CarbonIceDragon

@CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We Are A Different Breed⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  People tell their family and bosses what their “main” social media handle is?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨CMV⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Who designs robots with dicks? Sex-tox companies in a society that has relatively cheap consumer robots, presumably.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Tbf, aren’t the argonians in lore basically magically bioengineered by some intelligent trees in order to have a means to keep tabs on and defend themselves from the world outside their forest? It’s not really absurd for them to have some mammalian traits if they’re intentionally designed to interact with mammals and not naturally evolved. (actually, is anything naturally evolved in that setting, rather than being directly designed by deities?)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I wrote the thing you replied to before I learned about the DDOS thing

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Im inclined to believe that there were death-threats. I dont agree with what this person did here, but it should be considered that there is a certain segment of the population that has sufficiently poor consideration for others or emotional regulation that they will send death threats to people that make them angry, and, importantly, while this segment may be more or less common in some groups, that tendency in itself does not force a person to hold or not hold a given view (even ideologies or ethical systems that condemn death threats, because plenty of people out there are hypocritical). As such, these people can be expected to exist in any sufficiently large group, to include whatever groups you, I, or anyone else consider to be an “in-group”. The tesseract dev got a lot of people mad, so, it would honestly surprise me if they didnt get a few such threats just given the sheer number of chances for one of the angry people to be of the sort to send them. If anything, Id expect a shittier person to be slightly more likely to get them just because people like that tend to do more things that make people mad at them, though this should not be taken as saying that people that get death threats are necessarily shitty people or that they’re deserved.

  That stuff aside, Ive had mixed feelings about this whole affair. I do agree that the hidden blacklist thing was way out of line, but I find that most of the criticism Ive seen doesnt really give the right reason (in my point of view) for why it was out of line. (Namely, Ive seen a lot of it framed as “this is censorship, its wrong to make software that intentionally does not display posts from specific people/places”. I dont think I really like this argument, because I think a lot of the people making it havent really considered the implications of it thoroughly. Its generally considered acceptable for users to block other users for example, for moderators to ban users from a community, and for instances to defederate from other instances if they feel the need, and these things also prevent one seeing the posts of affected users, they just happen at a different layer than tesseract did. It is censorship, yes, but one cant expect to be entitled to the attention of others, theres simply too many people that have things to say, even important things, for it to be otherwise, nobody can possibly pay attention to everyone, nor is it healthy to try, so there must be systems in place that allow one to ignore those one doesnt want to see in favor of those one does.

  The problem in my view is one of consent: if tesseract had made it known upfront that using it without disabling some default setting also opted the user into its developer’s personal blocklist, then, well, it wouldnt be much different than when people on microblog platforms share blocklists with others, or when people choose an instance based on that instance’s federation decisions. I would not personally have wanted to use it, as I have different ideas of what I want to block and not block, but I dont think that in theory it would have been unethical for it to exist in that state. However, while the dev themself seems to have thought that they had done enough to make this feature known, based on one of their responses to the controversy at least, they clearly did not, else the public response to the list’s exposure would not have been outrage so much as “well yeah, thats what that program does, dont use it”.

  Part of this I think is that while moderation decisions are expected of an instance, they dont tend to be expected from alternate UI software, so, what would have qualified as “making it known upfront” would necessarily have to have been been very blatant. As it was, they certainly didnt meet that bar, and it was very plausible for a new user to find tesseract and end up using this guy’s list without knowing about it. This isnt something Ive seen come up in the angry response nearly as often as just “he’s blacklisted people that I dont think ought to have been, doesnt he know blocking people is bad, what an authoritarian!”. Though of course, I havent seen every post about this whole deal so its possible that I simply have missed that criticism and just seen the angry memes.)

  While Ill agree that self-reflection in their part would have been the most desirable outcome, I dont think it was ever really a realistic one. I doubt that any but a small fraction of the population would really be capable of anything but defensiveness when they have managed to anger thousands of strangers into yelling at them, its not a situation that humans are really well adapted for or handle well, given that the conditions we arose in would not have allowed for it nearly as easily as those of today do. As such, I think that just leaving in frustration, while not a satisfying resolution or a perfect one, is probably the best ending that could reasonably hoped for here. The other likely outcome would have been doubling down further and keeping the anger going, and by leaving there’s at least a chance that they might reflect on what happened once emotions have a chance to die down.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are we really doing this again?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Could be worse, we could be on the three day challenge again

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hey looky! I'm on a list a just learned about three minutes ago!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  they’ve responded about it a couple times at least, so they do know.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It’s Looking Like the Cybertruck Is the Biggest Flop in Automotive History⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It kinda makes a lot of sense I feel that they’d fit together. You have a form of transportation that is dangerous enough that requiring government licensing is generally agreed to be desirable, meaning that if its the primary option, a government can effectively take away a person’s ability to participate in public life or make a living, and easily justify it on safety grounds. Cars are expensive, so a government can both funnel money to its partners in private industry by promoting them, and subsidize them for the populations it considers “desirable” as a means to seem like it has created abundance and luxury (see how how the VW bug came to be for example). And, a society built around cars is one that tends towards physical separation and isolation between people (because of space inefficient infrastructure and relatively quick travel outside of densely built areas), which promotes distrust of others. Thats not to say that cars are inherently fascist or that most people that promote them do so to benefit that sort of ideology, but that if I was some kind of fascist dictator seeking to control a population, Id probably want to push them into buying and relying on cars.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My world has just been shattered⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Solution: make up some original characters with designs one likes, make up some lore that they have some cutesy loving relationship, and draw or write some for yourself with whatever vibe you want it to have. Also lets one turn horny feelings into motivation to practice creative expression which can then make for something of a hobby.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It’s Looking Like the Cybertruck Is the Biggest Flop in Automotive History⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Aesthetics wise, I used to think it kind of looked cool… when it was just a computer rendering with no exposure to conditions of the real world. In person all the flat and shiny but not like mirror-like surfaces mean that even the tiniest warp and defect is visible when the sun shines on it. Someone in my area has one ive seen a few times painted a somewhat matte black, which makes it even worse in that Ive been able to see fingerprints on it from across the street, and from a distance the colors of the windows and body blend together to look like some kind of featureless black monolith.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Sorry, I have no idea what this is. Some kind of sentient wheeled typewriter presumably but it doesn’t ring any bells

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Man or Bear 🥩⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That was how I preferred my steak as a kid, with the addition of a bunch of paprika mixed in to the ketchup. Not because it was at all good, mind, but because I have always hated the flavor and texture of steak, my father loves it and would make it often when I was growing up, and doing that makes it not taste like steak anymore.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'll take it to all 2 place it goes!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This is why I moved to Massachusetts after growing up in the south: the trains here might be old, late, and apparently catch on fire once in a while from what ive heard, but we have trains.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Actually on second thought, ill just die⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That can be a danger with some fish…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Radicality⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  But what if a group of dinosaurs independently evolved hair or something highly convergent to it, but then that lineage left no descendants among modern birds, leaving none of them with the trait?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Probably accurate⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Tbf, nothing in that hypothetical suggests true utopia, maybe they have occasional crossdimensional wars fought with weapons that make nukes look like firecrackers or something

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ESA bafflingly declares private Minecraft servers 'illegal'⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  To be fair, the european space agency isn’t NASA

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The real deal⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I wonder if lemmy gets stuck in common AI training data sets, and if they might now tell people to check the hue of their eggs now

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is this a fox or coyote?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Its a gray fox. Not a “true fox” in that it’s not much related to red foxes or arctic foxes or that whole group of animals, but it does get called a fox.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you think about the dead internet theory?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The issue I take with it isnt the “bots are everywhere” or these days even the “bots are most traffic bits”, its the “the internet has been abandoned by humans” bit. admittedly this is anecdotal, but I dont really know anyone that doesnt use the internet, and if it were really true that humans largely have left it behind, things like social media wouldnt be such a big concern, vans for online shopping services like amazon wouldnt be everywhere, etc. What I think has happened is that just about as much real human traffic exists as ever, and weve added an even bigger volume of bots on top of that, which isnt a dead internet per se, its one that is being overwhelmed with noise.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Everything is longer, including Florida Man⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Somewhat reminds me of that “Golden Circle” empire that some pre-american-civil-war slavers wanted to try to make

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is it about Mark Zuckerberg's appearance or demeanor that creeps people out?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly, I don’t think he’d be that creepy without the context, same goes for most other famous but hated people that people dont like the appearance of, like Jeff Bezos or such. I think that that reputation comes from a combo of: people being more inclined to notice things they don’t like in people they already dislike or to consider neutral features in those people negative (the flipside of how one find someone a bit bad looking, but then end up friends somehow and no longer think they look so bad), and media using photos of those people taken at unflattering angles, mid-speech where expressions look strange, etc, when talking about those people for an audience that already isn’t inclined to like them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[title]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Nihilism carries plenty of hope; it carries the hope that the values we make for ourselves, our subjective experiences, are the highest basis we have to judge ourselves on, that we are not a cog in somebody elses cosmic machine, or at least that if we are, that someone ultimately has no more valid a claim to us than we do. A universal meaning, if one exists, has a potentially infinite number of things that it could be, so if one exists, we almost certainly will fail to live up to it, despite any effort we make, and that notion I find horrifying. But you cannot fail if there is no goal, you can do what you want, and as humans are a social species, what we want, on average, is to live well, to be kind and experience kindness. Absent some other mission, this is what people try to do, without really needing to think too much about it.

  I do not get this “nihilism means you feel everything is hopeless” notion, despite it being commonly repeated, because if nothing matters, nothing requires you to give up. There is no reason not to keep going, and since humans are ultimately wired to want and need and care about things, hope for the future is the default state. The people that tell you to not vote, or not be kind, or similar, on the grounds that things are all pointless, are not actually following nihilism, because they act as if that implies there is a universal mandate for inaction, not simply no mandate.

  Beyond that, theres the matter that, well, I simply dont see a mechanism from which a universal meaning and purpose could arise (short of an actually omnipotent entity existing and using its power to decree such a purpose, but since I also believe such entities are self-contradicting and impossible, I cant accept that one). Purpose to my use of the term implies artificial creation to fulfill some role, an ultimate purpose then would somehow have to mean that the sum total of all things was created by some intelligent entity, except that entity would also be a thing that therefore would have to have retroactively created itself, which is paradoxical. Even if, for the sake of argument, I did think that the idea of a meaningless universe was mentally unhealthy, I cannot simply decide that idea is factually wrong simply because I didnt want it to be true, my brain just does not let me consciously change my beliefs without being convinced to the contrary like that. There are a great many things that I wish werent true, and yet think are regardless. This isnt one of them, but that isnt the reason I think it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[title]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I fail to see how, true or false, that would be relevant.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[title]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah, then I see my point of confusion: I do not see “nothing matters” as a fundamentally undesirable position (actually kind of the reverse), so to me Donald’s statement does not read as despare at all, it just reads as a neutral explanation of his stance on it. As such, Mickey’s statement doesn’t read to me as absurdist reassurance, rather, Donald’s reads more as something an absurdist might say and Mickey’s response reads more as “how dare you believe that, that idea must be somehow made false even if it is true and I wish to use violence to bring that about”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[title]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  What does that even entail though, you cant exactly force things to objectively matter if they don’t already, there’s no mechanism by which we could influence that. If you just assert values that you hold personally, you’ve merely created subjective meaning and done nothing relevant to nihilism’s truth value. Meanwhile If nihilism turns out to be objectively false, then you can’t fight it because it wouldnt even exist to fight. You can fight nihilists I guess, but then you’re in the generally disliked position of fighting people based on a belief of theirs that does not require them cause any harm to you or anyone else, because it doesn’t require anything at all.

  Its about as bizarre a call to action as declaring that you dislike some branch of math and want people to help you fight it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[title]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  transhumanism isnt transcendent of material reality though, its literally just the idea of using technology, which runs on the rules of nature to modify humans into some more desired state, its not that it does impossible things so much as that the limits of what the material universe allows are actually much grander than our current abilities are up to.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[title]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That hypothetical doesnt really change what I said though. It would make the materialist position incorrect, but it still wouldnt be hypocritical because it would still be consistent with itself, and it still wouldnt give you any course of action with which to “fight” the nature of the universe.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[title]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Always hated this meme because Mickey’s dialogue is set up to give the confident and condescending “vibe” of correctness but actually makes no sense if you stop and think about it. "Trusting the chemicals in your brain to tell you they are chemicals " when declaring emotions to have material basis isnt hypocrisy, it’s self consistency, essentially the reverse of hypocrisy. And if the universe is just a material thing with no basis for intrinsic value, what even is there to “fight” about that? You cannot exactly punch the nature of reality into submission, or change the behavior of the universe through sheer force of will. And if you could, there isn’t even a reason given for why you would even want to do so, it’s just implied that human values and emotions being a result of material reality is undesirable because what? “chemicals bad” I guess?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cultural impact⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Honesty I thought the second was the best one. It’s full of plot holes sure, but the watery setting makes a series that primarily is tech-demo eye candy, even prettier.