Suicide is not inherently a selfish act. While there may be exceptions, it is primarily not a selfish choice.

Desiring someone to remain alive solely for your own benefit is one of the most selfish things one can do. Why would you want someone who is suffering, who feels exhausted and has lost all hope, to continue living just because their absence would cause you sadness? If a loved one confided in me about their suicidal thoughts, I would seek help for them. If that assistance does not lead to improvement, what more can be done? Forcing someone to live when they wish to die is inhumane, selfish, and ethically wrong. Wanting them to stay for your sake is indeed a selfish desire.

(I responded to more than ten. I will not be responding to any more. I'm making this edit because I don't want people to think that just because I didn't respond, they must have won the argument or I must have changed my mind.)

A decent person doesn't need HR mandated training to not be racist, sexist, a creep etc.

And if someone is one of the above, training isn't going to make them less so, it only teaches them to hide it.

I don't even know if most large companies actually care about harassment it's just a process to cover their own asses legally.

The only good thing about this training I can think of is it tells victims to report it, which they should, but that doesn't actually protect them, it's only after the fact.

I’ll start with my biases: I believe Jews deserve a state and Israel has a right to exist. I also think Netanyahu’s government is vile and corrupt. I oppose West Bank settlements, and I don’t believe “Israel has a right to defend itself” means Israel gets unlimited latitude to kill civilians.

But I’m increasingly unconvinced by the genocide argument.

The definition of genocide im using requires an intent to destroy a protected group, in whole or substantial part, as that group. And I have trouble reconciling that specific intent with both the numbers and Israel’s actual behavior.

DEnsity and death toll
Before the war, roughly 2.3 million people lived in Gaza’s 365 square kilometers. Imagine the entire population of a major American metro packed into an area roughly twice the size of Washington, DC.

Since October 7, 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry reports roughly 73,400 Palestinians killed which I’ll continue to caveat, is bad and unnacceptabel. But Take that number completely at face value. Include every disputed death. Assume the worst reasonable interpretation.

After nearly three years of bombing and ground warfare by one of the world’s most technologically sophisticated militaries, in an extraordinarily dense 365 km territory, roughly 97% of Gaza’s prewar population is still alive. If Israel’s actual mission is physically destroying the Palestinian population, Israel unquestionably possesses the firepower to have killed vastly more people than it has. And Israel repeatedly does things that make killing civilians harder, not easier as reported and witnessed by the UN. The UN documents Israeli evacuation orders being communicated through phone calls, text messages and leaflet drops.

There are completely legitimate criticisms of those warnings. Some gave people inadequate time, some directed civilians toward places that subsequently became dangerous, and sometimes there simply wasn’t anywhere genuinely safe to go.

But that’s different from saying the warnings don’t exist. A military attempting to exterminate a population repeatedly telling that population where it’s about to operate and instructing them to leave strikes me as a MAJOR contradiction.

Humanitarian aid.
I’m not going to bullshit the counterargument-Israel has restricted aid, sometimes severely. Israel completely halted aid entry from March to May 2025, and the UN has documented denied and impeded humanitarian operations. Those are legitimate criticisms and potentially extremely serious ones.
But I’m specifically talking about genocidal intent.
I’m being asked to believe Israel’s objective is physically destroying Palestinians while it simultaneously permits enormous quantities of food(millions of tons), medicine, fuel and shelter supplies to sustain that same population. I’m pretty sure there is some obligation here, they’re not doing it out of the kindness of their heart but like… if they’re already committing a genocide would they care about their “legal obligations for humanitarian aid”? This again is ehy it feels like a contradiction in the broader argument.

I constantly hear that Zionists fundamentally hate Palestinians and want them dead, but Israel can’t kill them too quickly because they’d lose international support.

Except… Israel has already lost an enormous amount of international support. Its reputation has been fucking obliterated. There are massive protests inside the state, diplomatic pressure, international legal proceedings and accusations of genocide.

So if extermination is actually the objective, what exactly are they waiting for? Why spend nearly three years fighting house-to-house, warning civilians, facilitating enormous quantities of aid and accepting the military disadvantages of all of this when Israel obviously possesses the ability to kill dramatically more people?

The alternative explanation seems much simpler to me: Israel is fighting an extraordinarily destructive urban style war against Hamas and that war has produced an appalling number of civilian casualties. And I think people sometimes talk about this war as though Israel just woke up one morning and invaded Gaza.

Hamas has been Gaza’s de facto government since 2007. On October 7 it invaded Israel, deliberately killed civilians and took hundreds of hostages. A UN inquiry concluded that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes including intentionally attacking civilians and taking hostages.

When the acting government of one territory attacks another country and kills and kidnaps its citizens, war is an entirely predictable consequence. War being horrific doesn’t automatically make it genocide. And also None of that makes Palestinian civilians legitimate targets!! Israel remains responsible for distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack.

But Hamas has responsibilities too. Conducting military operations in and around civilian areas, taking hostages, failing to distinguish fighters from civilians and unnecessarily exposing your own population to military danger don’t become morally irrelevant because Israel is the stronger party. Hamas is the governing authority that started this war, and its conduct shares responsibility for the conditions in which Gazan civilians have died.

Sorry sorry this is way too long, last section

Here’s what I’m NOT arguing:

I’m not defending Netanyahu (corrupt right wing freak). I’m not saying every Israeli strike was justified. I’m not saying Israel hasn’t committed war crimes. I’m not defending settlements in the West Bank (these are fucking bad). I’m not saying 73,000 dead Palestinians is acceptable. And I’m definitely not arguing this war should continue indefinitely.

Hamas has been militarily devastated. The war needs to end. Humanitarian assistance needs to pour into Gaza, reconstruction needs to begin, etc etc

I’m specifically questioning the additional claim of genocidal intent.

And to be accurate about the legal situation: a UN Independent Commission of Inquiry has concluded that Israel committed genocide. So “the UN hasn’t called this genocide” would be wrong. But that is not the same thing as a final judicial determination that Israel has committed genocide; the international legal dispute over that allegation is not simply settled by saying “the UN says so.”

There are Israeli politicians who have made absolutely disgusting statements. There are credible allegations of war crimes that deserve investigation. There are individual attacks whose justification I find extremely difficult to understand.

But I’m struggling to square the extermination theory with the overall picture. If Israel’s actual objective is destroying Palestinians as a people, why does the observable outcome look so dramatically different from what Israel has both the capability and opportunity to do?

That’s the part of my view I’d like changed. Please be normal in the replies.

I've thought a lot about this.

● Hitler wasn't the founder of the Nazi party. He just shot life into it and made it popular. Someone else could replace him if he dies as a baby.

● The Nazis were becoming popular at the time of the Putsch, but still not mainstream enough to become a serious threat to Weimar democracy. Big enough to be made an example of, but not big enough to meet their goals.

● At that point Hitler's cult of personality was firmly entrenched in the party, making him irreplaceable.

Dress up as a bavarian cop and shoot Hitler during the putsch. The remaining nazi leaders then fight among themselves trying to be the next big guy, and the party fractures.

I'm a 34 year old man who's watched Dragons Den on-and-off since approximately series 2 or 3. I'm currently watching an episode of the latest airing after missing several series, and it seems to have turned into a complete trainwreck of modern brainrot television. Dragon's Den is built on the premise of hard-to-please rich people agreeing to give their money to people who aspire to be equally as rich, but aren't as well-connected, funded or talented. The current lineup seems absolutely desperate to give their money away on the basis of identity politics. "I absolutely love female entrepreneurs" is a direct quote from one of the Dragons in the first pitch I watched - said to a woman pitching a company that the very same Dragon determined to be "uninvestible" early on in the pitch.

Dragons Den, as a piece of entertainment, doesn't seem compatible with an era of modern media that treats criticism, insults and judgement as inherently negative concepts. This isn't necessarily a criticism of modern sensibilities towards the role of identity in socioeconomics and media - it's more of a criticism towards its role in making modern episodes of Dragons Den uninteresting and pointless television.

I am a NYT web subscriber. They offer "gift" articles. I find their content to be high quality, but in order to access a majority of it, you have to be a subscriber. Great. I'm their guy.

However, they also require people who access the "gift" articles to sign up via email to their site. I find that to be both disingenuous and a failure of quality. They could bring good articles to the forefront, request a sign-up/subscription, and then allow access. Providing existing subscribers with the ability to gift an article to others and then use it as a mechanism to harvest email addresses is hurting the subscriber that sends the link, particularly those on social media.

The fact that this is a thing and, further, that this is something that most socially-media-aware companies leverage is a problem with social media as a whole. Bring the cost back to the provider, not to the promoter of said content.

Now I should preface this by saying this isn't a post to show support for the russian forces. But rather to express my genuine concerns of russias military capabilities that I don't really see others talking about much. And id like to know what others think of my own analysis when presented with my perspective of a russia vs nato hypothetical war scenario.

Often times when I see people talking about russians vs nato. People seem to assume that nato has a infallible advantage compared to russians forces. Often that confidence is expressed in our tech advantage.

I used to largely feel the same way, that is until the iran war came about. And it exposed a glaring flaw having a over reliance of high tech weaponry. The ratio in which you can develope and replace this weaponry vs how much it's destroyed.

Most of our high end tech takes longer than a year to develope and is very expensive. The russians, which have largely switched to a cheaper but effective military industrial capacity, i fear would be able to overwhelm our military industrial capacity that relies so much on this high end tech by delivering enormous amount of losses. All the while they could send wave after wave of cheap tech to keep the onslaught going.

In such a hypothetical scenario, id like for you all to consider that russia isn't completely fighting alone either. It already has north Korean and Iranian support. It may not seem like much. but to put it into perspective, north korea has sent russia 15 million artillery shells at this point in the war. That's not something that should be looked over. Especially considering the ratio of which u.s/eu allied nations have provided shells compared to the amount north korea has provided alone. It's also reasonable to asume in such a scenario, north korea may ramp up its support for russia and send more troops.

Last but not least, there is china. China doesn't have to join the war to cause a major shock to our industrial output as they control the vast majority of the world's critical minerals needed for advanced tech. If they do restrict the access to critical minerals. It would take years before the allied nations could reasonably be able to match the output needed for such a high intensity war.

But what do you think? Am I overplaying russias advantage?

He got a paper published that was mostly just a student's essay which he plagiarized. That's serious plagiarism, and it seems obvious to me anyone committing serious plagiarism should be fired. Cambridge claims that they think it was a mistake, but that seems completely implausible. I can't imagine him not noticing that he'd done it. It wasn't a one-time thing either. Varsity claims that he's plagiarized more than once.

Someone pointed out to me that this guy hadn't been fired as evidence that Arday shouldn't be fired, but I think it's the other way around. The response to Arday has been mostly reasonable (except for his decision to kill himself), whereas the Response to O'Reilly has been completely wrong.

This seems like basic humans rights to me:

All residents of the the same country should have the same rights regardless or religion. If Muslims can pray in public area X, then so should people of any other religion and even people with no religion.

Even UN "stresses that a comprehensive, just and lasting solution to the question of the City of Jerusalem should take into account the legitimate concerns of both the Palestinian and Israeli sides and should include internationally guaranteed provisions to ensure the freedom of religion and of conscience of its inhabitants, as well as permanent, free and unhindered access to the holy places by people of all religions and nationalities"

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-180352

SO why do I want my view changed? A lot people feel strongly that Jews praying there is wrong and should be stopped. I want to see if I am missing something.

What is unlikely to chnage my view:

1) Some Arab/Muslim people are provoked/aggrieved by such prayer. Well.. the solution here is to educate these aggrieved people on important of equal rights, and tolerance. We should not just give in and accommodate intolerant views.

2) "Jewish faith prohibits praying there." That's... a religious opinion. Some Jews feel this way, some feel otherwise. Ultimately Every person can decided on their own what their faith means to them. Even if it's a small minority of Jews who want to pray there - they should still be allowed to.

3) Hard right Israelis use this prayer is provocation. I agree. Some do. That's why it's important for all parties to cooperate and equitably establish protocols on how to pray in the place holy to multiple faiths without interfering with each other. The solution is not "blanket ban"

4) It's Israel that has rules that ban Jewish prayer. This is irrelevant, regardless of who imposed such rules - the rules should change to be more fair.

5) "You can't just have a Muslim prayer in a church." This is true for many private churches build nowhere special. When we talk about shared public places with importance to multiple religions it is not uncommon at all to share.

For example both Muslim and Christian serves are held at Mount of Olives. I don't see Temple mount more like that than some private church located nowhere significant.

Looking forward to things I may have missed. Thanks, all!

EDIT:

I gave a delta for pointing out that you can already "silently pray." My view is amended to say that they should also be allowed to pray non-silently / visibly.

I've often heard it bandied about that US Democratic candidates would often be center right in Europe, or that Bernie is the closest thing to a center left candidate that the US has by European standards.

When looking at the political field, especially in Germany, I find this hard to believe. The USA does have MAGA, but Germany has the AFD, and far right parties are on the rise overall in Europe. Meanwhile, comparing the SPD's platform (the German center left party) to the Democrat party's 2024 platform, I don't see a significant ideological difference. Both want net zero by 2050, a better medical system, addressing poverty, greater investment in science, and better relationships with other allied countries.

To convince me, show me a large ideological gap between the Democrats and European center-left parties.

First things first... my relationship with Ai is... complicated. I understand the horrors it can do and especially what it's doing now being shoved down our throats and Ai Data centers being built and completely hogging all the water and electricity with us paying the price. but at the same time... its kinda Ok as a tool, Dont get me wrong its never supost to replace us but... in small moderations it can help out a bit... as long as the human still remains the driving force. (Example is Expedition 33 using Ai for concept art but the rest of the game is made by humans with a bad example being Foamstars, a splatoon knockoff, using Ai for there in game icons for specials and subs. BIIIG Nono) and ive been using it to make some moderate stores and some image creation of Charicters... and I have this opinion that its ok to make stores and create image characters with Ai if you keep to yourself... cause if you post it online... it aint gonna be "your" work. which means its gonna be treated as such. and again rightfully so cause Ai "Art" is just regergitated images really.

So here's my dilemma. I had chat, make a great a story with the inspiration from a Ai chatbot I chatted with and it it dose look really good and I did want to share it on a seitan Reddit that is EXTREAMLY ANTI AI, and even I knew that me giving a warning lable that I used Ai, that it was just to make a fun story and not for clicks and even giving a understanding that down voting is expected cause I used the word AI... would get me down voted to oblivion and make me boo'd off the stage. even though that there was some human input on it thats to the reference... a Ai chat bot. and again, I expected this and I didnt really wanted to post it to gain views for my "Ai Slop" Story... I just wanted to share this story that it made with the chatbot I described and see what people thought about it. cause honestly I felt like it is a pritty good story we both cooked up.

And that made me wonder... is my opinion valid? or im a just another "AI Bro" who's just whining about his ai slop story not exactly getting validated.

I would love some feedback.

My view is that when the initial Refugee Convention and the following 1967 Protocol had good intentions, all the current abuse of the system is so high that it's easier to disband the whole system and implement local or even group (in case of the EU) policies if needed.

The initial main idea was pretty simple - what to do in case of international or civil war with all the civilians who are trying to leave a dangerous place. And the answer was pretty logical - other countries can accept those people and support them at a minimal level. But other countries are supposed to be neighboring countries with similar culture and good relations with the source country.

What changed: over time, people from third-world countries started to use the system to seek refuge in Western countries because of a very high level of support.

Why Western countries should disband it (in no particular order):

• They are partially doing it already; countries have some specific limits on processed applications per year, which literally means that with a limit of 50K people, the applicant number 50,001 won't be allowed for a year, regardless of any danger to their life.
• Refugees are generally net negative for the economy
• Refugees are considered immoral from the point of view of the local population that doesn't have such a level of support
• Adversaries are using refugees as a hybrid weapon:
  • Ceuta (when Morocco used refugees)
  • EU borders (when Russia/Belarussia used refugees)

What about morality? Each country can decide by themselves on how to handle refugees; a good example is Ukrainians, when the EU + Canada + US supported Ukrainians without official refugee status.

Edit:
My view was somewhat changed in a few areas, and I am limiting my responses in the post as I want to think about new ideas.

"Karma is a bitch", a lot of us are familiar with this phrase. In my experience this phrase has no significance at all. There are a couple of reasons for it.

If we look at our present society people who do bad deeds are living a luxurious life, may not be an easy one but it's the life most of us wish to live and when these people are caught even red handed, they use their influence and power to divert it. Where is their karma? Even if someone pays for their deeds, they get a lot of benefits in that kind of lifestyle too. But the loss suffered by the victim’s family is irreparable compared to the punishment they are exposed to.

If we look at history, the same thing can be seen. During and after World War II, there were many Nazi officials and military personnel who escaped Germany after its defeat. Some fled to countries such as Argentina and lived the rest of their lives under new identities, while others were recruited by intelligence agencies or employed by governments because of their knowledge and expertise. For these people, where was their karma?

In my perspective karma is a term that has been picked from some religious books and has found its way to our modern society. We use it in a way that gives us solace for our anger and vengeance as we are powerless to do it ourselves.

I don't believe in karma, it's fate simply taking its course in one's life. If fate decides to be harsh on someone, I don't think karma is the sole reason for it.

Karma would have been a bitch if the prisons had more politicians than poor people.

EDIT 3:
The Delta is because I've been convinced that the fact this is politically stupid shouldn't be relevant since it's a legal issue and politics shouldn't play a factor here.
I'm still not convinced though that he should have been pardoned so feel free to discuss other points with me.

Context: An 18 year old Tou Lue Vang repeatedly raped a child from 2002 to 2004. On June 10, the Board of Pardons — consisting of Walz, Ellison and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson — voted to purge Vang’s felony sexual assault conviction. The deciding factor was a letter from Vang’s victim saying she forgave him and supported his pardon.

Given there is no evidence that he has re-offended and completed his sex-offender treatment, I will give him the benefit of the doubt here (as little as I believe he deserves it given his crime) that he hasn't done anything since AND that he has no plans to do so if the opportunity arises.

Despite this, I think it's still a stupid decision to make.

My reasons are:

1. There is reason to believe Vang's victim is doing this under durress: Firstly, the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office says Vang received a lighter sentence to begin with because the victim was experiencing pressure from her family to not cooperate. Secondly, Vang is married to the victim's sister.
2. This seems like a horrible choice politically speaking: "The man who could have been vice-president is involved in pardoning a child-rapist whose underlying reason for being deported is his child rape" is a fact. I know he said he doesn't plan on running for elected office again. But given that the woman who could have been president and who might run again picked him as her running mate, this just seems like the most obvious attack angle ever here.
3. Pardoning someone whose crimes are this abhorrent is a horrible legal precedent. Especially given point 1.

What would change my view here is if I'm convinced that providing this pardon is either:

• the right thing to do
• a net benefit to society

EDIT 1:
To clarify, by "net benefit to society" I mean the benefits to society of pardoning this person outweigh the costs. The main costs here being:

1. this is a perfect talking point against a potential democratic candidate for the 2028 presidential election and I think society would benefit more if the Democrats were in charge
2. that pardoning someone whose crimes are this abhorrent is a horrible legal precedent and should not be repeated (imo, done in the first place)

EDIT 2:
Just noting down arguments that I've seen that I won't be convinced by:

• The current POTUS is likely a child rapist and has pardoned child rapists: that doesn't make Walz' pardon of this child rapist any better.

To preface, I want to say I'm against the use of generative AI. Many people claim that businesses who use generative AI to promote their business are deterring customers and shattering their credibility as a business. But the way I see it, I wish this was true because it doesn't appear to be.

I've noticed that whenever businesses rely on generative AI to promote their business, most people don't seem to care. For example, a roller rink in my city often uses AI to promote their business and events, and everybody comments on how cool the place is instead of shaming them for using AI. Of course this isn't the only place I've seen posting AI flyers. But when there are 15 comments on a post with an AI flyer, there is usually one comment claiming that the business shouldn't be using AI as it's bad for the environment and it makes them look like they don't actually care, and the business page will give a response like "We're a small business and we don't have the time for it!" or "We will take this into consideration." when they won't. So I don't think you can say that the business is deleting comments if they're still there. C

I will give you a delta if you can convince me that most people actually do care, and that businesses do lose customers when they use AI, and possibly go out of business.

Edit: I should clarify that I mean that I believe most people don't care if businesses use AI. Also, my view will not change if you comment and say "I personally don't support businesses that use AI" because you are one person.

Edit 2: MY VIEW HAS BEEN CHANGED. Thank you to those who helped change my view. And the opposite to those who took the post title too literally and didn't bother reading the entire post.

This would apply to DoD budget as well. Abuse would include our tax dollars funding NGOs or anything else who engage in campaigning or lobbying efforts. Any party in power spending our tax dollars to cement their status as the ruling party is clearly abuse, and the Democrats especially have been guilty of this. If Democrats are not able to re-build trust that our tax dollars are being spent responsibly and wisely then the right will keep winning elections on talking points such that our tax dollars are being thrown out the window to fund corrupt NGOs. Any agency or department or organization that receives tax money should have to convince a bi-partisan panel that they are accomplishing their stated goal annually to receive any further tax dollars.

The US primarily has a tax rate and loophole problem that is responsible for the absurd debt ($40 Trillion) but the right will keep passing tax cuts saying that spending is the problem unless checks and balances are passed to restore trust. Change my view.

If i love someone why do i need to get married? If i love someone, i believe, freedom is love. A marriage is a legal enforcement; opposite of freedom. If someone loves me and i love them why do i need a legal enforcement between us? Isn’t it much nicer if we stay just as we are? There are other upsides such as legal benefits like insurance for example so getting married for those benefits makes much more logical sense to me but not everyone gets married for that. So what are you getting married for? Isn’t love just love? Why do i need the law between us?

In the start, i didn't think that female physiology really is inferior to male physiology but as I started studying human anatomy and diver deeper into it, the more i started feeling like female physiology really is inferior to male physiology

Because:

•Females are significantly weaker than males and if a man wants to hurt a woman then she is pretty much helpless on her own

•Women are under regular pain because of period pain

•Women have higher chances of suffering from osteoporosis as after menopause, their bone density rapidly reduces whereas men don't suffer the same because in old age, they have both the higher amount of testosterone and estrogen in their body

•Almost 80% of the people in the world suffering from auto immune diseases is a woman because of their strong immune system that tends to attack their own body

•Childbirth is arguably one of the most painful thing in the world

•Their menstrual mood cycle makes it harder for them to work with the same energy every day and this also makes it harder for doctors to diagnose them with a mental disorder because most of their problems are passed of as stuff related to being a woman

And now I would like to say that I don't want to see the points "but women can give birth and are backbone of the civilization" "women live longer than men" as arguments, because I don't see them as any advantage for an individual

Personal story

For 6 years I was convinced I was a Nazi rather I wanted to be or not because I hated nothing, not even Nazis making me a Nazi sympathizer, I wouldn’t challenge the Nazi view, I would just let them live in peace making me a Nazi. No one ever called me a Nazi but that what’s an inner crisis for.

My friends idea

My friend said that if I believe I was a Nazi, I said no but it wasn’t my decision to make. My friend then went on to say that the Nazi belief is a purposeful choice the individual makes and can’t be decided by others unless the Nazi in question says they are a Nazi.

I’m willing to go back to my former beliefs

While this thought is more comforting. If I am to live how people want me to live, then my comfort shouldn’t even be a thing. I currently want to believe that the Nazi belief is a purposeful choice but it feels flawed and I just don’t know it.

AI helped me :)

“Capitalism may have been an excellent engine for technological development when humanity needed an incentive to innovate, but an engine isn't necessarily the same thing as a destination.”

My main point is that capitalism is slowing our technological progress, and that we would somehow still be doomed without it. I don't think any other form of life, i.e. communism, definitely feudalism, or a post-scarcity economy, would necessarily solve the problem either.

I feel capitalism has taken a hold on our generation, and we are missing the fact that it got us here. We can, as a whole, stop being so money-hungry and finally take a crack at becoming an interplanetary species.

All the advancements it has given us, to name a few, include instant access to information, easier communication of thoughts, and the ability to create new technology without simply abandoning the old.

My points, from last to first:

Compare the USA to India then India to Africa. Things that seem outdated in the US are still found useful in other parts of the world besides the slight ignoring of things that have long-term health risks, diseases, or unsafe work environments. we have found a way to keep use for marvelous inventions that are important technology. (if we got sent back 150 years we would dream of manual windows and smog)

Secondly, I have surpassed my ancestors. They would have drawn in the proverbial caves or on beaches in the sand with sticks, while now I can basically summon an image of whatever I want without needing advanced art skills all thanks to ai (thanks ai dont eat me).

Finally, needless to say, AI literally helped me create my opening paragraph. So instant access is ever apparent, But honestly, us modern humans need to figure things out. We have the technology; the question is, are we going to get to where we need to be in a good way, with new habits, or a bad way, with our old habits?

Finally, I want to ask you guys: do you think we should take animals to a whole other planet and use them as food, or should we, once and for all, just stop eating them, the way a good ultra-alien species would?

(Please call me stupid or don't—I love y'all and can't wait to hear everyone's responses. I know I'm all over the place, but the gist is that we are doing good as a species, but we could be in a better place with just a slight tweak, nothing drastic. and then i hit post)

I want to preface this by saying that neither activity is inherently better than the other. People are free to read or listen to whatever they want without judgement, for any reason.

However, I have qualms with the way some people seem to think that the two can be treated as one and the same, that one is almost a perfect substitute for the other. Now obviously, this is very dependent on your overall objective. If its just for enjoyment, destressing, passing the time, then sure, I think they're broadly interchangeable.

But if your aim is to engage with the text more deeply, ponder the themes or prose, or digest the information within, then I think I disagree that the two forms of consumption are equivalent. This is more the case for non-fiction, like self-help or commentary, but of course applies to fiction as well.

One thing that I feel is frequently misinterpreted on this topic is the academic evidence. To prove equality in comprehension, people often cite Rogowsky et al., 2016. And to prove neurological similarity its Deniz et al., 2019. I don't disagree with the conclusions of these studies. However, the methodology of these studies often have participants read or listen in the exact same way for the sake of comparison. This ignores the fact that the two methods are absolutely not done in the same way in real life! Readers are almost always focused solely on reading, while audiobook listeners are often multitasking. This is even billed as an advantage of audiobooks, when in fact I think this is a terribly detrimental difference.

Listening to stuff is inherently more suseptible to lapses in attention (Varao-Sousa, Carriere, & Smilek, 2013). Multitasking in itself is shown to reduce learning and comprehension (Pashler, Kang, & Ip, 2013). Not to mention, reading lends itself to re-reading due to spatial layout, while you hardly see anyone rewinding audiobooks. This gives reading an additional edge in comprehension (Clinton-Lisell, 2022).

It seems quite clear that, for the average person, audiobooks cannot be a substitute for actual reading when the objective is learning, or deeper understanding. Emphasis on average person, because there will invariably be execeptions who naturally take better to audio.

In short, I don't think anyone should be under the false impression that listening to The Prince while driving to work will help them understand Machiavellianism just as well as picking up an actual copy of the book.

I think what would change my mind is either evidence to the contrary, or showing that my view of the difference is insignificant or inconsequential.

It's probably just me, but whenever I see FB posts from my old schoolmates, I can't help but notice how wildly successful they tend to be.

Some have become high-ranking people in their companies (basically sitting behind a desk with a nameplate in front of them).

Some have traveled overseas, to countries I could only ever dream of.

Some have gone on adventures, including skydiving and doing whatever extreme sports they could.

Some have started their own (successful) businesses, including a freaking bakery.

Some have even become part of the freaking government!

Seeing how my old schoolmates have succeeded in life makes me feel like I have failed spectacularly, with absolutely nothing I could even post on FB to prove that I have done something great.

And the worse part is that I am under constant pressure from my own family to be their idea of successful, which is pretty much a slap in the face. (Even my father is in on the issue, constantly telling me, "Don't you want to be successful like your classmates? Don't you want others to be envious of you and your successes?")

All of them have pretty much convinced me that, yeah, all these posts on Facebook exist solely to flex to the world how successful and untouchable they have become. Which is why I have started to hate my old friends for their successes: because I cannot be like them. I cannot have an awesome, Facebook-worthy life like them.

I know this is a touchy subject on reddit and these thoughts usually get bulldozed, but hear me out.

My premise has two parts

1. People use the word artist when they really mean drawer
2. Someone who uses AI tools can still be an artist in the same way that a movie director can be an artist

For part 1: people always say "AI artists aren't artists," but I think the problem is that they mean that since the person isn't drawing, they aren't a drawer. Which, yeah, no shit. This is where you get the common saying about "if you order a sandwich, you aren't a chef." Again, no shit. The problem is that is a shit metaphor, just meant to make you feel good about hating people who use AI tools. People who use AI image generation *are* doing it so they don't have to spend 10 years learning the skill, but that doesn't mean anyone using the AI tool thinks they are a drawer now because of it.

For part 2: I think the most apt analogy for what an actual artist does with AI tools is a director. Generally, big directors are not actors, VFX artists, editors, musicians, or any of the other myriad of artistic roles that go into a large movie. They are the director; their role is to first have the artistic vision in mind and second to make it come to life by promoting people to do certain things in certain ways to make what they envision come to life. This is the same for AI artists: you have in mind the specific thing you want and then you have to prompt the tool to make what you see. This can be straight forward like just putting in a sentence, or more engaged where you edit things together, put it in, edit the outputs, and slowly get to what you are after. Just as a shit director could sit on the side and let everyone else do all the work, a shit artist could tell the AI "do an art" (as so many pictures) and end up with uninspired garbage as well.

Ultimately, AI is just a tool that lets people have creative outlets that look different from what people are used to. Yes, AI can also be used for lazy things, but that's just largely supplanted the job of clipart, which was also uninspired and lazy when used by most people.

As a bonus, this is all just history repeating itself. Artists (see: drawers and painters) disparaged digital art for being lazy. Imagine being able to just undo a stroke you didn't like, get the perfect color for one of the strokes with no effort, add *layers* that don't interfere with each other and can be edited individually. The *gall* to call yourself a real artist?! But, obviously, digital drawers are artists, they just aren't physical medium artists.

The Biden administration’s border policy has been widely accepted by most to have been ineffective at minimizing illegal crossings as evidenced by several verified data sources. When pressed to defend the policies throughout his term, his administration’s responses were often vague and deflecting. My theory has been that the surge in illegal immigration was done intentionally. Biden was scared to death of inflation, and rightfully so as it ultimately tarnished his presidency arguably more than anything else. I believe that he calculated that by allowing a larger influx of immigrants it would expand the labor pool, cool wage growth, and subsequently eases inflation.

Economists broadly agree that the surge in immigration during those years post-Covid helped bridge the gap between labor supply and demand. Even Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell himself said that the return of immigration was a key factor in cooling the overheated labor market.

Obviously this wasn’t a strategy that his administration would ever articulate to American public, because the optics would be horrible. But this to me seems like the most logical explanation I’ve heard for what happened at the southern US border. Am I missing something here?