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Plastic straw pollution doesn’t have a measurable impact on the environment.
The entire thing about banning plastic straws comes from some high schooler using back-of-a-napkin math to guess how many straws are in the ocean in what was clearly a successful attempt at starting a science fair project the night before it was due. Some news station picked it up, and then a bunch of science-illiterates ran away with it.
You can’t determine the impact of pollution by count. Straws are tiny and weigh almost nothing. If you skip buying one pair of sneakers in your life, then you’ve successfully reduced your plastic use by almost a lifetime of plastic straws.
Removing plastic straws is probably the single least impactful way to reduce plastic pollution. It’s pure virtue signaling: it’s about presenting an image of being environmentally conscious while doing effectively nothing to help the environment.
Big bang for the hole universe is bs. It’s just our galaxy doing breath in (black hole building up) and breath out (black hole collapse).
You should always look in the oven before turning it on.
Seems simple to me. Before making the oven hot, make sure there’s nothing in there you don’t want to get hot (and that the racks are in the right place.) Takes maybe a second.
But a lot of people seem to find the idea that they (or anyone in their household) would ever leave something in the oven, when not cooking, to be deeply offensive.
Apartments and big cities are hell. People shouldn’t be shoved together like sardines.
You’re probably exactly right for the places you’re thinking of, but neither of those things have to be hell. Apartments originally were spacious places like the home-sized ones, the justification for their existence being that you get to live in the city centre rather than that being the only selling point.
If you want to see good examples of big cities with nice levels of public space, look at urban design in south korea and china
What do you do when your population outpaces your land mass?
Armor-piercing ammunition should never be banned.
Same goes for armor and suppressors.
Hmm, why do you believe that then? So that people can defend themselves against the police better?
I both thing people have a right to dignity, which by extension means they should have a day of how to live their lives. I also think that the general population shouldn’t vote. Against Democracy is a really good read if you haven’t read it.
For the record, I literally will drive people to the polls (since our current system creates better outcomes if more people vote) but I do really wish that most of them wouldn’t XD.
Okay so i haven’t read against democracy but it seems to take the socrates position. Instead of limiting votes to only the highly educated (which i take as an issue because this disadvantages the poor significantly due to higher education costing lots of money) why not just build a society in which everyone is educated enough to meet the standard for an informed voting population?
mandatory voting is better than any sort of voter controls, the catch is you also have to combine it with a properly funded/structured public education system designed to grow well rounded individuals capable of critical thought (instead of mindless factory drones, like the US’s).
Being mtf or ftm trans is conforming to gender stereotypes with extra steps. Abolishing gender stereotypes and letting everyone express themselves however they want would be far better for society overall.
I don’t mean that in a negative way and fully support respecting self identification because that has the best outcomes in the real world.
My controversial opinion is that if everyone has the right to self identification, I have the right to reject that identification. I am under neither logical nor moral obligation to accept another person’s beliefs about themselves or the world. Keep in mind I firmly assert that all people deserve to be treated with kindness and respect, I am making a descriptive not a normative statement. This is strictly a question of retaining the right to epistemological determination, “self identification” being based on that same exact fundamental premise.
Do you just never use gendered language in real life?
That’s a fair perspective.
I appreciate your acknowledgement that all people have the right to their own self-determination; and I appreciate your affirmation that all people deserve to be treated with kindness and respect.
I would also ask, though, when you assert your right to your own evaluation of another person, do you also practice awareness that it is fundamentally your interpretation, and that your interpretation may be factually inaccurate?
Do you say, “My experience is that I think that person is a man,” or do you say, “I declare based on my observations that I know that that person is a man” ?
Most of the time, we have no way of knowing what sex organs someone has, regardless of the expression of their outward appearance. It’s true that we may often recognize certain characteristics that lead to familiar assumptions, but in almost all scenarios we are still either making our own guesses about someone else, or we are choosing to believe that they are whoever they say they are.
Also, when considering intersex people and other variations in sexual development, even if we guess correctly about the sex organs or characteristics that someone may have been born with, we may still be wrong about the person’s underlying genetic make up or hormone balances.
I guess I wonder, when you hold your right to determine your own evaluation of another person, is your thinking flexible enough that you can hold your own assumptions lightly?
I’ve also thought about that a bit. The way I see it, transgender people definitely are following local cultural terms. Not the ones that they are expected to follow, but still.
What’s considered masculine or feminine isn’t standard across different cultural contexts either. For example, wearing skirts or pink aren’t exclusively feminine. In a western context they currently are, so that’s why western MTFs are currently inclined to wear those.
However, that wasn’t always the case. If the same person had been born a few centuries ago, pink would not have meant the same thing, and they they would have probably felt differently about that color. Also, what westerners would consider a skirt these days, can be a masculine or gender neutral piece of clothing in other cultures. Even today, there are place where mean wear something that westerners would call a skirt.
People have gotten way too comfortable with censoring speech. I understand the fight against intolerance and propaganda and how hopeless that fight can feel, but we’ve sometimes taken things too far and that’s only going to hurt us in the end. The left is not going to be the one that will take these compromises to the limit. We will be the most hurt by every bit of erosion we allowed to happen.
Specifically, I’m referring to efforts to get right wing platforms taken down not by being banned by a Facebook or Twitter or something, but by attacking the infrastructure on which a right wing website it run (such as attempts to get Truth social shut down by going after AWS, ISPs and other basic Internet infrastructure). It’s a similar approach as is sometimes done when they target payment processors and trying to shame them into banning these platforms from processing payments.
These types of attacks on speech should never be allowed no matter if it’s the left or the right. We can ban people from our private business or gathering place, but we shouldn’t be able to stop them from creating their own. And no, basic Internet infrastructure shouldn’t get to play the ‘private business’ card. They are effectively the roads, utilities and other generic infrastructure of the digital age.
Those attacks are no different from the right’s constant attacks on abortion clinics by attempting to subject them to needless and pointless regulations meant for full hospitals. Or as if we’d allowed a water company to start selectively shutting off water to places they don’t like.
We need more protections for the neutrality of infrastructure (both physical and digital) and keep the fights firmly restricted to end user platforms. Lest we find that someday our enemies have taken these tactics and beat us with them with far greater ruthlessness than we’d ever use.
Somewhere around the majority of people employed in academia are absolutely useless.
I say this as an academic.
I wanted to pursue academia until I met academics. I realized it was all dick measuring contests and covert social signalling. To get ahead you to understand the unspoken and political rules. It was a very disheartening realization. I didn’t have the heart to stomach it so I ended up pursuing a different career path
When I was in art school our TA’s were making 20k a year but stilling on 50k - 100k in student debt. They’d all been to bigger, more prestigious art schools, and they were barely getting by. And each of these schools was churning out hundreds or thousands of students every year.
That convinced me to take a different direction in life. Glad I did. I’m still a working artist and make a good living with it as a side hustle, but I’m glad I don’t have to live with the uncertainty.
It aint just academia.
Human beings should stop reproducing and walk towards extinction, we’ve done enough and irreparable damage to the nature
Any animal with the ability to dominate the globe as we do would do the same. So why single us out? We are part of nature. Even if we died off, intelligence would evolve again and then what? We make way for cockroach people to make the planet unlivable for all other species?
This degree of nihilism doesn’t impress me. I mean it’s not even an ethos!
No state that is in the Eastern Time Zone is a part of the Midwest.
Pennsylvania I could give you, but Ohio and Michigan? I guess it depends on what Midwest means to you, but as a cultural identity I would strongly disagree. But hey, that’s why we’re in the thread, right?
Not Indiana? Where would you put Hoosiers then? the east coast? great lakes? Appalachia? if we’re not midwest then we’re on a weird little island between everything else
Following “if it isn’t harmful, it’s not a problem” as a guideline, incest isn’t immoral if it doesn’t involve large power imbalance (e.g.: parent and offspring) and doesn’t produce offspring.
If the relationship, be it purely romantic or otherwise is mutually desired and fully consensual (usual requirements), then I don’t see how it would be different from other non-standard relationships.I hope that’s plenty controversial.
If the two individuals aged for a significant part of their lives together, offsprings are not the only “harm”.
Forming relationships with people that are different (as in, not relatives) helps avoid the bad parts of the family structure (the weird beliefs, opinions, behaviours, etc, that are taught within a family but are not accepted outside of it). Without that, you can end up with something that seems like “cultural inbreeding” where the weirdness persists and grows, until it reaches weird shit.
On a side note
Arguably a similar effect already happens in western countries thanks to xenophobia, and that’s why you have people that care so much about transmitting their DNA and having their own biological kids as if it mattered. This is just the remnants of a deeply racist culture that believes that you need to preserve your family line, and with it, your DNA. If people were mixing more with other cultures and origins, this would seem much more absurd.
Forming relationships with people that are different (as in, not relatives) helps avoid the bad parts of the family structure
That is an argument from utility, which can most certainly be debated. What constitutes “bad”? That is a subjective interpretation.
where the weirdness persists and grows, until it reaches weird shit.
And how do we define “weird shit”? Are “normal” relationships not “weird shit” and don’t they lead to “weird shit”?
their DNA and having their own biological kids as if it mattered.
Well, it matters to them. Therefore, it matters. Doesn’t it? It does to them.
Genuinely just poking at arguments here, I have no decided opinion either way.
It’s more of a question of what is healthy psychologically. Staying to close to one group socially makes a sort of echo chamber, and that’s always a problem.
And that’s what I mean with “weird shit”, things like racism are quite known to be increased in people that are not in contact with people of color for example. Echo chambers are generally bad, and I feel like this would create a very strong one (“us against the world” and whatnot)
DNA doesn’t matter when it comes to kids if you don’t have a background thought that is at least a bit problematic. It’s not about what matters to them only, but also about what is morally wrong. This “DNA is everything” thing is extremely toxic
I get what you’re going for here. But another caveat to add would be that the people in this sort of relationship shouldn’t have children. They might be able to get away with that for one generation, but if incest runs in the family then it won’t take long for things to start going south
I get what you’re going for here. But another caveat to add would be that the people in this sort of relationship shouldn’t have children.
Which is in my 1st sentence.
Whoops, misread that
Do you think people with autism, downs syndrome, or cognitive impairments should have kids?
Not the person you asked, but you and everyone reading your comment know that’s not a good faith argument.
The reason incest is frowned upon and often illegal is because of the danger it poses to any potential offspring. Many genetic diseases rely on recessive traits that require both parents to carry the recessive trait in order for it to be exposed. If two biological siblings have a child, that child would therefore have a massive amount of recessive traits exposed since both parents would share a massive amount of DNA
At a population scale, genetic diversity is critical to survival of a population, and a collapse of genetic diversity through too much inbreeding tends to lead to a very unhealthy population that can be easily wiped out through disease. This is much less of a risk with random incest today thanks to how much humans move around these days, but the flip side is that there is some risk of this from so called “super surrogates” who have genetically fathered hundreds or thousands of kids. The likelyhood of these kids meeting and reproducing can be quite high, which can therefore noticably reduce genetic diversity in a population, and ultimately reduce the health of a population
I see what you’re trying to do here and I don’t like it
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Supporting the death penalty.
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Rape is worse than murder; murder can be justified in some cases, e.g self defense, but rape never can. Therefore on average, rape is more evil than murder (it’s a question of 100% versus like 98.5% on the evil scale)
I think the first one is more contentious - yes it’s mainstream but it genuinely gets people riled up. The second one sounds shocking but is mainly just hard to articulate.
I’m in a funny spot, because I think reducing the number of shitty people on this planet is great! …But I don’t trust a government to accurately determine guilt. So I’m anti-death penalty, but not mad at all that Luigi (allegedly) murdered that shit bag CEO who has an entire business based on getting mandatory payments from people to deny and delay their necessary healthcare.
Completely agree. People like Luigi are essential, drawing a line in the sand for evil to see. That’s not to say we need vigilantes constantly… but it feels like times right now are when we need a few.
EDIT: It also troubles me how the USA does the death penalty. There’s a big argument of ‘what if we kill someone who was mistakenly convicted’ - I think if you stuck to only executing people who CERTAINLY committed the crime, you’d make huge strides in ridding the world of evil destructive rampage killers, anyway.
There are a ridiculous amount of killers in america who confess, boast, are proud of having killed. Who were caught on cctv, or otherwise witnessed killing.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
Some people read this as “Every man secretly wants to be a pirate” but to me it says “everyone has a point where what is legal becomes incompatible with what is necessary”
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I’ve got a few that I can’t really separate:
Dental hygienists are greedy charlatans who convince us we need an expensive hygiene appointment every six months when we really don’t. That used to be true before the invention of the electric toothbrush but not now. I stopped going 7 years ago and I make sure I brush properly daily for two minutes with my electric toothbrush. I occasionally use inter-dental brushes for a deeper clean and my teeth are perfect. No soreness, gum bleeding and certainly no cavities. It’s lies I tell ya.
AI is the most incredible development in human evolution since the invention of the wheel. I think it is the beginning of our next evolutionary step. It may even save us from destroying ourselves. It has brought me personally incredible results that have enriched my life in countless ways. I can’t wait to see where it takes us. People who are angry about it are dumb (you did say “controversial opinion” lol).
Money is basically the ring from Lord of the rings. You can’t have it without it changing you. I’ve had the dubious pleasure of knowing a great many millionaires and they’re all miserable bastards pretending that they’re not. Their families hate them, most of them are alcoholics and drug addicts. They hate themselves even more and their money doesn’t mean anything to them so they use it to impress others or hurt them, just so they can feel something. It’s all a disgustingly wasteful, tragic act.
Money is basically the ring from Lord of the rings. You can’t have it without it changing you (…)
I’ve heard this a lot and it’s one of the things thst most scares me in life. Because I want money, for financial security. I want to be able to have a four person family and guarantee their security and well-being 'til the kids have each reached 25+ y.o, and i want to actually own
propertya house that I can pass on to them, or one of them.But the absolute certainty with which people say you loose sight of all those things when you get your hands on money…
I’ve already in my life run into so many hurdles and situations where i went 'I’d NEVER make that mistake," or “I’ll never so something as evil, stupid or reckless as that,” and then ended up doing x thing anyway. It’s like having a God who constsntly reads your thoughts and tries to prove you wrong.
I’ve also witnessed 2 or 3 ex-friends go absolutely insane in the pursuit of wealth and status and they’re only in early 20s.
I think this one is actually not a controversial opinion. Some argue that we, common people, think we’re money hungry but we actually just never have as much as we need, and what we perceive as our own oursuit of greed is axtuslly pursiit of survival. But at that point we’re maybe describing something different to what you outline in your comment.
Good food for thought.
It’s funny. I’ve never really had money. Was worth about 10 million at one point (I was 1/3 heir to a building worth around 30 mil or so) and walked away because the family had issues and I’ve dealt with enough of my own family issues for ten lifetimes. Still broke most of the time but investing in my forever home is worth it.
If they hate their lives because of money maybe they should change things up and do something about it. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results is a perfect definition of insanity.
Money is basically the ring from Lord of the rings.
I’ll still stick with my (perhaps naive) belief that people still have this backwards. Wealth is not magically corruptive like the ring was. Rather only people who are already problematic will end up with the sorts of wealth that it takes to be labeled as one of those rich assholes. They aren’t assholes cause they’re rich, they’re rich because they were assholes.
The system (and human society in general) rewards the worst of us with wealth. However, if you short circuit this process and give a good person wealth, you’ll find that a) they don’t magically become an asshole and b) they probably don’t stay rich for very long. Typically because they’ve given most of it away as they don’t need it and don’t define themselves by having it.
If you want a great example of how instantly otherwise good people become the worst versions of themselves almost overnight watch what happens when a rich person with a large family dies. I did a couple of years in the will writing sector. I’m telling ya… zero to Golem in no time at all. I’ve also watched good people I knew extremely well turn bad too many times to remember. It all starts with “I couldn’t possibly have servants. How embarrassing!” and before you know it it’s “Eduardo! I’ve told you a hundred times I need my watermelon juice chilled! One more mistake and it’s back to Caracas!”. People should have to undergo intense psychological training to be able to be rich and stay human.
As the other commenter said, I’m not really sure these people were ‘good’ before. Maybe Sunday school ‘good’ as in they were good at faking things.
But sure, if you want to call it that, then I’ll just say that yes, some humans effectively have a negative gene that only activates if they get wealthy. A predisposition to rich asshole-ness.
I do not believe this is a universal trait or even a majority trait however. And, while these people aren’t good, they aren’t the sort of evil that’s implied when you’re talking about billionaires.
Aunt Becky going full Karen just cause she got a million dollars in a will is far different than healthcare CEOs knowingly implementing policies to auto deny coverage for kids with cancer just so they can earn another billion that they don’t actually need, care about or even use.
No matter how much of a bitch Becky became, she’s unlikely to suddenly be cool with the murder of children just because of some money in her bank account. It’s not that kind of evil corruptive force. Those traits had to be there from the beginning.
How did you know they were “good people” before? Some folks are just never in a position of power for their morals to be tested, and then they are and you discover who they are. I agree with the previous poster.
I don’t think we’re on opposite sides of any argument here mr argumentativemonotheist (great username btw 🤣). The only slight difference is that I’m saying that almost no one, in my experience, survives that test.
Thank you, thank you, lol. Well, fair enough, I see what you mean. And I guess I’d like to believe otherwise but that might just be wishful thinking. 🥲
Johnny Kitagawa’s child sexual abuse was confirmed in a trial over gossip magazine reports.
Johnny & Associates, which continued to have him involved with minors for over 15 years, engaged in organized child sexual exploitation and should be defined as a mafia.
Therefore, all organizations that did business with the company, including ISPs, universities, UMG, and Nintendo, should be defined as affiliated with the mafia.
