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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: May 19th, 2024

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  • Reddit is not really anywhere close to the darkest parts of humanity. They’re “merely” extreme in some cases.

    The problem is this:

    makes me genuinely feel that these guys hold on to genuinely insane beliefs,

    That’s irrational. I know it doesn’t feel that way, but you have a belief system and from that belief system, they look insane to you, but also vice versa.

    You know that saying “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”? Kind of the same is true for ideologies. They’re not rational. People just believe stuff and occasionally they can get interrupted, shown a contradict and if you’re lucky they will reconsider. But it’s not automatic or guaranteed.

    And something that’s dawned on me as well, is that we have some kind of “historic, cultural optimism” that assumes that of course, justice, truth, rationality, tolerance will win. That’s not actually a guarantee. And even if it does work, it’s not guaranteed to work for you in your local environment.

    For a different example, a lot of history that we have records of, slavery was an accepted reality. Is it “genuinely insane” to hold that belief? We think so in modern times. But it was normal a mere few hundred years ago. And if it wasn’t explicit slavery some different social orders that were effectively the same existed.


    tldr: no, that’s just normal human behavior. Our filter and our “higher standard” is the weird thing. You’re not like that and neither are your friends? Good. Cherish that exception. Try to preserve it.

    Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit for the effect. But still, you get the idea.




  • This is fine. We don’t need lemmy or the fediverse to take over completely immediately.

    It’s a good working prototype that’s not a complete ghost town and that’s good enough for now. It doesn’t need to win everywhere immediately, it’s fine if it’s a working solution we can point to and new communities can be created if some people decide to and they won’t exist in a complete vacuum.