• 4 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • I have inattentive type adhd as well, and was also diagnosed as an adult. I think It’s normal to feel frustrated/disheartened as you grapple with it. I also recently mentioned to someone that I think I may have an emotional range that’s narrower than typical.

    My wife, doctor, occupational therapist (I’m on short term disability because my I developed an anxiety problem that was causing me to spiral), and lawyer (I was told there isn’t a job for me to come back to when I’m better) all delicately danced around the prospect of depression/suidality. I’m lucky that I have some great things in my life that make it easy to tackle those questions head on.

    Talk to a specialist.








  • Fair enough I get all that. My contention is that writing off commenters as shills and bots underestimates the size of the problem.

    I agree that the Kremlin targets the fabric of our society. But they have succeeded to the point that we can’t just cut off the affected parts. It’s too pervasive. We need to mend and reinforce the damaged fabric. Idk if you’re confident they’re shills/bots/trolls then I guess you’re right, but what if they’re just ignorant?


  • Just FYI it’s totally possible for non-shills/bots to support Russia. They can be real people just with different experiences, values and/or information diets than you.

    Like to me it’s pretty obvious who the bad guys in the war are (russia). But to a Belarusian it’s probably not so clear (in fact I’ve met a Belarusian that feels this way).

    Writing people off as shills/bots gives a false sense of security (not exactly the passing I want but close enough I guess)

    I think it’s much healthier to say something like “your head is so far up your ass it’s difficult to understand you”.





  • I support robust enforcement of anti hate speech laws. In fact I’ve reported hate speech/ hatecrime to the police before.

    We’re not talking about laws, we’re talking about social media platform policies.

    Social media platforms connect people from regions with different hatespeech laws so " enforcing hatespeech laws" is impossible to do consistently.

    If users engage in crimes using the platform they are subject to the laws that they are subject to.

    I don’t care that it’s legal to advocate for genocide where a preacher is located, or at the corporation’s preferred jurisdiction, I don’t want my son reading it.

    The question was: is there a way a platform can be totally free speech and stop hate speech. I think the answer is “kinda”


  • I think it may be possible if you understand a difference between the right to speak and the right to be heard.

    Ie the right to say something doesn’t create an obligation in others to hear it, nor to hear you in the future.

    If I stand up on a milk crate in the middle of a city park to preach the glory of closed source operating systems, it doesn’t infringe my right to free speech if someone posts a sign that says “Microsoft shill ahead” and offers earplugs at the park entrance. People can choose to believe the sign or not.

    A social media platform could automate the signs and earplugs. By allowing users to set thresholds of the discourse acceptable to them on different topics, and the platform could evaluate (through data analysis or crowd sourced feedback) whether comments and/or commenters met that threshold.

    I think this would largely stop people from experiencing hatespeech, (one they had their thresholds appropriately dialed in) and disincentivize hatespeech without actually infringing anybody’s right to say whatever they want.

    There would definitely be challenges though.

    If a person wants to be protected from experiencing hatespeech they need to empower some-one/thing to censor media for them which is a risk.

    Properly evaluating content for hatespeech/ otherwise objectionable speech is difficult. Upvotes and downvotes are an attempt to do this in a very coarse way. That/this system assumes that all users have a shared view of what content is worth seeing on a given topic and that all votes are equally credible. In a small community of people, with similar values, that aren’t trying to manipulate the system, it’s a reasonable approach. It doesn’t scale that well.





  • I’d probably start designing and building a rolling ball clock/ sculpture, then hit some sort of obstacle and switch to making a self recirculating eddy current tube, get frustrated and try to design and build an electronically commutated counter rotating propeller driver, get frustrated and try to build a garage sized 3d printer, get frustrated and try to build a delayed action door closer get frustrated and try to build a co-planar compound cycloidal reducer, get frustrated and then forget my wife’s anniversary until 4pm the day before.