Asklemmy

Eugenics sounds really cool. Not the mandatory sterilisation style, but breeding superhumans? Don't pretend that wouldn't be cool.

AI is to computer science what black magic is to science.

Seriously, what do you get after you've spent days and days to train a model? An inscrutable blob that may as well be proprietary software written for an alien CPU; studying it is damn near impossible, understanding how it works would require several lifespans, and yet it works, and we trust these models and use them to get solutions to problems that would normally be impossible to handle by computers using "real" computer science. And one day, this trust will bite us in the ass, not in the form of an "AI rebellion" but with every system that uses AI becoming unreliable because of situations outside its training.

Blaming slow drivers for your dangerous driving to pass them immediately and dangerously has the same energy as a rapist blaming what the victim was wearing: The other person made me do it. I have no agency over my own reactions.

There's no ethical way to kill someone who doesn't want to die. This applies to more than just humans.

Modern Israel should not have been created.

I think having children when the world is already overflowing with unwanted children is pretty fucking selfish. how about you do humanity a favor and stop for a round or two, eh? maybe pick up all the lost and forgotten children society has strewn across the way.

(only child unwanted by both parents, dont know who my father is. left my mother at 18, but she made sure to remind me how much her life got fucked up because she had me...Currently married to my lovely wife going on 10 years at 2024 and 12 years together total. and we have considered a child. but...i cant stop thinking about the ones already here, unloved. but as a bastard only child with no real parents, i could be bias.)

I like sand

The kWh is a silly unit. Joule (J) is the one true unit of energy.

Also, common time units suck as much as inches, pounds, feet and whatever nonsense units you Americans still use. Just use seconds with the appropriate SI prefix instead.

Cubic meters and tonnes suck too. Just use kl and Mg instead.

You all look dumb when dancing.

Dismissing social norms because they're "only social constructs" is ridiculous, because all social constructs are a product of our biological brains. Gender norms exist because sex chromosomes affect brain chemistry, not because some evil global patriarchy cabal in 200,000 B.C decided they should.

Everyone should try and reduce the amount of meat they eat as much as they can. Same goes for flying and driving.

Generally, social justice is at best, a distraction from real issues, albeit with very good intentions.

(We talk about human dignity, representation in film etc but not say, the fact most of our stuff is made by children who occasionally burn to death making it. If I were one of the billionaires running things, I would be overjoyed that people were so distracted about what a comedian said versus how our entire economic model is structured.)

Meritocracy in the US is almost entirely a myth, outside of a few sports.

Free will as it's popularly understood doesn't actually exist.

Most shoes are bad for us and cause injuries over the course of our lives .

Nobody should have kids, we should just drift off into extinction. Nobody has been able to tell me why that would be a bad thing without using anthropocentric reasoning.

A lot of things around the world were better before the Internet. And they were definitely better before smart phones reached ubiquity.

The rise of feminism has seen the steady devaluation of the contribution of men in those areas of society where they should be most active. Rather than celebrate and recognise what's right, the focus is on attacking what's wrong.

The majority of men are lonely, isolated and uncared for. Many feel unvalued, unsafe and vulnerable. There is less community support for men than there has been in the past, less institutional support, and a continued decline in the tolerance of men being in shared places. The minimisation of value in societal roles is yet another way that men are cut off.

This seems to escape the vision of feminism. There is always claim of ideological alignment, where the empowerment of women directly benefits men, but when it comes to any form of concrete action that helps men that need help, or celebrates men that contribute - it's nowhere to be seen.

Men kill themselves. They kill themselves. In their thousands. Leaving cratered families, trauma, guilt from the survivors, many of whom are female. Because they feel valueless, helpless and can't see a purpose to going on.

Accountability goes both ways. In demanding support from men, feminism must support men.

Humans are the only animals that have to cook their meat to consume it. We're also the only animal that consumes another animals lactate.

The oil industry is the greatest evil humanity has ever created. Conversely the bicycle is probably the greatest.

If it's not open source it's pretty likely it's taking advantage of you.

The only people that don't want you to learn history are the ones that stand to gain from you not knowing it.

I have quite a few. I don't believe in copyright laws or IP in general. I think it holds back innovation and exists solely to benefit megacorps like Disney or pharmaceutical companies.

For example - you develop a new drug that really helps some people. You charge $50 a pill even though it costs you $5 to produce. Without the government protecting IP, another company will come around and produce it and sell it for $6 a pill, providing cheaper access to healthcare.

People will say "what would give someone the incentive to make new things?" Without actually thinking it through. For a great example of how lack of IP is a good thing, look at how Shenzhen went from a fishing village to a Chinese San Francisco in a few short decades.. one company will take the product of another and iterate on top of it.

Another unpopular opinion is I'm pretty absolutist with free speech. I think certain things like calls to violence or intentional defamation of character should be restricted. But pretty much everything else should be fair game.

I believe in open borders and think the US should return to the late 1800s style of immigration. We're gonna need the population to compete with China in the coming century.

I also think that the primary investment into climate change at this point should be preparing for the inevitable changes instead of trying to prevent the inevitable.

Kanye West aka Ye is not a genius. He is a narcissist. He doesn't write most of his music because he has a team of employees that do that for him but he takes all of the credit. He deserves to be dropped because of his comments and statements.

Swearing shouldn't ever be censored.

Liberalism and socialism aren't entirely incompatible concepts

Here’s an opinion that’s actually unpopular rather than simply controversial: domestic flights in the UK other than to Northern Ireland (which isn’t on the same island so fair enough) should be forbidden on the grounds their contribution to climate change cannot be justified.

Instead we should renationalise the railways by letting the franchises expire without renewing them and expand their capacity as far as we can. Instead of pissing around with HS2 we fuck the NIMBYs over with an Act of Parliament which they can’t swat away or delay and extend it all the way up to Scotland.

Yes, but they also tend to get me banned from places, so we only talk about it in real life where people can handle real conversations.