881–890 of 918 posts
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"Wrong" is a judgment. Why are you judging people for judging people?
If you're arguing that judging people is ok, I think you could do a better job than tu quoque.
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I can only remain bemused at how some people weigh things; 300,000 people were arrested in 2020 for possession of marijuana [1]. There is nothing short-sighted about wishing the free so many people of the misery of being under the same thumb (the penal system) that you bemoan for Assange and Snowden. 1. https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/317793-people-were-a...
It’s interesting that you chose to omit the more recent stats, as well as to notice that under the proposed change those people could still be in trouble for illegally possessing a controlled substance. But even then, it’s not just “2 guys” we’re talking about here. It’s 350 million people who are being illegally spied on and lied to. Dropping the charges against Assange and Snowden and apologizing to them would be a…
I pasted the first link I found but since you're trying to insinuate something about my motives:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/irisdorbian/2023/10/19/weed-arr...
> The exact figure was 227,108 arrests. Of that number, 92% were for possession only. This number is a slight jump from 2021 when the FBI reported a total of 219,489 arrests for marijuana.
Your point being what? That 220k arrested is a dramatic improvement over 300k?
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I don't see how that helps. I am deeply confused by much of BDSM, but I am aware that some people report enjoying the experience of not having any control, of their ability to choose being taken away from them. Can you also give an example of what you mean by "free will" such that your chosen definition does help?
To me, the idea of knowing that I exist and that I can do things with that existence, is free will. I dont see how I could exist, knowing that I can do things, without doing things. Hence they are inextricably tied, to me.
Personally, I've never heard that definition of free will, to know that you are choosing; and for occasions where I don't even realise I'm making a choice (e.g. when failing to notice I've been given a false dichotomy, or which fork of a road I take on long walks), I still have what I would call a conscious experience of them… but then, for me, "consciousness" is usually "qualia" (but if the sentence is more complex then it may also be for example one of "not asleep/comatose" or "not subconscious/pre-conscious").
Likewise, my default (in the absence of further context, e.g. being on this website) assumption when I hear "free will" is that the person using those words means something like a supernatural soul, but the underlying physical phenomena which is actually backing this is some combination of hidden information and being too complex to predict, which is why we also witness animism in various forms
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I don't see how that helps. I am deeply confused by much of BDSM, but I am aware that some people report enjoying the experience of not having any control, of their ability to choose being taken away from them. Can you also give an example of what you mean by "free will" such that your chosen definition does help?
BDSM people (hopefully) willingly choose to have that experience.
On the subject of not having a mental representation of what this means, I have also been pondering recently about "literally unthinkable thoughts", which may directly sound like the same kind of paradox, but is at the meta-level and about the same kind of (apparent) paradox (that isn't a paradox at all for the people using the terms in those ways): https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2024/04/30-13.54.02.html
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Pretty sure the Internet has not only not made manufacture of consent obsolete, it has greatly aided it. The book already calls out the public wanting truth for a dollar. Now they can have a custom truth that caters to their biases for a fraction of a cent! However, that doesn't mean anything for the subtle message this "truth" carries: a TikTok video can still carry a call to action just as well as a newspaper artic…
Don't you think your own example contradicts your premise? People have radically different biases. And so manufacturing consent requires the elimination of dissenting views, yet the internet specifically enables those views to flourish. For instance I had absolutely no idea what you were talking about with regards to Bin Laden, yet 30 seconds later I was reading a letter he wrote that there have apparently been wides…
Here's what I mean by manufacture of consent - the system knows your "syntax": the set of memes you'll respond to, and can deliver any message over that channel. Note that another person's "syntax" may be different, yet the same message can be delivered to both of you while maintaining the illusion of information topic diversity.
It's also possible to eliminate a viewpoint by associating it with people who are crazy, or otherwise unpalatable. By spreading stories about a select few people on the right, for example, the mainstream media has now manufactured a "far-right" label that can now be used to mean "anything a Berkeley coffee shop customer would disagree with". Here's a recent example: https://www.politico.eu/article/alternative-for-germany-afd-... After a few pages of ridiculing the supporters they interview a single person, a chain smoking mother of 8 from Eastern Germany. The implication of course being: if you listen to anything these people say, that's who you are. Never mind that even chain-smoking mothers of 8 are supposed to have representation in a democracy.
Or you can stop an effort to create some financial accountability with a simple "they are with the Russians" and leave it at that.
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Don't you think your own example contradicts your premise? People have radically different biases. And so manufacturing consent requires the elimination of dissenting views, yet the internet specifically enables those views to flourish. For instance I had absolutely no idea what you were talking about with regards to Bin Laden, yet 30 seconds later I was reading a letter he wrote that there have apparently been wides…
Notice that you had to seek that content out. The algorithm would have just kept you safely cocooned in your bubble. This Bin Laden content was viral. Spread like wildfire. Talked about on the news. And you had 0 awareness of it. If this doesn't convince you that information bubbles exist, I don't know what will. Here's what I mean by manufacture of consent - the system knows your "syntax": the set of memes you'll re…
This sort of propaganda/censorship package is tried by literally every single collapsing empire, and it just backfires horribly every single time. The only modern feature will be propaganda bots, but that will likely be even worse. Because the thing is, you can't just convince people that 2+2=5 by screaming it at them endlessly. The only time propaganda really works is on topics that people know absolutely nothing about and have no preformed opinions - like certain wars. But even that tends to very liminal, and then once people realize that things weren't exactly as they were led to believe, they're now that much less trusting of you.
I think your own example also emphasizes this reality. AfD isn't unique. Such parties are skyrocketing in popularity all throughout Europe. See the Sweden Democrats [2] who may soon become the largest party in Sweden. If you took out the ad hominem attacks against them, that Wiki page would be about 10% as long. Yet not only is the propaganda failing to change minds in the desired direction, if anything it seems to be having the exact opposite effect. Like always. But if politicians, let alone countries, were capable of learning from the past - then we might not find ourselves where are today, playing history on repeat like hamsters going around on a treadmill, with little but technology offering a refreshing change of scenery.
[1] - https://fortune.com/2023/02/15/trust-in-media-low-misinform-...
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Everything I've seen suggests that weed mimics or even exacerbates ADHD symptoms, where are you getting that it improves them?
There are studies. I think it's simply that ADHD tends to have anxiety at its root or at least it's a major component. Cannabis is also procognitive in appropriate dosages.
What an embarrassment to anyone in the DEA or public policy in general that this is still a thing. Not sure how the DEA can consider itself a serious organization.
Hard to judge the DEAs effectiveness off something like this. You have very little insight on their actual effectiveness and workings on everything, yet your comment seems to summarize the entire organization off a completely biased political comment.
It’s a single data point that is indicative of an entire system.
The war on drugs failed and has caused more deaths than any drug.
And the criminalization of cannabis and psychedelics over the last several decades ought to be criminal - based in no reality of science.
The DEA is a failed organization and continues to be.
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Often enough, it isn’t an actual ATM. You pay at the counter like you usually would using a card or an NFC payment method (e.g., Apple Pay), but the payment reader processes it as an ATM withdrawal transaction (hence an extra transaction fee of a few dollars). There is no physical cash involved at any point in this (at least not on the dispensary premises).
Maybe this is a state by state thing? I have never observed this in WA.
In WA, it felt like it was a pretty even 50/50 split (maybe with a heavier lean towards cash) between places accepting cash-only and those that accept debit as well (in addition to cash obviously). I dont remember any that accepted credit cards. All of this is a more recent situation though, as I still remember that just 6-8 years ago, pretty much every single place used to be cash-only. I also noticed some dispensaries experimenting with rather unconvential methods at different points in time too (e.g., Uncle Ike’s using a payment terminal for like a year that worked similarly to a regular debit card one, but it was using crypto as an intermediate medium on the backend to process the payment).
In NYC, it feels like everyone just accepts cards like usual, from grey-market ones to the legal ones.
However, I infinitely prefer the WA situation with cannabis over the NYC one for bajillion other reasons that are entirely unrelated to payment methods.