I do this a lot. I did it just now. I wrote about five paragraphs on a topic, deleted it and started over, wrote about five more and did the same thing. Got frustrated. Some thoughts that went through my mind:

• "this is not concise at all. It's disorganized and needs to be re-done"

• "this is going to trigger an emotional response and that will filter how they read it, so I'll be less likely to get interesting responses"

• "maybe I should just do this as a journal entry and keep it private"

• "these thoughts are worth something, and even if they aren't super cogent, maybe they can be a starting point for a collaborative thinking process"

• "that's dumb, nobody cares about my ramblings anyway. everyone has thoughts like this, mine aren't more important"

• etc.

So what usually ends up happening in instances like this is I just don't post. Other times, I get wrapped up in trying to make a post super-high quality and it comes across as over-produced... and if I've somehow triggered an emotional response then that aspect becomes an avenue for attack.

Does anyone else experience something comparable to this? Is it a good thing for helping to maintain quality content and discussions? If not, what are strategies to improve situations like these?

When I was younger I would spend hours reading books, Wikipedia articles, magazines, and news articles. I loved to read and do nothing else.

But I've found that I now have much more trouble starting and continuing to read. My eyes almost completely glaze over most pieces of text, and I almost have an aversion to focus on reading. I still enjoy reading, but ever since I've entered the world of video games, Youtube videos, and social media, I've read less and less. I don't want to say that these things are bad, but definitely easier to get into and to "enjoy".

I still read, and continue to amass a large list of things to read, but it's been harder than it used to be to do so and to get something of substance out of it.

I would love to hear about stuff you are interested in. Do you have a hobby you really, really love? Is there a subject you could talk about for hours? Something you tend to rant/rave on about even though you're pretty sure everyone around you has had enough of the subject? Please share it here, and don't worry about going on for too long - I love to hear people talk about stuff they are passionate about and I'm sure others do too!

Three examples :

American English have lost the u in word like "color", because it is closer to its phonetics (the u is silent and there's no particular sound associated with "ou"). The letter u has an anglo-norman root.

Swiss French (and for this particular example Belgian French) differs little from standard French, apart from the numbering system. It is ironically more metric than standard French since it streamlines what's left of the base 20 (vigisimasomething) system, i. e. it's "seventy and eighty" ("septante et huitante*") instead of "sixty-ten and four-twenties" ("soixante-dix et quatre-vingts". Historically people all over the world used some sort of base 20 system, probably because we have twenty toes and fingers.

*no one ever use "octante". Belgian people think the Swiss uses it, while Swiss people thinks the Belgian it. I don't know why its that.

Swiss standard German (not dialect) have ditched the Eszett ligature (ß) in favor of a more simple "ss ". That ligature was more common in the middle age.

With those example in mind, do you find value in the "old" vs the "new" way of writing?

(in other words: spelling reformer partisan and opponent : what goes through your mind?)

Dear Tildes community,

this is an issue that's bugged me for some time. I might struggle to put this into the right words initially, because I have not studied either philosophy, psychology, biology, sociology or anthropology. Yet, all of those fields could input into this. I will edit this post to clarify things once people start commenting.

I will begin by stating the question at the root of the issue I am trying to explore:

Does de-humanisation of others occur automatically, as soon as we believe that we can predict their actions?

Things to consider:

• What is a measure of 'humanity'? Is it consciousness? Self-awareness? Intelligence? Empathy?
• Is it true that a more 'conscious' or 'intelligent' creature is closer to us in nature and therefore should enjoy more rights, considerations, or respect? (Case in point: Some countries will not allow performing surgery on an octopus without anesthesia, due to them being considered very high up on the ladder of consciousness)
• It is easy to conflate consciousness and intelligence. I think that's a bit of a trap. I have often looked at intelligence as a sort of "clock rate" of the brain. As in, you might be able to process information very quickly, but that's still pointless if you're running the wrong algorithms, or have very little knowledge to rely on. Intelligence all by itself is not a good measure of how 'conscious' or 'aware' or 'human' something is. Often, however, people tend to call animals more intelligent or less intelligent when they mean 'more highly developed', or 'more conscious'. The same probably applies to people as well.
• Additionally, among self-aware, conscious beings (humans), empathy and intelligence van cary wildly. Therefore, does consciousness, or even 'human-ness' vary? Is a highly intelligent psychopath less human than a much less intelligent but empathetic person?
• What do we use to assess whether a human is highly developed, or less developed / desirable? (Brushing aside the notion that we obviously shouldn't do so). I think it is important to look at what mechanisms have been used in the past to demonise swathes of the population, in order to discredit them or further some kind of agenda. Take African people during the slave trade. They were called primitive, less intelligent, less human. In fact, in more subtle ways this even happens to women nowadays. They are constantly belittled by chauvinists, for supposedly being less intellectually capable due to their gender. Are these all forms of de-humanisation, linked predominantly to intellect?
• What is this founded upon? Is it predictability of their actions? Let's try to go full circle. How does one discredit a part of the population? One observes them and demonises their behaviours (and with that, culture, etc.) The predictability of such behaviours is essential in this. You cannot reliably say that "those brutes do [x], how disgusting", without there being frequent evidence of it actually happening. (On the flip-side, could people be predictably advanced or developed?)
• What do we think of predictable people in general? Predictability has negative connotations. At best it's boring (say, a highly intelligent beaurocrat), at worst, stupid / less human (say, racists talking about another culture being predictably primitive)
• Is there an implication of people, or beings, who are more predictable, having less free will? If your intellectual faculties are limited, or you operate on instinct more than you do on rational or logical deduction, you become more predictable, ergo, predictability == stupidity. (I know this is a fallacy, but I am trying to establish why one might irrationally and subconsciously dehumanise, not arguing in favour of this dehumanisation or trying to defend it)
• Take our favourite pets. Cats and dogs. They are pretty highly developed and if it wasn't for humans, they'd be unchallenged apex predators ruling the world. They display complex behaviours, at times even hard to predict ones. But still, they are animals and behave in reasonably reliable patterns. They are also not able to pass the mirror-test for self awareness, implying they are not (or only in extremely limited ways). So, one could argue they are less human, less intelligent. Now look at insects. Even less intelligent. Even though it could be argued that some (like ants) display a form of swarm intelligence, they are still extremely predictable. (Except for, perhaps, the flight patterns of flies or mosquitoes, which evolution has scrambled into extremely random patterns to avoid them being swatted. But that's just hard-coded into their genes, not an intelligent thought process)
• So, once more. Think of someone you really don't like. Do you ever call them stupid for their actions? Would you ever say "here we go again, they are doing this again". Particularly if they are your boss? Perhaps it helps you cope with their shitty behaviour to dehumanise that person. Make them a lesser human being, to compensate for the fact that they make you feel powerless in their work. If dehumanisation is such an immediate and convenient mechanism to protect yourself from feelings of inferiority, or to stop yourself from being threatened (say, by a different culture), perhaps it is in fact an ingrained behaviour, which expresses itself on a larger scale once fueled by propaganda and political intent. If we identify it and understand how it happens, we may protect ourselves against it by elevating others to a higher status of 'human-ness'.
• When we 'have figured someone out', we are stating we can predict them. Are we putting them beneath us, henceforth? Are they 'less' than us in some ways? It gives us power to be able to predict, so it makes us more powerful than them in some way, so it makes them lesser beings in some ways.

Why am I bringing all this up? In my life, so far, I have gone from being very insecure, mistrusting and scared of people, to much more open, trusting and confident.

The more insecure I was, the more time I spent trying to prove to myself that I was somehow superior to others. Generally using intelligence as an argument (uggggh....). You know, like the goth teenager sitting in their basement, who is oh-so-individual and everyone else is so stupid and nobody understands my pain, etc. (see, dehumanising my past self right there, haha).

The more I started trusting people and the more I started seeing everyone around me as humans, humans just like me, the more I began to see how others still apply these weird dehumanisation mechanisms to make themselves feel superior. This made me wonder whether there is some kind of innate drive to do so. Try to predict others, or paint them as predictable, to prove that you are superior to them, because they would not be able to predict your actions, as you are so far beyond their capabilities.

So yeah, uhm....let me know what comes up in yer heads as you read through this, I'd be most interested to hear your perspectives.

Since computers and computer-like devices are prevalent in most modern societies shouldn't we be teaching people how to use them effectively and for purpose, rather than saying "oh, they'll pick it up" or "they grew up with it, they'll understand it just fine". Both of which, are clearly not the case.

What does tildes think of a mandatory computing class in early grades, and/or several years of classes to master the concepts, like the U.S. does with History, English literature, Math, and Sciences?

Should computers be necessary to learn as an academic subject?

Or is it fine that many people can't do very simple tasks on computers?
Is it fine that they do not understand basic computing concepts? e.g. keyboard shortcuts, searching, folder management

Based on a post I saw asking for a ~philosophy group, it seems like there are at least a few people looking for some discussion like this. Does anyone want to talk about some concept that's been on their mind for a while?

If you do, go ahead and throw it down in the comments. It'd be great if we could get a couple of nice discussions going!

Most religions base their beliefs on the Bible. If so, where was the bible based on? Clearly, the bible was written by a bunch of men. Men. Humans. Humans are prone to corruption. We cannot tell whether these authors corrupted or even invented stories? So, why should we base our virtues on a thick book when we don't really know if it's accurate or not?

Science has already proven that Adam and Eve didn't exist. Evolution does exist. And Science have evidences. The bible said the Earth was FLAT and have 4 corners and sides. Science said the Earth was spherical, and it proved what it said. Science seeks evidence. Science seeks the TRUTH. The bible? It was just created by men many years ago to answer questions they cannot answer.

There are tons of wars and crusades that were religion driven, whether we had holy wars or wars because of terrorists following inhumane beliefs, many people ultimately died. Just like wars almost eradicated humanity, that is what should happen to be Religion. Become eradicated. Adding on to that we see many deaths every day just because of religious differences.

The bottom line is, The holy book is repulsive and its repulsiveness creates a huge barrier to development. The world would be a better place without religions. Religions claim themselves right. And because of that, people around the globe were divided by awful beliefs. It's really sad to think that people do good things because they FEARED the awful HELL and because they wanted to go to the fictional HEAVEN. Religious people were driven by a 'holy' book which cannot speak and collect evidences for what it says. We should wake up. Be united by an accurate tool that seeks truth. Science. We should base our virtues on our intelligence and common sense.

Greek mythology was once a religion, and it flopped and became a myth. Religion in the US is now declining according to surveys. With our eyes, watch and see how will religion disintegrate through the years while the development, peace and stability of the world integrates. To add to my initial statement, I can provide sources for every argument against religion and the "holy book"

What excites humans the most today is technological progress. Faster computers, better autonomous driving, colourful displays - a preoccuppation with 'means'. There seems to be much lesser excitement and study among popular consiousness with what is done with all these tech. Your smartphone is a technological marvel - but what are you doing with it?

This seems to be in similar veins as the idea of human progress from stone age to bronze to iron. "Stone age people used primitive technology, bronze age better, iron age the best. There are still peoples in the world who are still stuck in the stone age".

But this is a biased perception of human endevours. What matters is what humans did, not what they did it with. The incas, mayas and aztecs were 'stuck' in stone technology. But they built marvelous civilizations, buildings and cultures rivalling the greatest achievements in the rest of the world in their time.

Advancing technology is a fetish. One in pursuit of which we forget what matters is what we do with it. But there seems to be little of that going on. Most of the doing is for improving technology. And most of it in a fetishistic attempt to get out of the ditch we dug ourselves in from past technological 'progress'.

Today, humans are like a bunch of sculptures spending most of their days dicussing chisel technology rather than sculpting.

For the past few months I felt less and less inclined to engage in conversation on Reddit and other discussions platforms. The risk of any expression being met with a (severely) negative response is just too great. I don't know if it was always like this and that I just don't find it worth it any more or if there is an actual trend of people being more of an asshole more of the time to each other online.

I've only joined Tildes a couple of days ago, and enjoy most of my time here. I've also noticed that I'm now more active again on other platforms. It's made me want to express myself again. I put more effort in my contributions. I'm not necessarily getting more pleasant responses, but there are fewer negative ones, I think.

Does this sound familiar to any of you?

It's common in my job - and likely many jobs - to require learning and correction. I've noticed that people who have stronger self awareness are more likely to improve and learn from projects/mistakes/correction etc. I can say a lot more about the value of introspection, but I'll get to the point: I'd like to gauge someone's ability to do this by having a conversation with them.

If you were interviewing a candidate to work for you, what would you ask them to find out how self-aware they are? I figure if you asked: "how self aware are you?", each candidate would respond "in addition to my strong organizational skills and quick learning, I am also incredibly self aware." So I'll need to sneak up on the idea a bit.

For those not in the know, Brazil is going to be having a presidential election this year. The reason the title of this thread is what it is relates to the scandals that engulf all three of the current and past presidents: Current President Michel Temer, and past Presidents (in order of most recently in office) Dilma Rousseff and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula was found guilty and began serving his 12-year jail sentence for accepting bribes in early April, maintaining his innocence and that his investigation and trial were politically motivated to prevent him from running in this year's election.

There are few countries as publicly wrestling with corruption allegations in explicit quid pro quo deals between politicians and companies as Brazil.

If you're interested in a pretty decent introduction into this wild ride, the wikipedia article on Operation Car Wash--and that is how this scandal gets referred to--is a good place to start.

So, using publicly available evidence (in Portuguese if you have to), what role does corruption play in the highest political offices in Brazil, and how can Brazil begin rebuilding what seems to be a clearly shattered reputation?

Just random discussion out of boredom. What do you see the world as in 50 years? Possibly war with different countries, economics, technology advancements(of course), space exploration, etc. What does everyone think?

As the title says, thank you to everyone who participated in the philosophy thread that I put up the other day. It was really great to get to talk to people about interesting questions and see the different ideas have on issues like determinism versus free will.

I'm really loving this site because of the great, reasonable discussion that's been going on, and I hope that we keep it going!

P.S. If anyone has some more interesting philosophical questions, please make a post about it! Based on the response to the thread the other day, I think a ton of people would be interested in discussing with you. I know I would be.

One of the more looming stories over the American political climate these days that takes over pretty much everything else is the special investigation into the Trump campaign and potential collusion with Russian attempts to influence the US presidential election of 2016. There is a lot of information in the public domain about this story, including most recently Mueller seeking a revision of Paul Manafort's home confinement release after alleging that Manafort attempted to contact potential witnesses to conceal evidence relating to the various charges he faces.

You can find a decent overview of most of the publicly available information on the related wikipedia page.

So let's try to wrangle with all that public information. Please list, vet, and weigh the evidence you think is most important when it comes to the Special Investigation of the Trump campaign. Does it look like collusion with Russian electioneering happened or is this story mostly about finding incidental crimes of sloppy political first timers? What role do you think Russia played or tried to play in the 2016 election based on this publicly available evidence? What evidence would you like to see before making a judgment?

I can start. I live in Gujarat, India. The worst (some residents would argue best) part of this state is we have had a total ban on alcohol since 1960. Worth noting, it was the only state in India to have banned alcohol (until very recently, one more state had a ban).

The reason? Because Mahatma Gandhi was born in this state and he was against alcohol (for a good reason.) But now, whole generations have grown up without alcohol and majority of the people here actually support the ban.

Many occupations are set to be automated in the near future: truck(lorry) driving, cashiers, and various other service sector jobs. See the full paper here[PDF].

Will such a reallocation of labour be a net positive or net negative?

Will societies around the world adapt by offering ways to retrain those that lost their jobs, or by providing temporary assistance in some manner?

Or, perhaps, will those people who lose when the next automation wave comes just be ignored, as they would negatively affect the capitalists bottom line.

Let me preface this by saying that I live in upstate NY, which is far from anywhere a peacock should be.

Well, a decade ago, our local zoo closed. Last year, my stepmom saw a male peacock around the area. A week ago, now that i'm living with her, I see him. Today, I decided to feed the poor guy some crack corn like we feed our chickens. The guy ate right out of my hand! I hope he's doing okay, my new buddy.

How does everyone feel about...the other platform and overmoderation? It seems like a lot of content and comments get removed due to borderline rule infractions and/or hair trigger enforcement.

Wondering how you all feel about that and what it means for this platform. Is it an inevitable outcome of a large community, or did the system itself lead to such an outcome?
Or is my perception way off?

Openly published research makes science advance at a wonderful rate. In my experience scientists and researchers support open research in a nearly dogmatic fashion. Personally I am generally for it. However here is my concern.

I believe that humanity is in a terrible race. One of the competitors is the advancement of science, which of course can sometimes be used in a dangerous ways. The other competitor is our society moving towards murder and war becoming obsolete. The science is obvious and needs no examples. Societies move towards the sanctity of life is shown here.

"Violence has been in decline over long stretches of time", says Harvard professor Steven Pinker, "and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence."

Now to get to my point. In the past scientific advancement has created some really scary things. Atomic weapons, bio and chemical warefare, etc. However, those weapons took a lot of people and capital to produce, and had relatively un-scalable effects. Now with open research on advancements like CRISPR, we are nearing a time where in the near future a smart high school biology student with a few thousand dollars and an internet connection will be able to create self-replicating custom viruses that could kill millions. The asymmetric threat has never been greater.

Do you agree with my assessment and concerns?

If so, do you believe that there should be limits on publication of research in certain areas?

Edit: I should have said CRISPR and gene drives. Here is a TED talk on how gene drives can change and entire species, forever.

I guess there has been a lot of deliberation on the ramifications of reddit's upvote/downvote system, and voting for topics.
How do you all feel about the way reddit aggregates karma and shows totals for users?
How does this impact submissions and and commentary?
How does the voting system here change post and comment visibility?

Interested to see everyone's take on this.

Just re-reading some of my posts, and I would like to thank everyone for not nick-picking them apart for all the grammar and spelling mistakes I have. Coming over from Reddit, it's really nice not to go over a quick post more times than when submitting a resume.

Obviously this assumes you agree that humans have a soul, but even if no one agrees on what the soul is – if you agree that people have them at all, then when did they start having them within the historical context of human evolution?

There are a few ways this question could be approached depending on which frame of reference you choose to use, so I'm curious to know which frames you guys find useful and most relevant.

Movies, TV shows, and newspapers are just a few examples of the traditional media designations that dominated the 20th century. However, the digital revolution (and the internet in particular) has rendered them mostly meaningless now because the analog boundaries that separated them are no longer relevant.

Given the present-day proliferation of platform-agnostic content, what new designations or delineations do you think the world will (or should) adopt in the next century once traditional media is dead?

Personally I think stoves are badass. It's this big metal box with multiple spouts, which shoots up the refined corpse of dinosaurs and other beasts with just a turn of a knob, with a spark that shoots out to create a never-ending flame if you so choose. All in a matter of three seconds.

I've seen a few remarks here and there that have implied sort of matter-of-factly that places like /r/The_Donald have no redeeming value, the community members are awful (and undesirable to have here), their ideas are all reprehensible, etc. I assume that this is mostly just due to the demographic coming primarily from popular reddit mod teams where being anti-Trump is sort of an unspoken requirement - but I don't really know for certain.

It reminds me a little of this woman in a class i had once, who spoke to me about atheists, assumed I was christian just as a matter of course. It's kind of an awkward situation to find yourself in. I don't identify as an atheist, but if someone is mildly insulting atheists, it's uncomfortable. You have to be a covert conservative (or covert center-right, or even left-leaning Trump voter) or else you risk being blasted/flamed/mocked/etc. in places like reddit.

Part of what attracted me to Tildes was the sales pitch that it is to be a community for civil conversation, no hate-speech/bigotry. I think that's a perfect environment for political discussion - far more than shit-flinging and nuclear downvoting on /r/politics. So even if I'm the only MAGA person here, maybe there's a chance we can actually have civil conversations on topics we might initially disagree on...?

Edit: wow! Really happy to have these conversations with folks. Sad that i haven't encountered any fellow (public) Trump voters/supporters yet but very pleased that things have been civil as advertised. ;) Apologies for slow responses, trying to give proper thought and consideration to all the comments!

Edit2: gotta head to bed. sorry to anyone i haven't responded to questions from. feeling a bit like a novelty "And here's our token Trump voter. ha ha, he sure is a quirky one, isn't he, that crazy dictator-enabler!" xP. I'll try to answer any questions I've missed tomorrow. Sleep well, all (well, all who are going to sleep before I get back).

Edit3: Thanks for the open engagement, all you people who live in a different reality!

Still a bit bummed there aren't any MAGA friends here yet, but I've been blown away by how cordial most of you have been (i hope we can retain this culture into the future of the site). For those who are just coming in and don't want to read everything, I'd say a tl;dr of the conversations I've had below is:

• most people here want to engage with others on important topics without the shit flinging,
• some people express disbelief that someone can not be a bigot or racist and vote for Donald Trump,
• I've been repeating in various conversations the Laurel and Yanny thing is a great metaphor for the polarized camps experiencing different realities, seeing different movies on the same screen.

I'm continuing to try to reply to questions, and in the spirit of not provoking heated emotions I have been trying not to argue any of my political beliefs except that both sides are seeing different realities.

While there were numerous reasons for my exit from Reddit, privacy was a large one. This was something that when I joined here I thought was a fairly widespread view. For me my view of Reddit started to waiver a few years ago when their warrant canary was tripped. I've always been of the idea that the less of what I do online that can be traced back to me, the better. I also abhor the state of privacy online and in the US.

Despite this, what I thought was fairly universal viewpoint, there have been several threads(like here and here) where people give out identifying information about themselves. This, combined with many people using their real names as their usernames or revealing their real names in the introduction threads, made me realize that this is not an ideal that we all share to the same extent.

I guess that leads into my question, how privacy conscious are you guys online and what the the general vibe you've gotten from the ~'s community?

Hey I think I'm caught in a time loop so I'm gearing up and making some contacts. Post something I couldn't possibly know about you so I can post it tmrw morning (today) to surprise you into letting me get in touch on short notice. I'm working on figuring out my possible range of travel and it would be good to have people. Thanks!

edit: woke up this morning (Tuesday) like a regular person, so I think the loop ended. I got four days total. I didn't bother my roommate about it on the last run, so she doesn't even remember me being weird about anything. I'm a little disappointed, but it's probably good that I can go on to live my life now. Send me a PM if this happens to you. I didn't learn much but I'll be quick to believe you if that's something that would be helpful.

Honestly, every other site I join has been after a few years of being popular, so naturally, all the unique and cool names were taken. Fortunately when I got my invite code, I got my first choice: "Chill." Anyone else?

Good morning everyone! It's Monday morning and the weekend is over. How is everyone doing today? How was your weekend and is there anything you're looking forward to this week?

I did a post like this last Friday and people seemed to like it. After talking to @PBuddy I decided to do posts like this at the beginning and end of the week to see if we can get people familiar with each other. I love Tildes but it's too new and too spread out for a small communities to start like you'd see in some subreddits. Let me know what you think!

Seeing as we're still a small community, I see a lot of familiar faces in every thread.

So if you want to know what other people noticed about you, comment on this post. And reply to others with description of them. I'll try to be active here for several hours also.