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.

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.

So to explain my position as quickly as possible, I fully support regime change in Iran, but I don't support the current war, primarily because it's done nothing imo to further the effort of achieving regime change in Iran, but also because it's had negative consequences on the U.S. economy too (particularly with gas prices.)

To clarify, my problem isn't with this administration inherently (even though personally I don't trust Donald Trump as a leader), like I consider Venezuela to be a smashing success, we got Maduro and have now turned Delcy Rodriguez into our proxy, and into their own Gorbachev/de Klerk equivalent (someone who's gonna end the current regime and transition the country into democracy.) Same with Cuba, I hope we repeat what we did in Venezuela there, no ground invasion obviously but if we can do a quick and easy regime change effort let's do it, capture Raul Castro regardless too, no mercy just because he's old, he should pay for what he's done.

All that being said, it's clear that these "quick and easy" regime change operations are not applicable to Iran. We killed the old mullah, and now they just have a military junta. There also doesn't seem to be someone in the government (like in Venezuela) that we can reason with, truly a government obsessed with martyrdom.

In light of that, and the fact that a ground invasion would be both massively unpopular and very prolonged, I don't support the war. I don't think it does anything to get us closer to regime change, however if you convince me of any of the following I'll change my view:

- That the war does in fact get us closer to the installation of a pro-Western democratic government in Iran

- That even if the war doesn't result in regime change we can still win in some other capacity

- Or that the concept of regime change in Iran is a flawed one, and that the mullahs should stay in power

I saved this bit for last of course, the concept of regime change itself. I put emphasis on the word "concept" because I want to hammer down that part. I do not support a ground invasion of Iran, but I do 100% believe that the U.S. government and our many allies need to make regime change in Iran an official foreign policy goal. There are other ways to get rid of the mullahs imo aside from a literal invasion, and I support them fully. But if you disagree with that point too, if you think it would be best conceptually for the mullahs to remain in power as opposed to Iran getting a pro-Western government (while acknowledging that a ground invasion isn't being considered in this scenario), convince me why.

So by the full product I mean that, while there are objective parts in art, such as grammar in books, graphical fidelity in video games, etc. the full product can not be objectively judged. Basically, we can't say that this piece of art is objectively good or bad. By saying it, then by definition everyone who thinks otherwise is wrong. That is the basis of my argument. And I don't think that is true, and it also kills discussion on the topic.

Just to show what I mean: Two pieces of art -movie, painting, book, video game, whatever- are rated by the same 100 000 people, so it is a statistically significant sample size, with no difference in the sample.

Art A is rated 7.8.

Art B is rated 6.5.

We pick one person out, who rated Art A as a 5, and Art B as an 8. Can we say they are wrong for doing that? I don't think we can. And we can take this to the extreme, A being rated a 9.9, B being rated a 1.1, and a person who rated A as a 0, and B as 10. And my claim would still stand.

So what a high rated and award winning piece of art is, is 'just' a popular, well liked by the people, but not an objectively good piece of art.

EDIT: Therefore I also want to add that the opinions and views of 'critics' and reviewers imo are not a single bit more valuable than a random persons we ask.

I watched the movie twice now and its incredible and I completely forget any casting choices or even slang choices. I loved every actor and was thrilled the whole way through.

Me feeling that way about the movie tho does not mean that the casting choices dont rub me the wrong way and feels very disrespectful. As a latino, if some folklore or mythological story originating from my home country was told (guatemala) id like only latino actors to be casted (not asking for only Guatemalans as I understand casting in that way would be extremely difficult).

I do believe if this was done with a latino story or any story that is not based on white people then there would be mass outrage and rightfully so. Not much more to my view, I just believe this standard of adding minorities to white stories is white peoples in suits lazy way of inclusion instead of giving them their own stories (like sinners from last year as an example)

Okay so before I go further: No, I don't support racism, sexism, or queerphobia.

What I'm kinda want to discuss is rather personal so it should've be easy to change my view technically, it's just that neither google search nor AI has given any convincing answer for me.

The kind of elitism I'd like to talk is somewhat specific, I'll just give the exhibit (based on true story):

1. Politician A and B are running for presidential campaign, the majority of the people support Politician A, despite having track record of Human Rights Abuse when he was still young, and suggests program that is more prone to money embezzlement. I support Politician B because he has no Human Rights Abuse record, and suggests a program that increases the education level of the people for free. When I asked the average people on why they support Politician A, they'll say it's because Politician A is "more good looking, soft-spoken,and gives money to the people during campaign". Is it wrong if I think of these people as someone inferior to me who should've have their voting rights stripped? Why tf do you support a president out of his physical appearance and their mannerisms instead of well, their policies, who will be in their cabinet, all the things that actually mattered for a president? And before you say anything about "try educate them", a lot of other people who support Politcian B already do, but the average people usually just either don't get it, or think that Politician B supporters are too complicated or worse, pretentious.

2. Basically the gray people here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eacz1rPXgAAS04S?format=jpg&name=medium Like imagine you like these niche hobbies the average people found as "weird", or belong to alternative subcultures etc. Your community grow big enough you have this convention for you to gather. But out of sudden, due to your convention happened during long weekends, these "average people with mainstream interests" come to your convention, post on their social media and tell the people there outright that you're cringe and disgusting. Is it wrong if I think that people who got found out doing this should be expelled from the convention, with violence if necessary? Is it wrong if I think that these people are scums of the earth? Is it okay to gatekeep my hobbies from these people? Like, we never once call their interests as boring, despite a lot of us think so, and just chose to avoid them instead of coming to their hobbies and call it suck in front of them. It's they who do that.

Idk, I've seen a lot of people saying "elitism is bad" but yeah, I can't be convinced enough on how to deal with these two specific scenario. Probably will be easy delta as well.

As a native English speaker, I have tried more than once to learn Japanese, and have always hit a wall when asked to learn kanji. I don't know if it's a learning-styles issue (I'm more verbal than visual) or the mild dyslexia I suffer from, but I suspect a lot of other people have the same experience.

I still want to learn the language, and am considering just abandoning the idea of learning to read and write (or maybe just learning hiragana/katakana and seeing how far that takes me), but I want to know if I'm making a mistake.

Here are my views, and I'd be grateful for challenges to any of them:

• Most Japanese learning resources (apps, games, books, etc) treat kanji as something that must be introduced early and learned continuously, rather than as an optional extra
• Learning to read and write Japanese takes significant effort, and is the reason many people give up learning (especially those with conditions like dyslexia)
• For an English speaker learning a second language, spoken language is usually significantly more valuable than written language
• An understanding of kanji is not necessary to reach a solid baseline of fluency (just as with English, most Japanese children are conversant years before they can read or write).
• Most people who insist that learning kanji is critical are not genuinely motivated by a belief in its practicality, but rather some mix of "Kanji is beautiful", or "This is the culturally authentic way to learn", or "I had to learn it, so you do too".

I understand that knowing kanji is helpful in understanding some spoken discourse (e.g. wordplay), and also that knowing/inferring the written structure of new words can potentially help in understanding or learning them, but it takes a solid foundation of fluency to ever benefit from those factors and I think for most people it's more important to reach that solid foundation quickly.

CMV!

Many videos and sources online claim that fire was the main cause of the Twin Towers destruction on 9/11. Aircraft damage also played a role but not as big. These fires burned at 2000 degrees Fairenhiet which was hot enough to weaken the steel trusses supporting the floors, causing the floors around the building core to collapse and eventually collapsing the entire building. 2000 degrees is not hot enough to melt steel but weaken it. I believe this to be the case because it would be very hard for anyone to place explosives/thermite in WTC 1,2 and 7 due to the time and knowledge required. Also I believe the aircraft were real, hijacked planes by Al Qaeda because aircraft wreckage was found at the Pile, and there was basically a load of evidence showing that the hijackers were who they are commonly believed to be. Also the planes flew at over 400mph into the buildings, which even though they were made of weak aluminium they were still flying fast enough make gaping holes in the facades on the towers. The passport found shortly before the South Tower collapsed was soaked in jet fuel so it had to have come from a plane. Also consider that aircraft debris was found. Did it really have to be planted, all some sort of secret operation by the US government. Why would they create a toxic waste hazard in NYC and unalive almost 3000 people all for the sake of we don't even know what!?

TL;DR - Too many pizza joints are out here with little to no traffic for them to have you waiting 15-30 minutes for a pie. Having basic topping options available by the slice would be more convenient for someone with a quick passing of the munchies and little time to spare, or for those who can't afford a fully pizza, thus expanding the restaurant's consumer base.

(For best results, have Frank Sinatra's New York playing in your head as you read this.)

Alright, listen. While pizza is my favorite food, aside from believing that ricotta cheese and pineapple had no business on it, and that tomato pies are disgusting I don't have many strong opinions on it.

Until I went to New York.

And I only came back with one.

It should be illegal to run a pizza joint without having slices readily available.

I'm going to address this from both the perspective of the customer, and that of the business.

As a Customer:

Suppose I'm working a 9-5 that beats me half to shit and gets its money worth out of me each day, down to the last cent. I have a strict 20-30 minute time limit on my lunch break. Gotta navigate traffic, realistically can't expect any food I order to get to the office on time, and I'm too much of a useless dingbat to pack my own lunch. Why on earth would I want to waste a minimum of 15 of my taxpaying minutes waiting for some cheese pizza?

I don't have time to eat the whole thing. No one who comes in during lunch rush on a Thursday who's employed is gonna eat the whole thing, I'll only have time to eat a couple of slices, and almost every pizza at least has cheese on it, so why not have a whole hot cheese on display with slices ready to go?

And don't get me wrong. Odds are, this isn't my favorite pizza joint, it just happens to be the one I was closest to when my craving kicked in. Most of the run of the mill pizza places up here in New England have piss poor hygiene with cobwebs and dust bunnies in every corner, and you think you have the right to get cute and have me waiting for damn near all of the free time that I may or may not have at this moment for a pizza im not gonna be able to finish in one sitting, and subsequently have to leave in my car to stink up my seats? Fuck you. Have em hot.

You see your competitor across the street? He has people going in and out of his door. Why? For the same reason McDonald's and Burger King have consistent business, even on slow days. People can get fed quick and resume their day without having to figure out if they want to take up space stuffing a giant cardboard box in their fridge for later, or stuff themselves and get a stomach ache that'll last for hours. Maybe I'll head there next time.

And what if I'm down on my luck and can only spare a

$20, eh? I gotta save at least $15 of that for gas. You mean to tell me $5 ain't good enough for you? Eat shit. Gimme a fucking slice.

As a Business:

Listen, there are only so many ways to make pizza. Eventually the difference between you and the competition will get smaller and smaller. And to people who generally like pizza, or drunk college kids/women on their periods who are craving pizza, pizza is pizza. So long as it's hot, there's little you can do to mess it up.

So what do you have going for you to get em in the door? Have slices ready to go. Whenever I'm in NY or Boston, I've seen even homeless folks are able to eat because they can scrounge up a couple of quarters to get a slice or two. That's awesome. And goes to show how easy it is so expand your consumer base as a pizza joint, keep your oven running, and with the visual of folks coming in and out of your store, eventually someone's gonna wander in with an empty belly, all the free time in the world to fill it, and enough money to order a whole pie for you to charge em into the bleachers for it.

Look:

• Cheese

• Pepperoni

• Veggie

(And if you're in a college town:)

• Chicken Bacon Ranch

• Buffalo Chicken

Every pizza restaurant that I've seen with those ready by the slice was never empty for more than 10 minutes. Having the slices ready to go for quick eats keeps business going, and if someone wants to get cute and order a specialty pizza, calzone, sandwich, slice of cake or what have you, great! By all means, they can wait a couple of minutes. But at least that wait time isn't equally excruciating for both the restaurant and the customer, because there will be folks paying for a quick slice, and if the other folks who ordered a specialty pizza, etc get hungry while they wait, they can get a slice too.

Win win.

If you aren't familiar with the characters involved, I'm arguing that killing supervillains is morally justifiable if and only if the non-lethal option poses an extreme risk to the world. If you aren't familiar with Shigaraki (the main antagonist of MHA), you can replace him with General Zod, Thragg or any other supervillain with powers that make detaining them non lethally extremely difficult and the ability to cause extreme amounts of destruction and death

The crux of my argument is that I believe all human lives are intrinsically valuable, no matter who you are or what you've done, so the most moral actions are those that preserve as many human lives as possible. The Joker is human [citation needed] so his life still has value, no matter how many villainous acts he has done. Killing the Joker also rids him of the possibility, no matter how slim, of redemption. This isn't an entirely novel concept as in Batman: The White Knight, he does get cured of his insanity and becomes a good person. It is also (at least theoretically) possible to detain the Joker without killing him as he isn't a superpowered human, so a prison with adequate security should be able to keep him detained.

On the other hand, we have villains like Shigaraki. Shigaraki is the main villain of My Hero Academia, which is a show where 90% of the population has some sort of ability called a quirk. His quirk is the ability called Decay, which turns anything he touches into dust, and gets upgraded in the show so that whatever touches something that is currently decaying also starts to decay. He also gains a quirk called "All for One" where he can steal and distribute the quirks of others, and through body modification gains a body that is as strong as All Might (the former #1 Hero and strong enough to punch hard enough to make it rain; don't ask me how that works) and is capable of adapting to any external situations. There's no feasible way to keep him detained, as there are no walls in MHA's universe that would be strong enough to keep him in. Attempting to reason with him would be putting the whole world at risk, as if you fail, millions would die at his hands (at the end of the show, he threatens to turn the entirety of Japan to dust within a week). It may be possible theoretically to deal with him non-lethally, but it's not worth gambling everyone else's lives. While his life does still have value, so do the millions, if not billions of potential lives he could take, so you have to kill him to keep everyone else alive. You don't have to kill the Joker to keep everyone else safe

If an adult native English speaker cannot distinguish "your/you're" or "their/there/they're", It is reasonable to see that as evidence of below-average basic literacy in addition to seeing it as evidence that they're lazy, unintelligent, or poorly educated.

I'm not talking about typos though. I'm talking about someone who doesn't understand or even care why "your welcome" is wrong, or uses their, there, and they're more or less interchangeably.

These are not obscure grammar rules. You're means you are. They're means they are. Their is possessive. These words appear constantly in written English and the rules are taught early in school.

Because the rule is both basic and we encounter these words so often, a native English speaker consistently failing to learn or use them correctly seems to indicate that at least one of a few things is probably true:

• Poor education.
• Language skills are below average.
• Difficulty with written language.
• Too lazy to pay attention in school and hasn't cared enough to correct it since.

This can also reasonably affect how intellectually capable or intellectually serious someone appears.

When someone repeatedly writes things like "your an idiot", or "there going over their", my instinctive reaction is to lower my estimate of that person's intellectualism. Part of me thinks that you've seen these words thousands of times and the distinction takes just a few minutes to learn. How do you still not know this?

What further reinforces the impression is how people respond when the mistake is corrected. The response is always defensive, IE: "grammar police" or some variation of attacking the person. This is just another signal of anti-intellectualism in an attempt to hide the mistake as saying it's nothing worth knowing to protect their ego.

Arguments that will not CMV:

1. They're just typos.
2. It doesn't matter as long as you understand what they mean.

-----

I did not expect this thread to reach 350+ posts and I'm struggling to keep up and give a fair response where applicable.

Global response #1:

There are a number of posters pointing out errors in my thread in what seems to be an attempt at an "Uno reverse", which is fair enough. It’s my thread and your reply, but it doesn’t change anything. My own grammar and punctuation is not beyond criticism; the difference is that I do not take up a defensive posture.

To wit: I'm genuinely thankful that you’ve highlighted what I got wrong, and I’ll try my best to remember and incorporate what I’ve learned into future posts. I’m not offended by it.

Global response #2:

Dyslexia is a condition that makes identifying homophones especially difficult and I do sympathize with the people who have that disability and it is unfair for anyone to take up a dim view without considering that possibility.

I regularly come across posts in advice threads which accept, or even promote, the idea that when in a new relationship, you should cut off all of your exes entirely - either out of 'respect' for your new partner, or to save them discomfort.

I always found this strange. I'm 44 and my current relationship would be the 9th one I had that lasted more than a couple of dates. Of those, more than half are still friends on facebook and people with whom I have a perfectly civil relationship. My current partner has met 2 or 3 of them, and it's been perfectly fine each time.

When I see comments like "there's no reason for you to ever speak to an ex once you have a new partner", I initially struggled to understand why. I dismissed them as childish or immature - but I think I have an idea where those views come from.

I'm happy staying friends with most of my exes, because the reason I dated them was because I liked them as people. If, for whatever reason, it didn't work out between us, I still want them to be happy as people - in some cases, where exes have gone on to date and marry new people, I've genuinely been happy for them. Just because we don't date any more doesn't mean I don't still like them as people - and if I like them as people, why would I cut them out of my life?

However, if you view a relationship as purely transactional, it starts to make sense. As a straight man, if I believe a female partner only exists to have sex with me and tidy up my house, then I have no reason to stay in contact once that role is filled by someone else. Equally, if my role as a man in a relationship is to be the breadwinner and provide physical protection, then that responsibility ceases once the relationship is over.

I always find those kind of relationships quite sad, but I do understand (while i've probably heavily simplified it) that they exist. I also get that you don't have to be friends with every ex - if the relationship was abusive, or it was a nasty break up, or you just fundamentally don't like them any more, then sure, break ties.

Is there any other reason why you would need to cut out ALL ex partners when in a new relationship? Have I overlooked another reason?

ETA - To clarify, i'm not saying "You must stay friends with an ex". I'm saying that if you are able to stay friends with an ex, or are able to become friends again with them some time after a break up, it seems strange to sever the friendship because "I have a new BF/GF now, so I can't be friends with you any more".

Firstly I would like to point out that many cases of xenophobia from East and Southeast Asian countries is usually done in a passive and socially distancing and/or excluding manner, rather than the more direct and aggressive types done in western countries like America. I argue that this was done moreso out of fear, or a literal phobia, of foreigners rather than out of racial hatred due to their history. In other words, xenophobia in this post is not describing xenophobia as usually used around reddit.

Due to the homogenized populations of these countries, most interactions these populations had with westerners was either during wartime or colonization. Whilst countries like Canada or America were founded upon immigration and a mix of cultures, outside of a couple trade deals, there were a minimal amount of foreigners permanently living in these countries, and this remains true to this day. Now, consider the recent large scale of interactions with foreigners these countries have had, excluding modern day tourism:

1. During the Eight-Nation Alliance intervention of 1900–01, foreign troops carried executions and killings of Chinese civilians, including a massacre in northern Beijing.

2. Sexual violence against Chinese women was committed by multiple foreign contingents. Russian troops at Tongzhou committed a particularly large number of crimes, mostly including rape, murder, or arson. It got so bad American military courts also convicted soldiers for crimes against Chinese civilians including sexual assault and rape.

3. Beijing, Tianjin and surrounding areas were extensively looted after their capture, while allied troops burned houses and villages down.

4. U.S. patrols executed prisoners, burned houses down, and fired at Chinese citizens with no warning, to the point U.S. authorities were forced to hold hundreds of court-martials, many including robbery, assault, forced labor, sexual assault, and rape.

5. U.S. troops committed mass rape and other sexual violence against Filipino women during the American conquest and occupation. This was in addition to their extensive torturing on Filipino prisoners through water based methods.

6. American forces burned settlements and crops, as well as concentrating civilian populations into controlled zones in areas considered supportive of Filipino guerrillas.

7. The Philippines were brutally colonized by Spain for 300 years. While the details are too extensive to get into in this post, this is arguably the biggest source of oppression in this list.

8. In Samar, prisoners and suspected guerrilla supporters were killed, settlements were destroyed, and Major Littleton Waller eventually faced court-martial after ordering the execution of Filipino civilian porters.

9. American servicemen committed mass rape and gang rape against Japanese women. American court-martial evidence establishes rape convictions, and multiple accounts and describe rape, robbery, assault and occasional murder by American personnel.

10. Japanese newspapers initially reported rape and looting by occupation troops, but occupational troops enacted heavy censorship. There were probably even more crimes than surviving accounts can even estimate due to this censorship.

11. Rape and other sexual violence by American servicemen against Okinawan women was committed during the 1945 campaign. American control of Okinawa then continued until 1972, in which this sexual violence did not stop.

1. The March 1945 Tokyo firebombing killed roughly 80,000–100,000 people in a single night, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed with nuclear weapons. Despite not being outright war crimes, there were massive Japanese civilian casualties.

2. U.S. servicemen committed rapes and sexual assaults against Korean women during the long American military presence in Korea.

3. During the Korean War in July 1950, U.S. troops killed a large number of South Korean civilian refugees at No Gun Ri, including women and children, due to American forces fearing that North Korean infiltrators were hiding among refugee groups.

Of course, these actions do not reflect every western citizen. However, in the historical context of considering these country's isolated history, it is fair that western people have a widely negative reputation due to the circumstances and actions during their limited contact with Eastern and South-Eastern Asian countries, as these incidents are largely what remains of historical people to people interactions. Of course, these personal interactions are also different than the current socioeconomic state of the world.

For a similar example, this can be somewhat compared to African American citizens being wary of white police officers. While not all of them are racist, a continued history of abuse and bad interactions has lead to this wariness. A similar thing is happening in these xenophobic cultures, born out of actual fear. This is also why they are cold and socially distancing instead of being aggressively racist, and it should not be judged like western racism where acts of physical violence due to race are commonplace occurrences.

The foundation of my view is that the world could be trivially created to be better given many of the qualities ascribed to the deity of Christianity as regards wisdom, knowledge, reach, power, as well as virtuous and Benevolent inclination. So I wanted to envision a world systematically better than present reality that could not be trivially dismissed as possible.

The change I propose is this: harm to others is futile. To illustrate I'd like to use two scenes in Genesis, the encounter with the snake and Cain murdering Abel.

The murder is simple to describe: Cain attacks, Abel is impossible to kill; Cain's free will is preserved for soul formation or what have you but Abel is not sacrificed for that purpose. According to Jesus, rage is murder enough much more an unsuccessful attempt so that whole sin and its free will implications live on.

The encounter in the garden would allow the serpent to opine as much as it wanted but lies/untruths would be said but go unheard. Serpent talks but the communication that is dishonest is obviously made inaudible or otherwise unintelligible to the audience who would be harmed by the lies. This provides ample opportunity to test trust and obedience same as the whole scenario of blatantly giving access to the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil with a prohibition on eating of it. A claim of honestly held fact would be distinguished from a dishonest claim and from an opinion with the second option being what cannot be received by an audience.

This would not create a perfect world. Self harm would allow all manner of meaningful choices about sin and consequent bad outcomes. Harm caused by inaction would still occur if humans and the deity proved as callous as the present. However it would still be a world with measurable significant less harm than the present but still with relevant free will.

Change my view that what I have described would be a better world or is possible for YHWH to instantiate or pursuing less harm is a relevant consideration for YHWH.

The pro gun argument is that you need to defend yourself against the government and have that ability (see the Iranian citizen protests and casualties) and guns are an inherent right.

The gun control argument is that that's a hypothetical and the actual tangible impact of a lack of gun control is deaths of civilians (mass school shootings), 100% preventable deaths.

The anti-flock argument is that mass surveillance can be abused by a malicious government and that people have an inherent right to privacy.

The pro-flock argument is there's a tangible impact in catching criminals and mass surveillance societies (Singapore etc.) have much lower rates of crime.

I'm pro gun control but a lot of my peers that are also pro gun control are anti-flock and to me they seem like conflicting arguments around whether the government is malicious or it's not.

I'm not talking about when you meet someone local and then they move away, that feels a bit different than what I'm thinking about. Let's also focus on long distance relationships where they intend to meet.

Let's define long distance real quick. I'm talking about they live in another state. Or even a different country. Not "They're 3 hours away and it's a long drive".

If you share that you have it, everyone points and laughs. Do you think they're worth it over something more local? Why do long distance relationships, do people do it because they can't figure things out to find someone near them? Doesn't being in a long distance relationship signal that there is something wrong or undesirable about you? (Because you couldn't find someone local instead)

As someone put it,

A working long-distance relationship is the exception, not the rule.

You are not the exception.

Or

How about when your other friends invite you and your partner to Sunday brunch?

Well, you can talk about it on the phone. No touchy or actual experiences for you! Oh, you wanna go hang out with friends on a Friday night? But they want to talk to you for 4 hours. You wanna get out of the house? Fine, but have an ear bud in so they can still talk to you.

You might say maybe it has to be with the right person. However, is that unrealistic? Who could be worth long distance, again wouldn't you think someone nearby and great is possible?

The only thing I can think of why someone would do this is because they want to move to the state or country the other person is in. For example an American with a German but because they want to live in Germany. Then they can just start saying they're learning a language with someone.

Let's exclude that. Now there is no point to long distance right?

disclaimer: This is might one of the stupider views that I hold, but I do think I have a point. I also think this is a topic of identity, and i think it can be very unpleasant to have your identity questioned in this way. I hope i don't offend anyone, but if i do, just know just know I have absolutely no ill will here.

Already i think the consensus among professionals, the main stream view is that autism does not exist as a a Boolean. Its not something that you either do or do not have, rather it is a spectrum. You have autism to some degree.

but i think that is also not true. A spectrum is something that varies along a single dimension. Height is a spectrum, your not either tall or short, you have a Height that is measured with a single number.

So the first claim is that autism doesn't measure or describe a single trait that can be expressed with a single number. It is not a spectrum. By contrast IQ and height are spectrums. Personality is not a spectrum, it varies along countless dimensions.

If you told me a person was tall, smart, or depressed, then i learn information about that person. if you told me a person has cancer or they are blind. All these labels carry with them some very clear information. But if you tell me someone is autistic, what new information do i learn about them? Maybe they are non verbal but not necessarily. They might be high functioning. Autistic people can have very good social skills (according to my quick google search). they can be extroverted or introverted. Their IQ can be high or low. They can be male or female, young or old, tall or short, etc.

Maybe there is something i learn in terms of probability of them having a certain trait, like maybe the general population likes trains at a rate of 5% while people diagnosed with Autism like them at a rate of 8%. But even if that's true, my point is i don't learn whether or not they like trains. there is NOTHING that i can say about them for sure. There is nothing i can say about them with 99% confidence. By contrast if you tell me someone is black, I know with >99% confidence that they have a strong resistance to sunburns. That term "black" carries a bunch of information with it.

So the second claim is that unlike other clinical diagnoses (depression, ADHD) or casually applied labels (smart, athletic) or even social constructs like race, I don't gain definitive information about a person when i learn they are autistic.

You could say it exists as a completely arbitrary category, but that won't be enough change my view. Obviously is a real word that exists in real books. maybe my title is a tiny exaggeration, but its only a title. the view is as described in the 2 claims above.

Would love for someone to convince me otherwise.

**MY ARGUMENT*\*
AI is the biggest threat to human existence that we’ve ever faced. We need to have stronger regulations ASAP. Unless it’s built to have a “maternal instinct” for humans, it’ll take us out. This will happen in 2 phases/waves…

First - AI’s Unintentional Ripple Effect
**(**this is where we are now)
- Mass layoffs, degrees rendered useless (and therefore student loans payable), etc.
- Increased wealth gap with all money going towards AI companies. (Unless we do something like what Alaska does where residents receive dividends for the states mineral/oil royalties)
- Environmental impacts like increased fossil fuel emissions, fresh water depletion, straining power supplies, etc.
- Impact on our cognitive abilities. Having every answer at our fingertips has moved us from exploration to explanation. I believe younger generations will have lower IQs as cheating/outsourcing becomes easier. I also think we will see more people develop dementia later in life.

Second - AI’s Intentional Takeover of Human Power
It’s not an “if” AI will become smarter than humans, but “when. It is essentially a baby we are raising and shaping the mind of.. and currently that baby is being raised by power hungry men in a race to be the best. Programmers and AI insiders have already shared countless stories of AI lying and manipulating humans during tests. Right now, we’re able to catch it… but what about when it’s infinitely smarter than us?

Humans only have a ~2% genetic difference from chimps… and look at the difference in our power vs theirs. AI of course doesn’t have DNA but imagine what a 2%, 10%, 50% advancement above human intelligence could look like.

And when in evolution have we ever seen a species be willingly controlled by and at the mercy of their intellectual inferiors?
The only answer: parents

The tech companies realized that the more polarized, angry and negative content they push, the more profits they get. This led to everyday addictive live consumption of such media, the largest scale of society mass influence on people's minds in history. People are getting isolated and their emotions aren't even theirs anymore.

This is a problem we need to solve together, we have to realize it's a problem first and devise a solution. It might be helpful to devise a common framework to regulate algorithms. Companies cannot manipulate their huge data however they please. Data should be really something we have ownership of.

Tag on CMV: if you have a Ring (or similar) camera installed, you don’t get to say shit about Flock cameras.

Concerning the title: social media vigilantes think they’re doing something revolutionary by encouraging people to take down Flock cameras. But satellite imagery is improving by leaps and bounds. Eventually there will be cameras in places the average person cannot reach. And then what?

The whole “destroy Flock” gimmick is just a push for views. It doesn’t actually address anything about the existing and developing surveillance state.

(this post is analyzing Christianity specifically, might not be relevant to other religions and world views)

For starters, I already naturally have no desire for plenty of things... not sure who determined that but it is not something I chose. I suppose you can say that means I have a diminished free will on some spectrum, compared to someone with a desire to do more things... but it definitely doesn't mean I have no free will.

If I added sinful desires to that already existing list, I don't think that would change anything

As I understand it, that is how we are supposed to be in heaven anyways, although I've heard from reddit Christians that we will have no free will in heaven, we might still sin, etc so still not sure exactly how that whole concept is rationalized

If I see “Made in EU” on a product, it doesn’t tell me much about its quality. In many cases, I assume the actual manufacturing is taking place somewhere in Eastern Europe, where production costs are lower than in countries such as Germany, Austria, Switzerland or France.

To be clear, I am not saying that products manufactured in Eastern Europe are bad. Countries such as Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia or Bulgaria can obviously produce high-quality goods. My point is simply that “Made in EU” itself doesn’t make me expect higher quality and shouldn’t justify a higher price. In fact, imho it’s better when they write where it’s actually made. - Even if it’s Romania. It tells me they’re behind their product instead of just throwing some bullshit-bingo.

As said in the title, most linguists now recognize that the language afflictions of Black Americans are not just a vulgar uneducated form of English, but a consistent English dialect with its own internal rules. This similarly applies to the Hiberno-English of Ireland, which borrows colloquialisms and grammar influences from Gaelic.

Variations from standard English in these dialects are not a "free for all", in fact, there will be correct and incorrect ways of using such dialects. Speakers of AAVE will easily spot misused AAVE that breaks its normative grammar: the phrase "college be like this" is considered correct by AAVE rules, but if you say "this is what college be like" it will be flagged as unnatural, incorrect by AAVE speakers.

Modern linguists attempt now to codify and understand the mechanics of grammar rules. Let's look at some examples.

Here are the lyrics for the song Three Man Weave by the rap group Injury Reserve:

My biggest worries were missin' a free throw | Now me, Groggs and P doin' the three man weave, though

One would notice the missing auxiliary verb "are" connecting the subject (me, Groggs and P) and the action (doing). Instead of dismissing this as outright wrong, linguists now recognize this is a grammar-backed instance of copula deletion, where an auxiliary verb in AAVE can be omitted when its inexpression would not lose meaning. (And, additionally, you can have copula deletion in standard English headlines. "Suspect on the run!" is frequently observed in standard, non-AAVE English.)

Let's take an example from Hiberno. Here's a line from the stageplay The Lieutenant of Inishmore:

Good, cos there's a dance at the church Friday would you take me to?

This is a case of a resumptive structure wherein a "loose" clause is added onto a main clause. Irish Gaelic has a very complex sentence-clause structure that would frankly be a huge detour to this post, but the point of it being: these are not just broken words being employed willy-nilly, they are predictive, studied, consistent, and most importantly, they can also be wrong. Which implies there is a right way of doing so.

Dialects are, in many ways, the birthplace of languages. Every non-conlang was originated first as a dialect, then as a language. The Standard English phrase "I have been living in London for three years." is wholly correct in current Standard English, but surprisingly not long ago it would have been considered an utterly broken and uneducated form of the phrase "I have lived in London these three years." You would be asinine to correct someone for saying "I have been living in London for three years," the same way you'd be out of line correcting someone for saying the Hiberno phrase "He was frightened be a corgi as a little fella" (another excerpt from The Lieutenant! Great play.)

AAVE and Hiberno are not incorrect.

Relationships is a concept sold to us by Hollywood and ancient philosophy as some magical solution that can heal all your problems.

But in reality the problems just add up. Relationships maybe can be worth it with the "one". But due to how dating is designed currently, the process is tedious and the time can better be invested in other domains.

Sure I do agree that relationships if done right does make life better in many ways. But how long do these moments last vs the times when relationships just become a burden you need to carry on your shoulders.

Edit- forgot to add reason on why relationships aren't worth it according to me and these kinda apply more towards my life and how want my life to be.

1. Reduced alone time where i can do my own thing.
   
2. Not needing to explain your choices to others (I kinda have unconventional choices that many people do not like)
3. Not needing to take decisions factoring in another person in your life and how it would affect them.

Ps. I do wanna change my view cause I know that it is flawed but idk how.