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Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

newyorker.com

501–510 of 757 posts

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily put a square or a rectangular utility cover into the hole, because the length of the side is less than the diagonal. This isn't possible with a circular cover because the diameter is uniform.

> You can easily put a square or a rectangular utility cover into the hole Then why do rectangular (including square) and triangular manhole covers exist? Rectangular ones are quite common, triangular less so. Grandparent is correct, lips are what, in practice, prevents manhole covers from falling in, not being circular (which many are not.)

Well maybe in some cases the risk of the lid falling in is acceptable. Or maybe there are other mitigations in place.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#502
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Coon town is obviously offensive, but easily avoided (ie, not a problem)." It is until it starts to leak. "I casually followed the Leslie Jones incident and don’t see the problem." I honestly cannot see how one can see the incident, and cannot see a problem with thousands of posters telling an African American woman that she's an ape. "The brigading seemed easily avoided by Jones" That is blaming the victim. "So bot…

> It is until it starts to leak. It doesn't really leak, not until the honeypot gets shut down and the denizens are forced to hangout elsewhere.

Someone made a quantitative study about the /r/fatpeoplehate ban recently and their conclusion was that the honeypot theory isn't valid and that banning hateful subs causes a reduction in overall hateful behavior instead of just shuffling it around.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument is completely disingenuous. Your average person is capable of critical thinking and logical reasoning -- those who aren't are either wards under the care of another person. Normal people just think logically and critically in reference to local optima, and that's not something that we can or should try to program out of them. That quality is also known as adaptability and it's crucial to successful surv…

> All we can do is understand that our own perspective is not the default or de-facto correct one, and that other people are entitled to their own assumptions and unfalsifiable opinions just as we are. They're entitled to their own credibility heuristics and decisions about who is worth trusting. People are free to make their own decisions and conclusions, whether we agree with them or not. For opinions, perhaps. The…

Empirically? One suspects a different adverb would have been more correct in that sentence.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. In today's age of near-universal literacy, "uneducated" is just a euphemism for views disliked by the the side in control of the education apparatus. While thought-policing media, schools, churches, and any other possible venue of "indoctrination" may "work" to a superficial extent, it mostly just completely destroys the credibility of your authority and leads to stunning implosion and destabilization. See: the…

> Like it or not, you can't just beat "undesirable" views out of people, either with schools or social media moderation. You absolutely can. An example: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/sep/22...

That is indeed an inspirational example.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#505
post #150

We tend to think we’re more in control of our behavior than we actually are. That is, our brains are operating from habit a large amount of the time, and the idea of the CEO brain consciously deciding our every action is largely an illusion. This is why emergency exit doors must open outwards. People have died in fires in theaters trying to push on doors that said “Pull”. The crash bar on an emergency exit door is wh…

Norman doors https://99percentinvisible.org/article/norman-doors-dont-kno...

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's plenty of material out there that isn't remotely touched upon in a traditional education. Right. I took a logic class for my undergraduate degree. It's actually the source of the "modus" in my username. I guess to me that's a far cry from what people refer to as "critical thinking." Being able to identify textbook logical fallacies isn't the same thing as rationally and objectively forming a judgment about…

Do you think we've reached the absolute apex of having a well-informed citizenry? If not, if critical thinking doesn't work, what could we do to improve this situation?

Judging solely on the number of HN commentators who are absolutely incapable of detecting irony or satire, and indeed who may feel those are entirely out of place on HN, the average citizen isn't capable of considering two mutually contradictory propositions at the same time, let alone becoming "well-informed". The various exhortations in this thread to "just teach them!" bespeak a similar innocence. We have a rather large number of trained professionals engaged in the teaching already, so such pleas should at the very least be accompanied by considerations of why those efforts have not yet sufficed.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#507
post #496
post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trying to be ironic on purpose?

SA is basically 4chan except you have to pay 10 bucks to join. I don't really see the joke here.

The "joke" is that you complain about the lack of high quality conversation on SA, and yet your posting style here is extremely shitty.

No wonder you got banned so quickly there...

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> culture of exhibitionism that takes place in real life that "strangely" seems to have so far escaped being raised in the ongoing gender wars I'm not sure what discussing a lack of clothing or dressing provocatively would achieve - it's never an adequate defence for poor behaviour or assault by a third party. Any nuanced debate about the topic is difficult and likely to be a no-win scenario. One of the few reasonabl…

> I'm not sure what discussing a lack of clothing or dressing provocatively would achieve - it's never an adequate defence for poor behaviour or assault by a third party. It might open people's eyes to some of the hypocrisy in the current public dialogue, just one of many issues being that the same action (wearing revealing clothing) is considered just fine and don't you dare even question it you victim-blamer when c…

> It might open people's eyes to some of the hypocrisy in the current public dialogue, just one of many issues being that the same action (wearing revealing clothing) is considered just fine and don't you dare even question it you victim-blamer when committed by one gender, and sexual assault when committed by another. Oh and by the way, "all we want is to be treated equally'.

I'm not seeing apples for apples in your argument - it'd be valid to say the popular female opinion (whatever that is) is hypocritical if their stance was that men couldn't wear revealing clothing, but you're making the point that they're hypocrites for wearing provocative clothing and then being upset if they're treated indecently or worse. You could argue their exhibitionism is inappropriate, but that is subjective, shaped by culture, and entirely different to saying their position is hypocritical.

If I'm rich and wave my money as I walk down the street, it's still a crime to rob me even if you feel as though I was asking for it.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about this: first teach advanced critical thinking skills, so people have the skills (if not the will, that's another problem) necessary to see through propaganda from both sides. I have a feeling a lot of people would have issues with this approach though.

How do you teach critical thinking?

Philosophy
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