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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 30th, 2023

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  • Hi friend, I propose you try an experiment: post a small handful of anonymous comments on the Internet, try to make them benign as possible but casually slip in an acknowledgement that you are vegan. Something along the lines of “God that recipe looks amazing, but I think I might swap out the beef broth for veggie broth as I am vegan” like I said the point of this experiment is to say something completely as benign and inoffensive as possible.

    Once you post sit back and wait for the responses to roll in. You will likely find that while not every time, it is incredibly common for people to send you pictures of bacon, and an abundant of angry responses to the mere offhand mention of the word.

    I sincerely wish it was a straw man fallacy, but it unfortunately is a exceedingly common response to the word.





  • Yeah the only catch is that it turns out humans are really good at warming planets up, and that’s one of the big stumbling blocks to making Mars habitable. Reversing the process is not something humanity has ever done before. So why not turn one of our biggest bugs and turn it into a feature? Plus if we are going to experiment with intentionally changing the atmosphere of a planet I’d rather we experiment on a place where the entirety of humanity isn’t currently living.






  • God I’d kill for a place with no trolls, politics, shit posts, where your allowed to disagree and have spirited discussions on topics but mods would step in before it becomes an argument.

    I feel like everywhere you go online nowadays there’s a `well ackwchullly’ type in the corner. I’d love a place people can get together share ideas and joke around.

    Long story short, if you build it they will come.





  • I also generally don’t dream, or at least exceedingly rarely do I dream.

    I know other people who dream will have like full on stories. A handful of times a year maybe when I can actually recall something its usually blurry flashes or a vague sense of a scenario and that’s all I can recall.

    When I was a child I used to dream every single night, and then one day it just stopped. My current lack of ability to dream kind of bothers me because I feel like it will be kind of cool to slip into a fantasy world every night. On the bright side it’s probably been decades since I’ve had a nightmare so at least there’s that.

    A lot of other are saying in this thread if you don’t dream it’s due to THC consumption, but I don’t take any form of THC so that’s not really the issue for me.



  • One of the big issues I see with that proposal is that at some point, due to inflation an annual income in the ball park of 5 million dollars a year will be considered ‘middle class’. And then the average person will be hit with substantial taxes from a then archaic tax law.

    At that point you’ll need a constitutional amendment to shift the goal post which is nearly impossible to do such. (At least at this moment in time it is.)

    At that point the budget would likely have finally balanced itself out due to the higher tax rates. So of course there will probably be politicians arguing against making this change as it will effectively kill the federal budget, because shifting the tax laws will mean the government will be taking in substantially less.

    It’s a super well intentioned idea at the moment but it’s really a disaster in the making for a future generation.



  • To me it makes sense, there are a ton of ethical ramifications to the EMH being sentient that the people of the federation would likely have a very hard time coming to grips with.

    Data is a novel one of a kind technology for which the vast majority of people have never seen or interacted with. It’s easy to classify him in one way or another as it doesn’t effect their life in the big scheme of things.

    EMH on the other hand is just a standard hologram, not one created via extenuating circumstances. Meaning the people of the federation would effectively be creating and destroying lifeforms for their own pleasure every time they use the holodeck. I think the modern day equivalent would be to say that every time you turn off your TV or change the channel someone has to die. Or better yet imagine if every time you killed an opponent I’m a video game a sentient life form would have to die.

    Possibly a better modern analogue would be the meat and dairy industry. People in modern times commonly accept that dogs are sentient unique individuals with their own personalities, likes, wants and a possibly even a soul. But cows are mindless automatons where it’s okay to use them for our pleasure. They aren’t ‘real’ to people the way dogs and cats are. Most people don’t want to consider the ethical ramifications of every meal they eat especially when they’ve been doing things one way for the majority of their life.

    If EMH is sentient does that mean they have to stop the use of the holodeck all together? Do they have to “dumb down” the processing of holodeck characters to prevent it from accidentally creating a sentient life? And what would be the ethical implications of all of your holodeck adventures? If you have sex with someone on a holodeck adventure is that considered rape or sexual assault? What is consent if your programmed to feel a certain way from inception.

    These are heavy issues for the average federation grunt to have to ponder every time they want to blow off some steam. OR they can just put EMH in the same bucket as every other holodeck character who thinks they are alive but in reality are probably just a few lines of code sitting on the computers storage.


  • That may be true and all but I take it you didn’t read the article, because that not what it was about.

    They polled people and those who are regularly vote in past elections tend to be pro Biden, those whom hadn’t voted in recent elections tended to be pro Trump.

    Which is ironic because if everyone just got out and voted we might just have a send Trump presidency on our hands. I could be wrong, but I suspect that’s the opposite of what you are thinking would happen.