The same reason why in the US we have people attacking trans people (even when they’ve literally never seen one in person) and why our monopoly laws have gone from “chop them up for the common good” to “you better stop it or we might levy a symbolic fine”
The political window has been shifted so far right that the left’s position is “we need to be nicer to the people in Gaza, but really carefully since they’ll subjugate us if they have the chance”
It’s not an accident, it’s a small group of people with a lot of money who are investing it in hijacking discourse for their own power.
If you get on tv and start pitching socialism, you’re instantly dismissed as a radical. You can’t even have the conversation - people don’t understand what that means and will instinctively recite nonsensical talking points, because they’ve been fed those for so long it would take an intensive college course to unlearn enough that they can have the actual conversation of “would this work better”. The vast majority has internalized the idea that “raw dog capitalism is the only feasible system”
It’s the same with Israel. They’ve been fed propoganda so long that you can’t have the conversation - they’ve internalized the idea that Gaza is a bunch of animals who want to kill them, and the furthest left thing you can pitch to them is “well, maybe we should improve their situation economically, but we have to be careful not to let our foot on their neck slip off too fast”
Fun fact - there’s a lot of overlap with the groups doing this in the US and the ones doing it in Israel. By that I mean literally the same groups are funding both propaganda efforts, like the heritage foundation
There’s an easy way to reconcile them… The opinions are “articles should be backed up to prevent information manipulation, a threat to democracy” and “they should be able to hide their mistakes so they don’t get made fun of”
You reconcile them by not letting them stealth edit, and you stand up for them when they made an honest mistake and are being blasted for it
Some people genuinely don’t care about smells and such, and construction and maintenance is satisfying without being pushed to always do more with less… People do it for free all the time. Just this week, I helped my neighbor with some stuff, I like using tools and using my hands.
People literally pay to pick berries as a fun group activity. People go on wait lists for things like habitat for humanity
People like doing these activities. They don’t like the conditions of a job doing these things.
Clearly, there’s some middle ground - you don’t need the threat of homelessness to get people to work. You can make less desirable jobs well paid, let people play with the fancy power tools, or have the jobs come with social status/privileges
Obviously it’s not as simple as “hope someone volunteers” but it’s clearly not some impossible to solve problem
To put that in perspective, let’s say I drink water contaminated with chemicals for decades. Then, “suddenly”, me and half the people i know are sick with cancer and various side effects decades later…
That’s how environmental toxins work. They accumulate throughout the water cycle and through the food web, and if its less than acute (short term) in effect it statistically hurts a population, such as lowering reproduction or creating birth defects that lower the fitness. Then, once concentrations pass LD thresholds (lethal dose, meaning LD50 will kill half of the individuals of a species on average, LD10 would kill 1 in 10) you start getting mass die offs
Every water table, all of the soil, every living being is riddled with non-naturally occurring substances. Even though we released more damaging toxins in the 80s, the rate of pollution doesn’t matter - the concentration in various parts of the ecosystem is what matters, and that’s a slow process
Between wanting to do more with local LLMs, wsl annoyances, and the direction tech companies have been going lately, I think it’s time I start exploring a full Linux migration...
It is difficult for me to ascertain when the person I am communicating is using a logical fallacy to trick me into believing him or doubting my judgement, even when I realise it hours after the argument....
So I’m not sure how applicable this is - I’m a programmer, and I’m not neurotypical - but here’s how it works for me
If this, then that. When a certain trigger happens, I’ve conditioned myself to stop my train of thought and reevaluate
When I realize I’m uncomfortable or agitated, I first ask myself “am I dehydrated? Am I overheated?”. If not, I look at the situation… If I’m talking to someone and feel agitated, is it because of something that happened earlier today, is it because I’m just in a mood, or is there any other reason this is a me thing, and snapping at them would be unfair.
It’s a lot of introspection, and I’m not sure it applies to someone who doesn’t need coping mechanisms like this… But here’s how it applies to logical fallacies:
If someone says something I feel is wrong, first I ask myself, why do I think that?
Maybe I’ve been taught wrong. I first heard the vaccines cause autism from a parent who said “I think he was susceptible, and the shock to his system from the vaccines triggered his autism”. On it’s face, that made sense - it wasn’t until a coworker sighed and walked away after a comment I made that I googled it, and there was evidence against it and none for it, so I changed my mind immediately. I had no facts, one opinion by someone with a personal stake in it, and so I was wrong.
So if I only “know” a thing because I was told or because I assumed it, I immediately pull out my phone and look for evidence. You can do it very quick with practice, and people generally respond well when you take them seriously - either you go “huh, I guess you’re right” and they’re all smiles, or you show them what you found and go into the conversation with sources - either they can refute the source or you know they’re ignoring the numbers
So now, let’s say you’re arguing something not so clear-cut, I have a reason to believe what I do based on facts, but the answer isn’t obvious.
So first off, I don’t care if you’re the surgeon general or an anonymous Lemmy poster - ideas matter, people don’t. The only time you trust authority is when you aren’t able to understand the issue - and that comes up plenty, but it has no place in a conversation about the issue - you should be trying to understand ideas if you’re talking about it. If they bring up a person, that’s not an actual argument… Just ignore the names and the titles.
Hitler was right about some things, George Washington was wrong about some things - pretending otherwise is dumb. I’m on Hitler’s side about interior design… Nazi stuff looks imposing and regal. I’m also Jewish, so I’m not exactly a fan of the guy. Ideas matter, where they come from has nothing to do with anything
Next, is “if I can’t understand why someone would do/think this, I’m missing facts”. If you can’t give me a solid argument for the other side, I take everything you say about the topic with a grain of salt. No one is evil in their own story, no one takes a hilariously bad stance just because they’re dumb… They have a reason to think that way, and if I can’t understand why, then I’m missing something.
And if I’m missing something, it’s foolish to make up my mind before I hear what that is.
Then you get to the actual arguments. I lay it out in my head. I break down the individual statements - do they make sense individually? Are they actually related to each other?
Most of all, it’s important to see the difference between winning the argument and making a point. I’m not a great speaker - i don’t remember specifics well, I remember my conclusions. I lose arguments all the time, and I pride myself on the fact that if I realize I’m wrong, I’ll turn on a dime and own up to it.
But winning an argument and being right are almost unrelated things.
Finally, go back and fact check. The argument might be long over, but the goal should always be to understand better and gain a deeper perspective - follow up for your own sake
So my advice is: stop, reevaluate, and refocus. Every time something doesn’t sound right to you, take a minute. Take a breath, remember your goal, and decide if what you’ve just been told changes that.
It’s easy to get buried in details or lost in the heat of the moment, so make a habit of taking yourself out of it
Hmmmm (lemmy.ml)
The New York Times tried to block the Internet Archive: another reason to value the latter (walledculture.org)
School lunch debt, what about normal lunch debt? (lemmy.world)
literally no clue (media.infosec.exchange)
Looking for distro recommendations
Between wanting to do more with local LLMs, wsl annoyances, and the direction tech companies have been going lately, I think it’s time I start exploring a full Linux migration...
How do I learn to detect logical fallacies in a conversation?
It is difficult for me to ascertain when the person I am communicating is using a logical fallacy to trick me into believing him or doubting my judgement, even when I realise it hours after the argument....
Does anyone else struggle with silence, particularly when trying to sleep? (lemmyunchained.net)
Does anyone else find absolute silence difficult to deal with? In particular difficult to sleep in complete silence?...