I mean I am a programmer and while I don’t submit many changes written by AI, I review plenty written with its help, and plenty of those are actually decent. Plenty are shit or pointless, some execs’ expectations are utterly insane (“you’ll be submitting a hundred changes a week”). But plenty of others are sensible.

I think you probably get the point.

The null hypothesis isn’t “devil’s advocate” it’s just where you start from with no other information.

With just your eyes… And a big lake or sea… And a ship… And the knowledge that water lies level.

Similarly it’s not exactly understood from birth that lunar eclipses are the earth’s shadow.

You gotta work all these things out and make more complicated observations than just looking at the horizon.

Except it does matter, even if you don’t like it.

If the stock market falls a lot, people with money don’t want to invest it. (Paradoxically, that’s when you should invest…) If investment dries up, big businesses can’t spend that investment on projects, so they don’t contract with smaller businesses to help do them. Those smaller businesses have lower turnover and less work so make redundancies. Those redundancies are ordinary people who now don’t have a job.

Do you think it doesn’t matter that people lose jobs, and struggle to find new ones? It was a line from the Big Short which brought it home to me: 40,000 people die when unemployment goes up 1%. (The actual figure is apparently a little less but the point is unaffected). About 1000 of those are suicides.

The stock market taking a little dip isn’t a recession, but I think anti-capitalists are ridiculously naive about the seriousness of “the economy” and the role the stock market plays in it.

Wish it weren’t so by all means, but don’t mistake wishes for reality. The difference is life and death.

Today I learned that the definition of rape is something other than “sex without consent”

But just to be clear, the evolution of your conversation did not show any evidence of an inconsistency in their beliefs that would amount to cognitive dissonance? Because otherwise you would have brought that up, I assume.

You know what’s really weird?

Soapboxing in a shitposting community. Bet you’re jackin’ off to it all, as well, ya perv.

So let me get this straight, you were arguing with someone, tried to lead them to a contradiction, but they actually had a consistent view on it that you didn’t like, and your conclusion is that they have cognitive dissonance?

My friend, I do not think that means what you think it means.

You’re allowed to eat fibre as a guy?

(on learning what that means)

Hey, hornyposting is that way!

Ok, I agree that if musk’s objective in buying twitter was to amplify nazi voices, that confirms him as a nazi.

Do you have convincing proof that that was his objective? Convincing enough that some random guy buying a car who “doesn’t care about politics” would immediately believe he’s a nazi? I don’t think so.

He stated his aim was to remove barriers to free speech. People disagree over what speech should be protected as a matter of principle, so our hypothetical buyer may very well have thought that that was a good idea.

You understand the situation now. Continuing to stay “stop defending him” means you just want to cling to your black and white categorisation, and don’t want to hear anyone question it.

I don’t live in the US - very few people here are actual Nazis and cybertrucks aren’t road legal. But people are still buying model 3s and Ys.

I wouldn’t do that when the CEO has outed himself as a nazi but I’m also not so immature as to think everyone who’ll buy a product and ignore the shit the company owner does is a fucking nazi, because that’s insane.

None of those amount to Nazism. You know what does? Throwing out a couple of Hitler salutes. But that didn’t happen until later.

If you’re white you probably still get enough, especially if you consume dairy. If you have dark skin and live in more northern latitudes, there’s a higher chance of deficiency.

How on earth can you tell the difference between steel and zinc at a glance?

Yesterday?

Pears are delicious. Conference pears are my favourite… Actually all other pears I’ve tried have been less good so maybe only conference pears are good. They don’t last as long as apples, but they’re amazing for about three days and decent for a few days either side. Also in my experience they don’t all ripen as uniformly as bananas, so you’re more likely to have the whole punnet edible over a week.

You can judge the ripeness of a pear by trying to wiggle the tip - the easier it is, the riper the pear, so you can eat the ripest first.

Let it be known that I love this image

I bought 100 envelopes in 2007… I walked to the newsagents to buy them. I’ve probably got 90 left.

The distinction you are trying to make is clear, it’s just not an actual current distinction in the English language.

You are inventing a part of the definition of pornography which says, “it does not have a victim” or alternatively, “the important thing about it is that someone gets off to it.” You won’t find that in any dictionary definition of porn, and the continued use of the term “child porn” shows that this is not how people use the word in practice.

So it’s not that you’re merely relating facts about terms. The only explanation is that this is a distinction you feel people ought to make. But compare it to other things:

• Revenge porn - another term where we use “porn” but where there is a victim.
• Drink driving - the word “drink” turns a term like “driving” which is not immoral or illegal, into something different. The focus is on the activity, not the victim.
• Theft - the focus is on the property stolen, not on the victim, its owner.

You aren’t going to convince anyone who doesn’t think that child porn is that bad that is actually is, by instead insisting everyone call it CSAM. It’s not the name that makes them think it’s OK.

The victim should take precedence in nomenclature.

So “child porn” which makes it clear the victim is the child should be fine?