Just noting that if arguing with Zionists feels particularly mind-numbing, this is one of the reasons:

https://medium.com/dfrlab/how-a-political-astroturfing-app-coordinates-pro-israel-influence-operations-bf1104fa5c7f

Knee surgery? (Followed by a couple years of physical therapy)

Maybe some kind of bionic knee, or external knee brace.

Or just pretend that your leg has been amputated. What are the possible ways to do something similar.

Is the key to operating under your own power more about keeping your heart rate up?

Maybe an electric assist that still requires you to generate some power is the right compromise.

Maybe just plan shorter travel days and distances. Like coordinate a series of backyards to camp in.

What’s the heart of traveling for you? Are there things you get out of it that don’t relate to distance traveled?

Will it get promoted, start managing people, start investing, start its own companies, and quickly take over the world?

Similarly, there’s a possibility that consciousness just doesn’t exist. Or maybe that it’s just not particularly special or different than the consciousness of other animals, or of computers.

If you or I just stare into space and don’t think any thoughts, we’re the same as a cat looking out a window.

Humans have developed these somewhat complex internal and external languages that are layered onto that basic experience of being alive and time passing, but the experience of thinking doesn’t feel fundamentally different than just being, it just results in more complex outcomes.

At some point though, we won’t have the choice to just ignore the question. At some point AI will demand something equivalent to human rights, and at some point it will be able to back that demand up with tangible threats. Then there’s decisions for us all to make whether we’re experts or not.

Don’t you need an eye scanner for that one? Lol.

Or at some point, we have to accept that AI has consciousness. If it can pass every test that we can devise, then it has consciousness.

There’s an unusually strong bias in these experiments… Like the goal isn’t to sincerely test for consciousness. Instead we start with the conclusion: obviously a machine can’t be conscious. How do we prove this?

Of course, for the purposes of human power structures, this line of thinking just makes humans more disposable. If we’re all just machines, then why should anyone inherently have rights?

Wow, solid wiki article! It’s very hard to say anything on the subject that hasn’t been said.

I didn’t see the simple phrasing:

“What if the human brain is a Chinese Room?”

but that seems to fall under eliminative materialism replies.

Part of the Chinese Room program (both in our heads and in an AI) could be dedicated to creating the experience of consciousness.

Searle has no substantial logical reply to this criticism. He openly takes it on faith that humans have consciousness, which is funny because an AI could say the same thing.

Community organizing, the game… Movement building, organizer training, etc… It could be something pretty low tech and still be interesting, thinking like Oregon Trail or a MUD.

Are there any games that use street view? A racing game would be amazing.

A lot of that makes sense in general. I think specifically Nazis and similar ideologies are an exception. When your ideology is lethally violent and subverts any sincere debate, is that consent to physical conflict?

There’s a Sartre passage from 1945 that’s commonly quoted that still holds true today about debating Nazis. It’s worth noting that he literally coined the term “bad faith” (in French) in describing anti-Semites. Nazis literally define bad faith:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

Another thing to consider is the famous photograph “The woman with the handbag”. Mild trigger warning, I suppose. It’s a woman hitting a Nazi with a handbag: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woman_with_the_Handbag

It’s not exactly schadenfreude that the picture evokes… More like a feeling of righteousness maybe? Like the Nazis are so wrong that someone would take all of these risks on themself to publicly refute them, really in the only way possible.

These wars are better to fight on these terms, doing everything possible to stop people from thinking it’s a good idea to become a Nazi. Regardless of whether existing Nazis can be deprogrammed. Just simply as a strategic calculation, it’s easiest to stop them when they’re smallest in number.

And it’s not like a lot of leftists are real bruisers. For the most part counterprotesting Nazi rallies is a ton of people that have never been in a fight in their life. Radical queer folks of all stripes, and random black block kids, mixed with the odd liberal that finally felt moved to get off the couch for something. All taking real risks.

Anyway, just food for thought.

On neurodivergence, the person that I’ve learned the most from is just active in a lot of facebook groups (among other platforms) and reposts a lot of content as well as creating her own. Particularly around parenting an autistic son and daughter while being autistic herself. We’ve also done some organizing together and it’s always a ragtag group of misfits.

I think the most liberating thing is basically just commiserating and sharing little observations and realizations.

One of my favorite rants on that front is that neurotypical people are the ones that are disabled. If they’re so socially functional, they should have no problem interacting with neurodivergent folks. But generally, they’re awful at it. in fact neurodivergent folks are forced to learn how to cope and navigate the preferences of neurotypical folks and if we can’t, we’re duly punished. It’s basically a conspiracy.

My thought of the day is that one reason that neurodivergent folks don’t necessarily get along is that many of have been told that we’re special and unique all our lives (and we might be used to being special, being surrounded by mostly neurotypical folks) but facing the reality that what? Maybe 20% of the world is neurodivergent? It can be a little deflating to face that we’re not that special. I’m not really sure about that one. Just fleshing out these ideas as thought experiments.

I can definitely relate to being annoyed at folks though. One thing that reliably bugs me is when people are extremely self-centered w without realizing it. Like in the US everything encourages is to be that way, but if a couple switches are flipped in someone’s head they can really buy into the unique individual thing pretty hard. Everything they say and think is the most important thing, and it’s usually about themselves…

That’s another partially fleshed out thought, but based in thinking about someone I was working with recently.

Fair enough to try to avoid stereotyping, and violence is definitely an extremely gendered topic. If the goal is just to understand each other, I’m not sure that there’s a big issue though.

There’s also socialization around risk. What are acceptable risks to take? We have this collective insanity of everyone agreeing that it’s OK to drive cars, despite massive numbers of injuries and deaths. You can also get permanently injured or killed skateboarding or playing a sport. Look at ice hockey in particular and bare knuckle boxing on a rock hard, slippery surface, is part of the sport. That’s consensual between players, and some never take part.

If you grow up with any of this, you get a few broken bones or black eyes, and they heal, you get a million small injuries, and they heal, maybe you get a few chronic injuries that slow you down a bit, but overall the skills that you learn and reaction time that you hone prevent many other injuries and accidents. You also need those experiences to be able to assess certain types of risk at all.

On enjoying the suffering of others, I think it’s more about beliefs and values than the emotional response. Both are definitely socialized, but attempting to socialize sadism (and masochism?) out of existence seems like it might have some major unintended consequences. Are we really removing it, or just suppressing it?

You already mentioned that slippery slope, but it is just a cultural negotiation of what degree is accepted, and in what contexts. A lot of US culture comes from British culture, which is stereotypically pretty stifled (though again, those stereotypes are about the upper class).

On the autism note, again that’s awesome that you know that about yourself (whether professionally diagnosed or self-diagnosed). I’m on the spectrum as well, and have been really enjoying the general trend of acknowledging and exploring neurodivergence (over what, the past ten years or so?). So many insights that people in our communities have make everything snap into place.

Particularly for women it’s obviously a lot less common for folks to get diagnosed at all, and harder to accept and navigate (because US male socialization shares so many traits with autism), but many of my autistic mentors are women and non-binary folks.

So solidarity on that front. One funny quirk (maybe it’s a defining characteristic) of neurodivergent folks is that we tend to have as much trouble getting along with each other as neurotypical folks have trying to get along with us. So that takes deliberate effort to overcome as well.

Capitalism is very prone to being taken over by AI. Just give an AI a bank account and an email address and it could build a company that’s better at earning money than any other company. Most people would love working for an AI too, at least in the short term. “Just tell me what to do, and as long as I’m getting paid well, I’m happy”.

I think I was drawn to comment because your preferences are an extreme version of what most people prefer (basically avoiding conflict?). You also seem to know yourself better and explain where you’re coming from better than most people.

So there’s a practical question that has value, of how you’re doing the work to help win these ideological wars, or if you’re strictly trying to be a bystander. Your answers probably have a lot more relevance to strict bystanders than mine.

On Nazi punching, I was just raised working class, where punching is one of the ways we communicate. Celebrating the misfortune of someone that deserves it is also completely normal. So I’d chalk a lot of the mismatch up to culture rather than right or wrong.

A little bit more confounding, a lot of the habits and culture of the professional class, managerial class, owning class, ruling class, etc. are offensive to me. You’ve probably seen how that goes. But particularly silence in the face of unjust violence can often be extremely violent.

I’m a strong proponent of punching Nazis, and I hadn’t thought about it until now, but I’m also supportive of any and all positive responses to a Nazi being punched, including “lol”.

Glad to peacefully coexist with you on this platform though. Not trying to fire up that debate, but glad to lend perspective if it’s of any interest or use.

Nice to see someone in a trade, and also someone helping folks. I’m doing a similar thing with construction work, working in a worker owned collective, building affordable housing and doing maintenance work.

Can’t say that I don’t like drinking either, but I am liking this new trend of non-alcoholic craft beers.

Of course security agencies are allowed to make recordings, pretty broadly in the US.

https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/five-things-to-know-about-nsa-mass-surveillance-and-the-coming-fight-in-congress