>The obvious counter-argument is silencing them strengthens their argument and makes them a martyr. I don't buy that argument at all, it's far more dangerous to allow them to indoctrinate and appeal to all the fringe disenfranchised youth which they've become frighteningly effective at. In any case it's clear reddit can be used for good like in this article, I'm just not so sure it's a net positive to society as anot…
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14805545 and marked it off-topic.
Thanks for the link! I only know as much about Section 230 as I just read at that link, but it seems that this doesn't provide protection for things like calling for violence against a religious/sexual/race group. I concede that the exact boundary of what is a call for violence is hard to pin down, but I don't think that makes it OK to throw up your hands and say "Anything goes on my site!"
> it seems that this doesn't provide protection for things like calling for violence against a religious/sexual/race group. That's the job of the Constitution, as the SCOTUS made clear in Brandenburg v. Ohio, in which an actual KKK leader was being charged after participating in an armed rally and talked about getting revenge on various races and on those who supported them, like the President and Congress: "(..) the…
I think there's plenty of middle ground between "Providing a platform for hate speech is A-Okay!" and "We must silence those bigots at any cost!" At the moment, I'd say reddit is too permissive of hate speech. I acknowledge that this is a personal opinion, but I assert that it is a valid opinion.
I think Reddit is interestingly a net social positive. For all the bad things that come out of it you can often see users helping others in a pretty significant way.
I used to think so. I enjoyed Reddit a lot, despite people complaining about it. Then /r/the_donald happened. Now I tread carefully because you never know what kind of propaganda is being spread around. People say stick to the subreddit. But I think that's silly. If the core of Reddit is rotten, then the subreddit themselves will be affected. It has happened to places I visit like /r/environment. There is a constant…
And before r/the_Donald there were also subs like r/fatpeoplehate, which also served as a festering pit of hate that spilled into the rest of the site. But the_donald definitely brought it to another level...
I honestly believe drug addiction is a symptom of a greater issue in someone's life. There is no person who wakes up and says "I think I'll get addicted to heroin today"; it becomes a means of escape and relief from something that gradually turns into its own monster and creates a terrible cycle of dependence. By cutting out the time and money needed to "feed the beast" while providing professional help, they can bre…
The vast majority of heroin addicts today started with prescription painkillers. Many of them went into a doctor's office and took the pill that was prescribed to them by a trusted community member with a diploma on the wall. The problem was that these doctors were frequently either directly corrupt or under the unwitting influence of false advertising from Purdue Pharmaceuticals. When I had my wisdom teeth pulled an…
A just society executing the principal architects sounds similar to Italy recently prosecuting the seismologists for incorrectly predicting earthquakes.
I agree that there is a problem with over prescription of opioids, but this problem isn't solely due to a simple conspiracy of drug makers. I think that sort of rhetoric is unhelpful.
I can't recall a similar degree of concern and push for treatment during the crack/cocaine epidemic in the 80-90's and the meth epidemic of the 00's. What is it about the opioid/heroin epidemic that differentiates it from those prior?
It's now disportionately impacting white people, and in the 80s-90s it was disproportionately impacting black people which the US govt and media used to paint a negative image. So now it's hitting closer to home, so it's getting more attention and treated with a lot more sympathy.
I don't think OP has said "these people are evil". It's understandable that people who post in the_donald are heavily biased and even think they are doing the right thing. This American Life had a podcast where they interviewed these people at the DeploraBall , and one of them even said that he "Memed Donald Trump into the presidency". For some it seems this is part of their identity.
True, but that kind of dehumanization doesn't help anything, and I don't think it's a very good explanation of the problem.
What do you mean by dehumanization? How is that happening?
Where were you getting your kratom? Were you buying it from a vendor that also provides documentation from a testing facility to demonstrate that there were no adulterants? There are people participating in the kratom supply chain that adulterate the kratom that passes through their hands. Testing has shown kratom sprayed with opiates, or kratom adulterated with opiate potentiators (both herbal and not), and even stu…
Unadulterated kratom still affects mu-opioid receptors, just as other opioids, and so stopping taking it will cause opioid-like withdrawal symptoms.
Yes, but the point I'm making is that we can't know if he was taking some potent opiate along with his kratom. Kratom is used by many specifically because of its quick and mild withdrawal symptoms, which is why people on strong opiates use kratom to come off of their hard opiates. That's why it's suspect when people talk about lengthy, strong withdrawals, which are very uncharacteristic of unadulterated kratom. And buying from "a reputable vendor" doesn't mean anything if they aren't testing what they're selling. I know of at least one extremely popular and highly-rated vendor that knowingly sold adulterated kratom in the United States, and I have the test results documentation to prove it. So while I can say with certainty that what I'm putting in my body is not adulterated, these other people with (wildly outlier) anecdotal stories of very hard withdrawals can't say the same thing. And in fact, the anecdotal evidence -- uncharacteristically strong and/or lengthy withdrawals -- would seem to point to having consumed something with some kind of adulterant opiate or potentiator (or both) added for potency purposes. The fact is, this happens far more often than people are willing to admit, and of course everybody's counterpoint story comes with the "it wouldn't happen to me" fallacy. But the fact remains: I can prove that I'm consuming unadulterated kratom (and having almost no withdrawal symptoms with a fairly high, regular dose). These other people cannot.
What I find fascinating and disappointing is how much the opioid crisis isn't being talked about or addressed proportional to other societal issues. Billions of dollars of private research being poured into self-driving cars by our greatest minds and millions of dollars in lobbying against gun laws all in the name of preventing unnecessary human deaths... yet according to Ben Bernanke (and his references), opioid ove…
Your mistake is believing that people invest in self-driving cars as a sort of charity or social service in the same way as drug clinics. Even if that were the case, I think there's a reasonable case to be made that solving self-driving cars would be a better lives-saved/$ investment than opioids. Even if it was a comparable investment, it wouldn't make addicts as socially-productive a group as crash victims--this would take tens/hundreds of millions more in social services.
Even neglecting that, crash victims are more worthy (on average) than overdose victims, as they come into their fate largely on accident, while overdose victims largely make an informed choice to roll the dice. I don't like saying this; it sounds judgmental and it certainly won't be popular, but this is the logical conclusion. Fortunately, the choice between self-driving cars and combatting the opioid epidemic doesn't remotely hinge on this point.