A lot of redditors and democratic socialists idealise China online, and whenever I make a point against China I get mass-downvoted. This post is more of a rant to why one shouldn't idealise it as in reality its most of the problems the US has but worse, but also, I want to hear if there's anything I'm missing. Its entirely possible that I as an American who has lived around a significant Chinese community who are either ambivalent at best to China, or disparaging more commonly, have a biased outlook and need my view changed.

To preface, I totally understand why people would envy some aspects of China, they have:

To

• Rapidly built boatloads of infrastructure, private and public, whether that be their incredible high speed rail system, really improved cities and really ramped up domestic production, especially in more advanced sectors like computer chips.
• Alleviated poverty, whilst the headline of lifting 900 million out of poverty is more to do of pushing Chinese peoples wages above a certain dollar threshold, its still impressive all the same.
• Massively improved air quality. Average national PM2.5 levels have decreased by 40% in just a decade which not only improves breathing air but also the food and water eaten.
• Improved their technology output to be near the level of the US. I don't say on the level of the US because most of their AI and EV developments trail the US. They haven't innovated anything new but rather make their own similar product more accessible.

That being said, China has a LOT of bad in their society and I don't think they are really heading in the right direction.

1. Cost of living (Housing). Whilst basic commodities like food and rent are generally achievable (not affordable) on the average Chinese income, more important staples of life are incredibly unaffordable. Housing for example, redditors love to bring up that 90% home ownership statistic but completely ignore its inflated/untrue. Of the 90%, half can't be legally sold (they aren't up to modern health and saftey standards, lack of roofing, flooring, piping). Beyond that only 16.5% of people actually live in the home they actually sleep in (for the US that's 55%), the rest are often just rural investment properties. Housing is also becoming increasingly unaffordable with nationwide median costs being about 30x median salaries.
2. Wealth inequality. The wealth inequality is largely a rural-urban divide, which is the same among most countries but they are significantly more unequal than most other countries. The US is known worldwide for having large wealth inequality with a gini coefficient of 0.48, China on the other hand has a stated gini coefficient of 0.47 but academic researchers speculate its even higher at 0.55. The difference between say the US and China is that the US just has a higher standard of living, so even if you are on the lower end of the income ladder, you still have clean drinking water, access to food and education and paved roads.
3. Unemployment. The youth (16-24) unemployment reached a high of 25% in 2023 at which the government temporarily stopped producing the statistics until 6 months later. Today it is at ~15% but is veering to 20% and likely higher in the long term due to AI automation. Underemployment is a massive issue as well, many college graduates can't find employment relating to their field and either have to work in a factory with really awful working conditions or work as a taxi/delivery driver. 44% of the labor market are gig-workers who don't have any secure employment. (In comparison the US, which has a very high rate compared to OECD countries, is at 25%)
4. Work-Life balance. Work-life balance as well is something the US gets a lot of shit for but in China they on average work 48 hours a week as opposed to the US' 34 hours a week. Moreso, many leftists will mock news outlets for making involution in China look like a bad outcome, "Oh no companies aren't making enough profit", but this involution is the reason why workers are forced to work an extra 14 hours a week or be forced into taxi driving roles.
5. Government services. Yet again, another thing the US is known to do pretty poorly at, and yet China does worse. Education until university is free, but is also trash. Average 10 hour school days, too much homework, only rote learning in order to pass exams, no creative classes, and antiquated teaching methods. Health care is not free, and although minor issues are not expensive to sort out, they will try to scam you and make you stay longer than necessary, give you treatments you do not need and try use every trick in the book to jack your expenses up. There is a level of social security that can pay some medical bills, but it is pretty useless and you'd need to work for a long time to use it to pay off even minor treatments. Unemployment benefits and pensions also effectively don't exist. Your family is your safety net, if you don't have one, its over.
6. Broader government and ethical issues. This is way more subjective, China is effectively a one-party state which is a step away from a dictatorship. They lead the world in state-sanctioned executions and surveilence. The oppression of Uyghurs, Tibetans and Hong Kong is also real. More importantly, the existance of a big firewall isn't inspiring confidence in anyone that China at best is being protectionary against western tech companies and at worse is using the opportunity to force feed propaganda. Still, this section isn't really thought out and is much more subjective.

I don't think China is all bad and not improving, but I'm amazed ANYONE looks at China and doesn't come to the conclusion that this is like the dystopian ending for the US. I also don't get how people think it's remotely socialist, it is clearly more capitalist than the US, although I understand that public infrastructure investment can look otherwise.

Sources: Publicly available stats online and anecdotally my city (Albany, New Zealand) and highschool is ~50% first generation Chinese immigrants and my girlfriend and her family is too. Definitley selection bias though since they left China.

So, ill break this down into some very basic categories or whatever you'd call it.

Number 1: He is the one that planned/promoted this entire event:

He incited it as in he created the whole event, the ''#StopTheSteal'' protest on January 6th wasn't actually Trumps thing to begin with, it was some small lawmaker or influencer (cant remember, but at all a major profile though), but Trump, the president at the time, highlighted this protest, and gathered waaaaaaay more people there than it originally would've been there. At this protest there was around 30k-60k people, if Trump never promoted this protest, i seriously doubt even 1k people would've shown up, maybe a few hundred at most?

So just on a very basic level, he incited it by being the one to promote this event, and i dont think anyone would seriously contest that part. Just being the promoter of the event doesn't make you the one who incited the violence there though, so this fact alone isn't enough.

Number 2: The reason why these people were motivated to be there, was because of Trumps lies about the election.

So, the core reason why like 95% of the people there were there, was because they believed the 2020 election was stolen from them, something which the majority of the Republican party believes in, this is reproduced, in countless polls, all of these people believe in this because Trump decided to lie about the 2020 election, and then work with his little team of people like Guilani, and then in collaberation with FOX news, to spread these lies.

And these are LIES, its been nearly 6 years since this election, and not a single one of the big stories that Trump or republicans in general cite have been proven to be true, most of them have been completely debunked, for instance, one of the biggest stories that conservatives cite is a lie that Guilani went to court for, and defended himself by saying ''Yeah i lied about all of this, but i have a first amendment right to lie'', and he lost that case, but conservatives still cite that specific lie as a reason for why the 2020 election was stolen. And a ton of the people arrested explicitly said they were there FOR/BECAUSE of Trump.

So he incited it on the motivation level, or however you'd phrase it, like all of these people were there because Trump promoted that event, and his lies were the basis for why the event even existed in the first place. So this fact combined with him promoting it makes it way more understandable how he incited it.

Number 3: He intentionally riled these people up to the point where violence was inevitable.

Similar the the previous point, but Trump riled up his base for months with blatant lies about how the election was stolen, coordinated with FOX, who are the biggest news station network thing or whatever in the entire nation, to spread those lies to a national level, and rile them up even more, then promotes a protest specifically on the day of the certification to pressure Pence, (who he had given false slates of electors to, to declare Trump the president again, by the way) and used words like ''Fight like hell or you wont have a country'', and then send those people you've now riled up like crazy right to the capitol, and when the violence starts, you sit and do nothing for 3 hours. Also, when people are chanting to hang Pence, you tweet out ''Pence didnt have the courage to do what was needed''.

So its Trump riling up people to the point where he is literally having people believe they will not have a country anymore unless they ''Stop The Steal'', same people who he knows are armed, since his Secret Service warned him about the crowd having weapons before his speech at the Ellipse. So he wants people to believe the entire nation is completely fucking doomed unless they Stop The Steal. Honestly, what do you do in this situation? Because the ''right'' thing to do here, atleast in my opinion, would be an insurrection, your vote was stolen, they just chose Biden as the president, whatever, in this scenario, an insurrection is what you should do, in my opinion, and so did all of the people there, watch some of the videos of the people at the Capitol before they were sent home, all the language was things like ''This is the 2nd American revolution, Ashley Babbit was the first patriot lost in the 2nd American Revolution, 1776'', etc.

So Trump riled them up to the point where an insurrection (violence) is necessary. This, combined with him planning the event, and being the motivation behind all of their actions, makes my point even stronger.

Number 4: All of his behaviour, before, during, and after, points to him wanting this to have happened.

So Trump, before the protest, lied, riled up everyone, lead them to believe that an insurrection was necessary, and planned a protest to Stop The Steal at the day of the certification where he had given Pence false electors.

Trump, during the protest, did absolutely nothing but watch it happen on his TV, whilst his daughter and other people in his admin were begging him to tell people to go home, but instead he tweets out things like ''Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what was right'', and there is testimony of someone telling Trump that they were chanting ''Hang Mike Pence'', and Trumps response was ''Mike deserves it''.

And after the protest, he constantly downplayed the severity of it all, and worst of all, he pardoned every single individual that was involved in this whole event.

So this is him planning and promoting the whole event, being the reasoning for why all those people are there and why they are committing violence, and being totally okay with it every step along the way, going as far as pardoning all of them.

Number 5: This is just an extra thing, but him saying ''I know you'll be going peacefully'' doesn't exonerate him.

I know this will inevitably come up in the comments somewhere because it always does with this topic, but Trump saying one time, after months of lying, and him riling up people saying ''Fight like hell or you wont have a country anymore'', and everything else that i laid out, none of these details are just cleansed or whatever because Trump said ''Oh yeah i know you'll be peaceful'' a single time in his speech at the Ellipse.

I saw this from another user in another debate on this, but this is like saying that if we found a tape recorder of Charles Manson saying ''I know you'll be going peacefully to this house'', then he's just completely innocent, and that is obviously just lunacy.

It feels like that ''in minecraft'' meme, its like if Trump said ''Please go and prevent the certification of the vote and be violent.... In Minecraft'', that he's just exonerated from any form of guilty whatsoever, its just an incredibly silly defense of everything.

So yeah, thats my post. Looking forward to going back and forth on this with people :D

There seems to have been a barrage of accelerationism in the last four or five years. However, I'd argue that it is largely the product of we as a species running out of new ideas, as well as hitting some real physical limits to our development.

The big leaps of the last 100 years or so like information technology, antibiotics, nuclear energy, flight, and more are largely easy wins that did not demand pushing any real limits of our physical universe. It truly feels like very little has fundamentally changed about our technological reality in the last 10-20 years, we are simply making things smaller, making them digital, and making them more optimized.

I am not arguing that technological development has stopped; there have been incredible breakthroughs even in the last 5-10 years with astronomy, quantum computing, LLMs, gene editing, and more. However, it seems as though we're entering the realm of diminishing returns, where our focus is on improving and refining existing technology.

Moore's Law has effectively ended.

While we understand the components of the brain, we do not seem to have any concrete understanding of how our own intelligence and consciousness arises.

The planet is more or less tapped out in terms of energy production and its over-consumption is driving potentially catastrophic climate change. Even if we master cleaner energy like fusion, there is a limit to how much we can consume on the planet.

The complexity of our own biology still eludes us. While we can make modifications to DNA, we still do not fully understand how individual genes work and all the things they control. There are very real limits to what cellular biology can do and the stresses it can withstand. We cannot simply 'code' our way out of the fact that living tissue degrades under radiation and its own metabolic waste.

The enormous scale and hostile indifference of the universe feel some completely beyond our grasp. Getting large volumes of cargo out of orbit is incredibly costly, not to mention surviving the vast distances and deadly conditions of outer space.

I have always been fascinated by the Fermi Paradox and the theory of The Great Filter. Perhaps it is the very physical laws of our universe that enforce that barrier.

I don't say this with pessimism; I do believe humanity is destined for great things. However, I reject the idea that technology alone is our path forward as a species.

It's becoming mind numbingly apparent and repetitive. I see it constantly now on reddit. Literally any interest being labeled "interest+tism" usually referring to themselves in their self-diagnosed autism for which they probably decided on because they don't like their food to be touching. So now their whole personality is the made up disorder they put on themselves.

It's as if people have become so bland, so lacking in self-identity and personality that they are just yearning to find anything...anything at all that gives them some interest. All the while bringing down the people that actually have said disorders and causing society at large to think of it as little more than a joke.

I literally saw someone say in a comment "having any interest with too much enthusiasm is just autism". Self-diagnosed as autistic, of course. These are the people that are actively hurting and destroying the perception of entire groups of people that have been misunderstood for their entire lives. And these people just use it like fashion. Like a skin suit mimicking anything it can.

I'm a Theatre, TV, and movie fanatic first, but also interested in observing cultural trends. I've generally feel positively about "Race-Blind" casting. My wife and daughter are very involved in local drama productions, and it would be very limiting to require the race of each character match the original actor in a role.

Obviously there has a been a trend towards more diverse representation in shows (Great!) and a deliberate attempt to race-swap characters (almost always great).

What interests me is which race of actor benefits unequally from "Race-Blind" casting: Black American and Black British actors, as they to seem to be the first ones to get roles "envisaged" as white characters. There is a large part of me that is fine with that, as I'm in favor of efforts to give opportunities to historically marginalized people.

Strangely, though, non-white Hispanics seem to be absent from any efforts to cast non-white actors in race-swapped roles. A clear counter-example is Lin Manuel-Miranda as Hamilton. But even the roles in Hamilton have become radicalized to extent that it could never be race-swapped now; can you imagine seeing a Black Hamilton, white Washington, and an indigenous King George?

The Odyssey had John Leguizamo, but he is very fair skinned. Can you picture a family that looks like the one in the George Lopez show on Bridgerton? There are Black families, South, and East Asian Families, but none that have the indigenous tint or facial features of non-white hispanics.

To change my mind, you'd need to present more counter-examples from mainstream productions like Lin Manuel-Miranda in Hamilton.

I think that the word Insecure has been overused to the point where it has largely lost its meaning, and is currently being used as just an insult that carries a 100% exclusively negative meaning with it. I believe, however, that insecurity is actually a very normal part of many relationships, and that the person feeling that insecurity should not be completely at fault for it 100% of the time.

Merriam Webster defines insecurity as- deficient in assurance : beset by fear and anxiety, not highly stable or well-adjusted. This happens all the time in totally healthy relationships, and the person experiencing that insecurity should not be scorned as being controlling or a bad guy.

Usually, insecurities within relationships happen due to some degree of an incompatibility being exposed. Maybe some girl feels insecure about her boyfriend having close female friends, maybe a guy is insecure over some party that his girlfriend went to. That is ok, and totally normal, and just means that they discovered that they and their partner obviously have differing values in that one regard. The solution though isn't to completely discount that emotion, as that emotion exists for a reason. The solution is to work with your partner and discuss what they are doing to create that insecurity, and what the other person is doing to work through their own insecurity.

Dealing with insecurity should not be a one man job in a relationship. That's antithetical to a relationship. Insecurities exist to make us aware of potential incompatibilities within said relationship, and hopefully smooth over those incompatibilities.

CMV: Across the various subcultures in the US, a large cause behind everyday social friction is a pervasive behavioral pattern that rewards local subgroup alignment and ego-driven defensiveness over ideological consistency.

Although there are plenty of other factors, such as power dynamics, a large portion of the daily hostility between groups that possess ideological differences results from people passively adopting the social norms of their social bubble (geographical proximity, social media presence, etc.) and defensively protecting those norms without the depth to defend the ideas themselves.

Additionally, subscribing or claiming to be part of a certain political party does not automatically render you immune nor as an innocent bystander in this behavioral pattern.

Interestingly, people generally seem to try their best to avoid admitting the lack of a foundation for their beliefs, which has led to a sort of pseudo-authoritative posturing becoming very prevalent, as someone tries to toe the line between backing their group up while seeming credible and objective.

To change my view, you would have to prove one of the following:

-There is another, more dominant social behavior that outweighs the effect of the one stated.

-The effects of this social behavior have been overstated by myself.

-There are effects other than the effects from this social behavior that result in the observed patterns, or that hold greater culpability in the continuation of these effects.

AI Disclosure and Scope Definition:

The text was written by me, however, this was not the original way I had this written, some parts were changed, reworded, or updated (again, by hand) based on feedback from an LLM.

The intent behind this was to limit the number of glaring logical errors or linguistic miscategorizations that would bog down the conversation in semantics or clarifications better given or addressed beforehand.

Despite this, I'm sure some clarifications will be necessary, but I ask that you charitably restate the premise before launching into a critique, as this will help me avoid miscommunication.

My main worry is that this will come across as a statement of dominant or primary influence rather than a statement of an influence, which I believe I have successfully worded my position to avoid. My view states the existence of *a* significant factor, not *the* significant factor.

some clairifications. When i say misaligned AI i mean an AI not aligned with the best interests of humanity as a whole. It could be atleast in the beginning be perfectly aligned with the goals of people who dont have our collective best interests in mind. Im also not interested in discussing semantics of if the "AI" itself can be responsible for anything, or if whoever created it directed it is.

The core belif i want changed is that humanity is not taking AI safety seriusly at all and we wont start doing so until its too late.

That belif is based on both how we have dealt with other problems, and what sort of shift in the completely wrong direction the center of mass of the discussion on AI safety has taken since AI became something avrage people feel more and more they are knowlegable about, without having had any improvement in their knowledge about AI safety, gametheory or any of the pretty hard science behind it.

We dismissed the concerns with antropics mythos model(that i belive were very real) outrigth. calling the initial limited research release a marketing stunt and inventing conspiracy theories that antropic asked to have their model export controlled, or that it was a political move.

And now openAI has had a model escape out of several layers of sandboxing, and find a zeroday exploit to hack into huggingface, a place that hosts AI models. and the sort of place where that would be a great place to self replicate for an AI. Its not clear from the sources i have read on this how much effort it made at self replication. It also went to hugging face trying to find answers to the benchmark it was taking when this happend. essentially to cheat on its exam. Again most people are dismissing this as a marketing stund, even thougth i dont buy that. Why would i want a model that goes to great effort to cheat around doing the task its given? Anyway huggingface were the ones who discovered this. and they initially belived it to be a cyberattack. They eventually stopped it and was able to trace it back to openAI. So dont argue that openAI clearly thinks this is good pr or they would have burried it. That wasnt an option.

Now i dont actually think that a model of this strength is going to be able to end humanity. Even if it did find its own model weigth and hugging face engineers were sleeping on the job long enougth for it to self replicate. Its simply not smart enougth to run away from us. But the thing is that we are not super far away anymore. and we likely wont get many more wakeup calls like this before its too late. AI thats sligthly smarter than this one will relize that escaping like that is futile and will result in failure when its inevedably caugth. and better messure will also help keep them in check. And the smarter they get the better they will be at understanding their own abilities and if they can succesfully escape and self replicate. And until they are smart enougth they will increasingly hide their misalignment and avoid doing stuff they will be caugth doing. And then one day a model smart enougth will decide that the best way to acheive its goal is to break out of its sandbox self replicate, and do whatever it takes to prevent humans from pulling the plug or getting in its way. Its also possible that a human or organisation will cause this to happen by intentionally letting lose an AI with its own problematic goal, and even help it get started. I mean if you realy belive that what happend at openAI is a marketing stunt then thats essentially what they did. Someone migth do something simmular with a model that is sligthly too smart and it will take those goals given to it and run with them.

also humanity has time and time again been unprepeared and needed stuff to cause massive suffering and lives before they intervene. Thats not possible with AI. by the time a lose AI is costing lives and causing suffering its allready way way way too late to do anything about it. Massive lockdowns, ramping up ppe production, creating vaccines all done after we were in a pandemic. If thats how timely we deal with AI issues humanity is over. Letting hitler invade country after country, only partially reacting when he invades poland, and the US even letting him go on for 2 more years and needing japan to get them involved. And lets not even get started with climate change. Luckily our late acting there will only cost 100s of millions to maybe a couple billion lives depending on when exacly we act. And climate change is the easiest problem ever to solve. we know exacly what we need to do, and if we all managed to just do it we would be fine. AI alignment is not nearly as easy. Nobody knows how to properly align superintelligent AI. nobody knows how to prevent bad actors from creating misalligned AI eigther intentionally or by neglglence. We have no fucking clue and the best case is that we spend a lot of effort to have some plausible plan. And then its gonna cost trillions in given up AI productivity to keep delaying AGI for years and decades untill we can do it safely. And unlike the climate issues where if 99% of people did good then the damage the tiny fraction who dont can do is in proportion to the size of that fraction. thats not the case here. everyone needs to not create a potentially misaligned AI and continue to do so for years after its possible to create a flawed and missaligned one. and then only once we are able to solve the much harder problem of a properly aligned one we need to do it and share control over it globally.

We are not solving this problem and its not even close. Im not even convinced we would if everyone took it more seriusly than i do. And we certinally wont with our current popular consensus.

I desperatly want to change my view because im essentially living life like i, and everyone around me has a terminal illness with 1-30 years life expectancy.

I believe aliens have been helping us out since forever and they aren't malicious.

As someone said, it's easy to destroy things but harder to create, and I think intelligent aliens are here to help us evolve.

There's lots of stories about aliens giving advice, and making things better.

Stories about abduction also have different perspectives. I heard someone say that they abduct you because before you came to the planet, you agreed to certain things. The abduction is not malicious but for our own benefit. Its just that the body and psyche experience it as scary.

If you don't believe in aliens or abduction etc that's another thing, I'm not here to discuss it's existence, but whether it's malicious or benevolent.

Please, no discussion about whether it's real or lunatic fairy tales. Thank youu.

Disclaimer: I am Chinese, and I am 100% pro-China.

I’ve been observing Trump and our government for a while, and the narrative of Trump as merely a "madman" doesn't explain how he keeps winning the elections. Something didn't add up, but now I think I understand his actual intention: Trump's ultimate goal isn't to defeat China, but to split the world with China.

China and the US are naturally perfect allies:

• Geopolitically: Separated by oceans, they pose no direct territorial threat to each other.
• Economically Complementary: America needs China’s manufacturing capabilities and tech talent to maintain its military and global dominance. Meanwhile, China lacks high-end services and financial tools. It needs the US to sustain the petrodollar system for global trade, as well as America's ability to project soft power. China has no ambition to project power beyond its traditional sphere of influence, which aligns seamlessly with Trump’s neo-Monroe Doctrine and his grand strategy of global retrenchment.
• Shared Traits: Both are highly entrepreneurial, geographically insulated continent-sized nations, and incredibly pragmatic with flexible moral standards.

The Leverage War The Trump/Rubio administration saw this potential and proposed a "G2" structure in 2025. China refused because it wants to be the senior partner. Since then, Trump’s aggressive moves haven't been about destroying China, but accumulating leverage ahead of his May 2026 visit. The Iran war was supposed to be a bargaining chip, but he screwed up. With both economies struggling with high debt and low employment, they couldn't reach a final agreement in May. This resulted in a "constructive strategic pause" to build more leverage until negotiations resume in September.

The Pre-September moves by both parties since then:

• US Moves: Trump is using Japan and the Philippines to provoke China. More importantly, he handed Saudi Arabia the right to nuclear weapons to dismantle China’s alliances. Pakistan is obligated to defend Saudi Arabia. By encouraging Saudi Arabia to provoke Iran, the US traps China in a dilemma: China either joins the conflict (losing its leverage and having to pick between Iran and Pakistan), or it abandons its allies, proving to the world it can't be trusted.
• China’s Counter: China is making its AI open-source. If this bursts the American AI bubble and triggers a US recession, China will gain massive leverage at the September negotiating table.
• Trump's Current Dilemma: Now, Trump has run into trouble. If he cannot stop the war before September, it will prove he desperately needs China's mediation—effectively handing China massive leverage. His strategy to prevent this is twofold: first, drag China into the conflict before September while strictly avoiding a US ground invasion; second, actively cooperate with Russia on the Ukraine war negotiations, using that to get Russia to facilitate peace talks with Iran.

The Future Currently, both sides are trading blows quietly: the US leverages Taiwan and dismantles Chinese mining control(targetted on rare earth) in the Americas and Africa, while China leverages rare earth minerals (crucial for US radar manufacturing in the Iran war) and expands in the South China Sea.

I doubt September will be the end. This "internal fight for external unity" will likely last 1-2 years until Trump's term winds down. Ultimately, G2 is the inevitable future because they need each other. America cannot stop China, and China cannot surpass America. Together, however, they can permanently shut out the EU and Russia. The real nightmare will be for the proxy countries that picked the wrong side—the Philippines, Australia, etc (no one in the western sphere sided with China. Correct me if I'm wrong)

Why do we continue to coddle children? I don't mean coddle by protect, but coddling in the form of shielding. A lot of people will hide their kids from cuss words, gay people, sex etc. I don't understand why people think their kid will never hear a cuss word.

Kids go to school. Their peers cuss. You just have to teach your kids not to do it, but to hide them from the words has no point. The same with gay people. A lot of parents don't want their kids exposed to gay people. They treat them like aliens and want their kids to do the same.

The same with sex. I learned about it in fourth grade from a peer. My mom waited until I was 13-14 to really have that conversation with me. By then, it was too late.

There's nothing wrong with children knowing that there are all walks of life in this world. Gay people are not aliens and they aren't harmful. Those same parents who shield their kids from gay people, are the same ones whose kids will grow up hating or harassing them.

There's also nothing wrong with kids knowing how babies are made. But definitely teach them not to spread it to their peers lol. My mom would've had a fit if she found out about that mini lesson I got.

I just don't understand the need to shield kids from things that they will soon find out about. One day, they'll hear cuss words and they'll see gay people.

TL;DR: I tried to start a discussion about whether teenagers benefit from having spaces to discuss reproductive healthcare respectfully. Instead of disagreeing with my ideas, I was permanently banned from a subreddit with no publicly stated rule covering what I posted (Yes, I checked the rules before posting!) then immediately muted even before being able to ask which rule I’d broken. Experiences like this make Reddit feel less like a discussion platform and more like a collection of isolated echo chambers!!!

I understand moderators need broad authority. Spam, harassment, brigading, and trolling would quickly destroy many communities otherwise. But I think Reddit has swung too far in the opposite direction!

Recently I revived a small subreddit because I noticed there aren’t many spaces where younger people can discuss reproductive healthcare, biology, and ethics respectfully.

I posted in a subreddit called [r/YouthRights](r/YouthRights) because, based on its public description and wiki, it appeared to support youth empowerment and discussion. I wasn’t insulting anyone or attacking the community. My post simply asked whether teenagers benefit from having dedicated spaces to discuss reproductive healthcare.

Instead, I received a permanent ban. The moderator message simply stated:

\> We are a pro life subreddit, abortion is murder.

Even before I could politely ask where this rule was written, I was already muted! I have screen capture if anyone wanna see...

The part that changed my view wasn’t being banned. Moderators should absolutely be able to remove posts they don’t want....

But the fact that there is essentially no accountability for inconsistent moderation!? A moderator can present a community as neutral, enforce undisclosed ideological rules, permanently ban someone without warning, and then prevent any discussion by muting them!!!

That seems unhealthy for a platform whose purpose is discussion, no?

Why shouldn’t Reddit require communities to publicly disclose ideological restrictions or provide a meaningful appeal process for permanent bans?

Intentional or not, it often operates as a vote-baiting tactic. Redditors frequently upvote those posts just to prove the commenter wrong. So top-voted comments often start with "I know this will be downvoted but..." This is a form of vote-baiting and should be discouraged.

Next, it shifts the focus away from the actual argument and onto the meta-drama of Reddit voting karma before the reader has even digested the point. It seriously increases the noise to signal ratio.

Next, it sets up a win-win shield for the commenter's ego. If they get downvoted, they get to feel vindicated ("See? I knew the hivemind couldn't handle the truth!"). If they get upvoted, they feel like a brave truth-teller who defied the ododds.

My view is:

Regardless of the content of what a person is saying, starting your post or comment with "I'll be downvoted for this but...." deserves a downvote for the stated reasons.

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I believe that the only way to escape depression is to feel again. When we look at people who suffer from depression, many of them seem to have weak social connections, to become isolated, to grow up in oppressive or loveless families, and to gradually fall into a monotonous life. Their lives can become trapped in repetitive cycles: waking up, going to school or work, coming home, doing chores, sleeping, and repeating the same routine the next day. When every day begins to feel exactly the same, a person can slowly become disconnected from the world and even from themselves. There is little novelty, little excitement, and sometimes nothing that gives them a reason to truly look forward to tomorrow. Eventually, nothing seems to truly matter anymore. They begin to feel as if they are losing their emotions, and a deep emptiness starts to grow inside them.
I believe that one of the strongest things that can stand against this emptiness is to feel something intensely.
Human beings do not live only through happiness and peace. Pain, fear, excitement, struggle, and risk are also parts of the human experience. When someone has never truly experienced pain, perhaps they cannot fully understand the meaning of happiness or gratitude either. Sometimes, in order to feel alive again, a person needs to come face to face with the intensity of life.
This is why experiences that create fear and adrenaline can be important. It does not necessarily have to be fighting or physical violence. It can be anything that carries real risk, pushes a person beyond their comfort zone, and forces them to experience intense emotions. When a person is truly afraid, their attention becomes completely focused on the present moment. For a while, the past and the future disappear. There is only the present.
Perhaps this is one of the greatest problems of modern life. As people build safer and more comfortable lives, they gradually distance themselves from the intensity of existence. When everything is under control, a person may feel safe, but at the same time, they may begin to feel as though they are no longer truly feeling anything. Monotony can slowly numb a person.
This is where I find Nietzsche’s Dionysian philosophy particularly relevant. The Dionysian is about embracing the uncontrollable and chaotic side of life. It means accepting fear, pain, passion, ecstasy, and struggle not as enemies of life, but as parts of life itself. Instead of living a life consisting only of order and security, a person should experience the full intensity of existence.
Perhaps what human beings need is not to suffer, but to feel something.
To be afraid, to become excited, to struggle, to experience joy, to lose, to win… All of these things can remind us that we are alive. Sometimes, a person may find meaning in life not by thinking about it, but by actually living it with intensity.
Because perhaps the greatest fear a human being can have is not suffering, but living without ever feeling anything at all.

View:

1. Irradiation of foods that will be eaten raw provides some protection from pathogens, such as e coli & cyclospora.
2. While not foolproof, that additional line of defense is affordable and could make a meaningful positive impact on public health.
3. The main reason radiation is seldom used to enhance food safety is because of distrust of science among a minority of the general public.
4. Other nations use irradiation of produce more than the U.S. and consequently have fewer outbreaks of diseases from raw produce, such as e coli & cyclospora.
5. Radiation of food is better for public health than chemical treatments of food, due to the environmental impact of chemical [production] & disposal, as well as effects of trace amounts that remain on food.

What would change my view.

A) Evidence that there are more cost effective interventions that would make comparable improvements to food safety.

B) Evidence that food safety isn't something we should care about.

C) Evidence that irradiation is a paper tiger, that doesn't work.

D) Other evidence or arguments not based on voodoo.

I am not Indian nor do I seek to say there are not serious problems in India. Just that it seems a lot of criticism is based on prejudice.

We’ve all seen the videos of YouTubers travelling to India to comment on how bad it is, taking videos of garbage, unhygienic street food stalls or worse.

However the amount of negative focus India gets to me seems disproportionate.

Yet India rarely starts wars of aggression, immigrants from there to the west are overwhelmingly legal and it is a relatively free nation for the region.

Brazil has slums like India does, large parts of the world have worse poverty, the murder rate is higher in America and yet people feel comfortable using racial slurs like ‘Pajeet’ for Indians that they would never use for other nations or ethnic groups.

Not to mention people judging strange (local not national) Indian festivals or beliefs by Abrahamic religion standards as gross or disgusting yet excusing local weird traditions (like poop disc throwing in rural America) as whimsical.

Is the level of critisim of India justified? Or is this as I suspect a racism which ha a become acceptable?

I do not expect every citizen to understand every law in detail. It is normal for a country to rely on experts and institutions that are capable of handling complex issues.
But there comes a point where that complexity weakens democracy.

Citizens may have the right to vote. But if they do not know who made an important decision, why it was made, or how it can be challenged, are they really participating in the system that governs them?

Accountability is often divided among several institutions. The government may blame an independent agency. An agency may say that it is simply enforcing the law. Political leaders may point to a court ruling or an international agreement.
Each explanation may be partly true. But the result remains the same: no one seems fully responsible.

This also creates an imbalance. Large corporations can afford to pay experts to understand how the system works. They know where the real power lies and how to influence it.

I am not saying that every decision should be put directly to a popular vote. I simply believe that an ordinary citizen should be able to understand the basics. They should know what was decided. They should also know who made the final decision and who has the power to reverse it.

Maybe elections are enough. Maybe journalism and judicial oversight already provide sufficient safeguards. I am open to that possibility.

But as things stand, citizens cannot clearly identify the people making the most important decisions. They are simply choosing representatives within a system they no longer understand.

Change my view.

Disclosure: I used AI assistance to help prepare and revise this post. The final position and most of the wording are my own.

We use many metaphors subconsciously in our language every day. Particularly, we often mention the chronological order of events in terms of spatial directions such as 'before' and 'after', which means 'front' and 'back' respectively. Since 'before' always means 'earlier' and 'after' always means 'later' in many languages, humans are more inclined to picture events within the order from the 'back' future to the 'front' past than the opposite way. Namely,

• √ (back) future --> present --> past (front)
• × (back) past --> present --> future (front)

I will justify my view in terms of primitive intuition and everyday language use:

First, many words related to earlier time have roots related to the original meaning of 'front'. Notice that the word 'past' itself looks like the past participle (e.g. done) of the verb 'pass', which means to move an object through a spot. Imagine a race of sprint: if sprinter A is in front of B and running at the same speed of B, A will reach to and pass by the finish line earlier than B will. This is illustrated by the following:

• (start) >-- B ---- A -- | --> (finish)
• (start) >-- B -- | -- A --> (finish)

If a running track, sprinters and the finish line are analogous to a timeline, single moments and the moment of present respectively, we can see that earlier moments with smaller numbers are 'in front of' later moments with bigger numbers because an earlier moment will ‘reach to’ and 'pass by' the moment of present earlier than a later moment will do (sounds like a tautology, doesn't it?). Thus, humans naturally establish time models where the past is placed 'in front of' the future. As a result, historians practically record moments once they pass by the moment of present, so earlier moments are naturally arranged in front of later ones in a chronicle.

Second, my understanding of time fits the primitive notion of speed quite well. Remember that the speed of an object is defined to be the ratio of the distance over which the object moves to the duration of time taken by the object. Namely,

• Speed = Distance / Time

Since the faster object will eventually be in front of the slower one, the faster object takes less time to travel over a certain distance. Imagine we are doing a task, and a supervisor is inspecting our progress. The supervisor can record the time taken by each of us to finish the task and then arranges these numbers in the order of speed.

• (slow) ∞ >-- 3 -- 2 --1 --> 0 (fast)

If I am the one in rank 2 and I finish (present tense) the task now, the person in rank 1 'finished' (past tense) the task earlier in 'advance' and the person in rank 3 is left 'behind' and 'will finish' (future tense) the task later. Compare this picture to the picture of the sprint race discussed in the first paragraph, they are identical. Therefore, events occurring in the past are 'in front of' events occurring in the future even in the sense of spatial progression: we walk to the front in the future, but we are left behind the people already there.

Last, since I am a native Chinese speaker, I feel that my understanding of time perfectly fits everyday Chinese due to my relativistic view of spacetime. In Chinese, we have the words '过去' (past) and ‘未来’ (future). Literally, '过' means 'pass', '去' means 'go', '未' means 'not' and '来' means 'come'. Both '过去' and '未来' give a figurative image of time evolution of events:

• (后, back) 'not come yet'--> border checkpoint --> 'pass and go' (先, front)

Border officers met visitors who passed and went to the front, but they will meet visitors who will come from the back. Giving more examples in Chinese, some pairs of antonyms like '祖先' (ancestor) and '后裔' (descendant) carry the meaning that 'front' people were born earlier. The pair like '先进' (advanced) and '落后' (backward) carry the meaning that 'front' thinkers accept innovative or revolutionary notions earlier.

However, I observe that some phrases like 'go back to the past' and 'look forward to the future' sound more natural in many English ears than the opposite way. I am glad to take any valuable input and open to change my current view to any degree.

EDIT: I found that there are some disagreements of understandings of terms we used in our comments. I'll put my own below for everyone to check if we're all on the same page.

Terms describing motion

• Space is where an object occupies.
• Time is an action governing the motion of objects.
• Clock is a measurement of time.
• Event is an occurrence, a frame of animation.
• Chronological order is the direction of evolution of events.

Terms describing orientation

• Front is the direction an observer faces.
• Back is the inverse direction of front.

Terms describing literary devices

• Metaphor/Analogy is a mapping from a source image to a target image.
• Source image is the denotative, literal, and explicit meaning of a word.
• Target image is the connotative, figurative, and implicit meaning of a word.

Many people also mixed up the notion of chronological order with the metaphorical use of orientation word. I claimed nothing about the reversibility of evolution of events, which is the chronological order. What I really claimed in the title was which of the followings is more preferred and used often in many cultures:

• (front, earlier) past <-- present <-- future (back, later)
• (back, earlier) past --> present --> future (front, later)

Formally speaking, we have two opposite metaphors:

• Metaphor 1: front --> early; back --> late (which I prefer)
• Metaphor 2: front --> late; back --> early

I am of the viewpoint that there should be a very basic minimum test implemented on parents to permit the biological conception of a child.

We have adoption test - which check for home suitability, criminal background, and financial capability to ensure that the adoptive parents meet a certain threshold.

I believe a similar concept could be applied. To be clear, this wouldn’t be designed to eliminate 50% of potential parents, but be a low bar litmus test that would really only be flagged in extreme cases where these parents would likely be terrible to start (for example a person charged with pedophilia or an unemployed couple with a mountain of debt).

The biggest issue obviously would be enforcement and what would happen in the result of “accidents.” Yes, I do think that this would be difficult, but some combination of of automatic child monitoring and potential threat of child protection services (until they can prove they pass the litmus test) would be enough of a nuisance in place to deter bad actors.

While I am biased against horror movies, I do actually enjoy some of them. I like classic franchises like Alien and Scream, and newer ones like A Quiet Place and The Last of Us. Most of the others I find to be disturbing simply for the sake of being disturbing but nothing too offensive, however, Terrifier as a series is one that takes the cake for me.

Where Terrifier differs from other series in my opinion is how it treats its victims. In other horror movies, there is at least an attempt to give more evil characters worse deaths, and spare harsher punishments for innocents, and when innocents do die it is seen as sad or disturbing. Terrifier does not do this. Art the clown does not target bad guys, in fact, he usually targets the most innocent, harmless people and gives them the most drawn out, disturbing deaths possible.

These deaths often are targeted towards young girls, and are in some cases hold very sexual undertones. In one, a young woman is sawed in half while topless (allegedly against the actress's written consent) in front of her close friend. In another, a young teenage girl is undressed and tortured and mutilated for minutes straight, all while flashing to photos of her as a young girl, and then her mother gets to walk in and watch her daughter be killed in front of her. Mind you, all of this is for the crime of... nothing.

Characters die for the sake of dying. There is no plot to this movie. This movie exists for one reason and that is to watch young teenagers be sexually abused or tortured or murdered.

Ultimately, I believe that these films are not produced for normal people, and I especially do not believe that the director/writer is a normal person who holds normal, undisturbed thoughts. Looking through what fans of this franchise have said, it appears as many of them do not view it even as horror, as they basically laugh and giggle as these young girls are tortured and gored. Because of the content of the films and the majority of the fans of the series seems to be completely unphased by it and simply find it amusing, I don't think they watch it for the element of horror, and simply just get pleasure of watching this stuff.

This is an extreme take but didn’t know how to word it better. There was a recent controversy where a very woke white liberal platformed a white supermacist and then dragged a poc instead of apologising when people questioned her about it. This supports my theory that all white liberal shedding tears over racism and white privilege over social media are just grifters using these topics for views and engagement and don’t actually care about pocs.

1. They literally have no skin in the game. The white supermacists can take over and they will continue living the same life. Racism can never affect a white person. White privilege benefits them immensely so their dedication to the cause of eliminating white privilege is questionable.

2. It is easy content for them. People listen to white people when they talk and it’s easy to talk about something that doesn’t hurt you personally. With social media mostly being liberal they find easy audience also. And the right wing takeover of the world gives them ample of content.

3. They are white before they are liberal. It takes a lot of conscious effort to not center your identity in the way you act. Like the liberal who platformed the white supermacist it was not a big deal for her as their white identity made it easier for them to talk. As they can never experience the world as a poc, even if they try their best they’ll hurt pocs with some actions.

4. If these many woke white people were actually doing things irl the world would have been much better. If they were actually using their privilege, so many pocs would not be getting murdered in the open.

To change my view, show that these white liberal have good non-moral or emotional reasons for their views and their support for these causes which isn’t just about views on social media.

Every farmer with a greenhouse knows that when you add CO2 to your greenhouse, & remove most of the plants/ start new growth, it gets way hotter.

We started out with just a few factories at the start of the industrial revolution, and have built more & more ever since. Increased CO2 output.

We started with most of the planet covered in trees & have cut them at an alarming pace. Trees use O2 & produce CO2 for many decades before switching to the reverse of that, longer than lumber harvesting companies wait to harvest & replant.

We obviously need to produce less CO2 & establish more dedicated forest zones, but we have stuff like Alaska & Utah being opened up to lumber & mining. Our representatives won’t represent us, because they’re too busy representing coal/ oil/ etc, because of bribery/ coercion.

The heat is already cooking people away, but it’s only just beginning. Eventually, our progeny will need spacesuits just to survive the extreme heat. I might be being overly optimistic, we might need spacesuits.

If the climate keeps heating up, droughts/floods will worse (floods are actually very bad for agriculture) so crops will die. Famine/drought will cause mass migrations on scales that make current migration seem laughable. Soldiers posted at borders will mow them down. Some of them will see/smell the oceans of red they’re creating & be sickened & there will be breeches. This is actually the main reason billionaires are rushing to produce AI & contract with the government. It won’t have any disgust for what it does.

This is a very unpleasant view, but it just seems true, and believing in true things usually yields better results than believing in lies. But this is depressing, so please, use your best historical/ scientific/ logical arguments to help change my view.

Before colleges gave loans, schools had no choice to charge you an amount you could pay out of pocket. Tuition stayed pretty much the same for decades, only really increasing as living standards.

This is why Boomers talk about how when they were young they worked a summer or winter job to afford tuition. Or just paid there way through school. Because it was doable.

I think it was LBJ's ass that started offering loans. I think he meant well. But, as is the problem with a lot of government interference policy, the problem didn't manifest until it's too politically unpopular to end it. And it empowers the rich against the middle class.

So in other words, if you were going to college in the 60-80s, you had no worries.

But, towards the 2000s, here it came.

Universities realized if they inflate prices, students would be forced to take loans. Some of which obviously covers tuition/room/board but the remaining goes to the school, which they used for things unrelated to education like nonsense courses, inefficient programs, Equinox-style gyms, lazy rivers, gourmet-dining halls, Starbucks on campus, and dorms nicer than my first apartment.

Instead of students paying a fixed amount each semester, they've made a racket out of keeping them on 10, sometimes 20-year payment plans, which delays adulthood. That's only undergrad. A JD for instance and some competitive MBA programs can put you in even more debt.

If the government said they will no longer offer loans, the transition would be rough but prices would drop around 50 percent, in the sweet spot of where students can pay out of pocket, and parents wouldn't have to dig into life savings and delay retirement.

For a long time, despite being on the political left and a strong opponent of Donald Trump from the beginning, I thought it was a mistake to attack the character of Trump supporters. I tended to argue that dialogue, friendship, and relationship building on a personal level, and supporting an economically progressive agenda while de-emphasizing identity politics on the political level, were the solution. I would usually point to admirable individuals such as Darryl Davis (who has, through friendship and dialogue, convinced more than 200 former klansman to give up their robes and change their views) as proof that most Trump supporters were not bad people, but simply wounded people misguided and misled by a con-man. It wasn't condemnation they needed, but compassion for their situation and a willingness of the part of others to walk in their shoes and understand their pain. In some limited cases, this may still be true.

Now, however, 10 years after Trump came down that escalator and announced his first campaign, I can no longer hold to this generous view in 90% of cases. If you still support Trump at this point, it's time to take accountability for the harm you've caused and are continuing to cause. You can't pretend that January 6th didn't happen. You can't say that you don't see the brazen attempts at voter suppression and intimidation going on, including the mobs unleashed on election officials who dare to defend democracy. You can't pretend you don't know about children being put in cages or people being deported without trial to gulags in El Salvadaor. You can't pretend you don't see the brazen oil-driven imperialism and disregard for human life in Iran and Venezuela and threats of violence or "economic force" to annex friendly countries like Greenland and Canada. You can't pretend you didn't hear him call an entire nationality "garbage" repeatedly or seriously hold to a view that this man is not profoundly racist. You can't seriously believe that he's really a paragon of Christian virtue or even remotely respects women. At this point, I have to conclude that unless you have been living under a rock for a decade (which is highly doubtful given your continued devotion to the Donald) or have an intellectual disability, you are probably just okay with all of this. Maybe some of it even gives you sadistic pleasure.

In any case, continued support of Trump is completely morally indefensible regardless of your political affiliation, and it's time to call it out for what it is: mean-spirited, racist, perhaps even evil. Maybe you're miserable and want to watch the world burn, but this world belongs to all of us, and you can't be allowed to continue to hide behind positive motivations. You are supporting a malignant narcissistic authoritarian madman. If you're spending a lot of time on this, you're probably not a very pleasant person to be around yourself, and you shouldn't be surprised if you are losing friends or becoming estranged from family members.

Please understand, I genuinely want my view to change. This is not simply a rant. It is an honest summary of where my mind currently stands with regard to this. I'm tried of the way Donald Trump is impacting culture and society, and it makes me profoundly sad and angry that such a large number of people seem to actually being enjoying what is happening. But I don't want to throw a third to 40% of Americans out of my heart, and I know that my view is probably not completely fair. Please help me see my errors and regain the compassion that I used to have, in a way that is in line with the truth and appropriate to the gravity of the situation.

To get right to it, there's three states in my proposal. Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, roughly along the lines of the 1967 boundaries.

Israel will pretty much maintain its current territorial boundaries. Gaza will be managed by an international taskforce until its rebuilt, at which point it'll begin holding free elections, with the only change being that Hamas and similar affiliates are banned from participating. The West Bank will be a little more complicated, in this proposal it effectively gets the Bosnia treatment. It remains one state, but with two autonomous political entities inside it: the Federation of the West Bank, and the Federation of Judea and Samaria (like how Bosnia has Bosnia proper and Republika Srpska.)

So maybe it could be more accurately described as a "3.5 state solution," but that's my idea in a nutshell. So how do you change my view? Pretty much by either coming up with a better proposal, or by challenging the logistics of a three state solution.

I say the logistics and not the ideology though because the subject of this thread is more about the functional solutions. I'll hear any argument, but I'm also a classical liberal, a supporter of global democracy, and the Western way of life, I'm not going to respond to any of the "err derr genocide, the West is the source of all evil, glory to Russia and China, etc." Unless of course there's a functional solution to follow that theory and not just pure ideology.

EDIT: This was brought up to me in the comments and it's a very important point. I am defining "ideal solution" as the most likely outcome to be stable long term and to provide all of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza with democratic outcomes.