For some reason it bothers me greatly when people talk about the number 2 being special because “it’s the only even prime number”. Like of course, that’s literally how they are defined. It’s like saying “did you know 3 is the only prime number divisible by 3?”

I support the abolishment of prisons (at least as we know them), but I don’t think this is a fair or convincing comparison. Prisons are a failed attempt to solve a real problem (what to do with people who break the rules), which is what people are concerned about. In an ideal society it will be replaced by something (rehabilitation?). Slavery solved no problem, and so needed nothing to replace it.

Climbing is great, because people tend to be friendly, and also competitive. But not competitive against each other, but rather against their own projects/goals. Makes for a super inclusive and comfortable social scene.

I wonder how much energy it would take to adjust earth’s tilt 🤔 nothing could possibly go wrong with that, right?

Inscryption. The less you know going into it, the better.

I can definitely empathise with the lack of trust in democracy. I’m holding out some hope that things might change once a newer generation starts to take office, but we will see.

But this failing of democracy just makes it seem all the more important that we as a people try to resist the divisiveness of modern politics and media, as that seems to be a common tool of control used by those in power.

provide them with a pathway to build power

If I understand you correctly, then I very much agree, but I don’t see this happening very much. On one side I see people saying “vote for the lesser of two evils, and then we can focus on changing the system/changing the democrat policies” without actually any clear idea how to do that. On the other side I see “don’t vote for either party, neither major party deserves to win” without any clear idea of how to give any realistic chance for a third party to win.

It is bad to normalise genocide. Did you not know this?

Here again you are using bad faith tactics to dismiss the idea that people in favour of voting might have valid reasons to, instead presenting it as if these people think normalising genocide is a good thing. This is divisive and not constructive at all.

All it takes is for one “side” to be racist and panicky…

Yes I know how quickly controversial discourse can go downhill, but to be that seems all the more reason to not allow our arguments to disintegrate, even if the other sides are.

You have to unseat and challenge with a truth that disagrees with the prevailing wisdom

I definitely agree, I think all widespread “truths” should stand up to scrutiny, but my point is about the way this is done. Challenging a truth/point of view should mean approaching the logical base of that view, and presenting an alternative with reasons why the alternative is better. But so often I see people ignoring the logical base of the other side’s viewpoint, and instead creating straw-men to attack instead, or simply just dismissing the other side entirely through one tactic or another. To be clear, this is done by all sides, I see many people dismissing the argument to vote as simply being “supportive of genocide” (which is obviously ridiculous), while people dismissing the argument to vote third party as being “stupid/ignorant” or other things to that effect, which is also obviously false.

Like you say, we are all products of our societies with different values, but the vast majority of people are reasonably smart and have good intentions. And dismissing people is not a good way of “calling them out”, it only causes further division and makes them even less likely to be receptive to your ideas. If you cannot see the reasons for someone’s beliefs (even if you strongly disagree with those reasons) then you stand very little chance of changing their mind.

I think assuming that people are completely accepting of what the administration is doing, even when they try to voice their opinions in polls, is in bad faith. They simply don’t feel they have the option to not vote. In any other democratic system I genuinely think a third party (greens?) would have a good chance to win this election, but the two party system is so entrenched (at the minimum in the minds of voters), that to not vote is seen as the functional equivalent of voting for the other side.

I’m not in the US so my opinion doesn’t really matter, but I do think that political discourse would be much more productive if people would stop talking past each other and dismissing the motivations/logic of the opposing side.

In my opinion, gift cards are good gifts when the giver has some idea of what they want to give, but not enough information to make a proper purchase. For example:

• for an “event” (eg skydiving, a meal at a fancy restaurant, canoeing trip, etc) where the gifter doesn’t know dates when the recipient is free.
• for a specific product which the giver knows fairly little, and the receiver has strong opinions on (eg. Money to spend on PC parts without making any product decisions for them)
• for an item of a “set”, where the gifter doesn’t know for sure which items are already owned (eg. A board game expansion, a collectible Lego set, a book from a series)

However i do think that often gift cards are used as excuses to be lazy.

Of course some qualifications must be met to qualify for a specific term, that’s exactly what definitions are. You yourself are presupposing your own qualifications (“having all genetic instructions”) which you are thrusting upon everyone and assuming it must be the one true definition. But your definition is also deeply flawed. If I have some stem cells harvested from my bone marrow, are those stem cells also a human? If I let those cells die, am I killing someone?

Or to take a step further into hypotheticals, if I store an egg and a sperm separately in a device built to automatically mix them together in a year from now, is this device now a human? Because it matches your definition of containing all genetic instructions, and if left alone then it would eventually produce a fertiliser egg, which you claim is already a human.

A human individual is an incredibly intricate thing, and to try reduce its definition to something as mundane as “contains human genetic information” is the actual mental gymnastics here.

If it wasn’t a human then an abortion wouldn’t be necessary because a dog, bird or fish embryo would die immediately.

This is blatant false equivalence. Trying to claim that if the embryo is not of some other animal, then it must be a human, as in an individual life. It is obviously a “human embryo” but that does not necessarily mean it is “a human”, just like a “human fingernail” is different from a “chimp fingernail” and yet is still not “a human”

We are talking about people who have sex and don’t want to deal with the outcome.

This is honestly a frighteningly cruel outlook. If a rock climber has a fall and is dangling with a broken arm from his rope, should we just leave him there to deal with it himself, since it was his choice to take the risk of climbing? Of course not! Despite his own actions causing his predicament, we as a society still provide care where we can. Hospitals tend to the wounds of idiots who play with fireworks, governments (in many countries) provide care to homeless people who lost all their money gambling. Just because a couple takes a risk which goes badly, does not justify revoking their access to care.

Again, this whole debate comes down to a definition of when a fertilised egg becomes a live human. And if you want to have any actual impact in this debate, then you are going to have to do better than pre-assuming some definition and dismissing anyone who disagrees with it.

There can also be devastating psychological fallout from not getting an abortion, which would be why many people believe it should be a choice that the people involved get to make about themselves, rather than forcing it on them.

About the rest of your argument, it hinges entirely on a detail that it doesn’t mention: when does an egg become a human? If sex caused literal newborns to be delivered by storks the next day, of course no one would be arguing to kill the child, even if that was by far the most “convenient”. However in reality there is a transition from a mere collection of cells no more special than any other collection of cells in the body (besides their potential for further development), all the way to a fully developed baby. The egg and sperm cells alone are clearly not human, while a baby clearly is. So then where along this gradual process can we first say that it is a human?

And this is the real crux of the debate. There is no point convincing people that it’s bad to kill their unborn baby via abortion, because they don’t believe there is a baby to kill at all yet, but rather a collection of cells which will eventually form a baby. By removing these cells, you stop any potential for a baby to be formed, just like wearing a condom stops the potential for a baby to be eventually formed, by keeping the egg and sperm separate.

I’m ignorant on this topic, but couldn’t the wallet addresses be compared to check this?

Reading. It doesn’t have to be much, but occasionally filling idle moments with a few pages read instead of doom scrolling social media can do wonders. It did for me at least.

Ah yes, dismissing research before it even exists, based on personal belief. What a healthy attitude.

I mean, it is weird in the sense that it is unusual. But that doesn’t make it bad, in fact it should become more normal.

we invented the modern car

I’m not saying that the left is the correct side to drive on, but you do realise that roads and “driving” (with horses) have existed well before the modern car right?

In fact the US used to drive on the left, until large freight wagons started preferring the right due to where the dude holding the horse whip was sitting.

I don’t think money itself corrupts, but power does and power comes with money. Im currently reading a book “Human Kind” that argues that people are generally pretty decent, but that even a little bit of power almost always starts changing people’s behaviour, affecting their empathy, etc.

If we had to have a video game dictator, he wouldn’t be the worst

I mean surely its a negative? You might like Xbox/switch in spite of the closed ecosystem, but wouldn’t they be better if they had an open ecosystem?

But then why spend so much money on a phone? I also don’t care about the specs of my phone, but this means I usually buy some $100 phone that gets the job done for a couple years.

I genuinely don’t see a reason why someone would buy an iPhone besides as a fashion accessory/ status symbol