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3 yr. ago

  • Cory misrepresents the arguments (well basically hides them) in order to not have to face any material criticism and turns them into “you just don’t like these people” which frames the criticism as emotional and not rational.

    Well, isn't it? IMO some of the most popular arguments against generative AI are founded in misinformation and/or don't have strong rational defenses, even though there are better arguments further down the list, but that doesn't stop anyone because in the court of public opinion rhetoric and emotion trumps rational argument. This becomes really obvious when you try to publicly confront the failings of these arguments, in most cases the discussion will devolve into personal attacks immediately as people interpret argument as support of the enemy. If Cory Doctorow is being a little weaselly and failing to lay out an ethical position with full forthrightness, that's probably because doing so is a recipe for making everyone angry at you, regardless of your views, and since he's a public figure attempting to persuade people who mostly agree with him anyway and aren't trying to think too hard it would be a stupid choice.

    It would be great if we had a culture where it was safe to lay out and consider ethical ideas on their merits without holding anything back, but we just don't, and it's unfair to demand that from people who have to answer to the public because every single one of them would get crushed if they actually did it.

  • Because I don't trust you and shouldn't have to.

  • I noticed this kind of thing happening in a particular subreddit; there was a rule requiring all identifying info to be censored with the purpose of the sub not getting banned for brigading, but people disliked this and always tried to pass off censorship attempts that were as poor as they thought they could get away with.

  • By how they talk about people who aren't part of the conversation. Someone focuses a lot on heaping contempt on former coworkers and romantic partners, it's a bad sign.

  • Adblockers are not that difficult to install, so I'd guess the slice of people who really resent ads enough to actually make purchasing decisions out of spite but also who still watch them isn't that big.

  • Merz criticized defenders of online anonymity, saying they are "often people who, from the shadows of anonymity, demand the greatest possible transparency from others."

    Dude is non-comprehending and very offended to hear it

  • There is no ‘safe’ level for endocrine disruptors that mimic our natural hormones.”

    I think the article is probably right that headphones have these chemicals and it is a bad thing, but as someone wearing headphones a large portion of hours in the day for the past few decades I'm wondering how much risk there actually is, which it doesn't seem to weigh in on very much.

  • "In the new legislation, there is a defence carved out in relation to [art and literature], but the defence has to be made out first … it has to be borne out in the court process.

    Free speech but only if you go to court to prove you're allowed to say it...

  • I think the biggest issue is people are trying so hard to get you to think a certain way about politics, that having an actually good and proportional understanding of what is going on and what the real options are, and expressing that effectively, is somewhere between very difficult and impossible. Of course everything is enmeshed with politics, and you might care about that, but if you also know that you are not immune to being manipulated it might be a reason to think engaging in overtly political discourse won't be useful or good for you.

  • Yeah I like it

  • HB25 provides a means for enforcement of the law under the Alabama Department of Environmental Management. The Department would be required to establish a publicly available email address and online form for the reporting of violations. residents could also report what they believe to be violations by telephone or mail.

    I wonder what the job of an ADEM Chemtrail Investigator will be like

  • Maybe if my handwriting was that nice I would feel less embarrassed to leave petty insult letters

  • Seems to be broken in the same way, on Firefox but not Chromium

  • I tried playing it in VLC and it works there, I guess this is some kind of compatibility issue between your particular video and the web player (specifically the web player on lemmy.dbzer0?), since other videos don't seem to have this issue. One minute into the video the clock in the upper left shows 2:24 which is around 4 seconds short of where it should be. Edit: Also it seems this is only on Firefox.

  • Audio seems desynced by a few seconds for me

  • Parents make a whole host of medical decisions for their kids that they don’t formally consent to

    Just pounding on consent gets you in the same circle as the anti-vaxers

    Frankly I somewhat sympathize with those people because physical/medical autonomy is a topic that deserves respect. The only reason ignoring their choices is justified is because vaccines vault over a high bar of being important for public health and avoiding the clear and significant harm of disease. Also because that's again choices parents are making on behalf of their children in defiance of what is medically justifiable.

    I see a desire to make false equivalency between two very different procedures, because they both have “circumcision” in the name.

    They aren't equivalent, but the difference is severity of harm, not the type of harm. Both procedures are intended and have the effect of inhibiting normal sexual function. If you want to only argue against FGM and draw the line at supporting a circumcision ban, that's fine because the former is especially horrible and deserves special attention, I just think most arguments for this position are a little bit incoherent.

  • I used to before I got my ereader. IMO the way to do it somewhat comfortably is, get an app that lets you display epub files in dark mode (light text on black background), and turn the brightness down until the text is visible but doesn't strain your eyes. Unfortunately PDFs do not play nice with any reader software so you're going to want to look for other formats, or convert them and put up with conversion artifacts.

  • I think the point is that it's not a great comparison because the main argument against circumcision is that it's permanent and babies can't consent to it, I don't think many people try to say that no one should ever be allowed to get a circumcision.