Rottcodd

Sort of.

More it’s just the way I’ve pretty much always been. Before I was even really aware of it, I apparently figured out that I couldn’t control the outside world but I could control how I reacted to it, so that was what I focused on. One could sort of say that I did it simply because it made sense to me, but even that makes it sound more conscious than it was. It’s more that it just never occurred to me to do things any other way.

It was only much later that I discovered that there was a philosophy called “stoicism” that advocated that.

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength.” - Marcus Aurelius

I recognize that the universe is so vast that it’s likely that life forms other than us exist in it, but that’s the extent of it.

I’ve seen no verifiable evidence that they in fact do, so I don’t “believe” that they do.

Really, I don’t “believe” in much of anything for which there is no verifiable evidence. I don’t even understand how that works - how it is that other people apparently do. It’s not a conscious choice or anything - it’s just appears that there’s a set of requirements that must be met before the position of “belief” is triggered inside my mind, and one of those requirements is verifiable evidence. Without that, the state of “believing” just isn’t triggered, and it’s not as if I can somehow force it, so that’s that.

As far as I can see, governments are comprised almost entirely of psychopaths, opportunists, charlatans and fools, so I see little likelihood that they possess concealed knowledge regarding any nominal extraterrestrial life. First, and most simply, if they did possess any such knowledge, it’s near certain that somebody would’ve blabbed something by now.

Beyond that though, I think it’s exceedingly unlikely that any alien life form capable of traveling interstellar distances would, on arriving on the Earth, seek out contact with a government, much less limit its contact to a government. If they’re that advanced, it can only be the case that they, in their own development, either never bought into the flatly ludicrous and clearly destructive idea of institutionalized authority or overcame it before it inevitably destroyed them, and in either case, I don’t see any reason why they would lend any credence to our mass delusion that this one subset of humanity forms a specially qualified and empowered elite that rightly oversees everyone else’s interests. That’s our delusion - not theirs.

Yes - it is sociopathic.

That’s not a coincidence.

Ten bucks says he has snuff porn on his D drive…

They in fact are weird people with mental health issues.

I think a case can be made that a considerable amount of the ugliness we see in the world is a fairly direct consequence of the simple fact that a significant number of people in positions of power and influence are profoundly mentally ill.

The other answers mostly sum it up - it was initially made illegal primarily as a way to establish an “other” with which to frighten conservatives.

There’s another thing that hasn’t been mentioned yet though that I’ve long thought is relevant - is part of the reason that marijuana specifically was for so long (and still is in some quarters) so condemned.

Imagine you’re a corrupt politician, and you want to sell your constituents on the idea of going to war in the Middle East (so you can collect some bribes from defense contractors and oil companies) or instituting mandatory sentencing (so you can collect some bribes from prison contractors) or cutting taxes on the wealthy (so you can collect bribes from rich people and corporations) or any of the other, similar things that corrupt politicians want to do

Who would you rather try selling that idea to? A bunch of pot smokers or a bunch of drinkers?

I think part of the issue is that marijuana appeals to a part of the population that really is, to corrupt politicians and their cronies and patrons, “undesirable.” When they want to get the people all fired up in support of their latest bullshit, they want somebody with a beer in their hand, drunkenly shouting, “Yeah! Kick their asses!” Not somebody with a joint in their hand, muzzily saying, “Hold on a minute - you want to do what?”

Right, but it’s not a paradox - it’s a conundrum. It’s not just that the person saying it is part of the first group, but that they necessarily are.

Since people want to believe that they “know better,” there’s a strong urge to count oneself among the second group, which immediately places one in the first.

There are two kinds of people in the world - those who think there are two kinds of people in the world and those who know better.

Then every single person who takes any action would make a difference in the world and change the situation, which obviousy isn’t true.

How did you not get my point?

We’ll try it this way:

Thirty people live in a town.

Ten of them, with a leader, want some policy implemented

Twenty of them oppose the policy.

The ten with a leader organize and push for the policy

The twenty who oppose it stand around with their thumbs up their asses, each of them telling themselves that they can’t accomplish anything by themselves.

The policy gets implemented

Or

The ten with a leader organize and push for a policy.

The twenty who oppose it each, individually, pull their thumbs out of their asses and stand up and say they oppose it.

Each of those individuals, making their individual choices, finds themselves surrounded by nineteen other individuals who made the same individual choice.

They easily outnumber the ten who want the policy and the policy fails.

That’s exactly how and why individuals going ahead and making their individual choices instead of failing to do it because “I can’t make a difference by myself” can make a difference.

All they have to do is stop waiting around for somebody to lead them, pull their thumbs out of their asses, and just go ahead and do it on their own, each one as an individual.

the other workers at the factories don’t change their opinion.

And some number of those workers have the exact same opinion that you do - they’re opposed, but they don’t think they can make a difference.

And if all of you stopped waiting around for some charismatic leader to tell you what to do and just went ahead and made the choice you prefer, you would make a difference.

No - it’s not ethical.

Very little evil is actually a direct result of evil people doing evil things. The vast majority of it comes to be through ordinary people doing banal things - things that, like building weapons, are questionable at best, but that they excuse because it’s “out of my control.”

The thing is that it’s not out of their control. Yes - if one individual makes the decision to not take part, that’s not going to have much of an effect, but if every person who feels the same way makes that same choice, that absolutely WILL have an effect.

And there’s only one way to make it so that every person who feels the same way makes that choice, and that’s for each one of them, individually, to look past that “it’s out of my control” bullshit excuse and go ahead and do it.

Everything on any significant scale is out of individual control. Individuals just possess a very limited amount of control over affairs on a national, much less global, scale. But that’s really entirely beside the point. The point is how you choose to exercise the small amount of control you have. Will you use it for good, or for evil?

I don’t think it’s worse, but that’s only because, as far as responses from trolls and bad faith actors go, I’d rather get screeds from lunatic extremists than pseudo-leftist establishment dogma boiled down to little pieces of emotive rhetoric that are just mindlessly regurgitated over and over by bots and humans-who-might-as-well-be-bots.

Traffic narcotics.

I love the fediverse and especially the threadiverse. I’m okay with Lemmy specifically, but I prefer Kbin, and am looking forward to some entirely different option.

It’s not as notable as it was in May or June, before the main Reddit exodus, but it still feels sort of like the early days of the internet here. People have to kind of go out of their way to be here, and the system’s a bit wonky and obtuse, so there’s a pleasant lack of lazy idiots. And I can actually interact with people who actually have things to say, rather than just wading through regurgitated memes and botspam.

As with so many such things, it’s only a mystery if you start with the presumption that official narratives are true.

If you start with the presumption that official narratives are not true, then the supposed mystery immediately vanishes and everything just falls neatly into place.

Would you refuse to visit websites that force registration even if the account is free?

I already generally do.

What’s all the fuss about, you don’t care?

I honestly don’t much care, but that’s because western civilization is circling the drain, warped and undermined at every turn by wealthy and powerful psychopaths, and it’s just not worth it to care, since there’s absolutely nothing I can do to stop them

Is advertising a necessary evil in fair trade for content?

Some sort of revenue stream is potentially necessary, but that’s the extent of it. Advertising is just one revenue stream, and even if we limit the choices to that, there are still many different ways it could be implemented.

The specific forms of advertising to which we’re subjected on the internet are very much not necessary. And they don’t exist as they do because the costs of serving content require that much revenue - they exist as they do to pay for corporate bloat - ludicrously expensive real estate and facilities and grotesquely inflated salaries for mostly useless executive shitheads.

Would this limit your visiting of websites to only a narrow few you are willing to trade personal details for?

Again, that’s what I already do, so it would just add more sites to those I won’t visit.

Is this a bad thing for the internet experience as whole, or just another progression of technology?

At this point, the two are almost always one and the same. Internet technology is primarily harnessed to the goal of maximizing income for the well-positioned few, and all other considerations are secondary.

Is this no different from using any other technology platform that’s free (If it’s free, you’re the product)?

This is cynically amusing on Lemmy.

Should website owners just accept a lower revenue model and adapt their business, rather than seeking higher / unfair revenues from privacy invasive practices of the past?

Of course they should, but they won’t, because they’re psychopaths. They’ll never give up any of their grotesque and destructive privilege, even if that means that they ultimately destroy the host on which they’re parasites.

Except that Lemmy did catch on.

It didn’t catch on to the point that it got as big as Reddit, but anyone who expected that is a fool. It caught on to the point that it’s viable - it’s not going anywhere. And as time goes on, it’s going to continue to grow. And that’s sufficient, and really IMO to its advantage. Lemmy has a different feel from Reddit, and I like it better. And the new users it attracts over time are going to be people who appreciate it. And if the bulk of the meme-regurgitating karma whores stay on Reddit, all the better for Lemmy.

why do people need so much money

Mental illness.

Really.

I find that the most dependable way to make sense of Trump’s statements is to start with the presumption that, contrary to the physical evidence, he’s actually about 10 years old.

Like with this one - just imagine him as a fat, spoiled little 10 year old, out on the school playground at recess, dejectedly kicking at rocks and whining.