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We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

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411–420 of 520 posts

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#411

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You have to pay $200 and send an application to the Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms. It takes 8 months to a year; they will do a background investigation and send you an approval form if you pass. Then you can purchase the (used) machine gun. Fully automatic weapons are not currently manufactured in the U.S. Florida, in particular, has banned machine guns like the AK-47 which is to say weapons that fire multiple bulle…

How difficult is it for a person to modify a stem-automatic weapon to make an illegal fully-automatic?

Up until the Vegas shooter in October 2017, you could add a mechanism called a bump stock to a standard semi-auto AR and make it shoot continuously like a machine gun. The Trump Administration banned the device (angering quite a few of his base). Is it difficult today? Not for someone who has some knowledge and connections. The how-to videos and files are still floating around. It's not recommended, obviously, because it's now an illegal modification, but there are thousands of them already out there and it's likely people are still making them in garage workshops.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#412
post #407
post #400

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Its fine for you doesn't mean its fine for other. Not everyone the same. Whether its too much or not can be different for different people. Its not hard to understand right?

>>> One. Wearing Mask can be uncomfortable, and it is real downside (at least for me) >> I'm sorry. Grow up. I wear a mask 8 hours a day. Surgeons do for longer. Is it really that much to ask? I honestly don't understand this mindset. > Its fine for you doesn't mean its fine for other. Not everyone the same. Whether its too much or not can be different for different people. Its not hard to understand right? Some peop…

I didn't says decision and action can't have real consequences. Every action will have its consequences.

Forcing other to wear mask has its consequences too.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#413
post #409

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> I don't think that's what being advocated for. What specialists are good at is providing accurate information in their specialty. Often different specialists will disagree. This is an interesting point insofar as the second and third sentence seem to contradict each other. Am I over-simplifying? A translation of what I expressed above is that common people have common sense and that common sense inoculates us from…

> This is an interesting point insofar as the second and third sentence seem to contradict each other. Am I over-simplifying? It's not a contradiction. For instance: maybe you have an specialist (a consensus epidemiologist) that says if we don't do A, B, and C, then N thousand people will die. Maybe you have another specialist (an consensus economist) that says if we do those things, it will cost the economy M billio…

I was thinking of specialists within the same specialty disagreeing. Read that way it is a contradiction but it’s now clear that’s not what you meant. I feel the point still stands!

When I read your first reply I hadn’t considered specialists in different specialties disagreeing on the same problem or issue. But that seems to further bolster my point, at least as it relates to the distance between common sense and specialized knowledge.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#414
post #412
post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> One. Wearing Mask can be uncomfortable, and it is real downside (at least for me) >> I'm sorry. Grow up. I wear a mask 8 hours a day. Surgeons do for longer. Is it really that much to ask? I honestly don't understand this mindset. > Its fine for you doesn't mean its fine for other. Not everyone the same. Whether its too much or not can be different for different people. Its not hard to understand right? Some peop…

I didn't says decision and action can't have real consequences. Every action will have its consequences. Forcing other to wear mask has its consequences too.

> Forcing other to wear mask has its consequences too.

Like lower death rates and being able to reopen everything more completely and earlier?

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#415

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And if Facebook reduces the friction to those attacks? Isn't it then back to being the problem? I think the friction was part of the design/major benefits of older forms of media

The friction of those media prevents people from criticizing blatantly false scientific studies which have made their way to television and into laws. For example the layman has been told women are paid 73 cents for a dollar for the same work, and people constantly vote to raise women’s salaries based on the assumption it is true, because TV said so. Yet programmers who use spaces instead of tabs are paid 20% more, s…

> For example the layman has been told women are paid 73 cents for a dollar for the same work, and people constantly vote to raise women’s salaries based on the assumption it is true, because TV said so. Yet programmers who use spaces instead of tabs are paid 20% more, showing that even the slimmest external variable can double one’s salary, not even talking about internal variables.

It's worse than that, because the media keeps saying "73 cents per dollar for the same work" when, first, the current number is 79 cents (73 cents is out of date), and second, it's not for the same work, it's overall across all jobs. For the same work it's around 95 cents, which is within the margin of error.

Basically, the "wage gap" doesn't even exist.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#417

America is and has always been predicated on the idea that the ordinary person has the capacity to make decisions that guide the republic, either as elector or elected. This idea is the basis of all democracies, generally. Whenever I read that people “aren’t educated” enough or are “unduly influenced” by media, e.g., newspapers, television, or social media, I like to remind myself of this. I notice that there is, and…

The debate of electing competent politicians is pretty old. Plato criticized democracy and advocated for rule by wise philosopher kings. In the 1900s it manifests as a debate in Europe where communism gives it a go. In more modern times, Singapore is more on the side of “meritocratic rule over people” than not.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#418
post #396

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Honestly, having studied a bunch of official figures that I « was surprised of », I found there were just blatant lies covered by a scientific stamp (actually someone succeeded to pass a paragraph from Mein Kampf into the same journals, after replacing « Jews » by « Men »). The « scientific evidence » we’re governed with is frequently grossly manipulated, and yet it routinely passes peer review, journal publication a…

About the Mein Kampf thing. Were you referring to the grievance studies affair [1]? There is a documentary on it on YouTube [2]. Definitely recommend the watch. Funny too. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair [2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLHyNSlsz449SOhzpo7Cl...

Jay Leno did it better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_pw8duzGUg

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#419
post #259

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Boy do I hate that phrase. It's absolutely incorrect from a neuroscience perspective. Words can in fact hurt you, and, depending on circumstances, cause long term psychological damage. Here's a place to start to learn more if you want: https://www.td.org/insights/the-neuroscience-of-reward-and-t...

Hurt has acquired multiple meanings. The phrase you hate refers to "hurt" of the bone-breaking variety. To me, that makes it clear. But maybe it's confusing.

Fun fact, Tylenol works not only on physical pain but also emotional pain, because of shared mechanics in the brain.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as news anymore. It is infotainment designed to shock, outrage and be sticky for the sole purpose of selling advertising . Additionally, the FTC and SEC have failed us in letting such enormous consolidation. Just look at something like Parler that got popular for a hot minute but will fade back to obscurity whence it came. We need to start taxing advertising revenue aggressively to make disinfo…

I suspect that Parler along with other alternative social media sites like Gab will be with us for a long time. They fill a need. If you've been banned from Facebook, you have to go somewhere and right now these alternative sites fill that gap. I don't see Parler having a billion users any time soon, though.

I'm very interested in the Parler experiment:

What impact, if any, will verified identities have on social media?

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