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Everyone should have to retake the driving test (both written and practical) every five years. And if you don’t pass on the first try or are in a crash where you are found at fault, it should be bumped up to every year for the following five years.
People drive dangerously because they’ve forgotten rules, or rules have changed, or they’ve had a physical or cognitive decline. And yet we’re like “yep, you took a test once decades ago, good to go.”
Dangerous driving kills so many people.
I’m guessing they would do this if they could justify the cost to voters. I recall having to wait months for my driving test. Sadly, I have a feeling it’s easier to kick that problem (i.e. accidents) down to someone else’s department. But I’m totally with you. Yesterday I almost got ran over by someone that treated a stop sign like a yield sign.
So i drive a lot for work every day, and people not knowing traffic rules at all is a big problem. But people not even caring is so much worse. Everyone is the most important person on the road. The amount of time people cutting me off, backing up onto the road or merging on a highway without even looking or caring is crazy. These people probably pass a test, but you can’t force them to care, other people look out for them so it doesn’t matter to them.
Also turn signals. Where i live, there are a lot of roundabouts, and it keeps the traffic going. But for them to work properly, you have to use turn signals, so you can go as soon as you see a blinking light. But most people don’t care because it doesn’t matter to them if the other person has to wait, because they are out.
I agree about people not caring about anyone else, and I think it’s gotten worse since covid.
I agree with that i also think they should offer a more complex test that will extend that time to 10 years. After a certain age though you’re only eligible for a 5 year extention.
Totally agree! Also ppl like to bash on elderly persons. Statistically speaking you are most likely to be hit by a young or middle aged man.
I meeeeeean, there is a elderly guy in my neighberhood that only drives with his wife as a passenger, becuase he said he can barely see past his hood.
If someone couldn’t pass a driving test, they shouldn’t be driving. This should apply to everyone, elderly or not. It’s just that elderly people are less likely to be in as good of a condition as when they got their license for the first time.
I agree, and it could work like that here. (your driver’s license is only valid for a certain time) But as far as I know, you only need to retake the tests when applying for renewal if your license expired multiple years ago. Otherwise, you only have to fill out some forms.
At least old people & those who’ve had their license taken away need to redo their tests, which is better than nothing, but not enough in my opinion.
Yeah at the very least, they could easily make it a requirement to pass a written test at every renewal. Hell, they could do it as an online test you can do it home before you come in, I don’t even care if people “cheat.” Make it open book. Then at least people would have to flip through the book every few years which is better than nothing.
The purpose of government is to take care of the people. I’d rather pay more taxes to make sure my fellow men are fed, clothed, sheltered, educated and cared for because it improves security for my loved ones.
I know this really grinds some peoples gears but by golly I love big government.
It should also keep us from trying to exploit or attack each other
The question of ‘What is the purpose of government?’ is simultaneously deeply important to society and yet rarely, if ever, addressed in a useful context. I have watched people argue about multiple policies, speaking past each other the whole time, just because they had different baseline assumptions as to the purpose of government and couldn’t even see their opponents had a different definition.
Correct, others have different definitions of taking care of the people, which I don’t disagree with completely but I think takes a lower priority to what I believe.
Why is that unpopular? It’s literally the main stated purpose of most governments.
Graveyards are a disgusting waste of space. Their existence communicates to society that many dead people are more entitled to space on this Earth than some living people will ever have.
From everything I read in this thread… you won.
Graveyards don’t exist for the dead, they are a place where living people can mourn the loss of the dead person and remember older days.
I realize they’re not really for the dead, but the living decide that their dead bodies are entitled to more space than some living. Plots cost thousands of dollars. We ostracize the unhoused. Our priorities are broken, and graveyards are yet another thing for those “with” that those “without” will not have.
I don’t know. Personally I don’t need a “place” to go visit someone that is deceased, but I have very close family that needs that place in order to grieve. Pets or human family, they need to be buried and have a marker.
When I lived in a more urban environment the only way to achieve that was through graveyards/pet cemeteries. With some land and the option I’d rather bury people at home now, but lots of people don’t have that luxury, but still have the need to “visit” deceased loved ones, and know where they “are.”
I’m not one of those people, sounds like you aren’t either, but that doesn’t mean that a graveyard doesn’t serve a useful purpose for the majority of people.
Could they be more efficient? Sure, maybe. But honestly do they really take up THAT much space?
Definitely fits the unpopular opinion tag, but I think you’ve got some blinders on your empathy if you don’t see their value.
I understand the sentiment and yes, just like everything else, capitalism has turned death into a money making racket at the expense of the average person.
I live near a cemetery currently and was raised near a different one, they make great neighbors. Quiet and the one near me now is also a wildlife refuge so I can’t call that wasted space. Yes, it’s privately owned but it’s open to the public. Also, I work in historic preservation and love working in and exploring cemeteries.
In the end, I just love the blend of history, architecture, and nature in one place.
Not many of the living are entitled to less than 2 m² though. I’m not sure where you’re trying to go with this.
Graveyards don’t exist for the dead.
They exist for both relatives to mourn, and the wider populace who value the perspective on their own problems that graveyards provide. They’re also normally a peaceful place in an often unpeaceful world, much as urban green spaces.
When I was in unspecified foreign country I went to a graveyard with my family. It was very different in that the bodies were buried basically right next to each other and you basically just walk over the bodies of the interred to get to where you want to go.
It was a bit distinct from how we do it in America where, much like our suburban houses, you have to have a pointless giant green lawn surrounding where the body is buried.
I’m going to push back because as society exists now there are a lot of cities I have been to where the graveyard is the most easily accessible green space. I don’t know how weird it may be but sitting with the dead in the quite separated from the surroundings was one of my favorite things to experience. I’m not a religious/spiritual person and it was very helpful in connecting to the people who died before I met them.
If you eat factory meat, you’re doing something morally wrong that can’t be justified.
And the vast majority of people who get defensive about that, deep down know what they are doing is morally dubious at best, but they can’t/won’t admit it, so they lash out at vegans/vegetarians instead.
There’s something to be said about the ease of access and personal energy needed to deal with changing a diet that has been inherited by birth where the alternative is possibly much more expensive. I don’t blame individuals who eat cheap meat out of necessity just as I don’t blame people for not recycling since the responsibility of the exploitation and destruction of our planet lies entirely with the people who run the machine, not those who are forced under threat of violence to exist inside it.
Fair, however a balanced vegetarian diet is as cheap or cheaper than a cheap meat centric diet, and certainly healthier.
A can of beans is about a dollar, less depending on where you shop. Potatoes are a few dollars a bag, and for most people, a bag of large russets would last them several days if not a week. Same for leafy greens, frozen fruit and veggies, bags of rice, etc.
I agree that there can be other factors, but impoverished communities around the world for centuries have lived on staple foods like those.
I think some personal responsibility is necessary still. Sure the megacorps are the ones doing the most harm and push people to be more consumerist, but that doesn’t absolve people of all their personal autonomy, otherwise you justify all kinds of “just following orders” arguments.
We ought to still resist the corpos and try to live our lives in ways that are better for the world as a whole. Sure, me recycling cans and trying to buy local isn’t going to save the planet, but that doesn’t mean I should just throw litter around in the street and buy everything from Amazon and Walmart.
I’m not sure I’d equate having your hand forced with following orders blindly. It’s nearly impossible to change individuals’ behaviors unless it’s due to systemic forces (minus the few who just want to be correct as long as it is visible). But if you’re more focused on individuals and their “responsibility” even though they had no input on the creation of this system, I’d only assume that you’re fine with this system and would rather shout at the brick wall of “individual responsibility”, then get frustrated when people end up hating vegetarians and vegans. I’m like 90% vegetarian nowadays because I can’t really afford meat anyways as well as it giving me headaches and foul moods, but I don’t think you’re being realistic in what you’re asking. Would the world be better with no factory farming? Absolutely yes. But we’re in this situation not because of people’s choices. We’re in this situation because the choice has been made for a lot of us. Some people are a single paycheck away from homelessness, so they likely don’t have the resources to learn how to cook, then ruin a bunch of food in the learning process, only to overspend, and be threatened with getting kicked out all for your own comfort. Go fight the people making this the reality we’re living in.
Not just factory meat. If you are paying for another fellow creature to be tortured and murdered you are acting in an unjustifiable manner.
Guess what, most if not all veggies and vegans are also doing something morally dubious at best.
Factory farming, extensive farming, they’re all bad for the soil, bad for native wildlife, bad for native plants. The societal impacts of factory farming are also not small. In the end, the moral lines people draw are mostly at different places, neither is undoubtedly better than the other.
As it currently stands, the morally correct option for food production would probably be for a large amount of the population to starve. That, of course, is also not entirely morally correct.
Disclaimer: I am personally omnivorous. I have a son and many other relatives and friends who are or were vegetarians or vegans. I love a lot of veggie food and used to frequent vegan restaurants, so I have absolutely zero qualms with it.
I have personally tried to give up meat twice, once for 6 months and once for a year. On both cases my health suffered massively for it, and I went back to eating meat. I had a cousin who was, for many years, a hardcore vegetarian. She was also of the opinion that eating meat was wrong. A few years ago she reintroduced fish in her diet to overcome health issues after fighting them for years. Most symptoms subsided in a handful of months. I believe she now also eats beef, although infrequently and in small quantities.
I’m sorry to be that guy but reality is more complex than whatever moral line any one of us would like to draw. You’re not wrong but it would behoove you to acquire some nuance on your thoughts.
There are a lot of calories lost when eating meat, because the animals burn calories by staying alive. So eating meat is like eating 15x times more calories from veggies. So everything bad for the environment about vegetarian consumption is true for meat too but in worse.
And perfect is the enemy of good. Veggies aren’t perfect, but they’re far better than meat for the environment.
Some of those are useless calories, we can’t eat grass and on some lands where only grass grows so cows are a way of using that grass, but that’s not the majority.
most of what animals are fed are parts of plants people can’t or won’t eat, or grazed grass. in that way, we are conserving resources.
This is not true. The vast majority of farmed animals come from high intensity operations and the vast bulk of the food they eat is grown agriculturally. This is one of those happy little lies people repeat to themselves without verifying because it provides them with a shred of moral license. They don’t really care whether it’s true or not and finding out it is false won’t change their behaviour, it’s a totally facile argument.
sure, but I can’t eat cornstalks and I don’t want to eat soy cake, so feeding that to livestock is a conservation of resources.
Where are you getting your information?
The majority of all the plants that humans grow are fed to livestock. That’s just the fact of the matter. It’s not conserving anything, rather it’s incredibly wasteful. Human food crops could have been grown instead, on a fraction of the land.
And again, you don’t really give a shit. It wouldn’t change your behaviour to discover you are mistaken, it’s a disingenuous argument. It’s sophistry.
human food crops are grown. soy is a great example. about 80% of soy is pressed for oil, and the byproduct is fed to livestock.
this is a lie
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That’s exactly what I wrote
no, you said those calories are wasted.
Read more than the first sentence please
“Some of those are useless calories, we can’t eat grass and on some lands where only grass grows so cows are a way of using that grass, but that’s not the majority.”
most people don’t want to eat soy cake, or crop seconds, or spoilage. feeding that to livestock is a conservation of resources, not a waste.
Even if this were true, it does not address the moral argument that is at the root of this discussion. It’s a way that you distract yourself from the moral component of your choices. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, it doesn’t even matter if you believe it or not. It just has to distract you long enough that you get past the point where you might accidentally engage your empathy, and have a feeling you don’t want to have.
the moral argument in this thread is about allocation of resources. if you want to make a separate moral argument, you’re free to do so.
it is
Amazing how many plants rights advocates pop up every time someone mentions the cruelty and violence being endured by farm animals. And no other time.
It’s the only time where it’s relevant to the conversation, no? Why would you bring it up anywhere else?
Considering almost 1.5 billion adults in the world are overweight it wouldn’t be so bad to let some people starve.
Animals needs to eat and drink too, the meat industry has the highest tool on the farming industry.
It sound like your diet was off, if you don’t eat animal products you need valid alternatives to complete and balance your diet. In cultures shaped around animal products it may not be automatic or easy to find alternatives. Our ancestors diet for example had less meat and more lentils, in countries were they consume less meat you are most likely to find popular dish with other proteins sources.
You are fucked in the head.
I find it amazing how little space corn syrup takes up relative to how much is produced. It’s no wonder we use it in everything.
Care to elaborate? Like are you saying that there is something inherently wrong about veganism or are you saying that vegans are not perfect people and also commit bad acts?
If it’s the first, you need some serious evidence and explanations since scientifically it is established that veganism is healthier, better for the environment, produces more calories per land, water and energy usage, and of course, the animals get to live free of torture.
If it’s the second option, well yeah, no one is perfect. We should all do our best to improve, I wasn’t born a vegan but once I understood what I was doing I stopped it, and it was hard and I had some fallbacks, but eventually I got used to it and had no issues. This is not just about veganism, there are many things in my life that at somepoint I came to understand that they were wrong, and I changed myself to be better. People can do both good and bad things, but if they are aware of the bad stuff and choose to ignore it, that’s when they become bad people.
A simple example from my past is that when I was younger (kid to teen) I thought “nig&er” was just a word for a black person, it was only when a black person explained it to me that I understood the historical and cultural significance of it. Does the fact that I said nig&er made me a bad person? I don’t think so, but if I ignored what I had learned and continued? Yeah, I think that would have been bad.
The true unpopular opinion?
Large amounts of the population starving is not the morally correct option. Eating meat is many times more inefficient for resources used than eating plants. The infrastructure needed to sustainably mass farm vegetables for the whole world would be far less resource intensive than our current omnivorous factory farming system.
Your personal anecdote, assuming it’s true is completely included in my original critique. I specified factory farmed meat as the problem. I am fine with sustainable hunting if that’s your only option, because it requires genuine effort by the hunter, and it provides a generally less painful death for the animal vs what they would experience out in nature from any other predator. Also, there are some people who have medical situations where eating zero meat does cause them some issues. That being said, it’s a very small percentage of the population, and I suspect many folks (not necessarily you) are lying or mistaken that their health suffered when they gave up meat. Most of the time, it’s because they simply weren’t eating a balanced diet.
Eating less meat is better than eating more meat. Something is better than nothing, it’s good to cut down on meat consumption, even if you aren’t cutting it out completely.
Nothing we do is perfect, even the most hardcore vegan has slapped a mosquito or patronized a business that uses fossil fuels, etc. But it’s about trying to be better. Trying to equate the harms of the meat industry to harms that vegetarians/vegans cause is like trying to equate Ted Bundy with a kid who cheated on their math homework. Sure both did something bad, but one of those bad things is far more severe.
And as my personal anecdote: I am not vegan, I’m vegetarian. I get attacked by more hardcore vegans for eating honey and eggs. I have cut down my consumption of both, I drink almost exclusively non-dairy milk, and I bike and use public transport when I am able. But I’m not perfect, not possible to be.
Gaslighting
That’s willful self-delusion.
this just isn’t true.
I find it difficult to respect the way we exist in society. Most of us in the west enjoy what we have because someone elsewhere is being exploited. The general pride and vanity we have is unjustified and we should be using that power for good instead. We are focused on the
rightwrong things.You could say that this opinion isn’t unpopular, but just try bringing it up in conversation. Many don’t want to know.
You’re absolutely right but where do we as privileged and I guess inherently exploitative westerners go from here. Also the entire neoliberaljst system seems to be set up as a exploitation pyramid, where even us the privileged westerners are being exploited for the gains of those monetarily positioned above us.
Me I’m just trying to to understand all this so I can figure out where to go from there
Good question. The first step with any endeavour is mindset. So when people ask “where do we go from here?” my first thought is that we should stop the glorification of exploitation. Stop wearing brand logos. Stop showing our new devices to people with enthusiasm. Stop celebrating the “winners” of capitalism.
I don’t think we should despair - that doesn’t scale well. But we should (IMO) buy these things with a sense of regret or realism. We should normalise the discourse. I want us to be as up to date on this as people who follow sports.
Otherwise, not only will we never think of ways to fix this, but we won’t even recognise the solution when it’s in front of us.
We need to become conscious and informed of the dilemma of people who look different to us and consider them our brethren. That does wonders for the exploitative appetites we’ve developed.
That’s not unpopular at all yet, highly hypocritical. “Feeling bad” is just a way to feel like you’re giving something back, without actually helping.
If we feel good about it, we’re primed to continue the dark pattern. The first step is acknowledging the problem. If you remove the first step, subsequent steps can’t happen.
I get where you’re coming from. I see land acknowledgements used in colonies like NZ, Canada and USA yet treaties remain broken. I think (IMO) the answer is “all the things” rather than some. But we’re not even shuffling the deck yet as a population so making first steps accessible is important in my own experience. Too much in one go and peoples eyes glaze over.
Of course, it’s important to do the first steps. But that’s the thing. 99% of the population will stick to that first step. I plan to help people when I can in the future, but, I need to help myself first. Tho, see society around me, I don’t see that happening. I need to get rich and the only way to be rich is to either sell something stupid, yet “hypnotizing” or, to be corrupted and doing illegal stuff (and if you don’t have connection, will get caught).
People are dumb. Yeah, yeah, I know, everyone says that. But that’s another point. We are ALL dumb and especially weak af. Especially me! Cheers my friend!
I have studied this greatly recently. Including strategies and methods to counter and create more symbiotic feedback loops. Game theory, zero sum outcomes, Nash equilibrium. There are loads of studies and detailed analysis on how all of this type of behavior works against us.
It’s fascinating. Humanity has a long long way to go for where we think we should be FOSS and others. We are no where near the capacity of greatness we think we have achieved. Where we are now historically. It’s a facade. Smoke and mirrors on the grand scale. We are in a great transition right now.
Time displayed in different information architectures is interesting and where the real deep learning happens. Not just time but information structuring in general. Time was just relative to this reply. We train deep learning on this. It’s heavy mental gymnastics.
Desktop computers are way better and more fun than using phone for browsing, wikipedia, news, and Lemmy
I rarely use my phone for anything other than texting. I like using my desktop computer to browse and post.
not necessarily more fun, but definitely much, much, much more usable and convenient
Fair point! Fun is def not the correct word I should have used. “Practical” is the better choice.
I’ve been reflecting on this a lot lately, especially after watching a video by an internet funny man I enjoy (Eddie Burback) about him locking his phone away for a month (not a feasible strategy for most people.)
I also enjoy pretty much anything online much more on the desktop. When things started pivoting to app-only it felt very weird at the time - the phone access was always the clunkier secondary backup nice-to-have.
That said, 80% of my browsing happens on my phone. It’s less fun and it’s more mindless, but that’s the truth. I think I’ll hit a point where I find my phone just too magnetic but as a dopamine crutch it’s cripplingly convenient.
I purposely avoid using my phone to browse. Unless it’s something like restaurant review or urgent news as I’m out. I try to stay present, enjoy my space, and tell myself that I can just wait to look it up when I get home.
When I 'm out and look around I see everyone just staring down at their screen. It’s annoying to see. So I decided not to be like that. Now I actually hear birds, feel breezes, take in sights and smells. And I take my time. For me pesonally, 100 percent improvement of life. I’m rarely ever in a bad mood now.
People even mention how I always seem in a good mood. It’s because I’m not doomscrolling on my phone all day (like most of Lemmy does)! lol
And when I get home and use desktop, I do fun things like create music, write novels, etc. Life is awesome without the 24-hour doom and gloom.
The Beatles are highly overrated. I respect the impact they had, and I acknowledge that the music I like (metal) would not exist without them, but I’ll go out of my way to avoid listening to them.
It was easier to be a big fish in the pre-internet music pond. I would never said the Beatles are bad, they aren’t. But aside from understanding the historical significance, I would never ever put the Beatles on regularly.
Just as I don’t watch B&W films every night. Charlie Chaplin was great, for the time, just simpler than what I actually actually enjoy.
I’m also on this camp. I get the significance, but I think I just didn’t resonate with what they wrote, and the “old” production.
Here and there I found a great version someone else performed and was surprised to find it’s a Beatles song, then I heard the OG and went “yup, still not for me”.
Jeez, this thread is scary, I forget how many crazy opinions people can have.
Mine is probably that non-human animal lives matter, maybe not exactly in the same way that human lives do, but in a comparable and important way. I believe that murder is murder no matter the animal killed.
And also a maybe close second (not really an opinion but you could argue that I’m too dark about it) is that climate change is far past the point of no return and that in 50 years we are all going to live extremely hard lives (if we even survive) that right now would seem like an apocalypse type fantasy movie.
Climate change is not a lost cause. We are beating any estimates on wind and solar deployment, solar is cheap as fuck, and overall, were just no that bad off.
This is exactly the type of optimism we need if we’re gonna slow climate change enough to make it
To be fair, I didn’t explain myself. I don’t think it is a lost cause. I think that we’re already at a point where it’s gonna become apocalyptic. I think if we don’t do anything about it, it will become an extinction event.
But, I will admit that the last few weeks have been super depressing and myi mnd ia probably not as objective as it can be about the future
Also there is no “point of no return.” Every extra kilogram of CO2 is an extra small increase in temperature. The more we emit, the worse it gets. It’s not on-off.
…unless it is. Tipping points could mean that there will be a certain level of emissions, which we may already be too late to avoid, that will take the earth out of the expected ranges and put it somewhere we can’t predict. I can’t say, but more informed people than me have suggested it as a real worry.
The family of ants you ran over yesterday would like a word, their father and husband Steve, is a good soldier that supplies for the colony. This murder and or antslaughter must be punished with the highest degree of justice involved.
Just think if exterminators. The horror on a capitalist scale.
Look, I gave a short explanation of my views, but yeah, there are some grey areas that are complicated, exterminators being one of them.
My views on exterminators and really any other form of harm to others to serve your own purposes, is that you have to truly appreciate the fact that these other living creatures deserve to live and only under extreme circumstances should extreme approaches be taken.
If you have termites eating your house, yeah, you’re gonna have to exterminate them. It’s either them or your house and it’s a form of self-defense in my opinion.
The problem is that people just go for the most extreme approach of extermination when there could be other solutions to pests.
Maybe consider that next time you have a pest problem. Are there other solutions that cause less harm that would still provide you with the resolution that you need?
A very simple example is when you find a bug at home, you can choose to try and capture it and release it outside safely instead of trying to kill it.
I know you think that it’s a real gotcha moment and that you totally destroyed my views, But you forgot the meaning of murder.
You see, to murder is to knowingly and purposefully kill someone.
If I saw you walking on the sidewalk and decided to go over and run you over and I killed you, that would be murder. But if I was driving and was in a car crash and ended up killing you, that is not murder.
Similarly, if I accidentally, without intent, killed an animal, it was not murder.
And yeah, even ants deserve to live. I wouldn’t kill ants purposely. Is it hard not to kill ants by accident because they’re so small and you can accidentally step on them without seeing them? Yeah, but it doesn’t mean that I would knowingly kill them.
I dont mind killing cows/chicken/similar for their meat, bones, skin, and others. But I might understand your views if we are talking about needlessly murdering animals. Torturing animals.
But just killing animals in general? I lost you there.
Define needlessly?
You see, you probably define it as a subjective catch all for anything that you are used to having in your life.
But if you really inspect that idea you can reach all kinds of extremes, like do you really need a home? You can live on the street, do you really need a car? You could walk technically, do you really need meat? You could live perfectly healthy without it technically, do you need a towel after a shower? You can just let yourself dry, what about chocolate? Just a nice snack, is that a necessity? And marshmallows? Bread? Flavoured drinks?
So the line is individual and non linear. One might say they can live without cars but not without a home, one would say the opposite, one would claim that chocolate is more important than having towels, etc. Some can also say that the joy they get from turturing an animal is more significant for their own happiness than chocolate, or towels or eating meat, these people are 100% with the parameters of your logic, yet you lable it as unnecessary.
You could redefine necessity as things that would cause you serious harm if taken, which is still subjective but a little clearer. Most people can agree that never eating chocolate again would suck but not cause any serious harm. Most can also probably agree that not having a home would cause you serious harm. And while you might not like to admit it, scientifically going vegan won’t just not cause you harm, it would actually be healthy for you, and just like people who go on all kinds of diets, it sucks at first, but it does not cause any serious harm.
So ask yourself, what justification can you use to inflict serious harm on to others for the sake of simple pleasure to you?
I’m not trying to argue for veganism here. I’m just saying killing animals needlessly is bad. If you need the animal dead, kill it. For its resources.
If you think that going vegan is good, then do it. If you think eating meat is not the “min max meta” way of living, then you do you. But I think, as long as you don’t mistreat the animals, its worth it.
If you still want more discussion about avoiding mistreating animals and why it matters even if we are going to kill them anyway, ask your friends.
I find it interesting that you consider killing not a mistreatment.
You say that killing them for their resources is worth it, but worth it to who? Obviously not the victim. Most horrible things are worth it to the ones committing them.
All I’m saying is, while we might have different moral opinions, at the very least provide logical, consistent arguments.
I see you haven’t asked your friends, no matter though, I’m just some guy on the internet. You do you!
I prefer rap music by white artists because it’s less likely to feature the N word.
That isn’t just an unpopular opinion, but a very interesting one. Bravo.
I only listen to rap by artists that can write a full fledged symphonic track.
Lemmy users project their toxicity towards Reddit. This place can be quite hostile if you don’t echo the ‘correct’ ideals.
The Lemmy users who call themselves “Leftists” are garbage human beings. Shitty, hostile, unnecessarily combative, will disagree with you about anything you say even when you’re on the same page.
And most of them aren’t really that left. Trying to talk about abolition of police and prisons is something they would never agree to, even though it’s a fundamentally leftist ideal. They’re just bad people.
wait, is this a roundabout way of calling yourself a garbage human being?
Most users of those so open source, decentralizing apps are from the USA so, go figure…
Can second this
Becoming a parent is not a right, it is a privilege (I guess). You need a license to get married, drive, hunt or fish, your dog needs one. There should be some sort of class and background check you must pass before being allowed to procreate. Just the basics like: this is the level of care and support this small helpless mammal needs to be healthy and grow to maturity. This is how much, minimum, that quality upbringing will cost and do you meet that bare minimum level of competence and income to raise a healthy baby.
This is an extremely popular opinion among those who’ve not unpacked that what you’re describing is eugenics
It is not, at all, eugenics. Nothing in my unpopular opinion has anything to do with genetic traits
whatever metrics you use to decide who gets to procreate, you will certainly bias the gene pool. That’s eugenics
Who decides who can pro-create? What is the criteria?
I don’t see a scenario where this works out well.
Vague and ominous.
I laid out some bare minimums: knowledge about how to take care of and raise a healthy human child and the financial means to do so.
In the United States, political violence has ensured overrepresentation of minority populations below the poverty line. Requireing the financial means to have a child thereby limits minority procreation.
To address this, a universal basic income as well as a stipend for parents would be necessary. In the US, this is far away from ever happening, eere actively moving in the opposite direction. Mandatory birth control in this country is eugenics.
How tf does this shitty reply have 17 upvotes? How the fuck did 17 COMPLETE IDIOTS show that and though: “Hmmm… He is right!”
Like, hw stupid can you all be? Who’s going to decide? Obvious professionals who know of kids and have worked with them. Social workers, pedopsychiatrist, teachers, etc.
This isn’t even something new. This is how it’s done with adoption. You can’t all be so ignorant and dumb. I hate democracy because of idiots like you…
Ah, the age-old unpopularopinions dilemma. Do I upvote because I agree, or upvote because it is unpopular and I disagree?
It’s not that hard i don’t think. Just ask yourself should other people see this comment?
Upvote only if it’s an easy yes
You should upvote that specific reply if you have more than 2 IQ.
Are you that blind to the world? Do you really look at something like… The Trump administration, and think “Like, hw stupid can you all be? Who’s going to decide? Obvious professionals who know of kids and have worked with them. Social workers, pedopsychiatrist, teachers, etc.”.
Very clearly professionals and the people who have the best in mind are not the ones who are chosen by those in power. Get real, truly pathetic take
Thinking that Trump and your shitty country is the only one in the world is pathetic to say the least. Nothing will work in your country (and I’m not talking just about kids but in general) but that doesn’t mean it won’t work in other countries as well 🤦♂️
Challenge: USAns not be the dumbest nation on this planet for one day (impossible)
Lmao, not an American, but let’s use… Germany as an example. In the 2025 elections, the AFD (hard right fascists) doubled their seat count in parliament. I don’t think you have a solid understanding of how bad eugenics can get, or how it actually would take effect in a modern world. Actually, it seems you don’t understand much of anything.
One of the biggest problems would be enforcement of that license. With driving, cops are everywhere and regularly pull people over to check their license. With hunting, there are game wardens that patrol hunting areas and check the licenses of hunters.
With procreation, people can have unprotected sex anywhere and typically in private. You’d either need to give some group of people permanent access to enter any private space at any time (to randomly check for unlicensed sex), or force everyone without a license to take birth control or be sterilized. Unfortunately, none of those options are ethical.
I mean I hardly think enforcement is the issue here. Just mandating abortions would be a pretty simple and effective method of enforcement but there are obviously other issues, I just don’t think enforcing it is the difficult part
Then you also mandate tri-monthly doctor’s appointments or something similar to check. Sounds horrible.
Create a reliable method via which fertility can be turned off and on. Turn it off by default.
I feel like the problem with this argument is that it’s consequentialist. You can never be 100% certain which parents will raise their children well. There’s no metric that will conclusively tell you.
But you can start them off on the right foot by making sure they have the knowledge and the means to do the job correctly
I mean we do do this for adoption but we don’t so it for procreating.
Exactly! What OP says it should be happening from procreation as well!
Great idea except for the part where this is eugenics
Eugenics is trying to erase particular traits from a genome which is not, at all, what I stated in my unpopular opinion. I just would like people who are wanting (or whoopsing) a child into the world to have the bare minimum knowledge and tools to do the job “correctly.”
The problem is that then you need the government’s permission to procreate. There’s always the valid concern that the government would prevent you from having children to remove some undesirable trait from the population and justify it as being a danger to a child. I know you described basic competency skills, but there would always exist a very credible threat of it being politicized.
In fact, this already happens for things like queer couples being rejected for adopting children or the Uyghur population being quietly genocided in China. And Eugenics was historically practiced such that criminals would be sterilized as part of their punishment.
It’s worth pointing out that governments already intervene with unqualified parents by removing the child from the household. Shifting the burden of proof from the government needing to show neglect to parents needing to prove themselves worthy is a dangerous amount of authority to cede to a centralized, corruptible power.
Also, it’s not clear how you handle unlicensed parents. People are going to have unsafe sex no matter how illegal you make it. Would you push for preemptively sterilizing everyone and trusting it can be reversed after a license is acquired? Forcing abortions? Confiscating the child after birth?
I mean I guess not every aspect of eugenics was bad per se, but I’m not so sure about this level of social control.
Protecting children from been born into terrible families is not social control.
If you want to have a system which determines which people will or won’t make terrible families, only permitting the former to reproduce, you want a system of social control. If children were delivered randomly by storks it would be something else. Aviation regulations? Avian regulations? Something like that I guess.
Not all social control is bad. Society and its institutions often limit what people can do. But of late we’ve mostly determined that restricting reproduction should be used sparingly, not defaultly, and I tend to agree.
Also the amount of effort and wealth expended by the medical profession just so that some people can reproduce is mind boggling.
It is a basic biological function so you could say pooping is a privilege too.
I am not worried about helping people poop better
For all the reasons others have described, this is problematic. However, I propose a middle ground: develop permanent, reversible, side-effect-free birth control, and apply it to every child at 10 years old. When you turn 18, you can have it removed. You just need to show up at a government office, sign a form, and have the procedure completed. It is completely free, and you are out the door in an hour. The treatment can be reapplied at any time.
What happens? No more accidental pregnancies. No more getting knocked up in high school. No more scares after one night stands. No more becoming impregnated by a rapist. Everyone can fuck to their heart’s content, but babies only get made if both people actually want a baby. Most of the problems you are talking about typically occur when either one or both of the parents don’t want or weren’t expecting a child. Make pregnancy opt-in, and you’ll solve 90% of the problems.
That’s not middle ground. That BS! And it doesn’t even have anything to do with what OP said. It just prevents pregnancy.
For fuck’s sake, I know people think differently and I try to accept and respect that but, some of you make me really wonder how tf we can think SO differently…
I’m confused as to what your objection is.
It’s a great idea. But people are touchy about that. This is where democracy fails.
Regular expressions are not that difficult and coders that refuse to learn them because they “look like line noise” are terrible at their jobs.
I can write a basic regex independently, but as soon as capture groups or positive/negative lookahead or lookbehind start popping up I’m back to the docs every time.
Absolutely, the syntax is difficult to remember, but knowing about concepts like lookaheads etc. is already far beyond what “regex is line noise” coders will ever achieve.
And there’s always regex101.com to help develop and test your expressions!
Level 2 of these people: learn regex and try to parse something non-regular like XML or C++ templates with it.
Same people who did not pay attention and hated the “useless” formal languages lecture in university and who have no clue about proper data structures and algorithms for their problem, just hack together some half-working solution and ship it. Fix bugs with extra if statements instead of solving the real issue. Not writing unit tests.
Soo many people in software development who really should not be there.
Not a coder. But knowing basic regex, makes my life so much easier. Even in things like excel.
Hell, you can even use regex to search your stash in Path of Exile 2.
Easy enough to write. But reading and maintaining? That’s the hard part.
I’ve always thought that regular expressions are just specifications for state machines. They aren’t that difficult.
Abortion should be mandatory.
People keep arguing over whether abortion should be legal or not, but my opinion is that it should be forced on everyone whether they want it or not. Late term abortions up to 100 years after birth should also be considered for inclusion in this rule.
One of my favourite activities is finding controversial opinions, then taking an opinion so extreme that it makes everyone else look like a centrist.
But where would we scrape up the funding?
That’s a good argument for including very late term abortion. Inheritance tax.
Kill everyone now, legalise first degree murder, advocate cannibalism, eat shit!
Suicide is perfectly acceptable and should be a right, we should all have the choice of when we want to go. Some pain, physical or emotional is too much, or loss can be too great.
I don’t care if I could or can get better, I should be able to down some hemlock and leave.
I’m with you.
Many years ago I read a sci-fi story about a society where crimes are punished by extending your life (which is dreary in some way - I don’t remember). The protagonist keeps committing suicide but being brought back to life by advanced medical technology and punished with more time to live.
In the end, he manages to completely destroy his body, so the state takes a cell from an old blood test, clones the person from it, and adds the punishment to the clone.
That story stayed with me since then. It really shed light on the point of view that not wanting to live can be natural and forcing people to live in pain can be very cruel.
Talk about a relevant username!
Nickelback is an alright band. Far from my favorite, I just don’t get what all the hate was about.
In fact, I’d go as far as saying that their first album is pretty good, and I like it. Except from that song which is severely overplayed and mediocre.
The hate came from them being absolute dicks to their own fans.
Wait, actually?
Jip it’s their own fans that started hating them and spreading the hate.
I always assumed because it was played on the radio 24/7
It was le funny reddit thing to hate Nickelback and love queen.
Do yourself a favor and hear that cover bit they did for Metallica’s “Sad but true”. They’re pretty good musicians actually but they just choose to do more corny/commercial stuff – which imho is not valid reason for the hate. Sad but true.
Choosing to produce generic and soulless music for profit isn’t a good reason to dislike a band?
I was in Middle School when they hit it big, and am Canadian to boot. They got overplayed to the point of frustration on the radio and TV.
Couple that with them being one of the last successful “butt-rock” bands, and my friend group had everything we needed to hate on them.