Opinionhaver
@Opinionhaver@feddit.uk
Independent thinker valuing discussions grounded in reason, not emotions.
I say unpopular things but never something I know to be untrue. Always open to hear good-faith counter arguments. My goal is to engage in dialogue that seeks truth rather than scoring points.
- Comment on is there any way to invest ethically as a sole individual? 2 days ago:
The whole ETF thing is partly a grift
Are you mixing up ESG and ETF by any chance?
- Comment on Twitch's largest political streamer, Asmongold, shovels racist and xenophobic messaging to his audience of 52K+ live viewers 4 days ago:
What does that have to do with anything? Sweden’s population has grown from 8 million in the '70s to 10.5 million today. That’s 2.5 million more people - and 1.9 million of them are immigrants. The number of immigrants per capita has increased significantly since the '70s, not decreased.
- Comment on Twitch's largest political streamer, Asmongold, shovels racist and xenophobic messaging to his audience of 52K+ live viewers 4 days ago:
According to wikipedia their support was at around 4% in the 90’s, 5.7% in 2010, 17.5% in 2018 and 20% in 2022.
There was a peak in immigration in the '70s, but that was still only half of what it was in 2015. I doubt it’s just a coincidence that their support seems to correlate pretty neatly with the number of immigrants. I never claimed that it’s the gang violence driving the increased support - it’s the immigration itself. The rise in violence just makes it easier for them to say “I told you so.”
- Comment on Twitch's largest political streamer, Asmongold, shovels racist and xenophobic messaging to his audience of 52K+ live viewers 4 days ago:
You’re still doing it. I bring up integration challenges - you hear “brown people.” I talk about political backlash - you call it disinformation. At no point have I blamed immigrants for wealth inequality or defended Farage or Trump, yet somehow you’ve lumped me in with all of it.
You asked by who people get shouted down? You’re literally doing it right now. And you don’t even realize it. That’s the whole tragedy. You think you’re punching up - but all you’re doing is making sure no one outside your bubble wants to talk to you, much less vote with you. Keep going. It’s clearly working wonders.
- Comment on How come nobody does anything about North Korea? 5 days ago:
What exactly are you suggesting we do about it? They’ve got enough conventional artillery aimed at Seoul to cause millions of casualties the moment it even looks like we’re about to intervene.
- Comment on Ukraine Unveils Pocket-Sized Net Launcher to Take Down FPV Drones 5 days ago:
I literally thought of this yesterday and now it’s a real thing.
- Comment on Twitch's largest political streamer, Asmongold, shovels racist and xenophobic messaging to his audience of 52K+ live viewers 5 days ago:
Appreciate the live demo of exactly what I was talking about.
Instead of engaging with the argument, you go straight to branding me a racist. This is why the far-right keeps gaining ground - not because people agree with them, but because they’re sick of being shouted down any time they try to talk about real issues. Apparently things still aren’t bad enough for that lesson to sink in.
- Comment on Twitch's largest political streamer, Asmongold, shovels racist and xenophobic messaging to his audience of 52K+ live viewers 5 days ago:
Massive amounts of refugees and immigrants since 2015, failure to integrate, gang violence, shootings and bombings among the highest per capita in Europe, and the rise of the right-wing nationalist Sweden Democrats.
Sweden basically became the cautionary tale among the Nordic countries of how not to handle mass immigration.
- Comment on Twitch's largest political streamer, Asmongold, shovels racist and xenophobic messaging to his audience of 52K+ live viewers 5 days ago:
What he says might be unpopular on this platform, but I don’t see the racism in it. Integrating large numbers of people from a completely different culture into your society is extremely difficult – if not outright impossible. Exhibit A: Sweden.
- Comment on Can you see magic eye pictures? 6 days ago:
Stereograms? Yeah I can. I’ve even made them myself.
- Comment on How can I start getting familiar with the plants, trees and animals around where I live? 1 week ago:
I’d start by looking up the ones you recognize, even if you don’t know their names yet. It’s hard to memorize plants you don’t even remember seeing, but if you research the ones you commonly stumble upon - ones you can point to and start attaching names and info to - then the rest builds up organically over time. A book, with pictures, written by a local would be a good start. Goes with birds as well.
- Comment on Does people doing things that upset others also upset you? 1 week ago:
If I agree with the moral logic behind it, then yes - it’ll upset me even if I’m not personally affected. If I hear someone shouting slurs at a black person, I’ll obviously take issue with it, despite not being black myself.
On the other hand, if I hear someone say, for example, “this thing is retarded,” then even if society broadly considers that offensive, I still wouldn’t personally have a problem with it - because I don’t agree with the reasoning behind that judgment.
- Comment on I would still download a car if I could. 🚗 1 week ago:
I think it’s a false assumption that these people wouldn’t be paying anyway. That’s just a narrative spread as a fact. It’s undeniable that film/game studios are losing money due to piracy. Some number of the people who pirate would be paying for it if piracy wasn’t an option.
- Comment on Half a million Spotify users are unknowingly grooving to an AI-generated band 2 weeks ago:
You’re free to say “I hate all AI-generated content” - but the issue isn’t what you believe you hate, it’s whether you can know that what you hate is in fact AI-generated.
You don’t need 100% detection accuracy to hate some AI content. But if you claim to hate all AI content, then the reliability of your detection absolutely matters. Because if even one piece slipped by - and you didn’t hate it - your statement is no longer true.
And considering how much AI-generated content is already out there - usually unlabeled and increasingly indistinguishable - it’s statistically improbable that everything you’ve consumed and didn’t hate was human-made. You may feel confident about your preferences, but you’re arguing from certainty where none is possible. That’s not a logical stance - it’s ideological.
- Comment on Half a million Spotify users are unknowingly grooving to an AI-generated band 2 weeks ago:
That would require you to be able to detect AI-generated content with 100% accuracy, which simply isn’t the case.
What you actually have is a prejudice - you dislike content when you suspect or find out it’s AI-generated. But there’s undoubtedly AI-generated content you’ve encountered without realizing, and likely didn’t mind. Just as there’s human-made content you dislike.
You don’t hate all AI-generated content. You hate the idea of AI-generated content. That reaction is ideological, not purely about quality.
- Comment on Half a million Spotify users are unknowingly grooving to an AI-generated band 2 weeks ago:
You’re not really engaging with what I said. I’m not claiming everyone who listens enjoys it, just pointing out that some clearly do - and if enough people are voluntarily replaying it or adding it to playlists, then the “slop” label starts sounding more like prejudice than critique.
There’s always filler and mediocrity in any medium - human or AI. We just don’t call it “slop” when it’s made by a garage band or a beginner solo artist. That word feels like it’s doing extra work here - as if the low quality is inherent to all AI content independent of the end result. And that’s exactly the bias I’m pointing to.
You can say it’s “AI slop,” but if it passes for music some people want to listen to, then maybe it’s time to reevaluate what that label is even supposed to mean.
- Comment on Half a million Spotify users are unknowingly grooving to an AI-generated band 2 weeks ago:
It’s not exactly “slop” if people are listening to it and presumably enjoying it. That just goes to show it’s not AI-generated content in general that people dislike - it’s bad AI-generated content. If the content is good, people are drawn to it regardless of who or what made it - as it should be.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
As far as I know, many of the judges Trump appointed during his first term are now making rulings against his interests - despite having been seen as “aligned” when appointed. So in other words: you can’t know. Just make sure they’re competent and fit for the task.
- Comment on Why don't more people use Bilibili instead of YouTube? 2 weeks ago:
Because I have no issues with YouTube. I’d much rather use American spyware than Chinese one.
- Comment on Why does good faith matter ? 3 weeks ago:
I don’t think actually believing the views you defend is relevant here. Playing devil’s advocate can be done in good faith. In fact, I’d argue that being able to clearly articulate a view you don’t hold is a sign that you’ve genuinely understood your opposition’s arguments. You don’t need to be convinced by them yourself.
What does make it bad faith is if you put those arguments forward but then refuse to engage with the counterarguments - that’s where the line gets crossed.
For example, I don’t agree with the reasons Russia has given for attacking Ukraine, but I can still lay out those arguments in a way a pro-Russian person would recognize as accurate. That, on its own, isn’t bad faith. But if someone responds by calling me a delusional Nazi or something similar, that is bad faith - a strawman, specifically - even if that person genuinely believes people who argue that position deserve such a label.
- Comment on Why does good faith matter ? 3 weeks ago:
they don’t believe in the argument they are presenting
I don’t think that’s the case here. While people might lie when there’s something to gain from it, we generally don’t hold views we don’t believe in - because that creates cognitive dissonance.
More often, I think it’s that people hold views they feel are true on an intuitive level, but these beliefs usually aren’t something they’ve arrived at independently from first principles. Instead, they’ve adopted them from somewhere else - social groups, media, culture - and haven’t really thought them through.
The belief becomes part of their identity, and they accept it at face value. They know they’re right, so anyone who disagrees must automatically be wrong. That makes it easy to dismiss or ridicule opposing views rather than trying to understand where that “false belief” comes from. After all, why waste time listening to someone who just doesn’t get what you already know to be true?
What people need is humility. There’s no way one can be right about literally everything - we just don’t know what we’re wrong about. It might be something trivial but it also might be one of our core beliefs. The truth is not always intuitive or something that we like. Sometimes the truth is uncomfortable.
- Comment on Why does good faith matter ? 3 weeks ago:
So you think twisting people’s words, lying, cherry-picking information, and attacking them personally - rather than addressing their actual point - is a good way to make them change their minds?
I don’t think you really believe that either, but if I were to engage with you in bad faith, that’s what it would look like.
Good faith doesn’t mean you have to be polite - it means you make a genuine effort to understand what someone is actually saying and engage with that, rather than a cartoon version of their argument. That cartoon version might get you cheers from the audience, but it’s not going to change anyone’s mind. And if minds aren’t being changed - and no serious effort is even made to try - then what’s the point of the debate in the first place?
I’d argue that if someone is genuinely trying to persuade another person, it’s virtually impossible to debate in bad faith. Acting in bad faith means you don’t care whether the other person changes their mind - you just want to dunk on them, be mean, pretend they said something they didn’t, and rally a mob to dogpile on them. Then you tell yourself you’ve “won” the debate because you’re getting upvotes and they’re not - even though all you’ve really done is push them further into their corner.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
Name for this kind of slogan is a “Thought-terminating clishé”
A thought-terminating cliché (also known as a semantic stop-sign, a thought-stopper, bumper sticker logic, or cliché thinking) is a form of loaded language—often passing as folk wisdom—intended to end an argument and quell cognitive dissonance with a cliché rather than a point.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
I don’t see why it would be a bad thing. There’s probably more to gain there than to lose if you want to think it that way.
I go discgolfing with one of my customer regularly.
- Comment on Apple to Australians: You’re Too Stupid to Choose Your Own Apps 4 weeks ago:
But I’m not criticizing them for failing to summarize the entire article in the headline. I’m criticizing them for being biased - and for clearly showing that bias in how they chose to write the headline. This isn’t neutral reporting on what’s happening.
- Comment on Apple to Australians: You’re Too Stupid to Choose Your Own Apps 4 weeks ago:
So they didn’t…
The title should quote what they actually said rather than putting their own bias on it.
- Comment on Apple to Australians: You’re Too Stupid to Choose Your Own Apps 4 weeks ago:
I don’t even need to read the article to know that they didn’t actually say that.
- Comment on Why do fancy cars look fancy and cheap cars don't? Can't you just slap a Lamborghini-style chassis onto a lawnmower engine if you want? 5 weeks ago:
Is chassis manufacturing more difficult than it seems
Yes, I remember watching a video explaining how the bend on the side of an Audi differs between cheaper and more expensive models due to ease of manufacturing. That makes intuitive sense too: a nicely carved stick is more valuable and takes more time to make than one that’s simply had the bark removed. The body design of a Lamborghini is orders of magnitude more elaborate than that of a VW Golf so ofcourse it’s going to also cost much more.
- Comment on YouTube relaxes moderation rules to allow more controversial content 5 weeks ago:
No, it doesn’t. If I watch a 15-second funny video from nine years ago, my feed gets flooded with other short clips like that - that’s just how the algorithm works. My personal experience doesn’t support the claim that right-wing media is being disproportionately pushed to people who aren’t interested in it. If I click on that kind of video, it means I’m interested in it - so of course I get recommended more.
- Comment on YouTube relaxes moderation rules to allow more controversial content 5 weeks ago:
Well yeah, isn’t that the whole point of the recommendation algorithm? To suggest content people might find engaging. If a “Ben Shapiro destroys” video doesn’t break any rules, then what’s the issue with it being monetized? What I’m doubting here is the claim that this kind of content is somehow disproportionately pushed to people who have no interest in it.