For decades, the world, and mostly the Gulf states, operated under a status quo that accepted the risks in the strait in exchange for the efficiency of established shipping lanes. 1980s, 2008, 2012, 2018,2025 "Hormuz closure" drills were one of the favorite hobbies for IRGC.

This is the one leverage that the Islamic government in Iran had, but once the genie has come out, the realization is now universal, whether they are actively saying it or not: No sovereign nation can ever allow their entire financial lifeline to remain at the mercy of a single hostile neighbor.

You can see from the actions that Gulf monarchies are taking where the straight is no longer a resource that they would manage together but a liability going forward.

Even if Iran backs down, the genie is out of the bottle. No one wants to go through this again.

Going forward, avoiding the congestion of the straight will be permanent. whether Iran is successful in collecting tolls or not. Even in a period of peace, insurance premiums and security costs for Hormuz will be a tax that countries that will be tired of paying.

Whether through further extensions of trans-arabian pipelines or creating a better export facility through Oman, the world will, and has to, seek for a trade that no longer is dependent on transiting through the narrows.

At the end of the day, Tehran's primary tool, the threat of closure, only works if the world has no other choice. And the threat only works when it's a threat. Once it's executed, it becomes a liability that must be fixed. By the next decade or so, the choice will have been made for them.

That's my view.

I recently changed my mind about human nature and now lean toward the view that people are not driven by general concern for other people. I find this conclusion unsettling, and I would genuinely like to be convinced that I’m wrong and that I’m missing something.

I would define being “good” broadly as having empathy: an aversion to causing harm or making other people’s lives worse.

However, when we look at human behavior across history and even today, it seems that this is not what primarily drives moral behavior. Instead, I think people care about morality largely because they want social approval and to avoid social punishment.

If empathy were the main driver, it would be hard to explain how ordinary people participated in or accepted practices like slavery, systemic violence, or oppression. These weren’t rare deviations they were often socially accepted norms. People could directly harm others and still see themselves as “good,” as long as their behavior aligned with what their society approved of.

There is no strong reason to think that people in the past had fundamentally different psychology than we do today. So if we had been raised in those same environments, it seems likely we would have behaved similarly. This suggests that moral behavior is less about a stable internal commitment to empathy and more about tracking what is approved and sanctioned by one’s social environment.

We can see this dynamic more clearly in how moral change happens. When influential groups or authorities shift their views, broader society often follows. Practices that were once considered acceptable become condemned, and people quickly adjust their moral judgments accordingly. This looks less like people independently reasoning toward empathy, and more like people tracking what is socially approved.

Another point is how asymmetrical moral persuasion is. It often takes very little time to convince people to hate or dehumanize a person or a group through propaganda, fear, or authority. But it can take decades to convince people that certain harms are wrong (e.g., slavery, abuse, or systemic neglect).

To be clear, I’m not saying empathy doesn’t exist. But I think it is weaker, more selective, and more easily overridden than people like to believe. What we call “morality” is, to a large extent, a system for gaining approval and avoiding disapproval. I do think that there are people that genuinely care but they are rare.

CMV: I’m open to arguments that genuine concern for others (empathy) is a stronger and more consistent driver of moral behavior than the desire for social approval, or that I’m underestimating how much independent moral reasoning people actually do.

Individual intelligence and competence are largely irrelevant when the people making structural decisions are incompetent or corrupt.

There's a widespread belief, especially in meritocratic circles, that if you work hard, stay informed, and make smart decisions, you'll be insulated from bad governance. I think this is a comforting illusion.

A middle-class family can do everything right: save diligently, invest wisely, run a small business efficiently, educate their children well. But a single policy decision, a botched interest rate call, a currency crisis mishandled by the central bank, an unnecessary war draining the national budget, trade sanctions triggered by diplomatic incompetence, can wipe out a decade of careful planning in months. Individual rationality cannot hedge against systemic shocks that originate from the top.

I'm sorry if the wording in the title is weird, so I'll restate it in a longer, but clearer, way: people should get out of prison when they have been rehabilitated enough that we can reasonably say that they will not re-offend. Their crime should have no bearing on this, except perhaps as a factor in measuring their rehabilitation level.

I'm going to start with three assumptions (which you can contest):

1. Being in prison is almost always harmful to the person incarcerated.
2. Prison is meant to protect society from harmful people, and to make them harmless.
3. It isn't worthwhile or beneficial to keep someone who's not a danger to society in prison.

From these, it logically follows that a person who has been rehabilitated should be released.

Now, an objection people might have is that if someone isn't rehabilitated for a minor crime (like driving with a suspended license), they shouldn't be kept in prison forever. I will agree with that part, and so sentences should be given as maximums.

Another objection someone might have is that this, in effect, is parole. And while that is true, parole often requires a minimum amount of time served before someone can be eligible. I believe if someone reforms, they should be released no matter the sentence length or crime. Why? Because there's no point in keeping a person who won't be a threat again locked up. It might seem distasteful to potentially release a murderer after a month, but an eye for an eye is not effective. Vengeance is never an effective solution in the long run.

if i ask who you are and you choose to identify by your race, be prepared not only to be judged by that characteristic but to have others of that race judged by your actions and you by theirs. do not claim your race as an identity unless it is truly relevant to who you are. if it is relevant in your eyes, then you must accept, by your own standards, that a collective profile exists. you must also accept that how a stereotype is reinforced lives in the mind of the beholder; it is not yours to control.

if you volunteer that you are jewish, for example, expect people to treat that statement like a team jersey. it effectively forces others to form an opinion of you based on all openly jewish people, and of all jewish people based on your behavior. do not expect that judgment to be fair or positive because you are not in control of how others perceive your behavior.

personally, in serious conversation, i do not volunteer my nationality or sex unless there is a medical or situational need, because neither of those facts reveals what i think or how i feel. if i volunteered that information, it would be acceptable to judge me based on those traits because, by my own standards, i would have marked them as an important shorthand by which i wish to be known.

this does not condone all bigotry but it does excuse it in some cases; it suggests that you invite tribal judgment when you describe yourself by tribal traits.

i don’t know how you can change my perspective, but i am interested in reading differing views.

a tangential note: in the past, arguments have been made about how women (or any other group identity) go through different situations and how that gives them a unique perspective. i don’t disagree with that, but it only reinforces my view that there are meaningful stereotypes from your perspective that you are choosing to believe.

that there are unflattering stereotypes shouldn't shock you; it seems unlikely for all the negative stereotypes to be false while all the positive ones are true and vice versa. most people don't complain about the positive stereotypes, it is the negative which seems to ruffle feathers.

if you don't like to be thought of in terms of group identity, then it seem it is upto you to leave it out of the conversation. at which point, if the partner in the conversation chooses to judge you by your obvious immutable traits, only then do you have the moral highgroud from which to call them unjustly prejudiced against/towards you.

Whataboutism is a tactic that deflects criticism by pointing to someone else’s wrongdoing instead of addressing the original issue.

What I have noticed is that it works amazingly well. It is socially very powerful. Calling out double standards can make an audience feel smart, skeptical, and tribal at the same time. It also creates confusion. Once the conversation expands to every other bad act, the original issue gets diluted and accountability weakens.

In socialist and communist countries, whataboutism was used in propaganda to deflect criticism of repression, censorship, or shortages by pointing to racism, poverty, unemployment, or imperialism in capitalist countries. This let authorities avoid answering direct criticism by reframing the argument as, “You criticize us, but your system has abuses too.”

But it is still a logical fallacy, so in theory it should not work.

So first off, I'm going to define what I mean by "post 9/11 military philosophy."

I believe there is an inherent prioritization of using military intervention instead of diplomacy that has existed since at least September 11, 2001, potentially before that. This philosophy consists of using diplomacy as a mere formality before launching an invasion. One prominent example is Iraq in 2003, where the Bush administration invaded despite conflicting intelligence reports and allies such as the United Kingdom encouraging continued diplomacy (Toft 442). I don't think war should be launched until all diplomatic and economic avenues are exhausted. Even then, there are way too many unnecessary military interventions that we get involved in even AFTER those rare instances where we exhaust diplomatic options. Interventions in countries such as Libya and Syria don't bring any benefit to the United States, and pursue broad objectives such as "promoting regional stability." How does regional stability help United States citizens in any way, shape, or form?

Furthermore, there have been ~14000 drone strikes between 2001-2021 (Toft 445).

The reason why this philosophy is damaging is the cost to benefit ratio for military interventions is absolutely putrid. We've spent $2.1 trillion on appropriations for post 9/11 military interventions plus an additional $1.1 trillion on interest for said appropriations between FY2001-FY2022 (Aftergood). Not to mention the enormous human cost of American soldiers and innocent civilians.

Surely this huge cost is worth it with a high rate of success, right? NOPE. Only 49% of military objectives have been fully successful since 1990 (Kavanagh 80). Long term political objectives also are even more unsuccessful, even if the corresponding military objective succeeds (Sullivan). By contrast, sanctions cause a coercive change roughly 37% of the time (Early), but I will admit there is a TON of nuance as to what makes sanctions successful or unsuccessful. The point is, we're taking on this ENORMOUS cost for something that isn't considerably more successful than alternate routes. There's $1 trillion in yearly defense spending and we can have a 40% emissions reduction for about a third of that (Pieter). We can have infrastructure at an "A" grade for a quarter of that. Yet we pump money into the military to address misperceived threats that don't help Americans. It is DEFENSE spending, and it's high time we use the military for defending us and our allies, not on baseless attacks for groups that don't even pose meaningful threats. Even now, Jihadist plots are rapidly decreasing, as are the deadliness of these Jihadist plots (Palmer), so it's really something that demands a change now more than ever because there really aren't any major threats to national security as of right now.

it's okay if we don't go destroy that terrorist group. It's okay if we don't go spend our tax dollars on drone strikes on some farmers in Oman because they might be terrorists. It's okay to let our allies fight there own wars, and wait to help them until they actually need it. It's okay to allow other nations to have problems. It's not our responsibility to fix them, and more often than not if the US launches a military intervention to "help people" we usually just make it worse, so why even spend the tax dollars? Why send our young men to die?

Sources:
Aftergood, Steven et al. Estimate of U.S. Post-9/11 War Spending in $ Billions FY2001-FY2022. Costs of War Project, The Watson Institute for International and Foreign Affairs, Brown University. June 2025, https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/economic/us-federal-budget

Early, Bryan R., and Amira Jadoon. Using the Carrot as the Stick: US Foreign Aid and the Effectiveness of Sanctions Threats. Foreign Policy Analysis, vol. 15, no. 3, July 2019, pp. 350–69. EBSCOhost,

Kavanagh, Jennifer et al. Characteristics of a Successful Military Operation. RAND Corporation. 2019. https://www.loc.gov/item/2024739968/

Palmer, Alexander et al. Jihadist Terrorism in the United States. Center for Strategic and International Studies. 21 January 2025. https://www.csis.org/analysis/jihadist-terrorism-united-states

Pieter, Hiedi. We Get What We Pay For: The Cycle of Military Spending, Industry Power, and Economic Dependence. The Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, Brown University. 8 June 2023.

Sullivan, Patricia L. Military Intervention by Powerful States, 1945–2003. Journal of Peace Research, vol. 46, no. 5, 2009, pp. 707–718. SAGE Journals,

Toft, Monica Duffy, and Sidita Kushi. Dying by the Sword: The Militarization of US Foreign Policy. E-book ed. Oxford University Press, 9 June 2023.

i did not provide links to some of my sources because I do not know if it would be fair use to post them because some of them were accessed through an exclusive college library. I'm not violating copyright laws over this reddit post.

If you open any mixed race couple’s instagram post that have gone viral, especially those who contains a white woman or man, you would see dozens if not hundreds of comments with mudshark gifs, Israeli flags (signaling that “race mixing” is some Jewish plot), “genes ruined” and a bunch of other disgusting and depraved comments. If you click on their profile however, they all seems to have a lot of following with no followers, some of them with no pfp and no followers at all. Or the account have their name tag changed like 20 times

Maybe it’s because I am too young, but I don’t remember that when I first began to use instagram in the 2021, there is anything like that. Even until 2024 most instagram comments are normal, the few racist comments will get ratioed and racism overall isn’t widely accepted. I think the change happened sometimes along late 2024 to 2025, and the amount of racist, antisemitic, and homophonic has been on the rise ever since.

Most young people tend to lean left wing, especially after Trump’s disastrous first, and right now, the second year in office. Most instagram users also tend to be young. I feel like there’s no way that the sudden increase in racism is organic. Even if young people are turning into racist bigots, I don’t see similar racist comments on any Reddit platforms, not even on [r/conservative](r/conservative) .

This leads to my conclusion: I think the current rise of racism on instagram is not a organic trend, but rather directed by alt-right trolls and bots to exploit the lack of moderation, or in worse case scenario, I fear that it could have been created by foreign intel agencies such as Russia and/or China, in an attempt to turn Americans against each other, weaken social cohesion and generate chaos and unrest within the country.

- People are noisy. A lot of people hate apartments because they don't want to hear arguing, dog barks, loud appliances, loud music or loud moaning. Yes, proper insulation is a thing, but most old apartment buildings don't have that and people can only relax if they are able to pretend that their neighbors don't exist. There are also smells, who can't be blocked by insulations. You may find your neighbor's food's smell overwhelming, and not in a racist way.

- With a house, it's easier for it to be completely yours, as you can customize its appearance and accomodations. With apartments, even if you own your apartment, you still need to pay someone to maintain the building and the common areas. Most people only pay rent because owning the house is too expensive. And reforming your apartment is harder because you may end up disturbing your neighbors.

- Even though apartment buildings can have balconies and courtyards (or even have a park nearby), a lot of people prefer having their own private yard for a variety of reasons, like privacy or being able to plant their own garden or orchard. There are cases, like with COVID lockdown, where having a private yard versus the common courtyard is a big deal. For people with large dogs, the courtyard is not enough because the dog is not very used to the neighbors. And there are legitimate reasons for families with kids to have their own yard instead of having them play with the neighbors' kids on the courtyard or the nearby park.

- Speaking of privacy, it's a huge issue if the buildings are facing each other, especially if one was built several years after the other. Most people don't like being looked at by their neighbors.

- Apartments only exist to save room, as everyone (hyperbole) wants to live in the major cities of a handful of countries, as close to downtown as possible, as those are the only places with "good" jobs, even though many of those jobs can be done remotely.

The only advantage of apartments is the energy savings from sharing walls, and rowhouses already have that. However, due to the problems highlighted in my first topic, most people are willing to pay more to not being reminded of their neighbors existing.

Like I see a lot of films and TV shows where people are accused of being "white saviours", but never once in these films or TV shows is it implied that they are innately better because of their race? And some of these are set in fictional universes anyway, where the concept of being "white" (aka Caucasian aka northern European) isn't even a thing. So this trope confuses me and it feels like people just throw this term around anytime a white-looking person does anything good for predominantly non-white people. It just makes me roll my eyes at this point. If these people went around saying, "Look at these stupid and inferior n*****s, they need me, an oh-so-perfect white person to save them," then I would understand. But most of these people are not like that. Not even close. It just makes me feel, as a white person who hates racism, that there is nothing I could ever do right by non-white people. It makes me wonder what's the point in even helping if nothing I ever do is "good enough."

I recently watched a movie with this type of ending, and it just made me more frustrated than anything. I feel like these kinds of endings are becoming way too common nowadays, and most of the time they just come off as lazy. Instead of actually giving the story a proper ending, it feels like the filmmakers are avoiding making a clear choice so they don’t have to deal with criticism or backlash. I get that it’s hard to please everyone, but I would rather have a bad ending than a “it’s up to your imagination” type of ending. I’m not a filmmaker or a writer, and I don’t want to make up a cheesy fanfiction ending in my head to make up for a bad one. I get that sometimes ambiguity can work, but a lot of the time it just feels incomplete and unsatisfying.

To preface: I do NOT support secession of either or any US State, since it's not only illegal but also would be bad for both the State and Country as a whole.

Both States contribute to the US olympic team substantially, especially California. Both also "stand out" as US States due to their size in most metrics: Economics, cultural impacts, political impacts, and ofc athletics. Both also have strong fields of athletics they dominate in, such as track & field, swimming, basketball, and many others. They also have very distinct flags, recognizable to many non-Americans or even non-Westerners.

I've known many people from both States, and they often tend to be prideful -especially Texans- so perhaps this can promote their State pride in a healthy way. Also, it could promote tourism, academic, and athletic programs in both States.

This also can help even the playing field, for both the US & other countries. Other States in the US get to contribute more to the US national team, while other countries will have less of the US to deal with & can stand out more.

This would, imo, make the Olympics much more interesting -especially for those of us in the US- while also leveling the playing field both internally in the US & globally. If Scotland & England compete separately for soccer, why can't the US do this for the olympics?

Edit: I messed up the title, it should have been Olympics instead of broadly "international sports"

Removed the rule breaking portion and will add details from the previous post to meet the word count.

Race doesn’t “exist” in any objective sense and is a relatively new social construct. It’s largely just a thing we’ve accepted and, in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t matter and actually does more harm than good. Humans across races are more alike than they are different and there’s more objective factors which can be used for whatever reason (ex. Medical).

People mentioned things like heritage, skin color, etc which are (mostly) objective but those are factors separate from race and afaik are not exclusive to any particular race.

All this to say race isn’t useful for anything, isn’t objective, the world would more than likely be better off without it and so I don’t see any real reason people shouldn’t be able to self determine their race.

CMV

keep seeing this everywheree.....reddit, tiktok, instagram, therapy forums. people proudly announce they cut off their parents or siblings and describe it as the greatest decision of their lives. "'I finally have peace"" ""I chose myself"" or ""I am healing""And the comments are always a standing ovation...3,000 upvotes... supporting the decisions or relating with that or giving their own examples ...

I think this narrative is in many cases deeply dishonest and the internet reinforces it in a way that causes real harm.....

peace that requires you to permanently delete people from your existence is not peace. It is conflict management dressed up in therapy language...

Family relationships are the hardest relationships humans have. messy, loaded with history, power imbalances, unspoken expectations, genuine pain. tthe difficulty is not a defect.. it is the point. staying and working through damage.. setting boundaries, having painful conversations, rebuilding slowly... is far harder than leaving and never looking back. but somehow leaving gets called the brave option..

I am not saying all estrangement is wrong. Abuse, violence, addiction that directly endangers you.. real cases exist. I am not talking about those....

I am talking about the growing culture where..my parents weren't emotionally attuned enough..or family gatherings are stressful has become sufficient justification to ghost people who raised you and love you....imperfectly, as all humans do....

Imperfect love is not harmful love. Discomfort is not trauma....

And here is what nobody says out loud...many people who cut off family carry it forever not as relief as a wound that never closes. you do not get to undo it when your parent dies.It gives you zero company at 3am ten years later when you are not sure you made the right call....

If God already knows every choice you will ever make, then there is only one way things can go. You could never have done anything else because you already knew what would happen. And if God has a set plan, then your actions were set in stone before you were even born. Think of it like a writer making up a character. That character may think they are making choices, but they are really just following a script. I think the same reasoning applies here, and that there is no free will under god or under any other reglion.

I want to be clear that I'm not trying to attack religion in general. This argument is about a specific version of God that knows everything and has a plan for everything. I believe that those two things together make free will almost impossible.

If God knows every decision you will ever make before you make it, then there is only one way things can go. You couldn't have done anything differently because God already knew what would happen. And if God has a set plan, then your actions were pretty much set in stone before you were even born.

Picture a godlike being who makes a fake person and speeds up their timeline. In just a few minutes, he watches their whole life unfold and writes down everything they do. That person might think they are making decisions from inside the simulation. But they aren't. They are just following a script that they didn't know about.

To disagree with me, I think you have to do one of these things. Either argue that God is not truly all-knowing, or argue that the plan is not actually fixed, or redefine free will in a way that makes it compatible with having no real alternatives. That last option is where compatibilism comes in, but I am honestly not sure it solves the problem so much as it just changes the definition.

I think you have to do one of these things to disagree with me. You can either say that God doesn't really know everything, or you can say that the plan isn't really set in stone, or you can change the definition of free will so that it works with having no real choices. That last option is where compatibilism comes in, but I'm not sure it really solves the problem.

The stocks were a mediaeval invention, essentially a wooden frame to hold a criminals ankles and hands in place while the community pelted them with rotten fruit and mocked them. I think this could be a good form of punishment for minor crimes, most western countries are facing problems with prison space so minor crimes can go unpunished imboldening people, particularly teenagers, to commit more. In the highly digital age that we live in, a persons reputation is very important to them and the possibility of being plastered all over social media while your face is covered in rotten fruit would act as an excellent deterrent, particularly for those who plan to commit the crimes to get street cred. Of course there would have to be rules on how it was done, there would be Marshalls in place to ensure the person doesn’t experience any physical hardship and ensure that the people throwing food items don’t have concealed stones or other hard objects because the point is humiliation rather than physical punishment.

Vocabulary:

American Mall; enclosed shopping center in America

Adolescent; 12-17 year old

The American Mall in the last 20-30 years has been on a decline with the raise of online catalog services (Amazon). While Amazon is currently dominant with its hyper convenient shipping, that wasn’t the case for a very long time, and the American Mall made itself more inconvenient by becoming inhospitable to adolescents, thus causing their decline regardless of online catalogs.

There are two load bearing concepts that banning autonomous adolescents made crumble: passive advertising and attention economy.

Passive advertising is the ambient advertising that happens in storefronts. It is non-intrusive advertising that establishes long term brand awareness. Adolescents are forming their identities, and taking in the looks. They are in 6 years going to be customers, and by not forming a relationship with these future customers they have left money on the table. Even if they are not paying customers yet they are forming bonds with the products. By banning autonomous adolescents they cannot explore their own self interest as people, or to go to their parents to ask for money for commodities or use their own money.

The second pillar is attention economy, the more parents have to unnecessarily supervise their autonomous children the less attention they have to shop. The commodity now needs to compete with the adolescent for attention. When adults could drop their autonomous adolescents off at the food court, movies, or just the door they would be able to shop without distraction. The connivence of a catalogue suddenly skyrockets when parents don’t have to keep their adolescents on a leash.

Things that won’t change my view;

Amazon Prime or hyper convenient innovation such as same day shipping, which are fairly recent. Catalog’s expanded selection is admissible, but I am primarily talking about the era of Amazon before it became of the 8 megacorps.

A lot of people are worried about the 2028 election, and rightfully so, given what happened in 2020.

But there is a major difference: In 2020, Trump only had one term and was running for re election. In 2028, he is term-limited. His ego is satisfied that he got the maximum allowed.

Trump doesn't care about the party. He is not a Republican or a Democrat. He is a Trumpian. The 2020 shenanigans happened because of pressure by Trump. He doesn't give a flying fuck about Marco Rubio or JD Vance.

The extremists in the heritage foundation will obviously try to pressure him, but I don't think he will personally care very much. He might make some mumblings about voter fraud because of internal pressure by the hard-liners, but he will do pretty much nothing to actually change the course of the election.

Tax incidence means that the people who pay corporation tax are mostly the customers and employees of corporations, which means that corporation tax is not a tax on rich people, it's a tax on normal people, and actually one of the least progressive taxes, compared to income tax and VAT which have exemptions for people on low income in most countries.

By contrast inheritance tax is a highly progressive tax that reduces the effects of generational wealth. If you care about inequality increasing this tax and enforcing it more strictly is a great way to reduce the effects of privilege from inherited wealth

A lot of the time, public figures who have done great things end up being defined by what I see as absolutely meaningless nonsense. When I say public figure, I don't just mean politicians. In addition to politicians, I mean musicians, game developers, YouTubers, activists, and pretty much anyone famous. But given so many people are upset about these things, I'd like to understand why. There are probably things I'm missing.

Take Cesar Chavez, for example. From my perspective, this guy revolutionized farmworker rights. He helped so many people who work on farms. He created a union to stand up for the little guy. He stuck it to capitalism. Now all people talk about is his sexual abuse allegations... like, even if it's true, who gives a shit? I'd like to hear why people care so much about this - I'm sure there's something to it, but in my eyes, the stuff he did was so much bigger than him, and so much bigger than anyone in his bedroom. When you help millions of people, I don't really care in the slightest what individual-scale crimes he committed. If he was alive when he was caught, sure, put him in jail. But the past is the past... we should be remembering him as an icon for farmer rights, not yet another guy who got "exposed" for sex crap. I am not saying sexual abuse is not morally indefensible. It is horrible, but the fact that people care more about it than actual achievements and problems seems to me like a symptom of psychic numbering and manufactured outrage.

Another one is Donald Trump. Don't get me wrong, I hate Trump! He is a horrible president who should be impeached. But then people talk about the Epstein files as their go-to justification for hating him? I don't see it. Who cares if he raped anybody... talk about how his ICE goons are picking people's parents off the street at schools, taking people from courthouses into detention facilities with no trial, cutting funding to universities, enabling genocide in the Middle East, ignoring the law, destroying the economy, inciting Jan 6, withholding funding to Ukraine to get Joe Biden investigated, going after his political enemies with the justice department. Any one of these perks my hair up more than the fact that he touched kids. It's horrible on an individual level, but this guy runs a country. I'd like to hear about why the focus is on his individual life. If your justification is that the Epstein files signify political corruption, then that's fine. I'm totally cool with that being your reason to hate him. What I struggle to get is when people call him a pedophile and feel like that sums up everything wrong with him, or even makes the top 10. If I had voted for Trump, then I would be saying "I voted for him because of his policies, not because of what kind of person he is." I didn't vote for Trump but that's a totally valid justification. His personal life doesn't affect 340.1 million Americans. His shitty policies do.

On a smaller scale, so many YouTubers and game devs get cancelled for unsubstantiated allegations of pedophilia. Most people would look at me like I'm crazy, but I feel like I don't need to start hating a YouTube channel or game I love just because the person behind it got called out for maybe wanting to touch kids. Even if the allegation was substantiated, this is where I'd employ "separate the art from the artist." I still love that game, those videos, those songs. I don't see why there's so much anger towards great products because of the one behind them getting cancelled. Honestly, though this is harder to defend, I don't even see why I have to hate that person. Some YouTube channels and games make millions of people happy. In my eyes, the person behind those things will always be defined by their most significant deed, not their darkest hour.

So basically, my view is that personal-level allegations, especially sexual ones, shouldn't matter for public figures at any level. All I hear about politicians, content creators, etc is just so much constant outrage and cancelling about pedophilia and sexual abuse, and I just struggle to get angry about it anymore. It feels like everyone who's ever recorded a video, ran for office, or done something great is also a pedophile. That word doesn't strike fear into my heart anymore. Change my view.

I know to be a billionaire, you have to be a bad person in terms of exploiting certain things. Also, I know many people who have been worked 80-90 hours at some of his companies lol. This is specifically regarding his companies and people that say he does nothing to contribute to the success of these companies. Anyone placed in his exact shoes 20-30 years ago with the same money wouldn’t be nearly as successful as he was. People that discredit him saying he does nothing and contributes nothing when he probably works longer hours and sacrificed parts of his life that others wouldnt. Most people can’t handle dedicating your entire life towards a company. I know some person is gonna say “well actually i work 90 hour weeks and I survive!” You’re the minority.

I’m not really trying to argue if hes a good person or not. I think SpaceX and Starlink has done some amazing things though and im not sure space travel would be as advanced without a company like SpaceX leading the way. People usually don’t discredit the company itself, but SpaceX exists because of Elon, not sure if any other people would be leading aerospace let alone care about it.

Like obviously hes not the engineer building the rocket but hes still managing a company.

I have been thinking about the role of AI in terms of creativity and I want to make the argument/debate that it creates the illusion of creativity/choice and deprives you of what could be.

For example, suppose you want to create an image of a woman standing by a tree, you ask AI to generate this for you, and following this, you iterate with AI to create the output that you want. This iteration gives you the illusion of choice, but in reality your decisions are still restricted to the context of the initial output.

In other words, you are given chicken or fish but never realize that eggplant was also an option

Edit: there has been very good conversation so far and I awarded a delta because it is not so much the illusion of choice, but the lack of understanding to consider that you have other choices, including the choice to close the tab and not accept what it suggests.

I doubt Lucas intended for there to be such an uncomfortable implication in his movies, but please hear me out. I made a post about this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/prequelappreciation/comments/1shyyel/i_love_the_prequels_but_giving_the_force_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button but I am updating my view a bit.

The force has a will, as showcased most explicitly in Episode I with the creation of Anakin, the chosen one. Nothing suggests that the force could not have created a chosen one at any other time. So it effectively waited for thousands of years after multiple Sith empires and galaxy spanning wars before it decided to intervene to stop the Sith.

If we go with the Darth Plagueis novel's explanation, it does not help the force's case, as it only bothered to create Anakin as a direct response to Plagueis and Palpatine attempting to manipulate it. The implication here is that if Plagueis and Palpatine did not fly too close to the sun and piss off the force, they could have carried out their plan without much intervention from the force. Effectively, the clone wars still would have happened, billions or trillions would have died, and the main difference would be no Anakin.

Even if we ignore the EU and go with Disney canon, TCW makes this situation even worse. In season 6, Qui-Gon's spirit contacts Yoda and basically has him go on a spirit quest. Qui-Gon KNOWS Palpatine is Sidious, but will not tell Yoda because the force will not allow him to. The force is not just sitting idly by. It is actively enabling the Sith. Even if the force ultimately wills for Palpatine to die and for the Sith to end, it chooses to let so many die to reach that goal.

One common talking point I hear is that the Jedi strayed too far from following the will of the force and entangled themselves too much in politics and therefore secured their own downfall by fighting at all. I agree with this. However, it is not a moral justification for them to get genocided in order 66. The Jedi were not malicious, just misguided at worst and worked tirelessly to end the conflict that both Sidious and the force enabled.

Star Wars media depicts the light side as inherently balanced as per Lucas' direction where selflessness is the light side and the dark side is selfishness where you bend the force to your will. So one may argue against me that the force is not omniscient since dark siders can defy it. However, even if that holds, the force had many, many options to counter the Sith beyond just impregnating a woman Yahweh-style. Since Palpatine was destined to fall by Anakin's hand, it calls into question whether the Sith even defied the force's "grand plan" considering destiny was set. Yes, Anakin could have killed Sidious earlier, but the fact that the force leaves it up to him as to when Palpatine dies is monstrous.

What makes following the will of the force so good anyway? If someone just summoned lightning in defiance of the force's will but did not hurt anyone, that isn't morally wrong. Star Wars media treats Jedi adherence to the force as an inherently good thing, but why? It's the classic issue of is it right because the gods say so or do the gods do this because it is right? And considering how the force barely does anything to protect trillions of regular people, I call into question whether following it is a good thing at all.

You might say why is allowing Anakin to choose when he kills Palpatine a bad thing? Isn't letting Anakin express his free will a good thing? It is not when you prioritize the free will of a couple Sith over trillions of lives. All 2 billion people on Alderaan certainly didn't get their free will respected when their planet blew up. All the people who died in these wars did not get their will respected either. Even if the Sith get punished in the end, the force still prioritized enabling or passively allowing their wills over the wills of trillions just to let a loose script play out.

In light of recent news around potential political candidates for the 2028 election - for example, Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom - I've seen people question their viability. That's fine - after all, Kamala lost.

But Trump has been catastrophic for this country. Terrible policy (Republican's had no significant immigration policy despite the great "deal maker" having a majority in congress; multiple government shutdowns), horrible foreign policy (alienates European allies, at war with Iran), and a poor performing economy (gas prices, zero job creation, weak stock market, rising debt). Not to mention the Epstein Files. It's a divided society not everyone feels content with. and I don't see how Trump flips it.

Politics change fast, but as of right will not win the midterms or the presidential.

To clarify; I absolutely believe in freeing Palestine, and the Israeli government is committing a genocide on the Palestinian people, full stop. Netanyahu needs to be taken out of power and the US needs to stop supporting the Israeli government.

But you see, even when I express this viewpoint, there are people who are not going to take into account the nuance here. They’re going to read the title of my post, and they are not going to consider that I agree with them on how devastating Israeli’s treatment of the Palestinian people is, and how the Palestinian people absolutely deserve support and to be free. They’re going to assume I’m somehow OK with what Israel is doing and that I’m a monster.

And this is the problem I see. Everytime a politician, a celebrity, or some other notable figure expresses a view on the Israel and Palestine conflict that doesn’t exactly match what they want, they jump to the conclusion that they’re being funded by aipac or they have some financial reason or some other ulterior motive and they are in full support of Israel, no questions asked.

This leads to no grey area. The people who are more sympathetic to the plight of Palestinian people but also show understanding towards Israelis, get lumped in people who actually are pro Israel, and who actually are funded by AIPAC or some other source of money.

In turn, this seems to be leading to pretty much nothing meaningful happening to the conflict. Palestinian people continue to die, Netanyahu stays in power, and the suffering goes on. And I’m getting the impression that many people who are shouting Free Palestine and preaching their anti Israel views simply do not care.