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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • All animals want to keep living, that’s literally why animals evolved brains in the first place, to keep their bodies alive for as long as possible.

    Absolutely not. Brains evolved because it gave an evolutionary advantage. They developed from just sensing light, giving an adavtange to finding food, into more complex forms, but every stage is just because it allowed them to survive long enough to reproduce usually, and, for most animals, not much longer. Most animals don’t have an advantage to keeping elderly populations alive. At best, they’re a drain on resources and can’t contribute with fighting, hunting, foraging, or whatever else. Humans are special in that we can pass down information, and elderly people have amassed a lifetime of information. Animals in nature don’t really survive that long, so there is not an evolutionary pressure for what you’re claiming. Their bodies failing is literally evidence to the contrary.

    As far as I know, no animal (at least the animals we keep as pets) have an instinct to just give up and stop going through the motions of life past a certain age. Doesn’t that imply they always want to live?

    This isn’t totally true. Some things will cause them to stop going through the motions that keep them alive. Regardless, performing the actions that are baked into us evolutionarily does not equal a conscious choice. We (animals) will almost always eat, drink, sleep, etc. even if we want to die. If not, suicidal people would just decide to stop, instead of having to do more extreme things. Evolution has baked behaviors into us that are hard to overcome, even if we’re conscious of it.

    I consider the decision to no longer live past a certain age and certain number of health problems to be a uniquely human thing…

    I find this weird. It may be (unprovable either way), but you’re ascribing so many human traits to these animals, but then refusing to entertain the idea that they may want to die in order to stop being in pain. Why? I feel like you’re showing some biases here, and if you really want to understand your opinion you need to figure out what that is.

    But if they don’t die right after taking them off life support, you can’t just straight up kill them, they need to die by themselves. Why isn’t this philosophy applied to pets, who can never consent to euthanasia?

    The difference is the pet will never be able to consent. I assume the rule of taking them off life support exists to require it to take time. This way they have a small window where they could come to. I don’t know though. It could also be a morality thing of not wanting to actively take a person’s “life” (if you can call it that). I suspect this could change in the future, with increasing acceptance of assisted suicide, for example. Making them die from (presumably) dehydration seems much more cruel to me if they can feel anything.

    I don’t have a strong opinion either way. Do what you think is right for your pet. In my opinion though, suffering is something that should be minimized. That’s true for raising animals for food, for humans, for pets, etc. It depends on the pet, but if they are in constant pain and can’t really live life on their own (which would cause them to die in nature) then I’d consider euthanasia. I would at least not consider doing any expensive or invasive healthcare to keep them alive.






  • Every state (meaning country/government) supports terrorists. They only call it terrorism if it’s a non-state actor though. Ignoring what we do to other places in the world, do you think policing in the US is terrorism? I don’t see any way it isn’t. Violence and fear for political gain is the definition.

    You’ve just drank the kool-aid. You think what the state tells you is true and they can’t lie. Terrorism is a valid and useful tool. Again, it’s why every state uses it. It’s only since about 9/11 where politicians and the media discovered they can call anything they don’t like “terrorism” and get people like you to repeat the drivel.





  • The idea that a kid will be influenced by a hijab or a cross is also total bullshit .

    Do you think no kid has really liked a teacher and done things to get them to like them? I promise you, there are children who got into a religion, a hobby, etc. because a teacher they wanted to impress was into it.

    The real issues that should be addressed in extremist messages in places of cult like a imam who would support terrorism or a synagogues that sell occupied land in the west bank

    I mostly disagree with this. Which definition of terrorism are we using? The problem is the state gets to define whatever they want as terrorism, so they can target dissidents. Why does the state get a monopoly on terrorism/violence? (As proof of the term being bullshit to target people, why did use use an Imam for your example? Biased?)

    People should be allowed to do and say what they want in private. If they’re a public official, they shouldn’t use that platform to lend credibility to other organizations/faiths. That’s not the place for it.


  • The argument for it is to remove hate and division. The purpose of them is to act as a shibboleth, to identify yourself as part of an in-group. That necessarily requires division. If you make it harder for people to show their affiliation with exclusive groups then it makes it more inclusive.

    This doesn’t make them not allowed to follow a religion. It just makes them not allowed to share identifiers of that religion to children. Children are easily influenced, and having authority figures identities with religion lends that authority and authenticity to that religion, influencing the children.





  • I guess fair enough, though every other federated site I know of uses some other algorithm, and you seem to have been talking about the fediverse in general, not Mastodon, except for the example. Still, Mastodon’s sort is still an algorithm. You can’t display anything without an algorithm. That word just means a set of rules to complete a task. Mastodon uses one that only uses who you’re following and time to decide what to display.

    Algorithms aren’t the issue. We can have sophisticated algorithms that help users find the content they want. That’s great. It’s when there is an incentive, and ability, to influence the algorithm by the platform controllers when there’s an issue. The fediverse solves this not by ditching algorithms, but by having no singular controller.