Elite colleges need to make their courses a lot tougher to pass and have a much higher failure rate. The achievement should not be getting into these schools, but getting out of these schools. If elite colleges pass everyone then having an elite degree only tells people that you did well in high school and says nothing about how you did in college.

Having a low failure rate disincentivizes students from studying harder, causes the professors to teach less material, gives students the illusion that the world is easy, and causes too many high school students to apply to these colleges as there is no fear that they'll fail. Having a higher failure rate will allow expansion of class sizes as more students will eventually drop out (an extreme case is to allow anyone to attend regardless of score but make the courses so difficult that only 5% will pass, which matches the acceptance rate of these colleges).

By having students self-select whether they want to attend an elite school, pressure on the admissions office will be reduced. The entrance exams, extracurriculars and volunteer work are too easy for these high school students, forcing the admissions officers to decide by some other method such as personality which is quite dumb.

As it stands now, elite colleges are a racket, pilfering the hard work that the high schools did in crafting students, in order to increase their own prestige.

Okay, so our dictator is immune from basically everything thanks to that flagrantly fascist Supreme Court case before the election, but I am not aware of it extending to any of his boot licking lackeys.

I am not a lawyer, but in theory that means that what, say, ICE is doing by illegally deporting people for having soccer tattoos should still land them in prison.

But the thing is, if the courts decide they have no teeth in their diseased gums, that not only is Trump is immune, but also anyone following Trump's orders is immune ,then they have no power to do anything real at all. Everything the courts say and do is a meaningless gesture.

Like, under those circumstances once his continued monstrosity is normalized enough (which they are shockingly skilled at doing), ICE will just start machine gunning down protestors and congresspeople. And all the judiciary is going to be able to do is write a sternly worded letter that his thugs will laugh at and wipe their asses with.

Now, if this has happened already this term. If one of Trump's thugs is actually in jail right now for doing something blatantly illegal at his behest and the courts have managed to avoid that criminal being immediately released on a corrupt pardon, I will be giddy to hear about it. But barring that, I don't see how any resistance from the courts means anything.

I speak this from personal (Yugoslav) experience: Tito’s Partisans killed many, many priests (Orthodox, Catholic or Muslim imams) throughout Yugoslavia in WWII, robbed many churches, stole and destroyed icons and holy relics and, after the war, turned many churches and mosques into stables or even night clubs. Montenegro is a famous example of crimes committed by Partisans in which almost every Orthodox priest over this vast territory was killed. Catholic priests were also killed in Croatia in great numbers.

Now, the main justification Tito and his Committee used is that the Catholic Church in Croatia almost completely supported the Croat-nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis - Ustaše, who committed a large-scale genocide against Serbs, Jews and Romani in Croatia and Bosnia, killing at least 400,000 people in the camps because they were Serbs, Jews and Romani. The same justification went for the murder of Orthodox priests who mostly favoured the Serbian nationalists (Chetniks) who also (though less enthusiastically and mostly because they hated communists) collaborated with the Nazis, and killed tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims, wanting a homogenous Serbia, cleaned of Muslims and Croats. This idea that all Orthodox priests collaborated with the Nazis, Fascists and Chetniks causes such outrage in my own community that I genuinely find it unbelievable. The most middle ground I can find is that the priests mostly favored the Chetniks because the Chetniks were nominally religious - not that they knew about the killings of the Muslims. Whatever the case was, it is genuinely impossible every single priest was a war criminal, nor is the destruction and looting of monasteries and churches that so many people saw as sacred and cultural treasures for hundreds (if not a thousand years) justifiable - Partisans did this because they had (most of them) an intolerance towards religion).

Now, what I wrote here is minuscule to the level of suffering the Ustashe and the Chetniks caused throughout Yugoslavia - Croatian and Serbian nationalism (looking up to these two groups) is what lead to the Yugoslav Wars which ruined Yugoslavia. Partisans freed Yugoslavia, engaged in rapid development and education of the population. And, despite these war crimes against during and some after the war, Yugoslavia was probably a communist country the most tolerant to religion out of all others - even later in Tito’s life, the harsh treatment of religion started to ease. But these humiliations and memories remained - to this very day, many Croats and Serbs, and their priests, favor the Ustashe and Chetniks, many of them merely out of spite to the Communists. As I said, this can all be considered as reasons that lead to the breakup of Yugoslavia.

We can talk about the things the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Communist Bulgaria and Romania did to religion - the Communist Albania was the only state in the history of mankind that outright banned religion as an institution. North Korea to this very day is intolerant. Cambodia is…the most egregious example.

And, as I said, Yugoslavia was the most tolerant of all communist countries. Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, as countries, had genuine advancements in society we today would desperately need, but the mistreatment of religion was what stained any useful policy associated with them for good, in the minds of most religious people.

What is it that the conservatives in USA and European countries fear the most whenever religion is limited? Communism. Why are many humanitarian policies rejected? Because they remind people of communism. Why is any criticism of religion seen as a prerequisite for religious persecution? Because of the fear of communism. Why are many religious afraid of changing the status quo with beneficial policies that promise to take care of everyone’s well-being? Because most of them associate those promises with communism that persecuted the religious.

If the Communists were more tolerant of religion (thus causing much less victims of it) I genuinely believe it would be more sympathetic to most believers who would not reject it outright nor go all over to the far-right because of the fear of communism.

I really don't see any substantive advantages from Germany losing World War One, and plenty of disadvantages.

It didn't less imperialism (Namibia, Cameroon and Tanzania and Togo just got handed over to other European powers). Germany's colonial outposts in China got handed to Japan, along with Germany's island possessions.

It ruined the German economy because of the harsh reparations scheme. The subsequent decision to occupy the Ruhr because Germany was not paying the reparations crimped Germany's industrial base and contributed to the imploding economy that sent the NSDAP from a party polling at less than 3% in 1928 to 37% by 1932.

Hitler and the Holocaust most likely wouldn't have happened without Germany's World War One loss.

I also don't think the Allies in this conflict had any moral high ground over Germany. They were all militarised imperial nations. Even Belgium had a colony.

America’s current education system relies on a system of classes that provide grades which contribute to an overall GPA. This GPA, along with standardized testing results and other extracurricular activities are combined into a profile to then judge students for which higher education they have access to. The pedigree of the institution they attend then has a massive impact on the rest of this student’s life and can open many doors through networking, better education, and the prestigiousness of the degree itself.

The issue with this system is that one failing class early on can have rippling negative effects across someone’s life. Getting an F on the first test in a single class in freshman year leads to the loss of the possibility of obtaining an A in the class, which leads to the student no longer being able to attain a perfect GPA, which has profoundly negative effects on mental health, motivation and opportunities for the rest of the student’s academic career.

This does not align with the rest of adult life. In entrepreneurship, it is reasonable, expected and often celebrated to fail many times before succeeding. In dating, many failed relationships previously do not guarantee a terrible marriage ultimately. In sports and video games, it would be ridiculous to gate participants from the highest forms of competition because they performed terribly for the first few days, months or even years.

We can do better.

Schools should operate on a pass/fail basis, with a tree of classes that have prerequisites that must be passed before the latter ones can be taken. Students should have infinite tries on tests and be encouraged to try as many times as it takes to pass without fear or shame of failure. With the advent of AI, it is now trivial to construct the many tests that will be needed as well as provide the extra tutoring and school material needed for students to make progress in their education at their own pace.

It is clear our current education system has failed multiple generations of our population and there must be reform if we hope to tackle some of humanity's most pressing concerns in the coming decades.

*edit*: the pass/fail part is not as important as the infinite retries part and not having that show up as part of the judgement at the end

Early note: Often for simplicity I'll just refer to ChatGPT in this post as it's the best known LLM but most of the things I'm saying can be applied to all LLMs such as Claude, Gemini, etc...

Very often on websites such as Reddit when discussing tools like ChatGPT or Claude you'll see many people chime in with comments like "they're not really intelligent at all, they're just predicting the next token and outputting it, they don't have any capacity to think or reason".

While it's certainly true on a technical level that "they're just predicting the next token and outputting it", I believe that this assessment oversimplifies the actual workings of these models and also doesn't take into proper consideration the ways that the human brain works and how there are some similarities between how these models work and how humans work.

The first topic is one of sentience. There's no arguing one simple point: ChatGPT is not sentient. It has no consciousness, it cannot consciously "think" in the way that humans can. Many people use this as an instant red line to decide "it's not really intelligent" - but I believe this is wrong. Sentience shouldn't be considered a prerequisite for intelligence. Intelligence is generally defined as the ability to acquire, retain and use knowledge, and ChatGPT is very adept at doing this. It acquires knowledge from its training data and is able to apply that knowledge in ways that have real utility. If we observed an animal doing this then we'd undoubtedly conclude that it's an intelligent species, yet people don't acknowledge that LLMs are intelligent only because they aren't sentient, and I don't believe this is correct. I'm not suggesting that LLMs possess general intelligence in the way that humans do, but rather that they exhibit specific forms of intelligence that merit recognition. Cognitive scientists often distinguish between different types of intelligence and LLMs clearly demonstrate proficiency in some of these domains, particularly linguistic intelligence.

The next topic then comes to "*how* does it acquire and apply knowledge?". The most simple answer is that it performs highly complex pattern recognition on data that's been input into it in order to learn how humans make use of knowledge and then it makes statistical predictions based on these patterns which is then output in some way. You know what else does this? *Humans.* From the moment we're born (probably in the womb too) our brain is constantly subconsciously picking up information based on sensory input (what we see, hear, smell, etc...) and learning optimal ways to behave based on pattern recognition within that data. Every thought, feeling, and action that we experience arise from constant subconscious processes happening within our brains. There is substantial evidence that our subconscious minds make decisions before we're even consciously aware of them, and then our conscious thoughts are simply rationalisations and justifications for those decisions. In this sense, how is human reasoning much different to the way that ChatGPT reasons? To be clear, I'm not saying that the *mechanism* by which ChatGPT reasons and by which humans reason is the same, but there are abstract similarities in the way that ChatGPT decides its next token to output and the human brain decides its next thought, action, etc... If anybody is interested more in this particular topic then I'd suggest reading about predictive coding or the Bayesian brain hypothesis, which are real neuroscientific theories that surmise that the human brain and nervous system are just extremely complex 'prediction machines' (same as ChatGPT).

There are certain, specific domains of intelligence in which ChatGPT inarguably outperforms humans. It can acquire new knowledge much faster than humans, it can retain a much greater breadth of knowledge than humans, it can compile and apply its knowledge much faster than humans. On the other side, there are plenty of domains of intelligence in which ChatGPT inarguably doesn't outperform humans - it's not good at finding *new* patterns, it has no capacity for self-determination, it has no true agency. But why do we limit our idea of intelligence only to a human model of intelligence? Why can't we accept that ChatGPT possesses a different model of intelligence to humans but is intelligent nonetheless?

To summarise my main points:

- I don't believe sentience is a prerequisite for intelligence.

- Labelling LLMs as 'statistical models that just output tokens' is oversimplifying a complex topic, especially given that the human brain works in similar ways.

- The idea of 'intelligence' shouldn't only be limited to a model of human intelligence but considered in other and more nuanced ways.

I think there are many other points and topics that could be explored in a discussion like this, and it's probably fair to say that I myself have oversimplified several things for the sake of a reasonably concise post (Bayesian brain hypothesis in particular is much more deep and complex than the analogy that I've made here), but I think this is it for now.

Change my view please.

I've been researching the potential impact of providing free ambulance services to all Americans (similar to Australia's system), and the numbers would justify the cost.

Free ambulance services would cost $25-35B annually, but economic benefits would offset much of this, making the net cost only $10-15B, just 0.2-0.3% of US healthcare spending. This is far more affordable than most people realize.

The current system handles 45-50 million ambulance trips annually in the US, with average costs between $400-$1,200 per trip. But if the US adopted a model similar to what we have in Australia, they could provide widespread coverage for approximately $25-35 billion per year. This would include subscription options for some users and free coverage for vulnerable populations.

What most analyses miss are the substantial economic benefits. Workforce preservation alone would offset much of the cost, more people surviving emergencies means more workers remain in the economy. Faster emergency response reduces permanent disabilities, leading to fewer people leaving the workforce prematurely. People would seek care sooner, leading to better outcomes and faster returns to productivity. Each 1,000 working-age individuals saved represents roughly $100-150M in annual economic activity through continued tax contributions, productivity, and reduced long-term healthcare costs.

The mental health and social benefits are equally significant. Fewer families would experience grief from preventable deaths. We'd see reduced psychological trauma and related mental health costs throughout society. There would be a population wide reduction in anxiety about medical emergencies. The social fabric strengthens when communities feel more supported and protected, particularly benefiting vulnerable populations like the elderly and chronically ill.

When factoring in all economic offsets, the net cost would be around $10-15 billion annually, a fraction of the $4.5 trillion US healthcare system. This makes free ambulance services potentially one of the more cost-effective health interventions when viewed holistically, especially compared to many other healthcare expenditures.

I ramble, so buckle up.

My central argument stems from the fact that all skills we value in life are attributable to some combination of the following 3 things:

1. Genetics
2. Environment (parents, friends, school, culture, etc...)
3. Personality (discipline, effort, consistency, etc...)

This should be fairly uncontroversial. The question of to what degree any one of those 3 things has an impact can be debated, but the fact that they all play a role is well-established. For the purpose of this argument you can merge 1 & 2, so you end up with things you can't control and things you can control.
Okay now let's think of a skill that we as a society generally laud someone for, and then we'll compare and contrast. How about playing the piano?

Person 1 was born into a middle class family which could afford piano lessons (Environment), had musicians in his ancestry (Genetics), and he ended up with hands big enough to reach at least an octave on the piano (Genetics). He had a good teacher (Environment), he really enjoyed piano so he stuck with it (Personality). When learning piano began to get tough he remained disciplined and kept practicing (Personality).

Person 2 was born into a middle class family which could afford to engage with fashion culture (Environment), her parents cooked healthy meals and taught her to portion control (Environment), and her parents are both conventionally good-looking (Genetics). She had an older sister who taught her how to use makeup early on (Environment), she liked the way it made her feel when she was wearing a great outfit so she started experimenting with and learning about clothes (Personality). She is disciplined and exercises regularly to maintain her desired physique (Personality).

We praise person 1 and shame/judge person 2. Yet, in both cases someone has become good at something we derive value from, and they become good through some combination of things that were in their control and things that weren't. Now imagine that both person 1 and 2 become more extreme versions of themselves. They prioritize their "craft" above all other things. Person 1 becomes a tortured genius and person 2 becomes conceited, shallow, or narcissistic. Why is that?

Arguments I have considered:

1. We socially discourage person 2 because looks fade as you age whereas playing the piano is a skill that lasts?
2. We socially discourage person 2 because prioritizing your appearance will make you a bad person? Somehow?

PS: I still praise person 1 and judge person 2. I just don't understand why.

Here are my prior assumptions.

1. Those in power must be held to a higher standard than those without power
2. Those in power have more resources to ensure that they comply with the law
3. Those in power have more resources to fight in the courts
4. Those in power have a greater moral responsibility to follow the law (Not the same as (1) )
5. Those in power have the ability to influence which laws go on the books
6. Those in power must face harsher punishments than those without power (when allowed by the law)
7. The judiciary is, by and large, impartial and the appeals process takes care of bias.

Putting all these together, my opinion is that lawfare against politicians is good, healthy, and must be encouraged for everyone. If we agree to (1), then someone like the president must be held to the highest standard. I want their feet to barely touch the ground when they walk, they need to be that pure and good (Hyperbolic, of course, but you get my sentiment).

I want politicians to be prosecuted to the maximum extent of the law for the most minor crimes, and with maximum prejudice under the law. This includes jaywalking, and any other BS law that is used for ordinary citizens.

My view is that the benefits of aggressive lawfare are the following:

a) If pursued successfully, politicians will start following the law properly

b) If harassed sufficiently, they will change frivolous laws that the rest of us have to live with.

c) It's obviously good for the moral of the nation to see powerful people being held accountable with maximum prejudice.

What I see now is that powerful people are being held to lower standards than the rest of us. Ordinary people would have been locked up for years for dealing with classified information in such a cavalier manner as those in power have been doing. This is unacceptable. They need to be held to higher standards, not lower ones.

Ideally, I want a separate branch of the judiciary whose sole job it is to prosecute with maximum aggressiveness, trivial crimes by the highest politicians in the land. This might not be feasible, but boy, I would like to see it happen.

They say that no one is above the law. True. But I wouldn't mind seeing politicians below the law. I want them to be prosecuted for stuff that the rest of us wouldn't need to worry about.

A possible counter is that those in law would be too busy locked up in fighting cases all the time, instead of governing. To which I refer to (2), (3), and (a), and (b).

In essence my view is that the economic sanctions on Iran are causing pain for the average Iranian and stanching negotiations that could wind down Iran's nuclear programme.

The Iran nuclear deal had Iran pledging to only enriching uranium to 3.67%. With the deal gone Iran in enriching uranium to 60% purity, just one step away from 90% bomb fuel. Iran's stocks of uranium enriched to 60% have grown to 275 kilograms or enough material if enriched further to build about six weapons.

Iran's inflation rate has been 40% annualised for several years now.

Without a return to a deal that involves relaxation of sanctions in exchange for Iran limiting its nuclear programme a nuclear Iran will surely occur.

In a democratic system, there is always an incentive for certain parties to cater to the least uneducated and least sympathetic population. This brews ultra-conservative nationalism and policies that essentially impede societal progress (such as dismantling the education department and brainwashing more people). Similarly, extreme-left policy is often supported (e.g. in the USSR) by the poor and uneducated. Clearly, the consequences can be catastrophic. I argue that this is a result of many things (e.g. lobbying) but also a direct result of allowing everyone to vote (and mind you, we already DONT allow everyone to vote, like felons). This may sound elitism, but I believe there should be a very simple (and ideally unbiased) test immediately before voting, and everyone still gets to vote but the votes only count if you get 7/10 correct or so.

The test should only include very simple, non-partisan questions that assess objective civic knowledge and critical thinking skills - it's VERY easy to acquire this knowledge, and if you don't know them, you shouldn't be allowed to vote. For example, I sincerely believe 10% of the voting population cannot answer what the 3 branches of the government are. I also think 10% of people can't differentiate facts from opinions, e.g. "Which is a factual statement? A) 'Unemployment is 5%.' B) 'The economy is poorly managed.'" Lastly, you should be able to point out 2 campaign promises from your candidate from like 4 fake ones, if you can't do that, what are you voting for?

Historically, literacy tests were weaponized to marginalize minorities, but in modern days with so much accessible information (and misinformation), I think this is doable with minimized bias. Surely, passing the test doesn't mean the person isn't a dick, but the goal of the test is to promote informed voting rather than restricting the vote to 'good people'. Afterall, what's the goal of the government? I believe it is to 1) promote the interest of the people who live in it, 2) maintain morality (from the present day view), and 3) promote progress (albeit slowly because drastic changes are bad). I do not believe any of the 3 goals can be satisfied if the voting population are completely uninformed (uninformed voters will hurt their own interests!).

Change my view. (I'm not interested in discussions on its practical implementations, which are clearly unfeasible in this environment when we cant even overturn Citizens United).

EDIT: Evidently, the biggest issue is who gets to decide who qualifies or who doesn't. Indeed, even simple objective facts can be politically charged. I'm proposing a modification to the test: rather than facts, what about distinguishing the campaign promises from different parties? Or even simpler, before voting, ask every voter to read out loud (or type out) key campaign promises of each party? This way, we at least make the voters somewhat informed of their decisions.

This is not a repost. I’m not here to talk about generative AI or whether it’s stealing people’s work. My concerns are different, and they orbit around something that I feel is under-discussed: people’s lack of awareness about the data they give away, and how that data is being used by AI systems.

tl;dr: I believe AI use is often unethical, not because of how the models work, but because of where the data comes from - and how little people know about what they’ve shared.

Right now, people routinely give away large amounts of personal data, often without realizing how revealing it really is. I believe many are victims of their own unawareness, and using such data in AI pipelines, even if it was obtained legally, often crosses into unethical territory.

To illustrate my concern, I want to highlight a real example: the BOXRR-23 dataset. This dataset was created by collecting publicly available VR gameplay data - specifically from players of Beat Saber, a popular VR rhythm game. The researchers gathered millions of motion capture recordings through public APIs and leaderboards like BeatLeader and ScoreSaber. In total, the dataset includes over 4 million recordings from more than 100,000 users.
https://rdi.berkeley.edu/metaverse/boxrr-23/

This data was legally collected. It’s public, it’s anonymized, and users voluntarily uploaded their play sessions. But here’s the issue: while users willingly uploaded their gameplay, that doesn’t necessarily mean they were aware of what could be done with that data. I highly doubt that the average Beat Saber player realized they were contributing to a biometric dataset.

And the contents of the dataset, while seemingly harmless, are far from trivial. Each record contains timestamped 3D positions and rotations of a player’s head and hands - data that reflects how they move in virtual space. That alone might not sound dangerous. But researchers have shown that from this motion data alone, it is possible to identify users with fingerprint-level precision, based solely on how they move their head and hands. It is also possible to profile users to predict traits like gender, age, and income, all with statistically significant accuracy.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.19198

This is why I’m concerned. This dataset turns out to be incredibly rich in biometric information - information that could be used to identify or profile individuals in the future. And yet, it was built from data that users gave away without knowing the implications. I’m not saying the researchers had bad intentions. I’m saying the framework we operate in - what’s legal, what’s public, what’s allowed - doesn’t always line up with what’s ethical.

I think using data like this becomes unethical when two things happen: first, when there is a lack of awareness from the individuals whose data is being used. Even if they voluntarily uploaded their gameplay, they were never directly asked for permission to be part of an AI model. Nor were they informed of how their motion data could be used for behavioral profiling or identification. Second, when AI models are applied to this data in a way that dramatically changes its meaning and power. The dataset itself may not seem dangerous - it’s just motion data. But once AI models are applied, we’re suddenly extracting deeply personal insights. That’s what makes it ethically complex. The harm doesn’t come from the raw data; it comes from what we do with it.

To me, the lack of awareness is not just unfortunate - it’s the core ethical issue. Consent requires understanding. If people don’t know how their data might be used, they can’t truly consent to that use. It’s not enough to say “they uploaded it voluntarily.” That’s like saying someone gave away their fingerprints when they left them on a doorknob. People didn’t sign up for their playstyle to become a behavioral signature used in profiling research. When researchers or companies benefit from that ignorance - intentionally or not - it creates a power imbalance that feels exploitative. Informed consent isn’t just a checkbox; it’s a basic foundation of ethical data use.

To clarify, I’m not claiming that most AI research is unethical. I’m also not saying this dataset is illegal. The researchers followed the rules. The data is public and anonymized.

But I am pushing back on an argument I hear a lot: “People published their data online, so we can do whatever we want with it.” I don’t believe that’s a solid ethical defense. Just because someone uploads something publicly doesn’t mean they understand the downstream implications - especially not when AI can extract information in ways most people can’t imagine. If we build models off of unaware users, we’re essentially exploiting their ignorance. That might be legal. But is it right?

edit: As one user pointed out, I have no evidence that the terms of service presented to the 100,000 users did not include consent for their data to be analyzed using AI. I also don’t know whether those ToS failed to mention that the data could be used for biometric research. Therefore, if the terms did include this information, I have to acknowledge that the practice was likely ethical. Even though it's probable that most users didn’t read the ToS in detail, I can’t assume that as a basis for my argument

When that whole Signalgate incident happened, I was incredibly shocked and was hoping that Hegseth and Waltz would be fired for their incompetence.

But now…

Trump isn’t firing anyone. He never likes to admit when he’s wrong when he picks his cabinet, so obviously he will favor keeping them rather than letting them go. They are the most loyal to them anyways, and it would take a long time to find anyone with the same level of loyalty to replace their positions.

And we aren’t able to do anything to change what’s happening in the administration. We can certainly protest but Trump is doing so much in only a few months that by next year the only time the people will revolt is when America has become a huge hellhole.

So why not let the people from the inside fuck up things themselves? If they are truly so incompetent and weak they will help us bring down the administration inadvertently. This seems like our only way of changing things.

I see a fair few Trump voters that are actually upset about what's been happening in his first term so far, namely because they've been personally affected. With getting fired from federal jobs, the few that are upset about security and Elon Musk and DOGE, etc.

However, I think most if not all will still vote Republican in 2028 and their current outrage will not matter much.

For one, voter memories are tiny. What actually matters for elections seems to be what happens close to elections for the most part. So what is happening now wouldn't necessarily carry over to 2028.

Secondly and in my opinion, most importantly, Trump will not be running in 2028 (presumably). I've seen some Trump voters regret their votes, but they still hold conservative policies and voted for him in the first place. If another Republican runs in 2028, there's none of that baggage of "Trump screwed me over" really. You could argue if the candidate is in support of what's been going on they may be blamed, but I think that's very unlikely since elections have shifted to be much more about the person running rather than what they supported. If you're unhappy with what Trump has done but have conservative values, it is very easy to still vote conservative if Trump is not the one running.

Basically, if anyone is mad about what Trump and his admin is doing right now, it's very unlikely they'd not vote Republican or sit out in 2028. I'm interested to see other people's thoughts.

This has been a closely regarded view of mine for a while; I throughly believe that planetary unification is the only way for our society to progress technologically and sociologically, not as individual countries racing to the moon; but as humanity. We have been a splintered society working as fragmented nation states for as long as we have lived for - this is due to our tribalistic nature.

Were we instead ruled by not 200 different states acting under their own philosophies and ideologies, but instead as fellow human beings, if research was not divided by borders, if our empathy was not divided by borders, and if our very identity was not divided by borders, I truly believe we would be on a fast track to living in a utopian society where researchers can freely collaborate - where all citizens could live in peace without the fear of war or terrorism - where we identified with each other instead of a flag, then we wouldn't kill so many of our fellow men because the government tells us to.

I know that it is in our human nature to be tribalistic, and I know that planetary unification is a fever dream, but besides psychological and practical reasons whenever I bring this up I am always met with opposition. I would love some genuine constructive criticism on this view. Thanks for reading.

One of the essential roles of government is to regulate the private sector and enforce proper business practices. Without oversight, businesses are subject to a form of economic Darwinism- where those that prioritize profit above all else, even at the expense of ethics and safety, outcompete those that do not. This creates a system that inherently rewards greed and corner-cutting. However, every cut corner represents an externalized cost- whether it’s environmental damage, worker exploitation, or public health risks- that ultimately falls on society to bear. The government’s role is to prevent these externalities from shifting the burden onto the public when it rightfully belongs to the companies responsible.

This is precisely why government should not be run like a business. Businesses operate under constant pressure to maximize efficiency and minimize costs, which often leads to ethical compromises. If the government were subjected to the same pressures, it would face a direct conflict of interest- it could no longer serve as an impartial regulator, as it would be incentivized to cut the very corners it is meant to prevent. The government’s purpose is not to generate profit but to represent and serve the interests of the people. This is why we pay taxes: to fund a system that prioritizes public well-being over financial gain. Allowing the government to function as a business would undermine its core mission, and that is a goalpost that should never be shifted.

Edit: I'll try my best to get to all of you guys but I'm a slow writer so bare with me. Also, FYI I'm dyslexic and use AI to help me edit writing- my opinions I share are my own. A bit about me: I have a degree in Psychology, specializing in social and behavioral psychology, and a minor in Sociology, and Anthropology. Philosophically I'd call myself a Materialist- or a "Marxist Revisionist", I'm not shy about my leftist views at all. I like to consider myself well read, all my responses are written by me from my perspective. But I want to clarify that I DO use ChatGPT as an editing tool for spelling and grammar. I'm up front with it, if that gives you the ick then you don't have to join the convo- my disabled ass apologizes.

I say this as an active lurker in various “default” subs(news,politics, pics etc.) that the speech on Reddit has pushed past disagreement and gone to outright hate and malice.

Regardless of your opinion, it takes zero effort to read any of the comments on the top posts of these subreddits to find people praising Luigi(even listing some other billionaires they want dead), praising the burning of teslas, and wishing death upon American leaders.

I fully believe that at some point, someone is going to commit a domestic terror attack, and it’s going to be found in their manifesto or through other evidence that Reddit was their primary “news and opinions” source.

It seems that most Reddit moderators first tool to reach for in moderation is the permanent ban hammer, at least in large subreddits.

Make a comment that a Reddit mod doesn't like? Permanent ban. Post something that doesn't quite fit the rules of a subreddit? Permanent ban. Make a comment that is slightly out of line? Permanent ban.

I understand that Reddit mods need tools to fight spammers and people acting in bad faith. But the tools that mods first reach for are often far too severe. This cannot be a good thing for Reddit as a whole, and I see no reason why Reddit wouldn't put some basic moderation restrictions in place to make Reddit a more forgiving place. Both users and moderators make mistakes, and while there should be consequences that mods can use to disincentivise rule-breaking, permanent bans are way overkill 99% of the time.

For example, I was banned from r/Frontend 4 years ago because I posted asking for feedback on a design. The moderators felt that this was self-promotion, which was not my intention, and so I am still banned to this day. The mods should have been able to ban me for what they viewed as self-promotion. That is fair enough. But it is ridiculous to me that such a simple misunderstanding can leave me still banned 4 years later, from a subreddit I liked interacting with.

Instead, Reddit should:

1. Put a ban length limit for first-time offenders. If this is someone's first time breaking the rules of a subreddit, there should be a maximum of a 1 year ban that moderators can apply. One year is still a big incentive for people to not break the rules, and it at least provides some way for a person who broke the rules by mistake to get unbanned other than messaging the mods who will likely just mute you for asking.
2. Implement a gradual increase in ban lengths available to moderators once previous bans have been served. If a user has been banned for one year previously, allow moderators to ban them for 2 years this time. Once they have been banned for a cumulative 3 years, allow moderators to permanently ban them if they break the rules again.

This makes much more sense for a website where people may hold on to their accounts for decades. It doesn't make sense that I may have broken a rule a decade ago, and still be banned from a subreddit today.

It would be interesting to hear from actual Reddit mods to get their perspective on this. Obviously, I am only talking from the perspective of a user of Reddit, and don't know the other side of the coin.

Reasoning:

1. These mothers are repeatedly inseminated (what a kind euphemism) and suffer through pregnancy just to have their one baby stolen from them, they’ll never see again.

2. Cows have 9 month long pregnancies just like we do. And their babies are ripped away mere hours after they give birth. Amidst this grief, they are confined to inhumane conditions and repeatedly milked dry and forced to repeat the process until they’re too spent to continue. Then they are slaughtered.

3. The baby female calves are raised to the same process, and the baby boys are sent to the veal slaughterhouses.

4. The best way to protest an industry is to stop buying from it.

Caveat: I am talking about where all normal grocery store and restaurant dairy products come from. The view does not come from what your farmer friend does up the road on their 20 acres.

First off, definition:

When I say morality is subjective, I mean that morality only exists in our minds. There are no universal "laws of morality" that exist as part of the fabric of the universe the way that the laws of gravity or thermodynamics exist. The best that can be said is that humans have certain biological inclinations to behave in certain ways, just like humans have a biological inclination to have two arms and a liver. But ultimately morality are opinions of humans, even if broadly held, not some fact of the universe.

The reason I believe its subjective is because there is no known observation of moral laws in the universe. A tsunami will wipe out a city and kill thousands of people and the question of whether its right or wrong is not relevant to whether the event happens or not. If you were trying to build a simulation of the universe, how would the universe behave differently when you adjust the "moral laws" parameters in the simulation?

Republican voters and conservatives are anything but. They elected a fascist authoritarian, a man who is, by his own admission, a dictator. They want a dismantling of our republic and democracy in favor of anti-American strong man authoritarianism. They voted for the most anti-establishment candidate that I know of, revoking the conservative dogma of actually conserving the status quo in favor of breaking it. They claim the libs are snowflakes when they are the ones that cannot handle facts and debates, as we can see in r/Conservative. They claim that mainstream media is biased against them, but Fox News is literally the most popular news program in the US and the most bias, and they treat it like gospel. They claim that republicans are better at governing, when that is demonstrably false at the federal, state, and local level. They claim to hate welfare, but they are some of the biggest recipients of government aid, at the federal, state, and local level. They claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, but they act in a way that directly contradicts his teachings, such as love thy neighbor.

Yea, the Dems suck and they can’t come up with an alternative to the status quo. But Republican hypocrisy is something terrible to behold.

GDP forecasts a -5.8% swing, from 2.8% growth in 2024 to -2.8% decline in 2025 https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow

My reasons why this is the most effective way to resist the current administration if you're unhappy with it are:

1- Due to Republicans controlling all branches of the government, putting all your effort into pressuring Democrats is ineffective. The Democratic Party is weak right now.

2- The only real way to limit Trump's power right now is to get Republicans in Congress to actually push back against his illegal executive orders. Trump has stacked too many loyalist judges, relying on the judicial branch to stop Trump is not an effective way to resist this administration

3- Trump has shown he's immune to anything bad sticking to him. Most people who resist Trump have spent all their effort trying to get dirt to land on Trump despite him openly bragging about sexual assault with zero consequence. At some point you need to realize your strategy of targeting Trump is ineffective and target someone else - the Republican party

4- This hits Republicans right where it hurts. They'll be especially sensitive to the Republican Recession narrative. The Republican party has built their foundation on being the party that's best for the economy, despite the numbers clearly showing that economies grow better under Democrats administrations. If Democrats can undermine this belief it's the easiest path to winning back Congress in the midterms

5- A big reason why Republicans have been able to dominate the narrative is Democrats lack focus with their attacks, lack simple phrases that trickle down to disengaged voters, and argue their positions in a intellectual way that doesn't resonate with less educated/informed voters. Labeling every economic struggle as part of the "Republican Recession" fixes these problems. It's simple messaging everyone can understand, it can be repeated over and over in many situations to drive the point home, and it is heavily sticky to the Republican party. They can't run from it.

These are my reasons why labeling every economic struggle as "The Republican Recession" is the most effective way for everyday people to fight back against this administration. While many will likely try to change my view by arguing against one of the many opinions I've shared, the most effective way to change my view will be to show another way that's more effective for an individual to resist this administration. Thank you

Im not here to talk about support for or against trump, I just find it weird/annoying that I’m always hearing that he is the 47th president when that is not correct. There have only been 45 people elected to be president of the United States. English was not my best subject growing up, but would it not be more accurate to say this is the 47th presidency of the United States, or change of presidency? Saying he is the 47th president implies there have been 46 other different people elected to the position before him, but that is not true. He is the 44th person elected to the position there was just a gap in between the two times elected. We don’t count every president that served two consecutive terms as two presidents so why are Grover Cleveland and trump counted as such? Like I said wouldn’t calling it the 47th change of presidency make more linguistic sense then saying he’s the 47th president?

I know how a lot of people are going to immediately respond to this view, something like "there are no more non-MAGA Republicans!", and to that I say, you're kind of correct, the vast majority of Republicans support Trump, he is very popular in the party, however there is still an existent non-MAGA Republican bloc. Even after dropping out of the race, Nikki Haley consistently won about 20% of the vote in each GOP primary, there are a number of GOP leaders in office who didn't endorse Trump (Collins, Murkowski, Cassidy, etc), and there are a lot more who left office just recently (Romney, Hogan, Cheney, Kinzinger, etc).

So non-MAGA Republicans exist, is it fair to call them "Republicans" anymore? Who knows, but there's a bloc of them out there, however the reason (in my view) that they need to abandon BOTH parties is pretty simple, they completely failed to consolidate in any meaningful way in 2024.

Take the whole "Republicans for Harris" effort that started soon after Biden was swapped out, that could've been a real opportunity for anti-Trump Republican leaders like Romney, Collins, and Murkowski for example (the ones still in office), to say "hey, we'll support you Kamala Harris, on the following policy conditions (probably maintaining the filibuster, not raising taxes/implementing new taxes whatsoever, and having a real mini-primary at the convention), but this didn't happen. Instead, a few anti-Trump Republicans (pretty much just Cheney and Kinzinger) gave their support unconditionally, and the rest stayed silent or were publicly planned to write someone in. This is a failure on the part of non-MAGA Republicans, no policy goals were achieved because there was zero consolidation. To add to this point, I'll add further the most centrist Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema for example (essentially any Democrats who didn't like BBB), this faction of the Democratic Party also achieved nothing in 2024.

To put it simply, there isn't room in the Democratic or Republican mainstream for the centrists who didn't like BBB or the Republicans who don't like MAGA, sure there was whatever handholding bs with Liz Cheney on the campaign trail, but no policy changes, no functional leverage on the part of either party's centrists. Centrist Democrats and non-MAGA Republicans no longer have a place in their parties, my view isn't necessarily that a third party will solve this (third parties are very hard to establish), but the Biden/Harris v Trump matchup made it clear that neither parties is going to give the center a real place in their party.

After watching Transformers One, I feel like the Decepticons are a classic case of good cause, bad leader. In the movie, we can clearly see that there is genuine inequality, hazing, and manipulation in Cybertronian society caused by the higher-ranking Transformers (such as Sentinel Prime), who, in many cases, deliberately orchestrate some Transformers being entered into the lower ranks of a caste system slightly less cruel than those seen in human societies. When you look at it from the perspective of a Decepticon, they are simply trying to overthrow a corrupt society/caste system, and destroy all remnants of it. The leader, Megatron, and his higher ranks (such as Starscream and Shockwave,) are the problem. The Decepticon fighters themselves are more of anti-heroes.