This is why Quora is so sanitized unlike Reddit: you actually get to see the (alleged) qualification of the OP. I’m not saying this would get to be an appeal to authority, but blatantly contradicting the expert while you’re none of it wouldn’t be so easy to get away with in the other forums
Everywhere. Just look for anything that goes against (even slightly) the leftist perspective, such as:
anything critical of trans people competing in sports - a lot of those policies are bigoted, but there are legitimate concerns
evidence that the economy is not as bad as people claim - e.g. cars aren’t more expensive today than they used to be, bottom of the market cars are about the same price as they were 20 years ago, after accounting for inflation (they’re actually a little cheaper in many cases, and have way more tech)
arguments criticizing Biden/Democrats
anything anti-socialist
And so on. The quality of the argument doesn’t matter, what matters is that it doesn’t fit the leftist agenda, so it gets downvoted like crazy.
Go ahead, try playing devil’s advocate sometime (and don’t say the equivalent of “I’m a leftist, but…”) and cite your sources and see how well your post does vs comments that ignore facts and spout common leftist rhetoric, the lower effort post will get more votes and yours will probably go negative.
Aside from criticism of Biden/Dems, in all of those cases you’re taking a position that is, in general, not true. Just because you have some facts that suggest the economy is better than we think, or that socialism doesn’t work better than capitalism, doesn’t make you correct. Just because a fact is correct doesn’t make it true. The truth is that capitalism is killing us all, and nitpicking that narrative really doesn’t help anybody. Facts that disagree with that truth are usually either misleading or literally just fabrications themselves.
Just because a fact is correct doesn’t make it true. The truth is that capitalism is killing us all, and nitpicking that narrative really doesn’t help anybody. Facts that disagree with that truth
Let me just explain what I’m hearing here: “I believe X to be true, and anything that goes against that must be false.” That’s culty thinking.
Here’s how it should work: “I believe X to be true, but fact A goes against that, so I’ll look for more facts to prove or disprove X.” Science is all about making a hypothesis and finding evidence both for and against it, and then making a new hypothesis with that new information.
So the reaction to a well thought out argument that goes against your belief shouldn’t be to downvote and move on, but to challenge your opinion and look for evidence both for and against it. Take your belief as one hypothesis, take the alternative as another, and find facts that support each. Then go with the opinion that has the better evidence, or form a new one based on your findings.
Right, but I have already challenged my opinion far more than is necessary, I’m not going to start over. I used to think of myself as a capitalist, and as a liberal. But then I challenged my beliefs, and I found that they didn’t hold water. By I believe the transitive property, that means I no longer need to seriously consider whether capitalism or liberalism are reasonable views to hold.
As a result, unless I see a whole lot of new information on the subject, I am going to assume that any fact which seems to suggest capitalism or liberalism are valid systems is actually just misleading or false. And you should too. People have been having these debates with themselves for 150+ years, and all of the smartest people came up with the answer of socialism (Einstein, MLK, Lenin, etc). Meanwhile, all of the grifters and Nazi lovers came up with capitalism/liberalism
Einstein was a fan of socialism, but he was also very critical of Lenin saying he and the Bolsheviks had established a “regime of terror.” So it’s unclear what system he’d actually be in favor of, since socialism tends toward authoritarianism.
MLK was more of a democratic socialist (e.g. someone like Bernie Sanders), and he was staunchly anti-communist.
So each of those three are very different from each other.
Nazi lovers came up with capitalism/liberalism
No, Nazis hate capitalism and liberalism, by definition.
Fascism is wholly against international free market capitalism, and against any form of capitalism within the state that does not directly benefit the state. Fascist regimes consistently interfere in capitalist mechanisms.
They hate liberalism because the needs of the state supercede that rights, wants, and needs of the individual. Fascism is actually defined as being anti-liberalism, so they’re pretty much diametrically opposed.
So either you don’t understand fascism, or you’re applying the term to something completely different.
I don’t know for certain that fascists love capitalism, but capitalists sure love fascism. Most of the Uber wealthy in the mid 20th century were more than happy to work with the Nazis. And the Nazis certainly were not opposed to working with those capitalists. The two ideologies are very similar: both steadily constrict the power of the government into fewer and fewer hands, until you get situations like Nazi Germany or present day USA, where one group of a few thousand has near complete control over the country.
I was using socialism as a blanket term for “the left” there (do you know a better one?). All 3 of them were further left than Bernie Sanders, which I’d argue makes them socialists (the blanket term)
Not sure where you’re getting the idea socialism tends towards authoritarianism, it has more defenses to it than capitalism. Capitalism literally demands that a company do everything it can to co-opt the government, because if you don’t, your competitors will. By contrast, socialism is commonly referred to as “workplace democracy”. It has distributing power as widely as possible as its central tenet, IE workers owning the means of production.
capitalists sure love fascism. Most of the Uber wealthy in the mid 20th century were more than happy to work with the Nazis
I would hazard to say those wealthy people aren’t capitalists (ideologically at least). Yes, they have a lot of capital, but they would rather pull the ladder up behind them than support open economic policy. They’re crony capitalists at best because they preserve their wealth not by continuing to produce value, but by regulating competition out of the market.
If you look at it from that perspective, it makes a lot more sense. They like the idea of government that’s very involved in the economy because that means they can cement their power, and perhaps get more by turning their economic position into a political one.
And it’s not just people from the right, people on the left do it as well. Look at the big tech firms, they tend to support candidates on the left because they pass the kinds of policy that cement their position. It’s cronyism all the way down.
And it’s not unique to capitalism, influential people have been trading favors since the dawn of time. The more opaque the system, the more corruption there is.
I was using socialism as a blanket term for “the left”
I would say “progressivism.”
Socialism is collective ownership of the means of production, so something like the USSR, Vietnam, or China. And that government system absolutely lends itself to authoritarianism. Look at any socialist country, and you’ll either see authoritarianism or collapse.
A lot of people mean “democratic socialism,” which isn’t socialism at all, but capitalism with a lot of social programs (universal healthcare, free college, etc). Another term for this is “welfare state,” which is just a term for a state that provides a lot of services. It’s still not socialism, just redistribution of wealth within a capitalist system.
Lenin absolutely was a socialist, MLK Jr. certainly wasn’t, and Einstein seemed like he was just reacting to fascism in his home country and thought socialism was the solution. If Einstein were alive today, I think he’d reconsider that point. What Einstein seemed to want as less income gap and more equality, so more similar to democratic socialists than socialists.
By contrast, socialism is commonly referred to as “workplace democracy”. It has distributing power as widely as possible as its central tenet, IE workers owning the means of production.
How often do political tenets hold up in reality? The more power you give to politicians, the more corruption you get.
Small scale socialism can certainly work (e.g. co-ops), but once it reaches a certain scale, it’s just the same cronyism you’ll get with any political structure where power is involved. Those with power will take for themselves at the expense of those without.
The problems with socialism and fascism are the same, but coming from different directions: centralization of power. Einstein seemed to think “the right people” could make things better and that Lenin and Stalin were “the wrong people,” but that’s just it, “the wrong people” are attracted to power, so you’ll trend toward getting “the wrong people” in any governmental system you pick.
My opinion is that we need more capitalism, not less, and add some wealth redistribution on top. Take a look at georgism, which proposes distilling taxes to a land value tax, which means you own the value you produce (buildings you build, products you make, etc), but you get taxed on the land you occupy and the public owns the resources on the land itself. It’s not a far stretch to require assets to be turned over to the public upon death as well (the pubic has a greater claim to your assets than your children). This preserves the best parts of capitalism (incentive to provide value to the public), while eliminating many of the worst parts (monopolization of public resources, squatting on unimproved land, generational wealth, etc). With socialism, you eliminate that incentive to produce value, which is why socialist regimes often resort to authoritarianism to get things moving (5 year plans, etc).
I think workers having shared ownership of a private business is a good idea, but only if it’s within a capitalist context, otherwise the incentives just aren’t there.
Crony capitalism IS capitalism, in its purest form. The system incentives doing it, so it will ALWAYS happen. Tech firms aren’t left at all, theyr all capitalists solely out for their own gain.
Socialism is when the workers own the means of production. The collective workers in any given company own it. Not the government. That’s why it’s so insulated against authoritarianism, because without the unions behind it, an authoritarian govt has nothing.
The reason the results we’ve seen are authoritarianism and collapse is that the US military/CIA have gone out of their way to make sure the ones that aren’t authoritarian will collapse. Rigging elections, assassinating elected leaders, blocking trade, etc.
It’s better for your political system to have a central tenet that is good, and which it sometimes doesn’t live up to, than it is for it to have one which is bad and it always lives up to. Capitalisms central tenet is to take the power that should belong to the people, and give it to clueless rich guys who don’t work.
No ownership of large parts of multiple companies, no cronyism. Well, minimal cronyism. If a large shareholder of UPS cannot possibly also own large shares of an airline, then they can’t possibly act in their own interest but not the company’s.
Why would the incentives for workers not be there, if the system is requiring that those workers be paid 100% of profits? The only people without incentives are the rich leeches who don’t want to do real work.
Crony capitalism IS capitalism, in its purest form
No, cronyism happens when you mix the government and the economy. Pure capitalism is little Timmy with the lemonade stand on the corner, cronyism is the city ordinance banning unlicensed businesses.
People like to fix problems, and the government is a convenient tool to do so. But the more laws there are, the easier it is for a lobbyist to tweak them to get an advantage.
The collective workers in any given company own it. Not the government.
So you’re in favor of market socialism? Most people mean non-market socialism, like the USSR with planned economies and whatnot.
I’ve seen a few businesses make that work, but nothing widespread enough to really consider the country socialist. I’m interested in what role the government has in such a system.
But unions aren’t that. Unions are collective bargaining, not collective ownership. So unions act more like governments than business owners.
make sure the ones that aren’t authoritarian will collapse.
Care to provide some examples?
Capitalisms central tenet is to take the power that should belong to the people, and give it to clueless rich guys who don’t work.
No, capitalism’s central tenet is that a free market will eventually self-regulate. A clueless rich guy would eventually fall to more motivated people who outcompete them.
The problems occur when clueless rich guys can convince lawmakers to put obstacles in the way of their competitors. Such as ISPs creating bureaucracy to stall competitors until they run out of money, or a ban on municipalities making their own (happened to my city, we’re trying again now that the law changed). The government’s job is to prevent that from happening, not enable it.
The motivations to consolidate power exist in any economic system be it socialist, capitalist, or fuedal. That said, despite this, western capitalist societies have done a fantastic job improving the standard of living of the average person (rising tide lifts all boats).
Why would the incentives for workers not be there, if the system is requiring that those workers be paid 100% of profits?
Are they paid equally? If so, what incentive does the average worker have to take a more risky job or one requiring more education? Surely it would be rational to do the easier job, no? Likewise, why would people innovate if the reward is just another job?
If they’re not paid equally, what’s to stop the founder from giving themselves an outsized portion of the profits? What exactly has been gained? What’s to prevent exceptions in the law for more influential founders? What about embezzlement?
I’m not exactly sure what system you prefer, so I’m not sure how to show the potential flaws, but hopefully something there provokes thought. People with power will find a loophole to enrich themselves, and if that’s too difficult, they’ll bring their innovation to another country instead.
I think it’s better to play off people’s selfishness and pit them against each other than try to compel them to share. Otherwise selfish people will end up in control of whatever system we choose.
Why would employees ever be paid exactly the same? It’s obviously paid by position and seniority.
Capitalism is not equivalent to a free market. In general, free markets are simply something people create. Capitalism is when the power resides with the capital.
Socialism means that the power resides with society. Not the government. Afaik, workers owning the means of production is the only way to do this. A true socialist state has a pretty small government, because like you’ve pointed out, central governments are pretty vulnerable. 50 different worker unions across 5 different industries, who do not allow outside investors, is not at all vulnerable.
Cronyism must happen in any true capitalist society for this reason:
As a business owner, you are required to do anything legal to increase shareholder value, otherwise investors will sue you.
Rewriting laws is a highly effective means of increasing your companies value.
It is legal to bribe the government for new laws.
If any large business does not do this, they will lose to their competition who does. This is why cronyism is the natural state of capitalism.
I don’t see why a real founder of a company shouldn’t maintain some huge amount of ownership as high as 10-15%, for life. They started it, after all. The people who are left out of the deal are the investor class, who have never done any actual work for the company.
The countries America has destabilized via the CIA is extensive. The methods range among: assassinations of elected leaders (at least 5 foreign presidents, that’s what I found a couple minutes, probably closer to 15), rigging elections, arming a neighboring warlord who then slaughters hundreds of thousands (Jakarta, 1963, 1 million dead in under a week), placing trade embargos on them to prevent them getting necessary supplies, and even using our fruit companies to put their economy into a stranglehold, then demanding the laws be changed to benefit the banana companies.
Venezuela in particular has been completely ravaged by America killing their elected socialists, then installing authoritarian puppets who go on to brutalize everyone. Pretty close to every single south American country has been a victim of the CIA. Chile is another great example, CIA assassinated Allende, then installed Pinochet, one of the worst dictators in history. I suggest you look up more, I can’t possibly cover even 10% of it here. The events in Jakarta, 1963 is a great place to start, along with the last 80 years in venezuala.
These events happened largely because the capitalists needed another war to profit off of. All of the atrocities the CIA has committed over the years are directly attributable to capitalism and it’s need for infinite growth, forever.
I think it’s especially bad here because you have a higher concentration of passionate people, i.e. people who went against the mainstream and left Reddit. So you’ll get far fewer “average joes” vs a more popular site like Reddit.
I’ve been mass downvoted here for pointing out a point in the article that nobody had even read. It’s incredible the amount of dogpiling that can happen for something so innocuous. Could have been isolated to that thread but you are definitely right about the hive mentality.
Yes, effective communication strategies are a vital and required skill set for the most learned among us. It is the duty of the rational to communicate knowledge and understanding to the irrational. They certainly can’t do it themselves.
This has happened to me multiple times, what’s worse is that I have over corrected myself a few times with being a bit too polite. Maybe I come off as sarcastic when I do that.
Yup, I try to post a ton of sources to compensate. That way hopefully they’ll see the effort I put in and actually read past my rather direct way of communicating online.
It seems to work more often than not, but unfortunately lower effort posts are more frequently rewarded vs higher effort posts imo.
Reddit is great for watching communities being radicalized. Wehther they do it themselves or they get a psyops push is up to everyone’s guess but I’ve watched it several times.
SRS: Started out as a community pointing out misoginy and racism, ended up as a very weird hate group. I didn’t watch it that closely, only saw the result.
some tumbler centered sub i followed, I forgot the name: same story, started quite light hearted, making fun of stupid shit said by kids on tumbler, turned into a right wing hategroup. This one I witnessed. They ran out of material quick, started posting lame shit but now they gave it their own, made up context in the comments. After a while, people who pointed out obvious satire got downvoted.
OP might not have a PhD but this stuff happens a lot on reddit. A lot of people here on Lemmy have an IT background and would get a rude shock looking at some of the dominant opinions on the major technology-related subreddits, particularly those that are heavily astroturfed.
If you really want to have some fun, when an Intel CPU is out preforming an AMD one on the charts go and mention that in a thread related to CPU performance. I’m fairly sure you’ll be talking to people paid with AMD money to astroturf the shit out of Reddit who will make up every excuse they can about the situation.
Intel CPU do outperform AMD in several workloads, but on the top end, AMD seems to have the efficiency advantage.
If AMD lost in some, they outperformed in many more metrics by large enough margins.
This trend was true in past 2 gens (price and efficiency advantage with an overall perf advantage in power limited scenarios). Nothing to astroturf about it.
The weird part would be if someone is comparing a zen2 with 14gen and still sticking with AMD for “some reason”
I have similar gen Intel and AMD, the Intel chip annihilates the AMD one for bursty workloads, AMD eats Intel at everything else though (power draw especially).
I have similar gen Intel and AMD, the Intel chip annihilates the AMD one for bursty workloads, AMD eats Intel at everything else though (power draw especially).
“Just” is the most dangerous adverb in the English language for engineers. I catch myself making sure I revisit anytime I say it to make sure nuance is better captured.
I hop into the selfhosted subreddit every once in awhile and as you would imagine it’s mostly hobbyists that have no clue what they’re doing, but they’re also not very receptive to advice from people who do. They have their own set of commandments at this point it’s pretty wild.
The most common thing you see is the idea that the holy grail of security being “not forwarding ports in your router”. Put your publicly accessible web service running on your unsegmented home LAN behind a cloudflare tunnel and you’re “secure”, problem solved, job done. If you point out the fact that this doesn’t solve any of the problems that go along with “port forwarding” or that CF tunnels MITMs all their data, you’ll get downvoted as a “CloudFlare hater”.
Similarly they tend to believe that there’s no reason to separate your publicly accessible server from the rest of the devices on your home LAN, especially because the home LAN is “safe”.
Pretty much, seriously, fuck reddit… it’s the only service I’ve ever been banned with in my 33 years of life, and I keep seeing others who have an unfair ban either on the site or from the site.
What’s the old saying? If you run into an asshole, fuck him, if you CONSTANTLY run into assholes, you might be the asshole…
The only site I’ve been suspended in was X (twitter) recently, and it was on a lurker account I mainly use to follow people and rarely ever post on, and it was after coming back to the app after a few weeks of absence lol.
Automated modding seems to fail on those sites, while giving users modding powers is always abused. I guess it’s manageable if there’s support, which X doesn’t seem to have anymore.
Nah, this shit is real. I’ve seen it. Once the piling on starts it becomes hard to turn the ship around though I’ve seen it happen. People are morons and they follow the crowd. They see the downvote, and like chicken, they peck at it because others did the same.
is the phenomenon real? absolutely. is writing vague fake stories about how “This community is better than that other community. I went there, and I got downvoted even though I’m definitely right because I’m definitely an expert. Congratulations on being part of the smart community instead of the dumb one.” also real? absolutely. The two things that make me think this is bullshit are:
“I’m definitely right because I’m an expert in that field. No I won’t tell you what the field is.”
174% of the time “I got banned for having the wrong opinion” translates to “I was a complete and utter shithead to everyone and now I’m trying to pretend the issue is what I said not how I said it.”
To be fair, it was only in the last couple years that it became that bad. It’s still better than Elon’s white nationalist vehicle of a social media site.
Tbf, I think I got banned from a vegan sublemmy for having an opinion that wasn’t even necessarily pro-meat, but not necessarily pro-vegan either. I forget what it even was lol
I said “typical Vogons” or something like that. I don’t remember exactly what non-existent race I used. The whole point of my comment was to mock racism itself, and I got banned for racism.
I got banned because I said a transgender person that broke the law (raped and murdered someone) should face the same consequences regardless of what gender they identified as… I have nothing against transgender people but I bet you can guess what rule they said I broke. Honestly when it comes to transgender issues I think that’s everyone’s personal thing and I have no right to tell someone else what to do in that department.
I think this plays a role, but it’s absolutely dwarfed by what people want to be true. Or, maybe, they just equate any disagreement with the hive to being “dickish.”
Or even better if you’re going to post a wrong reply, post it in a patronising, know-it-all tone so not only does it convince people you’re right, it crushes the soul of your opponent.
I recently posted accusing a certain company of using dirty tricks to con people and control public perception. To my surprise someone from that company was in the thread and he replied saying, “You always say that” and then lambasted me for being a crazy person with a vendetta.
But actually I’d never posted about it before. His reply was a dirty trick to control public perception.
Let’s not pretend we’re in any better of a situation. Same exact thing could happen on any Lemmy server, especially since each server is a small fiefdom run by randos.
No kidding. I got downvoted a dozen times because I mentioned that diet and practices help with sun burns and sunscreen isn’t the win all against the sun. I didn’t post sources right away, but when I did the hive has made up it’s mind.
I’ll recuse myself from giving you an up vote or down vote but I’ll make a suggestion. Maybe provide the proof when you make the comment, especially on a topic that might be controversial or have health risks.
Why did I need to provide sources on the comment above? Are people really curious on how diet can help your skin defend against the sun? Then let’s have a discussion I’ll post my sources. But my comment then was just in conversation, adding that diet helps, and if people wanted to know more I’ll show. I’m not going to start off every comment with a research paper worth of citations.
But above I’m arguing that there’s a hive mind mentality, and my source is my downvotes. I’m just hoping lemmy doesn’t cater to the more “popular” comments because that’s how an echo chamber turns into an information swamp. Just because something is more popular does not make it necessarily correct. I’m not responsible for people to think outside of themselves.
And before people rail against the lack of a blue link for them to hit because of something that has nothing to do with the conversation we’re having here now, here. Click below. It’s not controversial to believe what you put in your body has an effect on how your skin is built, and that can help with sun burns.
I am, on the other hand absolutely not saying that some vitamins have the same protection that a sunscreen does. Which it seems what the downvotes are for. Since I can’t see why people would be upset to know how diet can affect your skin’s ability to defend against radiations.
People need to start eating healthier in general, but they feel like they’re having their boundaries stepped all over when people tell them that. That’s one of the reasons you got downvoted probably.
Sucks to be told that you can’t eat crap, as well as knowing that americas medical system tries solving symptoms, not the root problem. But that’s the individuals responsibility. Americas medicine isn’t going to take care of you.
You make a valid point about sources when making a random throwaway comment.
Thanks for the link, I see what you mean about what we eat affecting our skin and it makes perfect sense. You’re right that it’s not your responsibility for other people to think outside of themselves but you could be a catalyst for it, which is something I strive for.
I like to give people the tools for them to think about any given topic and in real life I’ll often even say that I don’t want a reply to a question I posit them. I find people might be more truthful to themselves if they don’t feel the need to justify themselves to me.
I think your comment was probably misconstrued as you saying that sunscreen is useless and it’s all about diet when you obviously didn’t say nor mean that. I admit on first read I misread it that way as well and was curious about your stance. Thanks for having a conversation with me bud, hope you have a lovely day.
Since I can’t see why people would be upset to know how diet can affect your skin’s ability to defend against radiations.
A lot of your downvotes probably come from people misinterpreting your message as some woo woo bunk about replacing sunscreen with a proper diet and you won’t get sunburned, which clearly isn’t what you’re saying. However, its very easy for small, flippant comments to come across with wildly different connotations from the reader. Not really sure how to get around that, outside of way too much context.
Yeah, outside of way too much context. Reddit created a mentality where you have to comment a certain way, and only certain comments get seen. It’s self fulfilling in teaching how to talk. “reddiquite” lol
Settle down. I’m talking about people getting upset on a comment without acknowledging authenticity. The downvote and how a comment is buried or promoted is probably the worst thing reddit has manufactured. It’s what the post is about. And what the comment I replied to is that it’s happening here at lemmy
just sounds to me like youre a kid and you give too much worth to a karma system.
Link the comment, maybe you didn’t deserve it but to me you just sound like a wiseguy.
Diet doesn’t replace sunscreen.
I could care less about any of these systems, other than say it’s not flowing towards equitable information. You thinking I’m saying diet replaces sunscreen shows you’re not processing it.
We’re not discussing sun screen, and I’m old. Take what you want.
Like when people start commenting on the near-east conflict. Hardly anyone knows what the fuck is going on there yet we find many experts on the topic in the comments.
“please stop fighting and get along” is my fundamental take on most wars. It’s not particularly useful, but it helps me split the average soldier from the average “leader” that sent them to die.
All that matters is whether you’re speaking for or against the prevailing assumptions of the site/the subreddit. Most people on the internet are not experts on the topic but somehow already have their minds made up.
Also, Lemmy is not better than Reddit in this regard. Dominant opinion > everything else.
You’re right, and it takes humility to admit that you’re wrong and someone else is right. Personally, I will try to argue for my belief based on the reasons I’m holding it in the first place; but if I can see that I’m wrong and everything I’m googling is matching what the other person says, then I’d rather have beliefs that match reality than be right.
My favorite is how ignorant people are so certain about some issue that top scientists are unsure about.
If you point out that we don’t know whether there’s any life in the galaxy except on Earth, folks will say there has to be because look how many other planets there are, or even say you’re arrogantly self centered for entertaining the idea that there isn’t.
Amen, same with the machine learning haters nowadays, pretending they know exactly how the llms work that not even the scientists working on them understand. And they can extrapolate how useless and bad this technology is
machine learning haters nowadays, pretending they know exactly how the llms work that not even the scientists working on them understand.
I think part of this particular problem stems from experts in the field making pretty wild claims while not still not completely understanding the tech.
Now a lot of this is prompted by market and media interest, but companies like Open AI taking advantage of this interest by making obtuse claims for funding purposes isn’t exactly helping.
It IS wild, it is very special that we have a new field we don’t fully understand how or why it works. No need to excuse blatant misinformation from just people guesstimating using their basic IT skills
The odds of existing within a region close enough to find each other is rather small. The odds of existing during the same time period in history are infinitely approaching zero. Humans have existed for a very short amount of time, and we’re currently more likely to wipe ourselves out than we are to leave the solar system in a spacecraft.
That doesn’t mean life couldn’t possibly exist, just that it’s extremely unlikely that we will ever cross paths.
I suspect life is everywhere. I base this on the fact that our DNA complexity is currently around 2.5-3 billion years older than the planet. Intelligent, and more importantly multicellular, life is the variable that can’t be determined quite yet. The step from single cellular life to multicellular life has happened a few times on Earth, but all of those times have been in the last billion years. I personally believe that is because we are just about as young as intelligent life could possibly be, since the universe was actively hostile to life prior to about 7.5 billion years ago.
I also like the idea that for a few hundred million years (around half a billion years after the big bang) the entire universe was the correct temperature for life to have developed literally everywhere and anywhere.
DNA complexity is currently around 2.5-3 billion years older than the planet
That doesn’t mean DNA existed before the earth. It is possible that at low complexities different factors dominated the exponential increase assumed to reach that figure
“I base this on the fact that our DNA complexity is currently around 2.5-3 billion years older than the planet.”
That isn’t a fact, it’s extrapolation based on a simple exponential fit to rough estimates of present-day genome complexity.
Even if we knew complexity always grew exponentially, which we don’t, small changes in an exponential fit will greatly affect an extrapolation.
And we don’t know what the genome complexity was of the first prokaryotes, not to mention any number of forms of life that might have gone extinct between then and now.
For example, there was a group a of multi-cellular life that flourished long before the current group, but they lived for millions of years. We’ll probably never know anything about their genetic complexity.
I used to use Cunningham’s Law to find out expert nuances before a presentation to C-suite execs.
These days I tell people online about the things I’m an expert in and was brought in at ridiculous consulting fees to talk about and get dumb disagreement, especially when it goes against hivemind.
Social media got much worse over the past decade. I’ve gotten the sense there’s a bit of a generational aspect at play as well, in terms of the emboldening to spout BS from ignorance as long as being paid attention to and a thin skin in being debated with.
It’s your tone, bro. You can’t just keep blaming everyone else for not getting your message across. Doesn’t mean you aren’t knowledgeable, just that you have poor communication skills
No, it’s more confirmation bias and the fact I actively avoid appeals to authority.
I know full well if I pointed out my background in certain situations, I’d get a massive amount of agreement even if what I’m saying is against common narratives.
But the difference I’m commenting on is less about how people perceive what I write about and more the shift in how common it is for people who clearly have no idea what they are talking about to have the confidence and wherewithal to debate a topic entirely out of their element with little more than an appeal to gut feelings.
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