Who decides what ideas are and aren't okay? Who decides which ideas are bad enough to use force against? What's to stop those in charge of making those decisions from being compromised, or plants, or changing their minds, or having morals counter to the morals of their society, seeing as the voting clearly cannot be trusted. All it takes is fascism and conservatism to quietly seep into government and now we've created the perfect framework for them to shift the targets to those they oppose.

This week, trans people have been declared anti-party. Next week it's disabled people. Tune in the week after for nationalism.

This is like building a big gun to protect ourselves from fascists but not putting any checks to make sure it's wielded in the best interests of the people.

He got less than 50%

That may be the case, but they made significant progress on rockets, nuclear, and discoveries in physics. Whether or not they were war effective, the scientific progress was there. Fascism isn't incompatible with technological progress, but resistance to higher education and anti-science sentiments are. In the long run, the loss of knowledge due to book burning and genocide may have caught up to them, but we thankfully don't know. The government could have continued to fund and focus on science.

Genuinely, I cannot tell what your point is. In some alternate universe, are we just rolling the rocks downhill? Don't you think we'd already be doing that? This seems like a great use case to replace diesel trucks with ones that recharge themselves using potential energy from ore. This absolutely is a galaxy brain moment, in that it's a very smart idea.

The user's pronouns were in her username, OP's client just doesn't display additional lines.

They never said they're in the left lane, and in fact specifically specified against it. Sounds like you're both defensive and an aggressive driver.

We have more than enough resources for more than the world's population. The problem isn't overpopulation, it's manufactured scarcity. Telling people to just have less kids is victim blaming when capitalism requires letting some people starve to maintain the artificial value of products.

I'm not suggesting that the director has full responsibility for the art. They are part of a team, and the creative style of a director heavily influences the finished product. You can tell who directed a movie just by watching it. There are very important creative decisions and directions that point the team of more specialized artists in the right direction.

This is not analogous to AI art. That would be like the director of a movie telling a team of interns to cut together clips of other movies as best they see fit, within a general outline of the script. A person using AI to generate art isn't part of the creative process in the same way; they tell a machine what to do, and decide whether to rerun or tweak the prompt after seeing the result. This takes some small modicum of creativity, but it isn't creating art. It's fine for fun, or to use as a stand in tool, or to mock-up designs, but it will never have the creative direction of a human being, or stand on the same level with true masters, regardless of how well it can copy their style. It can't understand the art.

Directing is an art form of its own. The cinematography, the pacing, the set design, acting, and so much more is all influenced by the director's decisions. It would be like saying a conductor or a music producer isn't an artist. Easy to say if you don't have an understanding of the art form, but dead wrong. There are a ton of creative choices at all levels made by directors, and there's a reason we've been using them in one way or another since we first started performance art. I've worked under and beside directors in the past, and I have only the utmost respect for what a good director can do for the art.

A bad director however... I might agree with you.

I agree that killing should be the absolute last resort, though I disagree that killing humans for population control should ever be in consideration. There is a difference between taking the role of a natural process, the predators that have been depopulated, and killing humans for population control, which have no natural predators. We also never need to consider that as an option, because as you pointed out, we can't distribute pills and condoms to deer, but we can to humans. We shouldn't be thinking of things in terms of equality, but equity. Humans can be managed through effective legislation and education. Deer cannot, and need much more direct intervention. I look forward to the day that culling is no longer necessary, as it's a brutal and unfortunate necessary evil. And for the purposes of demonstrating that it's not specifically about species to me, yes, I believe that if the only way to save the global ecosystem was a rapid depopulation of human beings with no alternatives, it would be right to do so, regardless of how impossible that hypothetical situation is.

Without getting all Agent Smith about it, yes, humans are an ecological disaster. I'm not trying to throw charged what-ifs back and forth. We solve the problems we can. Can you clarify what you're saying? I agree that no animal should be killed by humans, but I also recognize that we must work with the solutions we have. Are you suggesting that we stop cullings and allow overpopulation to happen?

I strongly agree that hunting should not be a sport. I also believe that if we're going to kill an animal, we should at least use the corpse to feed back into the ecosystem, and I don't begrudge those that eat the things they hunt, if necessary. Many people subsist off hunting to survive, and while I disagree with the concept of hunting another animal for food, I won't suggest that they starve, especially when they're filling a vital ecosystem role. If we don't need the food though, we should not be hunting animals for food. I don't know if my opinion is well founded enough to defend the position that if an animal is killed, tragically necessarily, for culling, it should not be eaten. I believe that to be true, but I can't defend that position with anything but my personal feelings and beliefs. On some level, I understand the argument that if an animal must be killed, then it's wasteful to not use the meat. Regardless of either argument, I strongly disagree with trophy hunting, and find any hunting for sport abhorrent.

I hope you can see the nuanced nature of my position. I'm not trying to play devil's advocate or be contrarian. I have a well-formed belief from my experiences, and I am trying to argue my position, and don't think you have to agree with me, nor do I expect you to. I do not see a large scale alternative to culling at the moment. I think those types of alternatives are being pursued by some in the industry, but the scale is small. I also do not believe it's an option to allow populations to grow uncontrollably. I believe allowing that to happen would be as morally reprehensible as hunting for sport, as it's neglecting a duty we have to sustain an ecosystem that we damaged. I am open and interested in any and all alternatives to culling, but I've heard none that haven't been tried or that haven't been able to succeed at scale.

No, certainly not. It's a condition known as aphantasia, and isn't something that can be cured with practice. I have a lifetime of practice in conceptualizing in a different way though. I don't feel that I'm missing out on anything really, just experiencing the world differently. I didn't even know that I was any different than most until I was an adult, and a friend of mine made me realize it.

Someone with aphantasia might be able to learn how to conceptualize in a different way, but I don't think you can train what's not there, any more than a blind person could train themselves to see. There isn't a lot of study into it though, and I've found it difficult to get solid information on my condition, so perhaps there's more to learn. Why, for example, do I have a very vivid imagination of sounds? I can imagine an entire song in all of its different instruments as if I could hear it, but I can't even conceive even a little bit of what it means to see something in my head.

I've had it explained to me very often by people with varying degrees of sincerity or understanding, and I still don't quite get it. Is it like dreaming, or like a hallucination, or like an image you can't really see but still know is there? It's foreign to me, and no description I've heard makes it clear. I dream quite clearly and in color, but that's like I'm there experiencing it in person. I'd love to learn more about aphantasia, especially since my fiancée has the opposite, hyperphantasia, and it would be nice to more easily collaborate as artists.

I love reading, and I love writing and storytelling. I think books can be for anyone. I wouldn't let a difference in perception preclude you from enjoying an entire form of media, entertainment, and information. For me, audiobooks work best to hold my attention, as I struggle to sit and read words in front of me without keeping myself busy. It's not a fit for everyone, and not everyone will like reading, but I think it's a very simple joy that so many people have had hammered out of them by bad parents, bad teachers, or bad education systems that taught them to dread or hate books and reading. I got back into reading as an adult, and it's one of the most fulfilling parts of my day.