I agree - and I still eat meat. This is the only thing where I’m openly a hypocrite. I put convenence and my own health first even when I know the amound of suffering it causes. This all will chance once lab grown meat becomes a thing.

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.

The horseshoe theory seems to hold. The extremes of both political sides have more in common with eachother than with the people on the middle.

Due to low fertility rates the population of earth will soon start to decrease so in that sense this particular issue is going to solve itself. Though that comes with a load of related issues.

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.

I agree. There just seem to be a fairly widespread pro-censorship sentiment among Lemmy users, usually driven by the desire to block speech that could be harmful to marginalized groups - but in practice, it often extends to broadly silencing all ideas they disagree with. The strawman here tends to be that anyone who wants more free speech just wants to shout slurs and spread (in their view) objectively harmful ideas.

That’s a bit different than using chatGPT in what is effectively a one-on-one interview. This isn’t about writing a job application. It’s about someone asking you a question and instead of you answering it you make chatGPT to answer it for you.

This decision makes sense to me.

It only makes sense if you yourself are being paid by lobbyists.

I can’t read it in any other way than as him calling the previous poster a paid lobbyist.

You seriously think anti-weed (or whatever) lobbyists are being paid to comment on Lemmy? Because that’s what it sounds like you’re implying - discrediting the person for who they supposedly are, not for what they’re actually saying.

Good point. North Korea is quite stable.

Doesn’t take much to get labeled far right these days.

It’s such a massive platform that managing the flood of spam accounts must be nearly impossible - but they’re still trying. I think it’s kind of like how AI got so good at solving captchas that they had to make them too difficult for even humans to figure out. I’m guessing the system they use is probably fully automated. Someone creating a new account likely behaves very differently from a genuine new user, so people like that get flagged. I don’t think you’re shadowbanned from the entire platform - some subs just let you post without notifying you that your posts aren’t visible to anyone.

My argument against capital punishment is that no legal system is foolproof and some number of innocent people are going to get locked up no matter what. That is aready unacceptable in itself but the idea of sentencing someone to death who hasn’t done anything wrong is the greatest injustice I can think of.

And I swear to god if you say the phrase “high value men” I’m going to laugh until I lose consciousness.

I don’t see what this has to do with anything I said.

No, I don’t want the commitment. I’m used to living my life in a way that lets me do what I want, when I want. I definitely feel a kind of melancholy when I see dads with their young kids, but I just don’t think it’s for me - and luckily, my partner feels the same about herself.

Unless you want to rely on luck, investing is all about starting early. You simply can’t catch up to someone who began in their early twenties unless you have a spare $500,000 to start with. On top of that, you’d need a wage and lifestyle that allow you to consistently invest several hundred dollars every month for decades. It’s never too late to start - but unfortunately, in your case, it’s too late to “make a bank” unless you’re willing to take a gamble.

I really feel this. I’ve said versions of this before in other threads, so I won’t repeat it all again - but suffice it to say I’ve had the same experience more times than I can count. The problem isn’t just the occasional jerk; it’s the tone of the platform as a whole. There’s this ever-present undercurrent of smugness, snide one-liners, and tribal hostility and gate-keeping that makes it feel like you’re either on the inside of the joke, or you’re the joke.

It’s exhausting. And the irony is, like you pointed out, everyone here talks about wanting an alternative to Reddit, but then they turn around and make this place even worse in all the same ways - just smaller, more insular, and with more groupthink.

I don’t blame you one bit for feeling the way you do.

I’ve yet to make that purchase, but I’m about to spend around €1.5k on a new (used) e-fatbike, since I snapped the frame on my old one. The one I spent over €2k on three years ago was absolutely worth it, so I don’t hesitate for a second to spend that much again. I’m just grateful that my finances allow for it - an unexpected cost like that would be devastating for so many other people.

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Will Storr - The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It: On Social Position and How We Use it