I got a hell of a lot smarter when I allowed myself to not have opinions on things. Like if a friend asks me if I have heard of [thing], I am nowadays much better at saying “No, I havent, tell me more” or “I’m not sure. It sounds familiar though. Remind me?”. A big part of this is being in spaces where it feels safe enough to be vulnerable in saying “I don’t know”.

Yeah, this is a big thing. A sentiment that comes to mind is “we judge other people by their actions, but ourselves by our thoughts”. Sometimes I reread past comments of mine and cringe at how ambiguous the tone is.

Yeah, I think this is fairly common. I’m pretty good at not being overly adversarial online, but that takes me a bunch of active effort. Sometimes that means taking a big breath and moving on.

I think it’s admirable that you care about contributing through commenting; I saw a similar stat when I moved to Lemmy and I have also been more active in commenting. However, if you’re not enjoying how you’re typically engaging, perhaps a different framing could be useful: rather than (or in addition to) thinking about commenting as you contributing to the community/platform, think about it as something that you’re doing to enrich yourself. For example, sometimes when I do get into spicier discussions, it’s because I am responding to someone I disagree with, but whose points have caused me to think differently. Or maybe I am enjoying the practice in articulating my views on a complex matter. Or maybe it’s cathartic. Thinking about what I hope to gain from a discussion helps me to avoid unproductive discussions where it’s just mutual attacks.

If you can’t find a middle way, it’s also okay to not comment on things. My opinion is that we do owe a duty to the communities we inhabit, and in the online world, that might imply that it’s good to be contributing via commenting. However, informational self-care is incredibly important nowadays, and it’s so easy to become burnt out. It’s okay to not engage in behaviours that cause you harm (or aren’t encouraging you to grow in the way that you would prefer).

That game looks pretty similar to a game I know as “Racing Demons”, played with regular playing cards

I feel like I’m haunted by linear algebra because it keeps cropping up in all sorts of places

A friend of mine had a partner accidentally draw blood when he (consensually) bit them. It got infected and they needed quite serious hospital care. I suppose that counts.

If I wanted an autistically over-literal answer, I’d either ask myself (or come to Lemmy)

Stochastic parrots is an excellent phrase.

Yeah, that kind of mocking is a direct attack at me, and I honestly like it because I feel like my weird achievement hunting is definitely mockable (especially because I already know how ridiculous I am and thus will not change in this respect)

The modern world runs on plausible deniability, especially the tech world

I have to believe in a future where people look back on this from a world with less hatred in it than it currently has. I want to give the perpetrators of hate as little plausible deniability as possible.

I have to believe that even though looking back on history didn’t seem to help us avoid this situation, that there will be people in the future who are wiser and empowered to make better choices for them and their communities.

It’s a fantasy, and I honestly don’t care if it’s unrealistic. It’s what I need to believe to keep going. I need to believe there can be something better after this, regardless of whether I’ll get to experience it.

Thanks for this breakdown, I can see why people are protesting. The situation is fucked

I respect your approach. I bet you’re the kind of parent who apologises to their kids when you make mistakes

That sounds beautiful. You really captured the moment

Thanks for this recommendation. Diverse perspectives are important in underscoring that the Israeli people are not a monolith, and that they are distinct from the state of Israel.

I often see people online speaking about Israelis as though all of them are in favour of the ongoing genocide, when this is simply not the case. That’s not to say that Netanyahu’s control of the media hasn’t led to a depressingly high proportion of Israelis to see themselves as righteous victims — years of state propaganda has unfortunately had an impact. However, there are journalists and activists (Jewish or otherwise) who are working to challenge this rhetoric.

No it won’t. Eco-fascist rhetoric like this is unproductive because it ignores the fact that the people who are most shielded from the harms of climate change are the ones most responsible for it.

Billionaires and others who are profiting most from pillaging the planet’s resources are not the ones at risk here.

(N.b. I am not calling you an eco-fascist, just that this framing is commonly used by eco-fascists. Part of why I highlight this is because your use of this rhetoric may not be intentional)

It’s frustrating how common IQ based things are still. For example, I’m autistic, and getting any kind of support as an autistic adult has been a nightmare. In my particular area, some of the services I’ve been referred to will immediately bounce my referral because they’re services for people with “Learning Disabilities”, and they often have an IQ limit of 70, i.e. if your IQ is greater than 70, they won’t help you.

My problem here isn’t that there exists specific services for people with Learning disabilities, because I recognise that someone with Down syndrome is going to have pretty different support needs to me. What does ick me out is the way that IQ is used as a boundary condition as if it hasn’t been thoroughly debunked for years now.

I recently read “The Tyranny of Metrics” and whilst I don’t recall of it specifically delves into IQ, it’s definitely the same shape problem: people like to pin things down and quantify them, especially complex variables like intelligence. Then we are so desperate to quantify things that we succumb to Goodhart’s law (whenever a metric is used as a target, it will cease to be a good metric), condemning what was already an imperfect metric to become utterly useless and divorced from the system it was originally attempting to model or measure. When IQ was created, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it was. It has been made worse by years of bigots seeking validation, because it turns out that science is far from objective and is fairly easy to commandeer to do the work of bigots (and I say this as a scientist.)

It’s one reason why I like Lemmy so much — conversations around here are so small scale that I can be confident I’m talking to a human.

I saw an article recently that looked at the rates of suicide in Israeli soldiers. One guy, who featured heavily in the article, had killed himself after being an IDF bulldozer driver. The article tried to dial up sympathy for him, but additional coverage (in response to this article) highlighted that this guy had posted some pretty horrifying stuff on social media — stuff like videos and photos of him in Gaza, being pretty jovial as he drove through bodies and buildings. I wonder whether the PTSD he experienced afterwards was a sort of moral immune system, and that once he was away from the kind of military camaraderie that normalises atrocities, if he began to reflect on his part in this genocide. At least for him, we’ll never know.

A Jewish, anti-Zionist friend who lived in Israel for a while said that it was disturbing to see how much the Holocaust was leveraged to make people feel scared and insecure. I imagine many members of the IDF do genuinely believe that most, if not all Palestinians hate all Jews and want them to die. That way, they can enthusiastically participate, believing that they are on the side of justice.

I once punched a Nazi at a gig, and I did enjoy it, because it feels good to be righteous and angry. Enough so that it makes me anxious about how easy it would be to lean into anger if it feels righteous.

I think being aware of the ongoing maintenance (and one’s ability to do it) still feels productive in a prepping sense. It’s sort of like meta-prepping? Like, I’d expect that in a disaster, your knowledge would be helpful in organising within your community. Certainly you’d fare better than me, as someone who has been fortunate enough to never have to consider emergency supplies.