ContrarianTrail
@ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee
I prioritize ethics over optics even if it means facing criticism.
Sharing my honest beliefs, welcoming constructive debates, and embracing the potential for evolving viewpoints. Independent thinker navigating through conversations without allegiance to any particular side.
- Comment on How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it) 5 weeks ago:
All I have seen is that self driving cars will decide to kill people because they cannot make decisions about life in a way that preserves it.
Do you have any examples?
- Comment on How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it) 5 weeks ago:
Cheaper, safer and one extra seat.
We’re obviously not there yet but I haven’t heard a single good argument for why we wouldn’t be in the future.
- Comment on How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it) 5 weeks ago:
Humans are not getting any better at driving. Self-driving cars will eventually lead to tens of thousands of human lifes saved annually. Why do you want to prevent this?
- Comment on Taylor Swift Fans Are Leaving X for Bluesky After Trump’s Election 1 month ago:
“Some of Taylor Swift Fans Are Leaving Twitter for Bluesky After Trump’s Election”
- Comment on "Florida is a conservative Christian state" 1 month ago:
And go where? Get off twitter and come to Lemmy to get dogpiled for not having views that perfectly align with ours.
- Comment on Anon is jealous 1 month ago:
Good for her.
- Comment on On a lighter note: Why do people still buy fast food? 1 month ago:
I like fast food. A steakhouse hamburger from Burger King is just as good, if not better than most hamburgers I’ve gotten from restaurants. On top of this I don’t need to wait 30 minutes to get it, I don’t need to deal with waiters and I can just leave when I’m done rather than wait for someone to bring a a check.
- Comment on Serious statement: I don't understand the argument that not voting for Harris was the morally correct thing to do, because of Gaza. Why does anyone believe this? 1 month ago:
If you can’t make a cohesive argument for your view using your own words, then I’m not interested in going any further with this.
- Comment on Serious statement: I don't understand the argument that not voting for Harris was the morally correct thing to do, because of Gaza. Why does anyone believe this? 1 month ago:
questioning morals of not endorsing genocide
That’s a somewhat skewed lens to view it through, as not everyone agrees that what we’re seeing is a genocide. I definitely don’t think it is. I’m open to hearing arguments to the contrary, but so far, everyone I’ve tried discussing it with either gets emotionally captured or doesn’t argue honestly and in good faith, so the discussion goes nowhere.
- Comment on Serious statement: I don't understand the argument that not voting for Harris was the morally correct thing to do, because of Gaza. Why does anyone believe this? 1 month ago:
…is an absolute statement in itself.
- Comment on Serious statement: I don't understand the argument that not voting for Harris was the morally correct thing to do, because of Gaza. Why does anyone believe this? 1 month ago:
Personally I don’t see morals as entirely subjective.
I’d say that ‘worst possible misery for everyone’ is objectively bad and any attempt to move away from that is better.
- Comment on Besides traditional cable/satellite tv, what's considered "tv" today? 1 month ago:
YouTube is my TV. I don’t pretty much watch any movies or tv-shows.
- Comment on Why do Republicans bring up Kamala's "lies"/shortcomings as a way to claim Trump is better? 1 month ago:
I’m trying to summon my inner Ben Shapiro here. This isn’t my opinion but my understanding of what he has said on this subject.
While Trump lies a lot, he’s fundamentally a bullshitter, which is different. A liar knows the truth but chooses to deceive, whereas a bullshitter doesn’t care about truth in the same way. When Trump says something like, “We’re going to withdraw from NATO,” he’s often expressing a sentiment or creating leverage rather than making a literal commitment. He treats politics like business deals, where you start with an extreme offer, then meet somewhere in the middle. Shapiro has argued that in the case of NATO, this approach worked: other member states did increase their defense spending (though the war in Ukraine played a role too).
So, the point is that Trump’s statements should often be taken as rhetorical posturing - ways to push for certain outcomes - rather than literal promises. From a Republican perspective, his actions during his first term ultimately aligned with their goals, which explains their relative tolerance of his exaggerations. In contrast, they see Kamala Harris (and Biden) as engaging in misrepresentation that has led to policies Republicans find harmful, so there’s a greater focus on what they see as her inconsistency between words and actions. In short, the critique of Harris and Biden is about both their statements and the results, which Republicans view as failures.
- Comment on Most of the trick-or-treaters have been skipping my house, and I finally figured out why 1 month ago:
My front door faces the courtyard, so you’d have to come through the gate, walk between the house and fence, and then around to the back to knock on the door. My house is one of the older ones in the neighborhood, with big trees and bushes and no porch light or anything. I’ve never had a trick-or-treater knock on my door. Maybe I should get a massive, highly coveted bag of candy just in case someone does - and then just give them the whole thing.
- Comment on How long do you think we'll keep seeing "formerly Twitter"? 1 month ago:
I never stopped calling it Twitter and I never will. Just like Facebook will always be Facebook.
- Comment on How can I migrate my current Lemmy profile to another lemmy instance? 1 month ago:
In my case I have around 500 blocked users and around 700 blocked communities. I make a new account around once a year and I’d rather not start from scratch with each one.
- Comment on How can I migrate my current Lemmy profile to another lemmy instance? 1 month ago:
There’s an ‘Import/export settings’ feature in your profile. It’ll move your subscribtions and blocks but not comments, likes and such. Just your user settings.
- Comment on Is it cheaper to use a plug-in oil radiator to eat an individual room, or run the central heater to heat an individual room and living room? 1 month ago:
Electric radiator is 100% efficient.
If your central heating works by heating coils with electricity then it’s 100% efficient as well. If you heat all the rooms to the same temperature it makes no difference which one you use. If you use radiators but leave some rooms cooler than others then that’s going to cost less money.
If your central heating works by burning oil / gas then that’s probably going to produce heat for cheaper than electric radiators are. Same applies if it works by heat-pump. Those are 200 - 300% efficient.
- Comment on What do you like/dislike about lemmy? 1 month ago:
On browser you can put this onto your custom filters
lemmy.world##div.post-listing:has(span:has-text(“/musk/i”)) - Comment on What do you like/dislike about lemmy? 1 month ago:
I dislike that Lemmy is such a left-wing echo chamber. Reddit had a much wider variety of opinions being voiced openly; on Lemmy, there’s almost none. It doesn’t take long to figure out what’s acceptable to say here and what isn’t. It’s a kind of self-gaslighting because it can make you feel like the opinions of the average Lemmy user represent the wider population when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Also, there are almost no blue-collar workers here, and most discussions revolve around office jobs and big city life.
- Comment on Carl Sagan be like 1 month ago:
The number of leaves depends on the age of the plant. There are ones with one and three leaves as well. However I’ve never seen a leaf with a bud in the middle like on the left.
- Comment on How are scammers getting my email address? 1 month ago:
Doesn’t matter how careful you are if the people close yo you with that information aren’t.
Why yes ofcourse you can access my address book in order for me to play candy crush.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
I don’t have TikTok myself but having seen my friends show videos from their screen I think it’s absolutely hideous how half of the video is covered with comments and buttons and shit. That would be a total dealbreaker for me.
- Comment on Is my reaction weird? 1 month ago:
I don’t know about weird but that’s a bit sad read. I hope you’re young.
- Comment on Has "Self-Driving" devolved? 2 months ago:
That’s Autopilot though, not FSD. Untill not too long ago it was still switching to Autopilot on highways where as in cities it was using an entirely different system. Nowdays the neural nets based system is used on highways too assuming you have FSD subscribtion. If not, then it’ll keep using Autopilot which is less advanced system.
- Comment on Has "Self-Driving" devolved? 2 months ago:
Tesla recently switched from human-written code to full neural networks with their FSD system, which resulted in a significant leap in how reliable and human-like it became. Nowadays, it’s safe to assume it will perform better than the average human driver on most trips, but it’s still not reliable enough to be blindly trusted. You still need to sit there, paying attention to make sure it doesn’t do anything stupid. It’s by far the most advanced ‘self-driving’ system available on a vehicle you can actually buy.
The reason it’s constantly in the news is that anything related to Elon, AI, or self-driving is guaranteed to get clicks in today’s mediascape. It’s not a flawless system by any means but it’s also not as bad as people make it to be.
- Comment on Do you actually care about your friend's new baby, vacation abroad or similar life events or are you just being nice? 2 months ago:
I specifically wont pretend to be interested. You’ll notice that I’m not - that’s why I wont ask in the first place.
- Comment on Do you actually care about your friend's new baby, vacation abroad or similar life events or are you just being nice? 2 months ago:
The nature of my job is that I often listen to people tell me their life story while I’m replacing their kitchen faucet. It’s not that I can’t do small talk - I just find most of the topics incredibly uninteresting. Like I said earlier, I know how to play the game, I just find it mind-numbingly boring.
This goes both ways, though. I’m acutely aware that most people aren’t interested in the things I’m most passionate about, so I don’t bring those up either. But when I do meet someone with similar interests, I could talk for hours. Those conversations are rarely about people or events - mostly about ideas.
- Comment on Do you actually care about your friend's new baby, vacation abroad or similar life events or are you just being nice? 2 months ago:
I don’t feel like it makes much difference whether the person is close to me or not. It’s not that I don’t care about what happens to these people, but a huge part of the topics people generally small talk about are the kinds of mundane things I have almost zero interest in discussing. For example, if something interesting happened to you over the weekend, I assume you’re just going to tell me about it - I would. But I sometimes feel like people expect me to ask about those things, and when I see others do it, I’m often a bit skeptical about whether they’re actually interested or just going through the motions. Thus this thread.
- Comment on Cool People Doing Cool Things 2 months ago:
When speaking of memes, most people think of internet memes. The likes of which this and every other meme community is full of. That’s not what Dawkins means by a meme. What he means by meme is a cultural analog to genes. A trait that passes from person to person as an idea or behavior. Shaking hands would an example of such meme.
Internet meme on the other hand generally comes in the form of a picture which is funny, ironic or relateable.