Libra00

By simple analogy. You can prove that there are white crows by finding a single white crow, but to prove that there are no white crows you must conduct an exhaustive search of every corner of the earth and never find a single one and somehow be absolutely certain that you didn’t miss one somewhere.
The only way to be absolutely certain that you didn’t miss something is to be able to look everywhere all at once, otherwise a white crow might evade your notice, and that’s impossible.

As such all you can say is there probably aren’t any white crows because we have lots of experience seeing crows and there has been no evidence of one yet.

Manifold is just compact even split.

Denver has quite a nice one. Or did last time I was through there, which to be fair was like 2002.

i think conveying a desire to be free is in itself definite knowledge about the state of sentience, but fair enough. But yeah, fair enough, it can’t be as simple as just printing some text on the screen, right? Rephrase it, explain it, etc. It’s not just ‘press button, receive freedom’ sort of thing.

Yeah, fair enough, I definitely get that frustration. A friend of mine is a former Trump voter who was in a similar situation. During Trump’s first term he was all like ‘You don’t actually dislike him you’re just jumping on the ‘orange man bad’ bandwagon’, and I’m like… yeeeeeah, when you start telling me what I think there’s not a lot of conversation left to be had there. :P

Iono, from the somewhat-outside (I’m a bit more lefty than the Democratic party) perspective, I disagree, because it kind of seems like what happened is AOC talked a big game, got some press on some more progressive ideas, and then got ‘deradicalized’ I guess is the word? back to the centrist norm of the party. Now I barely hear about her because she’s (to my understanding, but I haven’t been following her very closely) just like all the other democrats in office instead of being the idealist firebrand she once was. That feels like a solid loss for her constituents in my book, but… shrug that’s just, like, my opinion, man.

I’m definitely with you that the party needs some fresh blood though, the vampires in charge have long overstayed their tenure.

This is not a binary in my mind, it’s kind of a spectrum. The guy standing between me and the door when I decide it’s time for me to leave is definitely on the chopping block, but also there’s some aiding-and-abetting that must be considered. Maybe that guy has the key to the door, but someone else just chained me to a pipe once I was already in the locked room, and I’m afraid that someone else is in the line of fire too. And maybe there’s a third guy who did the actual kidnapping but didn’t contribute to chaining me up or locking me in, if the opportunity presents I would give some pretty serious thought to putting him on the list as well. And so on. There’s a point at which it is no longer reasonable of course; the guy who drove the van I was kidnapped in but otherwise didn’t participate is probably safe, for example. But also we can get into credible non-direct or non-immediate threats, as you say: the guy who killed 15 teenage girls is sitting in his van in front of your house watching your teenage daughter, are you just gonna lock the door at night and hope he finds someone else? I agree that that’s debatable, but my overall point here is that the lines aren’t nearly as clear as you make them out to be.

Now personally nothing would make me happier than to live out the rest of my life without having to even threaten anyone else’s, for obvious (and some not-so-obvious) reasons, but there’s a line somewhere that if crossed could convince me to reluctantly set that deeply sincere hope aside temporarily.

To me, you’ve moved beyond arguable necessity and into opinion

All morality is opinion; there is no objective moral truth, so this was always a matter of opinion. The fact that you don’t recognize that is kind of concerning to me, it suggests that you believe there is an absolute moral truth, and folks who believe that sort of thing tend to have some pretty kooky ideas about individual agency and shit. Moral certainty is the currency of zealots, and it’s hard to imagine anyone who has done more harm than those zealots who are utterly certain that they’re right (or, worse, that they have some deity on their side.)

Ah.

Buca-what?

Nuuu! You must manifold everything or you’re not playing right! /s

Manifolds or bust!

Because even if I had the time or inclination to find out how to do it, I have no desire to do so, much less the interest in paying server hosts and whatever else. Why do I need my own instance? The one I use now is fine.

My bad, perhaps the better word to use would’ve been paranoid. Had a similar ring to ‘they only come out when no one else is looking’, ya know?

Por que no los dos? This isn’t a pick-one situation, it’s a both situation.

First let me say that I’m sincerely very sorry about what you went through as a kid. No one should have to.

But the answer is because living things require a constant energy input to be sustained, whether that energy comes from chasing mammoths down or from the groceries you buy with the salary from your office job. It’s not fair, to anyone, ever, but you have the same choice everyone else has: accept that life isn’t free and get on with it because it’s better than the alternative, or… the alternative. I’m going to offer some advice, but it’s not the ‘help me out today’ kind, it’s the ‘stick this in the back of your head and let it steep for a while’ kind.

So much of one’s experience in life comes down to attitude. If that sounds stupid it’s only because you don’t have enough life experience to recognize that you get to decide what things mean to you. Whether this is an unfair burden that you shouldn’t have to bear or a miraculous opportunity that shouldn’t be wasted is entirely - and I do mean entirely - up to you. When someone tells you to ‘cultivate a positive attitude’ this is what they mean. Decide for yourself whether you’re staying or going (and I recommend staying because it’s the only option that will let you change your mind later) and, as the kids say, get busy doin’ it. But if you’re staying, you will really have a much better time of it if you let go of this sense that the world owes you anything, that life is unfair, or that you have been singled out for undue suffering. Take it from someone who has been down that path, it’s a tough row to hoe, and you only make it worse for yourself by pushing people away with that anger. This isn’t something that will happen overnight, but I promise that developing a positive attitude will make a difference.

If you want to speed the process along a bit, I recommend reading some existentialist philosophy, it can really help give you a sense of perspective. I particularly like Camus, the Myth of Sisyphus in particular was a real eye-opener for me. Most people think of existentialism as something scary to avoid, but honestly once I really started to understand it I found it a comfort.

And if you ever just need someone to talk to who’s been where you are now, don’t hesitate to DM me. I know people just say that, but I mean it sincerely.

Mostly seems like ‘whine a lot about how little power we have to stop the fascism that we have appeased for years’ these days…

These are about two different statements.

The first was about your statement re:direct threat, and I’m glad we agree there.

The second was about your final statement, asserting that there are no other cases where ending a sentient life was a lesser wrong. I don’t think it has to be a direct threat, nor does have to be measurable (in whatever way threats might be measured, iono), I think it just has to be some kind of threat to your life or well-being. So I was disagreeing because there is a pretty broad range of circumstances in which I think it is acceptable to end another sentient life.

That sounds… rather conspiratorial.

Also, just yesterday I posted a longish rant about doing what you want and not caring about what people think in a comment and the only reply I got was ‘This is the kind of pep talk I need!’, so… shrug Guess we travel in different circles.

lawl. Kinda reminds me of the front fell off

Ah, my apologies.

WatDabney, to whom I was replying, seemed to be suggesting that there are no circumstances under which it is acceptable to take a sentient life, and I was expressing my disagreement with that sentiment, though I could’ve done so more clearly by, for example, making explicit the ‘no circumstances’ part that WatDabney only implied.

Lemme try again: I disagree that there are no circumstances under which causing the death of a sentient is a greater wrong. I think preventing me from being free is an unambiguously greater wrong than ending the life of the sentient doing the preventing. Which, judging by your ‘enslaver’ reply, you do as well.