• Opinionhaver@feddit.uk
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      24 days ago

      Being femine or just being attractive? Because the halo-effect definitely is real. As Pet Shop Boys said: you don’t need to be beautiful but it helps.

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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    24 days ago

    The stock market is a scam, value has become meaningless, and capitalism is a slow march to societal breakdown and revolution.

  • Opinionhaver@feddit.uk
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    24 days ago

    As someone who’s slightly center-right, a significant number of my opinions are unpopular on this platform. But setting politics and social issues aside, I’d say the nuclear bomb of my unpopular opinions is my belief in determinism - and, by extension, my claim that free will is an illusion.

    By that, I mean the idea that you could have done otherwise in a given situation is false. If we had a time machine and could replay a moment exactly as it was, you’d make the same choice every single time. Whatever caused you to make that decision the first time would cause you to do it again - without exception.

    A related belief of mine is that the sense of self is also an illusion. To me, these are two sides of the same coin. By “self,” I mean the feeling that there’s a subject behind your face, looking out at the world. But that’s just brain chemistry. There’s no point in the brain where it all comes together - no central “you” making decisions. That’s why there’s no free will either - because there’s nothing making the decisions. They’re simply being made.

    The illusion comes from the fact of consciousness. The fact of subjective experience. It feels like something to be you, from the inside. There’s qualia to your existence.

    • iii@mander.xyz
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      23 days ago

      I’m sorry to say, but I find that thinking really scary!

      Can’t it be used as an excuse everything? It wasn’t me it was everything that others did before. Oh, and there’s no me. There’s no you either! So don’t say that I hurt you, as that’s impossible!

      • Opinionhaver@feddit.uk
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        23 days ago

        Well, it does remove the justification for blame - there’s no one to blame - but it doesn’t excuse bad behavior. If someone hits another person and says, “I couldn’t help myself, I have no free will,” then while that statement may be factually correct, it still signals how they’re likely to behave in the future. So jailing them is reasonable - not as punishment, but to protect others.

        It’s similar to when a bear wanders into a residential area and attacks someone. We don’t shoot the bear because we think it’s evil - it’s just a bear. We do it to protect innocent people.

        Laws do work as a deterrent. Knowing that actions have consequences affects how people behave. Retroactively, you could argue it’s not fair to jail someone who couldn’t have acted differently, but if people catch on that there are no real consequences - that we’re just bluffing - then more people will start breaking those laws. That’s why we need to follow through with those “threats,” even if, philosophically, it doesn’t fully make sense.

        • iii@mander.xyz
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          23 days ago

          Knowing that actions have consequences affects how people behave.

          How? People are automatons programmed by laws? How are the laws made?

          • Opinionhaver@feddit.uk
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            23 days ago

            If you know that driving over a certain speed limit will increase your chance of getting a ticket, then you’re less likely to do so.

            • iii@mander.xyz
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              23 days ago

              You can’t because you’ve no free will. Regardless of the law, the speed you’ll drive is the speed you’ll drive, no?

              • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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                23 days ago

                The speed you’ll drive is the product of innumerable in-born and external influences (which include past experience). Laws would be useless if people had free will, actually. They work because of a deterrent effect; getting pulled over paying fines, and maybe going to jail feels bad. It’s the threat of feeling bad that makes laws an effective incentive, and we can’t change that emotional response.

                If humans had free will, though, we could decide how we emotionally react to anything. We could decide to flip a switch in our minds so that jail is emotionally fulfilling and preferable to freedom. Then there’d be no way to punish anybody, and thus we could have no laws.

                • iii@mander.xyz
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                  23 days ago

                  If humans had free will, though, we could decide how we emotionally react to anything. We could decide to flip a switch in our minds

                  Exactly! ❤️ That’s the trap that sadly keeps a person locked in his mind. The slave’s curse. And I’m sorry it’s happening to you. I’ve been there before, as well.

                  Know that you are more than the sum of your environment and history, good or bad. You can decide to do something, just because you like doing it. You might not even remember what you like doing. It can take a while to find out, but you’ll find it. And from there it will grow.

                  You’re not trapped, just hurt. 🌸

              • Opinionhaver@feddit.uk
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                23 days ago

                You’re thinking of a fatalistic universe, where the future is predetermined, rather than a deterministic one, where every action follows from a prior cause. It’s not that you choose to follow the speed limit out of free will - you simply don’t want to get into trouble, so you’re compelled to obey it. But even that want isn’t something you chose.

                • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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                  23 days ago

                  I figured out recently from Lemmy discussions that people have different concepts of what free will means. Humorously, one of them operates within a deterministic mindset, while the other points out the determinism.

                  Best analogy that I can think of at the moment is the difference between a drill press and a 4-axis CNC mill. The drill press has one degree of freedom, down and up. It’s locked in. The mill has 4 degrees of freedom, and it can run code that makes its behavior highly complex. For some people, that’s good enough: The mill has free will while the drill press does not.

                  The view of free will that recognizes determinism says that humans have innumerable degrees of freedom, so our behavior looks complex, but our conscious choice is just the various competing influences shaking out.

  • zout@fedia.io
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    24 days ago

    People who complain about multiple once-in-a-lifetime events happened in their lifetime really are snowflakes.

  • shalafi@lemmy.world
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    24 days ago

    If it wasn’t for American gun owners, the fascists would have already destroyed us.

  • LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zoneOP
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    24 days ago

    Schools should teach more practical subjects, they’re more useful to loads of people and improve engagement. If they have to reduce subjects like history to do that then they should.

    • YappyMonotheist@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      History? That’s the one you wanna get rid off? Do you just want obedient working bees that easily fall for propaganda and previously used control tactics? 😔

        • YappyMonotheist@lemmy.world
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          24 days ago

          Fair enough, but I still think that’s the one that shouldn’t be reduced. For instance, ICE is a mercenary group for human trafficking working in the interest of for-profit prison shareholders, we have seen this something like this before, right?

            • starlinguk@lemmy.world
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              24 days ago

              Have different types of high schools instead. My cousin went to bakery school in Germany at 16, for example.

              • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.world
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                24 days ago

                That’s not how it is in the US? Here in Czechia you can either go to a general “gymnasium” (aka general high school) or to a high school that specialises in a certain subject, or to a specialised school that is not a high school (usually trades).

                • Max@lemmy.world
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                  24 days ago

                  There are basically only general high schools in the US with two small exceptions: religious schools that teach religious studies in addition and STEM magnet schools that have a bit better science/math programs.

    • theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      24 days ago

      My late teens and early 20s would have been a lot less destructive if I had received even just a small amount of practical financial advice.

    • Cris@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      I really miss things like shop class existing. I would have thrived in that kinda stuff.

      I don’t wanna reduce history but more practical skills would be nice. Honestly not really sure what I’d change to bring things like shop class back, but I probably wouldn’t want it to be history.

      English maybe? Its massively important that kids learn to read and learn from books but I think formal grammar and whatnot have way too much emphasis placed on them. Ability to communicate effectively is affected by grammar, but you can communicate extremely effectively with “wrong” or informal grammar, which people generally intuitively pick up on. I’d rather more emphasis on practical communication- but then I’m not sure that would actually make more space for things like shop class. I dunno 😅

  • ReverendIrreverence@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    Pick your cutoff age but it should be illegal to groom children into an organized religion. Frankly, since human brains are still developing until age 24-25 that would be my choice but 21 would be acceptable. “Let go and let god” is literally advocating for a trained lack of critical thinking skills.

    • Okokimup@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      Addendum: the only wrong topping on a pizza is the one you personally don’t like.

    • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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      24 days ago

      I hope you mean chunks of pineapple on top of a pineapple sauce that is on top of either a pineapple slice, or (if you’re a wimp) a dough made with both pureed pineapples and pineapple juice

      Because otherwise, it ain’t a real pineapple pizza, it’s just a pizza with pineapple on it, and that is for posers.

      Real pineapple pizza for life, yo!

  • PortNull@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    23 days ago

    We should not try to save every creature, plant, business, whatever that is threatening to become extinct. Maybe it’s just their time.

    • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      Businesses are obviously very different - but this is a very short-sighted view of plants and animals. It’s only their time because we’ve massively changed ecosystems in very short timespans, and their extinctions will often further affect their respective ecosystems and other species negatively, leading to further extinctions.

      The only times when this many species went extinct was when literally most species went extinct. It’s naive to think this won’t include billions of human deaths.

    • iii@mander.xyz
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      23 days ago

      I always thought dogs need their human, as much as the human needs their dog. It’s a co-dependance, a mutual coping mechanism.

    • Cousin Mose@lemmy.hogru.ch
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      24 days ago

      I’ve considered that it’s likely not ethical to have pets, but dogs at least have been bred over thousands of years to the point that they’ve become dependent on us.