351–360 of 433 posts
In case someone reading this is thinking similar thoughts: there's no version of reality where doing this will solve any problem. Don't.
But ultimately that is what you get for fucking with the people for too long and assuming wealth/status/power is an armor. Source: the French revolution
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You've basically just said anyone who doesn't hold the "approved" opinion is wrong and then you called them names. But you wrapped it in extra words so that it's less flagrant. Did you ever think that maybe people do in fact believe what they say they believe?
Everybody who believes civil violence is a productive solution to any problems we have in 2026 is wrong. I don't see myself as having called anyone names; rather, I said that the point was so banal that the only conversation you're likely to see is from people who get dopamine hits from taking the edgy other side of the argument.
I'd love your thoughts on the violence people committed during the following civil uprising: BLM riots, Minneapolis ICE (there are many more instances through history but Ive selected the most recent ones for simplicity).
Where you condemning the actions of people in those threads, encouraging them to have more civil "discussion" or do you think it was the duty of people to take arms against injustice?
If so, how do you corroborate the justification of violence with your current stance?
Thank you.
In case someone reading this is thinking similar thoughts: there's no version of reality where doing this will solve any problem. Don't.
Why not? There are only two redresses against elites who don't abide by a social contract: the law & courts, and physical violence. The courts are much preferable, but legislators now serve those elites rather than the public, and the courts are impotent or unwilling to use what power remains with them. What's left but physical violence to either dissuade or punish? The specific stigma against physical violence (and…
I often can't help but see the "all violence is bad" narrative as another tool of oppression by the ruling class. Even if that isn't its intent, it certainly seems to serve their purposes.
Political violence is not acceptable in a democracy. Full stop, no "but". That's all that needs to be said on this thread.
Political violence is wielded against dissidents in the United States constantly . Another way to think of this is that a government that resorts to political violence against its own citizens is not a democracy.
When a State becomes undemocratic, it can more easily wield that violence against its own people. Part of the founding ideals of the US is the hope that the people would oust such a State, explicitly through the threat and application of violence if necessary, thus the second amendment.
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Does it really matter who is more violent? The fact of the matter is both sides do have a nonzero amount of crazy/violent people and both sides could treat the other with more respect instead of furthering division. You will notice I never said that both sides have the same amount of violence (since I don't think that that's actually relevant), so you are responding to a point I never made to begin with.
Vending machines and guns both kill people, so we should expend equal effort addressing the problems with both. Do I have that right? This obsession with just pretending the two sides are mirror images, who simply need respect each other more is just lazy thinking. Interrogate what the contemporary American right values and believes. It is deep seated resentment (urban elites!), hate (owning the libs), bigotry (mass…
I am seeing information about the attacker that show he was being influenced by Rationalist thinkers - he posted about “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares. This information of course might be false, so take the words below with a grain of salt. I might be completely wrong. When an influential group in the Valley that has ties to many tech companies spends years speading rhetoric…
Yudkowsky followers already have killed at least six people.
How many people believe continued AI "progress" would be so dangerous that it should be prohibited? 136,513 people signed a statement to that effect:
https://superintelligence-statement.org/
The name of the man that threw the Molotov cocktail is Daniel Alejandro Moreno-Gama, and "Daniel Moreno" is one of the signatures on the statement. I concede that his motivation almost certainly was to try to slow down AI "progress".
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Everybody who believes civil violence is a productive solution to any problems we have in 2026 is wrong. I don't see myself as having called anyone names; rather, I said that the point was so banal that the only conversation you're likely to see is from people who get dopamine hits from taking the edgy other side of the argument.
> Everybody who believes civil violence is a productive solution to any problems we have in 2026 is wrong I'd love your thoughts on the violence people committed during the following civil uprising: BLM riots, Minneapolis ICE (there are many more instances through history but Ive selected the most recent ones for simplicity). Where you condemning the actions of people in those threads, encouraging them to have more c…
The idea that people think that the BLM riots are somehow a mic drop argument for the effectiveness of civil violence is just further illustration of how far apart our premises are.
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I have worked on electoral and initiative campaigns, and traveled thousands of miles to knock on doors. I’ve donated money. I’ve called my congresspeople. I’ve gone to and spoken at public meetings. I’ve protested, been tear gassed, beaten, and thrown in jail. I’ve been doing all of this continuously for about 20 years. I can tell you, from extensive experience going through the official channels, that the formal mec…
If you don’t have large support for your ideas then it shouldn’t be a surprise it’s hard. But that’s the intent of the system? Represent what most people want.
Thankfully, there is a paper on this that you can read, so that we don’t need to argue about this.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
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> I had a professor in college who was big on entrepreneurship. So he formed an organization, got others involved, went to Washington to lobby his rep. His rep said “let’s do it”, and sat him down with her staff to write a bill. That bill was brought to the floor for a vote and passed. Until you’ve done that, dont complain the system doesn’t work This is a sign of the system not working. A well connected professor, w…
Well connected? A professor at a small college from a town of 15,000? Nope. She had been working on entrepreneurship for a while so had met her reps years ago. No money involved. Hell, not even from a very big state.
In case someone reading this is thinking similar thoughts: there's no version of reality where doing this will solve any problem. Don't.
The type of person who posts here is unlikely to be the type of criminal that does that sort of thing. The virtue signaling is well-noted - good to have good citizens on here with strongly-worded top posts that get upvoted to the top. I'm just waiting for dang, et. al to fix our thread voting system as it's a little too Reddity around here these last days.