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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • Of course I’m biased. Everyone is. But am I wrong? My accusation was not that OP is biased, but that the meme itself was trying to secretly promote a right-wing narrative. I understand if you don’t trust me as a biased observer, but you can still read my points and decide whether they are factually correct or not.

    If you think I’ve made an error, feel free to respond with a correction. I’m not here to flame anyone, just to point out that I see a vehicle for disinformation. I respect many philosophies on both the left and the right, even if I disagree with them, but regardless of “sides” everyone deserves to make informed decisions arrived at by their own reasoning. When you are manipulated without your knowledge, your ability to reason properly is taken away from you.


  • I can understand your viewpoint, but I don’t agree with it. I think you’re missing the signs that this was written to promote a right-wing narrative about leftists.

    You say you think it’s written by a “well-meaning liberal perspective,” but none of the things you mention point to it being a liberal’s perspective, except for the implication that you are a well-meaning liberal and thus you identify with it. Coming from a liberal who interacts with mostly liberal people, and who has been friends with people on the left and right and talked philosophy with both: A, B, and E are just not written from the normal perspective of a left-leaning person.

    By your explanation, you clearly understand the C and D roles best, which are the right-wing descriptions. Could it be that you are projecting a liberal perspective on something that is clearly a right-wing narrative because you are used to seeing this narrative, despite identifying as a liberal now?


  • EDIT: for those downvoting me, I would be happy to engage in a civil discussion about why you think I’m wrong, and even change my mind if I’m mistaken.

    This is extremely dumb for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it’s very clearly written with a certain bias.

    A (the communist) is describing a tankie. But generally someone who identifies specifically as a communist is not authoritarian, they’re closer to anarchocommunism than the reverse.

    B (the lefty antifascist) describes them as a subtype of A, but antifascists are diametrically opposed to tankies, ideologically. Also, “antifascist” is a word that has long been used to label a specific group of leftists… calling them “lefty antifascists” implies that there are also “right-wing antifascists,” trying to equivocate the sides by generalizing the word. Also, most importantly, the description is 100% bullshit.

    C (the hard right) a single token addition of a very generic “hard” right person, to appear balanced. No making fun of this person like in the rest of the descriptions, just a list of facts… except “always an arsehole” which I would argue most of these people would enjoy reading about themselves because they would think it was funny and kind of true. Clearly the target audience.

    D (the contrarian) this is the modern right wing lowest common denominator person, and an accurate description of the archetype, but no mention of left/right in this description. Wonder why?

    E (the peacenik) what? Peacenik is just another historically left-wing-associated label. These people do not have a unified view of how to end the conflict, and certainly don’t frequently suggest ceding land to an invader. That’s a really stupid take on pacifism, and it’s just another dig at the left.

    This is definitely dumb and probably just plain old propaganda.



  • In my experience, this has always been a problem after a forum grows beyond a certain size. It’s not really a Reddit-exclusive thing. It’s also not related to karma/reputation-tracking, IMO.

    Early adopters of a small, somewhat empty community are people who want to grow the community and encourage posting. Discussion is bright and careful in certain ways because it’s usually just a few commenters interacting with each other who all want the same thing.

    Once a community grows big enough to support lurkers and a variety of topics, with multifaceted discussion happening naturally, you have a familiar effect happen: you know how people are disproportionately more likely to review a product or business if they had a negative experience than a positive one? Well, in a similar way, when there’s enough content to lurk (and not be one of the early enthusiasts who post in spite of a lack of content, as a duty to help the community grow), then lurkers are more likely to come out of the woodwork and join a discussion when they see something they disagree with or feel strongly about.

    Honestly, though, it has a few silver linings. I grew up learning a lot from arguments online in various places. Sometimes they are handled well and sometimes they are handled poorly by the participants. Learn from both. It’s great to see two sides of an issue, even a petty one. It can teach you a ton about how to behave well, how to actually persuade someone on a topic, and how to avoid conflict in the first place. It can also teach you about a controversial topic you knew little about, and spark your curiosity to learn more (if only to refute something with citations) and sometimes change your opinion altogether.

    The healthy/toxic dichotomy starts in your own mind. You can’t control others, but you can control yourself. So find those little positive nuggets where you can.








  • I’m not saying this to be an asshole, because I’m happy that you got to the right conclusion eventually, but I have to clarify for history’s sake: if you thought Trump was playing 4D chess in 2015-2016 then you were being duped. Most of us understood what he was from the get-go. Claims of 4D chess have always been stupid.

    Again, I’m happy that you figured it out. Everyone makes mistakes. But “we” didn’t think he was playing 4D chess. The hypothesis about Musk/Twitter above is hardly the same.


  • I honestly only made it a few minutes in, and there is probably plenty of merit to the rest of her perspective. But… I just couldn’t get past the “AI doesn’t exist” part. I get that you don’t know or care about the difference and you associate the term “AI” with sci-fi-like artificial sentience/AGI, but “AI” has been used for decades to refer to things that mimic intelligence, not just full-on artificial general intelligence. Algorithms governing NPC behavior and pathfinding in video games is AI, and that’s a perfectly accurate description. SmarterChild was AI… even ELIZA was AI. Stuff like GAN models and LLMs are certainly AI. The goal posts for “intelligence” have moved farther and farther back with every innovation. The AI we have now was fantasy just 20 years ago. Even just five years ago, to most people.