be around to experience those eventualities. If you’d like to chat about existential nihilism, absurdism, or other concerns, I’m happy to do so, but I don’t perceive them to be particularly germane to the argument at hand, unless you’re trying to use a nihilistic argument to tear apart a fairly common position among nihilists. Utilitarianism itself is, ultimately, a response to the lack of meaning in the cosmos, and is an attempt to ascribe meaning by our own, subjective definition, so of course it’s human-biased, but it can be applied evenly, even to animals, which seems to be a primary concern for you.

  and if we’re going to go out quietly into the night, we should do it with the least amount of harm, and I would rather we put that energy into taking better care of the people we already have.

  That is… Exactly my point. Are you sure you are disagreeing with me? We need to be actively taking better care of the world, so that no one need feel afraid of bringing a life into this world, only for it to experience unspeakable suffering.

  Do you know for sure if you’re actually reducing suffering? Or just reducing your own guilt? For all we know, this is as good is as it gets.

  Such a thing is fundamentally unknowable, but our definition of suffering is fairly consistent, and of course It’s all about personal moral culpability, because that’s the whole idea of morality. If you’re going to take so many nihilistic and moral relativist stances, I don’t see why you’re so concerned with population collapse or animal welfare.

  We don’t know if the alternative to this is better, odds are it isn’t, we don’t know if you are actually deciding if you’re bringing in a new life or only changing the shape of your own conscious experience in this universe. We don’t even know if you have a choice at all, and are not just post-hoc rationalizing decisions you’ve already made.

  While it is fair to attack the postulates of an argument, this is not, in my opinion, a particularly compelling argument. Sure, I assume that not creating a life does no harm, but to say “ooh, free will might be an illusion” doesn’t actually negate my point, because, at worst, this means that it doesn’t matter whether you’re anti-natalist.

  [a] crustacean that gets cronched by some predator or a primate who suffers horribly and dies after her family is murdered by another tribe.

  My argument does not apply to animals in a state of nature, as those animals are not reasonably expected to have responsibility. Humans are the active cause of the current mass-extinction event, and we have the wherewithal to potentially stop it. That is, from my perspective, a moral imperative. Humans are the cause of a great deal of suffering, both human and animal, and one of my precepts claims that suffering can have a net-negative effect on the value of life. Another precept enjoins us to act, as the failure to act constitutes negligence. Do i believe that we must all stop procreating? no. Do i believe that there are cases in which it is actively irresponsible and negligent to bring a child into the world? Absolutely, yes. Do I think that I have a moral responsibility to stop people from fucking? No I do not. Do I think I have a moral responsibility to make the world a better place for the inevitable products of the aforementioned fucking? ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Slay Girl⁩ ⁨⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s fair, and I can’t speak for others, but at the very least, it’s a generalisation which I believe is unwarranted. I can simultaneously believe that it is morally questionable to choose to have a child, but also that a child, once born, places upon all members of society a moral duty of care in its upbringing, not only for harm reduction, but to work toward the betterment of society writ-large, so that we can potentially make the future act of procreation less morally concerning.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Slay Girl⁩ ⁨⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  As someone who understands, if not necessarily espouses, anti-natalist ideology, I can give a bit of elucidation from my perspective of the philosophy of utilitarianism, which I am happy to debate. It would be nice to be proven wrong here.

  It comes down, in my opinion and understanding, to the following argument:

  1. an entity is inherently unable to consent to its own creation. [A postulate]

  2. suffering has a net-negative effect on the (perceived or actual) value of existence [precept of utilitarianism]

  3. suffering knowingly enacted against any entity which cannot give informed consent is eqquivalent to the suffering of an entity which is actively not consenting [by which argument paedophilia is a crime]

  4. The potential suffering inherent in life is foreseeable, as is the potential of a human life to harm the lives of others. [The basis of the concept of negligence]

  5. An entity that is not created does not harm or cause others to suffer, nor does it experience harm or suffering [postulate]

  From propositions 1 through 4:

  5. You are personally, morally responsible for the life which you create, both its actions and its experiences, as all of its experiences and actions are exclusively contingent on the act of its creation. It is from this moral duty that parental responsibility derives.

  6. there is a foreseeable possibility that the entity being created could endure enough suffering (or be the cause of same) to make the value of their life net-negative

  From propositions 5 and 6, and the various observations one might make of the world (from climate change, to the renewed rise of fascism and the far-right, and a myriad of other “natural shocks which flesh is heir to”), they suggest:

  8. On cost-benefit analysis, the expected value of a new life which I might create is net-negative.

  From which:

  9. it would be irresponsible (read: negligent) to procreate.

  That is the basis. If you can prove each of those propositions, then from a utilitarian perspective, I think anti-natalism follows. I am personally convinced up to proposition 6, and I am personally waiting until I no longer feel that 8 has a chance of being valid before I have children. There are plenty of ways you can argue against the propositions, but as they stand, there is no indication of a moral duty to end already-extant life or to engage in mass-sterilisation of animals. There are certainly people who try to come at it from a nihilistic perspective, and it’s MUCH easier to argue pretty much anything from nihilism than from utilitarianism, but I, being primarily utilitarian, hold with the above.

  I also think that the person saying “anti-natalists think children are awful to be around” is presenting a ridiculous strawman. I’m a public school teacher, and I love being around kids. The wonder with which they view the cosmos is forever inspiring to me, but many of my students have experienced truly awful things. I believe my moral duty involves doing everything I can to minimize the suffering of entities that exist. I think that, once a child has been created, you now have a moral duty to make that child’s life as free from suffering and as fulfilling and rich as possible (without imposing suffering on others, of course)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I've wondered since I was a youngin⁩ ⁨⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Iroh is not a pacifist. He is just very selective about the use of deadly force.

  Iroh tries to teach zuko how to kill his enemies unflinchingly with “cold-blooded” lightning, and when that fails, teaches zuko to redirect lightning, which he knows is, and makes clear to be, explicitly deadly force, “to turn your enemy’s energy against them”. He acknowledges that, if he were to defeat Ozai, it would be “brother killing a brother”, because there was no realistic world in which Ozai could be contained without leading to his death. He accepts that his granddaughter “is crazy and needs to go down”.

  When he chooses to take back Ba Sing Se, does he go in covertly and retake the puppet state from the occupying troops by forcing a surrender or a diplomatic solution? No, his opening move is to generate the largest ball of fire possible, then hurl it at the titanic wall, which not only does the camera show us has many people behind it, but which Iroh is ready to obliterate, soldiers and all, sight unseen. He does what must be done. Violence is his last resort, but he clearly has no moral compunction against using violence against the violent. Deadly force is met with a redirecting blow, carrying that same energy or more. In the first season, when he believes the fate of the world hangs in the balance, he threatens and uses deadly force “tenfold” that which is exacted upon the moon spirit. There is nowhere in the show that Iroh says that death is never the solution. The only reason we don’t see the deaths of the many soldiers occupying Ba Sing Se at Iroh’s hands (as well as all of the other times he has caused soldiers to be buried under their own boulders, breathed fire into their faces, or otherwise used violent infernos to defeat enemies) is that it was depicted in a kids’ show. The only person in the series who maintains that deadly force is never the answer is Aang. Aang only manages it in the finale by Deus Ex Machina because he’s the chosen one (and the protagonist of a kids’ show).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I've wondered since I was a youngin⁩ ⁨⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Do you think that the white lotus took back Ba Sing Se without killing anyone with those 100-foot-tall walls of fire? No, you don’t expel an occupying force by just cutting the tips off of some spears. Avatar shows us the least-bloody parts of the recapture, but do not mistake Iroh’s depiction in a kids’ series for pacifism. Iroh is very clear, vocally, that violence is necessary in some cases. He teaches zuko to redirect lightning to send it back at the person who launched it, as he says “to use your opponent’s energy against them”. He prefers nonlethal methods, but that doesn’t mean he refuses to employ deadly force. He and his friends use fire against enemy metal tanks, which in reality would boil the soldiers alive. They use rocks to stop up the holes through which benders were actively shooting fire, which would rebound and fill the tank with that same conflagration. Those tanks get shot up hundreds of feet in the air and have hard landings on top of one another, which would not only concuss anyone inside to death, but would crush all of the tanks on the bottom. Iroh literally starts the liberation of Back Sing Se with a fire blast large enough to completely obliterate the titanic wall, as well as everyone behind it, in an instant. He doesn’t know how many soldiers lie behind that wall. He just destroys it, sight-unseen.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Which one is it?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Hey guys! This lead acetate is really sweet! Let’s make candy out of it!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Which one is it?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  They cut off option d, which is “tell your lab supervisor immediately”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Exploding 🌳🌲🌴🌳🌲🌴🌳🌲🌴🌳⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Are you suggesting that these trees are likely to be fissile?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Exploding 🌳🌲🌴🌳🌲🌴🌳🌲🌴🌳⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Lake effect probably prevents huge temperature swings further east, and there are mountains to the west, I believe. The problem is the flat area pictured.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Randezvous 📅⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  This reply is art.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Randezvous 📅⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Old English was like a least complicated German. It was the Norman French who fucked it up. Never forget 1066.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Self-Care⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Waymond? Is that you?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Children Of Time Intensifies

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Real⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ooh, did you read Grágás? It’s a shockingly entertaining read for a legal code. The section on Wergild is great, and you can learn a lot about the attitudes the Icelanders held toward different behaviours. Also, it strongly implies that there were at least a few people in Iceland who were training polar bears (which they must have either imported from Greenland, or found stranded on passing ice floes), and those trainers must have lobbied pretty hard, because it was specifically illegal to import trained brown bears from Norway.

  There are a lot of greens in there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Good point⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It comes from Portuguese, it seems, meaning “big head” en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cachalot

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Delicious rocks⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d bet that the high solubility would make it taste closer to burning plastic, with how much sulfur is in it and actively dissolving on your tongue.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Delicious rocks⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  But orpiment tastes like garlic!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Delicious rocks⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And orpiment (arsenic sulfide) tastes like garlic!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Delicious rocks⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Orpiment looks citrus-flavored, but when you lick it, it’s actually garlic-flavoured! These secrets have been hidden from us!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whats the best use for 75 dollars?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Waymond?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I deal with the outside world when I have germaphobia and don't really like outside?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, it’s DEFINITELY not for everyone, but as something wildly outside the norm (unless you’re in a fallout game) I think it serves to prove a point: whatever the OP needs to do to feel safe enough to engage with society, they should do, but the onus is on them. They have to set and communicate boundaries. They can’t assume that people will change how they live their lives for them. If that means that they look like a batman villain when they go to the grocery store? Well, turns out everybody else has their own problems, and nobody really cares. If they can find a solution that makes them feel like they can engage with society in a healthy way, then they should go all-in.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I deal with the outside world when I have germaphobia and don't really like outside?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have been wearing a P100, 3M 6000-series half-face respirator everywhere I go in public for the last 5 years (genuinely far more comfortable than any other mask I’ve ever worn). I have particularly compelling reasons why I feel this is necessary. In my experience, it’s an effective measure, and I literally teach high school 8 hours a day with it on. In my experience, the trick is this:

  • What the other people around you think of you is absolutely meaningless. Doesn’t matter. Ignore them.
  • if someone wants you somewhere badly enough to demand you go out of your comfort zone, then they want you there badly enough to be brought out of their own comfort zone by having Darth Fucking Vader show up.
  • People who look at you weird are not people you want to be around. People who ask you why you are wearing it are worth a brief explanation, and the simple fact is, nobody really gives enough of a shit for it to matter.
  • I have gotten very good at not inhaling when I don’t have my respirator up, so I’ll take it off momentarily to explain the situation to anyone who asks, and they are, 19 times out of 20, immediately understanding and we both go on with our days.
  • You have to make your own threat model. For me, I’m to the point where I’ll downgrade to an N-95 in my therapist’s office (since we’re 1-on-1 and nobody else has been in that room for 15 minutes) and when I go to a triannual game night at a friend’s house, because i know they’re all vaccinated, and I trust them to tell me if they’re sick.
  • Outside of some place like Japan, where societal pressure has led to an actual culture of hygiene, propriety, and basic consideration of others, you simply cannot assume that people give a flying fuck about their effects on the people around them. In a million ways, from cutting in line or on the highway, to playing music or a phone call on speaker on public transit, to the myriad externalities of the way they live, they inconvenience you and others around them. This is, unfortunately, normalised throughout most of the world, and bad hygiene surrounding infectious disease is just another part of that. Unlike playing music on a bus, however, poor infectious disease hygiene can lead to someone else’s death. You have to decide the precise level of risk and investment you’re willing to accept, and fuck anyone who disagrees with you. They can either deal with your non-negotiables or not. Set a clear fucking boundary. Rather than demanding that they act in accordance with your whims, judge by their past actions how they fit into your threat model and inform them of your new criteria by which you feel safe to engage with them and the world.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Glass⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The throne has been abdicated ever since Comet Drop. Someone’s gotta give serious answers to absurd scientific questions!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Glass⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m the other guy, wolframhydroxide

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Glass⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Indeed, the post was originally going to be a reply to this comment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gotta commend them for the effort⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  le updoots

  fake: … gay: …

  4c*an

  Hmm… Projection much?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Glass⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Let’s consider what it would take to have unbreakable (effectively infinite) surface tension:

  Either existing intermolecular forces would need to be dialed to infinity, or a new intermolecular force must come into action. In either case, it would make it energetically favourable for gaseous water to immediately condense into liquid whenever a gaseous molecule interacted with another water molecule. It would be an ice-ix scenario. All water would fall out of the atmosphere within hours, everything which uses lungs would find them filling with fluid. No water could be poured or create any droplet smaller than itself or otherwise separate from other water. However, that’s not even the weirdest bit.

  If this new or altered intermolecular force functionally increased the attractive forces between molecules of water, and only water, to infinity, all water would immediately collapse such that the individual atoms would undergo fusion, breaking the bonds of the molecules in a conflagration of nuclear fire.

  But let’s assume that it reaches just before the point at which the atomic bonds break. The water will likely take on the properties of a glass, becoming effectively solid, everywhere, just like ice-ix.

  So let’s be more generous and assume that the intermolecular forces are increased to be only strong enough to make it effectively impossible to break surface tension. We’d see a significantly higher viscosity, but what else?

  Well, the intermolecular forces will probably still SIGNIFICANTLY decrease the solubility of pretty much everything, everywhere, all at once (but especially covalent gases, which do not dissociate).

  This means that, in every living thing, at the same time, bubbles of oxygen and nitrogen will be coming out in the blood/hemolymph/cell membranes, not only making respiration functionally impossible (or at the very least far less efficient), but also embolizing every living thing with the precipitated gases. Everything alive dies, immediately.

  If those two gases aren’t enough, it will probably also significantly change the dissociation constants of pretty much every ionic compound, making them far less likely to dissociate in water, effectively causing large portions of the salt in the sea and other dissolved solids to precipitate in a cloud of powdered solids that would make the banded iron formations of the great oxygenation event look like a child’s sandbox.

  Depending on the interrelation of water’s own dissociation and the intermolecular forces, which I can’t recall at the moment, all acids and bases may suddenly neutralise in a similar event.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon develops methods for inserting ads onto any flat surface in an existing video⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Look at this guy, thinking they’re worthy of “respect”! The fucking temerity, the absolute gall of these poors!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is gold investing a scam?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t forget “skills you can use to make yourself valuable to a small community”, especially the skills to make food, locate and purify water, construct and maintain shelter, maintain and upscale off-grid power, and use ammunition and weapons.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Statistically, probably with the beetles. 🪲⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Fair enough