Well, NoFap is against the porn industry, which is why I used to believe its spread would be beneficial, but there is a large part of the community that expresses very clearly misogynistic or pseudoscientific views, and I no longer think it’s feasible to reform NoFap in any way to overcome this, other than the unlikely case that they make clear those are not welcome in their community.

This is amazing, I think it could even nicely fit a use case in a project of mine. Thanks!

Even if you often try to make that person feel understood and empowered to express their views, everyone’s needs are different. For example, if they tend to feel inadequate or are self-conscious about their achievements/intelligence/etc., you may need to go the extra mile here.

Try to identify all the positive and negative interactions with them (i.e., those in which they get the impression that they are right versus those in which they don’t) and make sure that positive ones greatly outnumber negative ones. If you need, you can try to acknowledge more situations wherein their contribution to a conversation deserves praise, or even simply not point out their mistakes if the question at hand is not critical for you (easiest imo).

This brought a smile to my face, I love those face-melting red thingies!

When a person says this, sometimes even if they do it in a positive tone, it’s usually a way to verbalize more concrete concerns that you should address. For example, they might feel that you are always dismissing their opinions, that you don’t listen to them in general, or they would simply like to get support when they express their views in a group so they get some recognition. In any case, they feel like you can do something to help but may not feel comfortable to express it or may not have fully identified it. If that person is important to you, you should be able to see what they want and take action.

I’d hate on any country that was the bloodthirsty, manipulative, living incarnation of capitalist interests at the world level, the US just happens to be that.

Brilliant. That makes a lot of sense, especially the more concrete the goals are. I wish it were easier to achieve, maybe the theoretical frameworks for this will be a reality in a few decades… Your implementation at least seems more plausible.

Okay, my answer is pretty removed, but I’d say I’d like a system where decisions are made by submitting automated proofs of their optimality, either absolute or over all submitted proposals in a defined time frame. The conditions of optimality would be pre-defined in a Constitution, and non-provable facts would be accepted or rejected via a decentralized voting system that would keep multiple diff chains and penalize e.g. voting for facts that are later proven false via a submitted proof. The proof system would hold all powers, but would be able to delegate decisions to entities under proven rules, which would come faster but possibly be overriden.

Multilateralism is the exact opposite of what would happen if the US manages to fend off Russia and China. The only way multilateralism can truly emerge is a confrontation between two or more blocks where there is no clear winner and thus big countries need to offer more autonomy to small countries in order to win them over. The US sparking wars to keep poor countries sending raw materials home, leveraging the dollar and nuking from orbit anything that even remotely looks like socialism as they’ve been doing right up to this point is the worst case scenario, and the global events that are weakening this should go on as much as possible. The best case scenario is that a revolution becomes easier due to instability, and cooperation between socialist powers appears as a new stabilizing force.

Absolutely. But I don’t want to influence anything, just make the OP slightly happier and hopefully have a good read myself.

The reason some desires are universal is that they are achievable, thus it makes sense that an entity that looks for them exists. And we don’t yearn for God, we yearn for happiness, empathy and staying alive, and some of us have created a conceptual entity that gives us an infinite supply of those.

I tend to upvote everything, no matter how much I disagree. I don’t trust my own opinions or the authors’, all of them are flawed in some way.

Those are very good points, and I agree with most of them. Overall I think this invasion is detrimental to the international interests of the working class. The only part where I disagree with you is that I think bringing about a more unstable geopolitical order (a side effect of the path the conflict has eventually taken) is beneficial, as it will weaken the mechanisms holding together imperialism. I might be wrong though, and I would like to discuss this more in depth to hopefully understand what options I should support. But I fully reject the argument expressed by this meme and some of the people in this thread, as such simple (even emotional) reasoning tends to give me paranoia that I’m being manipulated by ideas created by propagandists. Is it okay if we continue this conversation in the dms?

Yeah, but then it’s not “the will of the people” that matters here, but maybe international law or whatever other principles.

Thank you, your answer was very valuable to me. It’s helped me get a better perspective on the problem. I have a tendency to cold-bloodedly redirect the trolley, you know? I feel that’s the right thing, but I respect your humanity here.

Yeah, and people in Crimea never ever wanted to be part of Ukraine, and yet Zelensky has promised to take them back. Same for most (although in this case not all) people in the Donbass, which was invaded by Ukraine in 1917. Putin stated he would invade (or “take back”, who cares at this point) just those territories, so doesn’t that make him the good guy here? Of course I don’t believe he is, or Zelensky is, there are no good guys anywhere in this story.

There are many hypothetical ways. For example, that might prevent further war in the future, or might be the continuation of an existing conflict. It might alter the balance of power in the world in a way that is eventually beneficial to working class struggle. Hell I can think of thousands of ways in which not starting a war would have been worse than starting it. The fact that you can simply stamp a meme, appeal to emotion and make a huge logic jump without a single word is perplexing.

Using simple words and short sentences is good for upvotes, but I don’t trust such comments.

“Russia has invaded Ukraine” is a true statement. “Russia has invaded Ukraine therefore I should do/say/support …” is false in general, a deceivingly simple deduction that is hiding a lot of complexity under the rug. For example, what do I want to achieve by doing that? Is it beneficial for the working class? Does anyone want me to do it at all costs to support imperialism? Am I using an appropriate framework for extending ethics reasoning to large organizations and groups of people? What actions are lawful? If no one has the power to enforce that a country will not take unlawful action against another, how is it reasonable of me to expect that the other will not defend itself by unlawful force, if that is de facto its only defense? Am I having a positive impact on the world by simply acting against every country that does something I consider unlawful? If I do so more to some countries than others, am I not acting in favor of some countries? Shouldn’t I choose what countries I act in favor of? If I don’t do it, who is choosing that for me?

Haha no worries, it’s nice to get some tips, thanks! :D