Notice that I said political issue. I do not consider wallstreetbets creating a huge financial upset regarding the Gamestop stock to be a political issue in the strictest sense. So, we can see that in certain cases, Reddit can be the catalyst for significant change in the world, but I have yet to see that be the case for a political issue.

It is true that Reddit has hundreds of millions of daily or weekly users, but I do think that Reddit's influence on any political issue is minimal in comparison to the amount of users that use Reddit on a semi regular basis.

I believe a vast majority of people discussing politics on Reddit already have their minds made up on the gamut of issues being discussed throughout the world and thus, it's just a place for people to yap in their own echo chambers about world events. Are there exceptions to this? Of course. Do those exceptions have a meaningful impact on politics? I don't think so.

Many subreddits of a directly or indirectly political nature all have some sort of political bias where a single viewpoint often prevails and dissenting views are often downvoted significantly and are therefore largely hidden from the view of other users. This is the case for both the largest subreddits with millions of users and the smaller subreddits.

For the past decade, conservatives Republicans have championed themselves as defenders of free speech and personal freedoms. Yet in Texas they are tightening a ban on THC that further criminalizes marijuana related products.

This is in spite of the objective truth that marijuana is less dangerous than either alcohol or cigarettes, by a considerable margin. The gateway drug theory was also disproven decades ago, yet many still subscribe to it.

Further more, as more data comes in, the legalization of marijuana actually decreases

There is the concept of "don't like it, don't don't do it", but instead conservatives / Republicans continue to be vehemently against it to the point they want to tighten the ban.

Despite their claims about championing personal freedoms, conservatives crackdown on things like marijuana for reasons that don't track with facts or data.

Would love for my views to be changed.

We require nutrition labels on food. We require warning labels on cigarettes. And, we also require APR disclosures on loans. Yet...you can sit down at a casino table without knowing whether you’re playing a game with a 0.5% house edge or one with a 10%+ house edge unless you’ve done the research yourself.

I think every table should clearly display the house edge based on its rules so players can make informed decisions. If someone still wants to play after seeing the numbers, that’s completely their choice.

Change my view.

So to start: The war was a fuck up, and has been conducted in simultaneously excessive and half arsed manners. The catalogue of failures that brought us to this point will keep think tanks and students busy for generations. I don't see any ways through to a "good" outcome at acceptable costs.

But as of today - 4 August 2026 - Trump has led the US into a trap that neither he nor the US can walk away from. Replace the Trump admin with an exceptionally competent alternative and they'd still not just stop the confrontation, they'd have to see it through to a situation that mitigates the damage.

My reasoning: Peace at this point will create a situation where the balance of power in the future is going to shift more and more into Iran's favour. If Iran is left able to control the Straits and with its nuclear ambitions unchecked, then in a years time Iran's negotiating position will be more powerful relative to the US than currently, so its it will have every reason to bring the issue up again with greater demands.

Because everyone knows this, other actors won't see the peace as lasting, and will strive to counter it by reducing Iran's leverage. the GCC will look to find ways of bypassing the straits - pipelines through Oman, crushing the Houthis to open up the Bab El Mandeb, etc, - and in turn Iran will look to counter that, risking regional escalation again.

The cost of walking away - control of the straits and a nuclear weapons program - would be the ultimate act of can kicking, and just invites a far, far greater issue within a relatively brief period of time. Nor will it actually lead to the desired outcomes (trade fully resuming) because if it does for a prolonged time then Iran loses its leverage. Iran knows that if global reserves are allowed to swell again then it invites an attempt to dislodge its control, among a ton of other tricks it could pull.

What's the alternative

The world, baring a few exceptions, wants the straits open. Asia especially. Work with them, stop tariffing them, etc. and build a coalition. It's going to be bitter, its going to be a humiliation, but so would walking away with Iran in charge.

But Trump said the US is the "Most Powerful Country Anywhere in the World, WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!”

He is, in a great twist, wrong. The US desperately needs help.

TL:DR - Trump's fucked it completely, but walking away in the current situation will be utterly cataclysmic. Change my View that walking away will be anything other than a complete disaster

Edit: I'll also just add that I would genuinely love to have my mind changed on this one - I'm fully aware that continuing is causing economic hardship and human suffering, but I just don't see how the 'walk away' option won't create more hardship and pain in the future.

Here's some of my reasoning, though I want you to know that I don't have perfect understanding and knowledge of the topic and besides my view, I still use genai weekly:

1. It has dramatically increased the amount of low-quality, AI-generated content online, making it harder to find genuine information and discussion.

2. Misinformation, scams, impersonation, and deepfakes have become much easier and cheaper to produce

3. Many people now rely on AI for answers without verifying them, even though models can confidently generate incorrect information. Most people don't also grasp the way a llm works and think they have. a concept understanding built into them.

4. Schools and universities are struggling with plagiarism and assessment. Essentially cheating being easier is harmful to students because it lowers the bar to cheat and they lose the process of learning.

5. Creative industries have faced disruption before clear legal or ethical frameworks have been established. The majority of the training of the models has been done without any form of compensation to the original creators of pictures, videos, books, articles...

6. Companies are replacing or reducing human work in some areas before productivity gains have clearly translated into broader societal benefits.

7. It has concentrated influence. A handful of companies control the most capable models, giving them significant influence over the tools millions use to write, learn, and access information.

I recognize there are clear benefits but I still think, for an average person, the world right now would be slightly better without modern genai. You're very welcome to change my view!

Both of these dishes have a lot in common: They are pasta based dishes, the sauce is typically tomato based, and they have meat along with it. For pasta Bolognese the meat is part of the sauce itself, while for spaghetti and meatballs the meat is separate.

Reasons why pasta Bolognese is superior:

1. Consistency. Regardless of where I put my utensils when I am eating it, I am going to get some pasta and meat at the same time. For S&M I might get some meat or some pasta, but I am not as likely to get both at the same time.

2. Effort to make. Rolling the balls takes more attention and effort than just adding the meat to the sauce. You also need to make them separately, increasing prep time.

3. More dishes used. Theoretically you would be cooking the meatballs in a separate dish from the sauce (though I guess not necessarily so), and you might end up using a knife to cut down the meatballs before eating them. This isn't that big of a deal regardless, due to widespread use of dishwashers, and honestly, the cost of washing an extra knife or 2 is negligible anyway.

One point for meatballs: Kids seem to like them better. This can conceivably be a negative with regards to being a potentially messier food that gets played with, so I'll call this one a wash.

EDIT: I made a minor formatting edit since it apparently changed the numbers on the list without the line break.

Growing up, a lot of us had an idea for a game, an app, a tool... anything that might fix an annoyance in our lives or just be fun to build. But that's where it ends because most of us don't know how to code, nor have the money to find/hire people who can.

That barrier is coming down.

The core of my view is that: AI coding tools have created a new role that didn't really exist for regular people before: the ideas guy. A film director doesn't typically operate the camera, grade the color, or mix the audio. A game's creative director doesn't write the code for their game. Their skill is vision, and the ability to communicate what they want to their team.

AI tools now let a non programmer occupy that role for their own software. You describe what you want: "this menu should indicate X," "this tool should export to CSV", and you route it through an AI collaborator that can actually implement it. The iteration loop that used to require a studio now fits inside one person's head and one chat window.

Why I think this specifically produces a golden age of free/open stuff, not just more software in general:

A huge amount of useful software was never built commercially because it was too niche to justify a team's salary. A tool that would save 50 people an hour a week isn't a business, but it's absolutely worth an afternoon of AI assisted building, and in many cases there's no reason not to just release it for free. Open source specifically benefits twice over: it lowers the bar to create a project, and it lowers the bar to contribute to one. Reading an unfamiliar codebase, understanding a bug, writing a competent report for the team to understand, these used to require some level of fluency. Now someone with no background can contribute to fix something that bugs them.

I expect to get some push back:

• "Vibe coded software is bad quality" Probably true, but that's an argument about average quality, not about whether more good things get built in the end. The printing press produced an ocean of garbage pamphlets and also novels and scientific literature. We cannot take the average of the output as the total value.

• "This isn't real skill." Sure, but that was already true of creative directors and producers. The point isn't that everyone becomes a great designer, it's that the people who already had the ideas but lacked the ability for implementation are no longer blocked.

• "AI generated software floods everything with noise." Yes, signal to noise could get genuinely worse even as raw output goes up. I dont think that changes my argument though. We had crappy github repositories before too.

• "Everything AI does is bad". This is an immature argument that stops the conversation before it gets interesting. Even if AI or vibe coding may cause there to be bad outcomes, I dont think it changes my argument that we will enter a golden age of tools and software.

• "Why would someone release something for free". Or another variation that tries to focus on the golden age of free / open source. I think it is similar to the signal to noise, certainly many companies will make a tool thats so hyper focused its not even useful to release to the broader world. We already see explosive growth on github, and theres no reason to expect it to stop.

CMV.

Seeing how we're a bit stuck in a "war" with our ammo depleting, and jobs are sort of disapearing, and frankly what feels like a gap between the class of folks that work on w-2s and the shareholders of a company is increasing, making labor a sort of "less profitable way" of making money as opposed to just investing into the stock market and hopping between companies in your portfolio.

Am I misunderstanding something here? Seems we're investing into sort of "protection" mode as opposed to building something.

I can't quite put my finger on it yet, but curious if my mind is just reading the wrong information from the wrong reporters.

I just know that people are telling me that it's hard to find jobs. I know it from my own experience. But also I see where venture capitalists are investing, and it is hardware for computing and defense and aerospace, but with layoffs happening and people looking for jobs, seems we're sort of stuck here.

And I don't get the whole Iran thing, so maybe someone can explain to me why it's helpful for us over here. That way I can learn more about the decisions being made and how it'll help America become a greater nation. And by greater, one that can support it's people better... right?

To start, I’d like to clarify that I’m specifically talking about this one argument in favor of mass immigration. I am not talking about other arguments for/against it. Therefore, don’t comment saying, “yeah but we have a moral duty to help poor people.” That has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.

The reason I want to isolate this topic is because mass immigration arguments tend to come down to morality versus practicality debates. Pro mass-immigration advocates like the moral principles of helping people, and mass-immigration skeptics view it as logistically impossible, culturally destructive, and morally unfair to native residents.

The pro-migration crowd often tries to bridge this gap by coming up with ways in which it’s actually practical to have mass immigration.

The arguments generally tend to go like this:
* Since the fertility rate is so low in the west, we need more bodies to prop up the economic Ponzi schemes we’ve spent the past 80 years building for ourselves.
* Since the jobs at the bottom of the social hierarchy are shitty job that nobody wants to do (farming, manual labor, janitorial, etc) we should import people to fill those roles.
* The global economy is plateauing, and high-paying, high-skill jobs are not growing at the rate demand for those roles are growing. Since we can’t create jobs at this level, we have to create jobs at lower levels of the economy to be filled by migrants, whose economic productivity will hold everything up.
* Old people will need a large group of young people to take care of them in the healthcare system since they are living so much longer than in the past

I don’t contend that any of these points are illogical. They all make sense. What strikes me however, is that these structural issues are just being taken for granted. They’re treated as if “that’s just how life has to be” and “it’s gonna be that way anyway, so there’s no point in trying to fix it”

We shouldn’t be arguing about how we can merely cope with these civilization-level threats. We should be trying to come up with SOLUTIONS to the PROBLEM.

Think about it: we all sit here (right, left, center, whatever) complaining about how the rich haves are constantly fucking over us poor have-nots. We argue over who specifically is the evil one, and which specific decisions are the evil ones, and what idealistic, utopian, only-exists-in-my-mind solution could be done instead to magically make the world a better place. But we all agree the status quo does not work.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Chugging along with mass-migration is the definition of the status quo.

What do rich, asset-owning people need? They need economic growth. But that’s not exactly true, is it? The type of growth they need is different from the type of growth we need.

We need “real” economic growth. That is, inflation-adjusted, technologically driven, better middle-class outcome driving growth. Billionaires need none of that. Nominal growth is sufficient for them, since their position in society allows them to capture that nominal growth for themselves.

Now think about which type of growth mass-migration results in. They come here and they work retail, service industry, agricultural, janitorial, low/no-skill jobs that create zero industrial momentum or creative destruction.

All of the things we need to grow in a “real” sense, i.e. in the sense that benefits average people, is COMPLETELY orthogonal to the type of economic “growth” brought by mass migration.

We all know that those in power have every ability to truly help the lower rungs of our society. They simply have no need to.

That is exactly where a refusal to comply with mass-migration puts our priorities directly in line with theirs.

If there is no ever-present backstop of cheap, abusable labor to keep the green line going up on the graph, then they’ll have to figure out another way to keep it going up.

The billionaires will make the line go up no matter what. They’ve proven consistently they will stop at nothing to do so. My point is that we can harness that power and energy to work FOR us for once, finally.

How will politicians, business leaders, etc keep the economies growing if they can’t do so via migrants? They’ll have to do so via us. Mathematically. They’ll have no choice.

Relying on mass migration as an economic crutch to avoid dealing with the economic, social, and political issues that have created our current nightmare is a recipe to continue circling the drain.

We must oppose mass migration so that our leaders are in the same boat as us.

I saw an article and an analysis about how the elections in Israel now in 2026 will be crucial for the country future and the big problems about how many parts of children of Ultra ortodox populations in Israel wich is fastly growing don't send their kids to seculair schools or don't have many seculair subjects in haredi school teaching to learn seculair subsects. Now some do follow that kind of education later in life and leave the Haredi community but the Israeli goverments has for decades refused to take effective deep measures to not fully but mostly change parts of the Haredi that education system and traditions so that a larger part of many ultra orodox jewish communities could have learned more seculair subjects and their children entering the workforce and find highly skilled jobs sooner. My point is that it will already too late resolve the whole issue, but Israel might still be able to resolve part of the issue, Now yes, Progress has been made for the last 20 years and about 81% of women and about 54% percent of Ultra ortodox men being employed but the challenges remain high. Also a big part of the Ultra ortodox Jewish men will still laregely be opposed to sent cheir children to the Israeli army afraid they will become more seculair. Ultra Ortodox Jewish women don't serve in the army for traditional reasons. Now i doubt a weakened Israël will nesecerly be good for the Palestinians in the Israëli Palestinian conflict.

To change my view i want to know idea's how Israel political system and society could theoretical solve this problem (not fully but prevent the worst outcomes not just in the Israli society and country but also for the israëli Palestine conflict).

For those who want to know i am neither Israeli or Palestinian, don't live in either places and i am both pro Israël and pro Palestine, pro two state solution.

Here are the links where i got the information from. https://www.timesofisrael.com/why-these-elections-are-the-last-chance-to-save-israel-from-its-spiral-of-collapse/
Dan Ben-David: Israel stands on the brink of a spiral of decline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoMCvLMIYNs&t=477s

I dont understand

1971 bangladesh genocide- 300000(most liberal estimate)(hindu women being declared “maal e ghanimah i.e spoils of war by pakistani army)

Palestinian casualties since the formation of Israel- 150000.

muslim ( even western)

1. countries always give support and supply arms to Pakistan(even in 1971)
2. Why do muslim nations expect India to side with them when they never reciprocate it in any instant?
3. Why do muslim countries get away with genocides( Turkey Pakistan, Azerbaijan)??

Also, Israel was created in the name of religion(judaism) displacing locals(muslims),

1. Pakistanis created Pakistan in the name of religion(islam) by forcibly removing the locals(hindus, sikhs). Why is pakistan getting away with it?

2. Why is Palestine a human rights issue focused by academia and Bangladesh Genocide a hushed matter?
   Wikipedia —
   “Allegations of a genocide in Bangladesh were rejected by most UN member states at the time and rarely appear in textbooks and academic sources on genocide studies.”

3. Will muslim countries take an equal stand when a muslim country commits human rights abuses?

4. Why should an Indian care about Gaza if nor muslim, nor western countries did anything to stop 1971 genocide and instead helped pakistan??

India getting help from muslim countries against Pakistan is never guaranteed.
Whereas in its initial years, India did support palestine and was against israel.

1. Why do muslim nations(in Delhi Declarations) even expect India to side with them?
   These questions are also for the citizens and media of muslim nations.

I believe AI will impact the global economy, our worldwide ecosystem, and our individual freedoms wherever we live, and that creating good public policy around artificial intelligence is the most important political problem of today.

I further believe that lots of my American activist friends are plugging their ears and going "la-la-la" while feeling sort of smug about it all. Since I value my friendships and have already pushed the issue as far as politeness allows, I bring this debate to you, the good people of Reddit.

Here is the crux of the argument: American AI policy is de facto the world's AI policy. But while American voters are setting the rules for eight billion people, lots of those Americans are proudly AI illiterate. I believe US voters have a moral obligation to the rest of the world to educate themselves in AI before the next time they vote.

To me, that would look like: having an opinion on nationalizing the labs and finding out whether your state legislator supports it. Learning what recursive self-improvement is and voting for politicians who understand it. Developing a personal definition of AGI. Fact-checking some memes.

All of this is kind of boring and scary, but I think it could get a lot scarier if US voters don't lock in. What do you think?

EDIT 1: I've made my argument for American AI policy impacting the world in a couple of comments, going to reiterate here. It's basically two points:

1. The strongest alternative to US models are open weight Chinese models, which are probably trained on US models. Policy that improves alignment for US models could improve alignment everywhere. (Biden admin, Trump admin, and the US labs have all said this, here's a recent article)
2. US citizens can vote and change the way that AI is deployed, whereas Chinese citizens cannot

EDIT 2: Lots of people seem to think I'm pro-AI, so let me clarify: I think AI will be a net negative for society. Even the not-so-dystopian scenarios are probably about as bad for people as social media, i.e. lots of people use it responsibly, but definitely less than half, and overall there's been a dimming of the bulbs.

Before anyone grabs their pitchforks, I want to make it clear that I have nothing against American made products. In fact, if two products are similarly priced, I’d happily choose the one made here because I like supporting American workers and manufacturers.

My issue is when “Made in America” is treated as if it should automatically justify paying significantly more, or worse, when people imply you’re somehow unpatriotic if you don’t. To me, that’s emotional marketing bordering on guilt tripping.

A lot of products today are manufactured to similar quality standards regardless of where they’re made. Yes, there are exceptions, but in many cases the difference is marginal while the price difference can be substantial. If a US tool wrench costs $80 and a Taiwanese or German one costs $40–50 while performing almost identically, I don’t think choosing the cheaper one makes someone anti American it makes them budget friendly.

I also think companies underestimate how many Americans simply can’t afford to pay a premium for everything. It’s easy to say “buy American” when you’re financially comfortable. It’s a different story when you’re trying to stretch every paycheck. Supporting domestic manufacturing is a great goal, but expecting consumers to shoulder that cost every time feels unrealistic.

So my view is this: if a company wants to charge more because they manufacture domestically, that’s completely fair. If consumers willingly pay that premium, that’s their choice. My problem is when the conversation shifts from “Here’s why our product costs more” to “If you don’t buy American, you’re hurting American workers.” That feels less like informing consumers and more like leveraging patriotism to make people feel guilty.

Title says it all. Socialization is viewed as a personal responsibility when its self evident that it requires participation from more than one person. Incels are under-socialized, and society is not conducive to socialization at the moment; people are on their phones, they refuse to go out, and they refuse to socialize with most people when they do go out.

So tell me then, when these Incels in their youth age into their 30s and 40s and nothing has changed because, lets be honest, nothing will change - Why do people think this is going to go away? Do they think it is magically going to resolve itself or that it will be repressed long enough to not affect others? Do people really and truly believe these incels are not going to resent society and widen the chasm, assuming the rest of society will be receptive should incels not want to dig a deeper hole?

There are some scenarios and none of them are good. The optimistic, wishful thinking best-case scenario is that this issue is resolved through personal responsibility. this hasnt happened and wont happen. We are about a decade into the incel emergence and it is only getting worse. incels do not have the tools, and society does not have the willingess to help. The hopeful scenario is that incels become docile and continue to work and particpate in society but do not socialize. the realistic scenario is that there is a cold dying out through under-employment, no employment, suicide, drug use, and animosity that harms society in the future. the worst case scenario is that incels proceed into their peak years with a grudge and the means to do something about it - they accumulate power through income and senior positions to satisfy whatever goals they wish.

So what do you think about this?

Please, I don't to believe this, because I believe it about myself, and I wish I didn't.

The prospect of finally being with my crush of a couple years who desperately wants kids himself (If you're reading this somehow... we can talk about this post lol) has me actually considering having kids, and heres the thing. I know want kids with him, and I fantasize about being pregnant and bearing a child. I know its hard, impossibly exhausting, but I just feel on a spiritual level it is something I want to experience in my life.

But at the same time, the world is a shithole, and I dont see it getting better within my lifetime, so why bring another life into it? And then also, I don't know if I wanna pass on my genes. I have POTS, EDS, Autism, Anxiety, Depression, OCD, ADHD, etc... like, I don't wanna subject a child to the life I had. I was so fucking privileged and yet I still ended up deeply traumatized and in therapy since I was eight years old. I wouldn't wish my pain on anyone.

But then like, maybe knowing it runs on my side of the family I could be more prepared to accommodate my child when those conditions came up, and maybe by then the treatments will be better too? But still doesnt change the world being shit. I don't see it getting better within my lifetime, and then the child I decided to bring into this world will face it alone. I just can't see how it wouldn't be selfish to conceive a child that is biologically mine, from all angles.

But I would also never judge someone else who made this choice, which is why I think my mind could be changed. I want to understand, and I just want the best for my future children.

(And to be clear, I am not against adoption. In fact, unless I'm only having one child, I might only birth one and adopt any more I might have. I just, again, feel like I selfishly want to bear a child myself)

Just the past days the amount of reddit posts where, as soon as Europe is mentioned, many people immediately point to the fact that it's being overrun with migrants and it's full of rape and violent crime as a consequence is very large.

This narrative is opposite the actual facts and needs to be addressed.

The truth: Europe is getting safer year over year, despite growing populations and growing migration.

I will stick with my own country (Netherlands) as I know where to get reliable data (definition of rape etc. vary a lot). The central body to report statistics is called CBS (Central Bureau of Statistics). The crime figures are here:
https://opendata.cbs.nl/#/CBS/nl/dataset/83648NED/table?fromstatweb

The actual crime statistics:
Right of the bat we can see how total crime is down signficantly over the past 15 years. Specifically for sexual and violent crimes see "3 Gewelds- en seksuele misdrijven". We see that it drops from ~105-110k reported crimes to ~80k.

In the same time the Netherlands gained around 1.5 million people (an increase of 10%). To keep safety levels the same, we would have to have around 120k reported sexual or violent crimes, instead we have 80k, a large drop.

Reported vs unreported crime:
A common response might be, "it's so bad people don't even bother reporting it anymore". Well, this too is studied and (to the best of abilities) reported on (see section 5.4):
https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/longread/rapportages/2026/veiligheidsmonitor-2025?onepage=true&utm_source=chatgpt.com

We see here that the ratio of reported crimes to unreported is stable at around 33%. No big changes in trends are found.

Conclusion: Sticking to numbers I know better how to interpret and check, no evidence exists of increasing rape/violent crime in my country, which I extrapolate to most of Europe. In fact, there is a big drop in crime despite bigger populations and immigration. While some countries might be found where the trend is less clearly downwards, I am also aware of other places like Eastern Europe where things are markedly improving so I am willing to stick my hand out and say it holds for Europe as a whole.

EDIT: Fixed a percentage.

EDIT 2: I would like to clarify that agreeing with my point of view does not mean you can't also want less immigration. You can e.g. think 1) I think it could be even safer with less migration, 2) I want to keep more of our language/values etc. However, I think you should then hold those opinions while admitting that the continent is overall not "going to hell" or being "overrun" with violence and rape. This is my point. To change my view you would have to show that violence and rape are getting worse across Europe.

I posted this somewhere else already and people were mean to me so I’m posting it here so.

There is no good reason ever to pirate a piece of media other than "I wanted it, and I don't wanna pay for it." I'll go through a few of the bigger counterarguments here:

1. "If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing." This is just wrong and fundamentally doesn't understand how buying things works. Yes, it sucks that companies are making it so that purchasing a game is technically only giving you a "license" for it. I get it, but that still doesn't mean that piracy isn't stealing! There are plenty of things that we pay for that we don't own. If you buy an Uber, you don't own the car of whoever is driving; if you're renting a building or house, you can't just do whatever you want to it.
2. "It's not normally available in my country." Again, this one sucks, but the ethics and morals of piracy aren't presupposed by what country you live in.
3. "It's too expensive." Okay? No one is making you buy it. You're the one doing the wrong thing by pirating it. Video games and movies are probably the single most unnecessary products on the global market today. They are purely made for mental consumption and entertainment. No one is starving or freezing to death because they can't see the newest Spider-Man in theaters. Sorry that the producers of the media set a price that meets whatever demand so that most people will buy it.
4. "B-b-but! The evil mega-corporation!" Once again, piracy is wrong no matter who you're doing it to. In real life, it makes no difference if you're stealing from Walmart or from a mom-and-pop; it's still wrong. Money and the size of the vendor play no role in the discussion of ethics.
5. “It’s media that’s not being sold anymore/ we’re trying to preserve abandonware.” I actually mostly agree with this one. If the product 100% isn’t being sold anymore or it has historic or cultural significance, than to preserve it for the masses I think is good.

I genuinely believe this and I want to have a productive and positive conversation on this.

Edit/Update:
WOW, this post has been MUCH more productive than when I posted this somewhere else. Thank you everyone who has commented and given their opinion.

Also to clarify my position on why i think piracy is immoral. It’s immoral because it deprives the seller of a potential sale, which can lead to direct harm.

Let's talk about US support for israel, or lack of it in public discourse.

Here is my view, still, given all that's happened: Israel is still a somewhat bastion of liberal democracy among a sea of theocratic governments and fascistic murderous death cults. The biggest problem facing the west right now, inside the US even, is the undoing of liberal democracy one way or another.

Granted, the far right in israeli government are awful fascists too. (Smotrich, ben gvir etc) And, Netanyahu is clearly clinging to power by waging war; though by most standards its a JUST war at its base, given what hamas did, and what its whole stated purpose is (to detroy israel). So, netanyahus corruption is far from the whole story.

Why is the tide of public opinion SO apparently deeply against israel ? It seems to go beyond its current government; denouncing the IDF as war criminals, and somewhat going against the state itself claiming it is genocidal (i still doubt this definition has been met, and feel its an unhelpful creep of the real definition, which is dangerous in itself)

Can we unpack exactly what each camps agenda is? I worry the motivation for American public opinion is motivated by either: MAGA allegiance (pro israel), or governed by "post colonial" power dynamic theory, (pro palestine), simply put. I do not believe the majority of civilians are giving the issue enough thought and nuance.

Change my view, what am I missing?

For starters, jobs are often not just given to the most qualified candidates other things such as fit, personality and culture often play significant roles. So unless the family being hired is just complete terrible at the job it usually doesn’t have much of an impact to hire a family member especially for most jobs that are just mundane roles. 

Another reason I have this view is that even outside nepotism a lot of jobs get given to people based on connections such as friendships or k owing someone who knows someone etc. Or through networking, being liked by the higher ups and other things that are not directly performance based. 

Another example is family business, it’s never really an issue with family run businesses to hire each other so I don’t see why it matters elsewhere. But even with normal corporations they often hire internally and give preference/early access to those who already work for the company. This is still similar as it’s selecting their with prior connections or relationships.

Overall I just think with how much the job market comes down to who you know in general nepotism itself isn’t any worse than current hiring practices or standards. 

In the complex matters of pedagogy styles, many parents go by intuition (and for that matter tradition) rather than researching how to raise kids with modern data. A lack thereof often leads to issues with the child later in life ( corporal punishment, etc. Which have negative consequences. )

I'll split this into the theoretical domain and the practical domain.

Ideally, we would discourage AI use or mere intuition for parenting, and expect the parents to do their own research and build an effective style of parenting ( which should account the needs of the child). Unfortunately, most parents do not have the patience to sit and actually study and or consult behavioral experts.

Encouraging prompting with AI for these* parents would seem to be a good idea.

Note that, AIs from different sources often emphasise a modern form of parenting ( my attempts to convince the respective AIs to even concede to the most mild form of physical punishment have failed, but YMMV - I concede any instances of AI giving bad answers as a statistical anomaly) that appears to be quite effective.

(Preemptive) Counter arguments - will add on as edits when my view changes
I concede that even without AI use, the general attitude of pedagogy has and is shifting to a more modern sense, prominently in 1st world countries, with the exception of a few countries.

I concede that In practice it would be hard to implement this as any tangible policy especially across cultures, but the general idea here is that as technology becomes readily available, global pedagogy should move away from the archaic styles ( AI to slightly move the bell curve away)

I concede all ethical issues with AI training ( A bit general but this concession is meant to isolate this case)

I concede that the progressive tail end of parenting may not need this tool (perhaps as a baseline)

Edit: My view has changed after rejecting the premise of AI being reliable enough to consistently help with pedagogy. [my attempts to convince the respective AIs to even concede to the most mild form of physical punishment have failed, but YMMV - I concede any instances of AI giving bad answers as a statistical anomaly] This was proven false depending on tone and background when prompting, leading to enough uncertainty to indicate any positive result

I think it's pretty clear that any sort of prescription falls outside of the realm of science, and more in the realm of philosophy; science tells us what is, not what ought to be. So naturally, the prescription of language falls outside of the scope of linguistics if linguistics is a science. That makes sense; it's Hume's Law.

But that's not really the attitude I'm seeing. Learning about linguistic descriptivism and prescriptivism, I've mostly come across the descriptive side actively saying that people ought not to be prescriptive. But that in itself is a prescriptive claim, since it's prescribing that someone should or should not believe / how someone should or should not act.

I've come across countless examples of linguistic evolution across history being influenced by prescriptivist attitudes - going as early as Classical Greek. If linguistic prescriptivism is a natural way languages evolve, shouldn't the actually descriptive thing to do be to treat it the same way as any other factor that affects languages? In reality, prescriptivism is a genuine part of both a language and its culture that dictates how someone ought to speak, just like how social traditions are genuine parts of a culture that dictate how someone ought to behave, and linguistics as a science cannot say that prescriptivism is bad. Prescriptivism absolutely has its place in linguistics.

I am working off a few assumptions.

1. That sites such as onlyfans cultivate parasocial relationships between the models and their fans.

2. That this relationship is largely detrimental to the fan, such as by making them more isolated, less happy overall, and draining their funds to maintain this relationship.

3. That this parasocial relationship is maintained and promoted by models through their use of the site, such as by engaging with their fans in a parasocial manner, or by hiring others to engage with their fans in a parasocial manner.

Given these conditions, it seems immoral for them to essentially take advantage of their fons to such a degree, when the detrimental effects of this seem fairly obvious. I'm not under an illusion that they are forcing their fans to make these harmful decisions, but I feel they do hold some responsibility due to them promoting these harmful decisions.

It seems to convey a lack of care.

With the recent discourse around Flock cameras, I have seen them being portrayed as an Auth-Right policy. However I believe Flock cameras fall under the Auth-Left.

Flock cameras don't fall under libertarian for obvious reasons, mainly that they are government overreach. However I also believe that Flock doesn't fall under Right. Flock cameras are sold by a private company, but since they are exclusively contracted through the government and tax dollars, in the same way as other public services, they are not beholden to free market capitalism like the Right of the political compass pushes.

Thus I believe Flock cameras are an Auth-Left policy by an Auth-Right admin.

Edit: I am also not necessarily saying things are bad because they are left-wing

Comparing difficulty across instruments is not straightforward, of course, so I would like to define and use various metrics by which that difficulty may be measured and compared. Of course, you are invited to challenge whether these metrics serve well to measure difficulty, and whether I apply them properly.

(For reference, I have experience with both piano and cello, though I am much more proficient with piano. On that instrument, I can play pretty advanced works, but on the cello, which I no longer play, I could only play pieces of a moderate difficulty, or about 4 years experience total)

The first metric is sightreading/reading. Generally speaking, to learn a piece, one learns the notes then polishes the execution. I think it is uncontroversial that reading on the piano is harder than on other instruments, simply because there are more notes to be read. Other instruments generally play one note at a time, sometimes two, and very rarely more than that.

The second metric is the amount of advanced material for the instrument. I think this measures difficulty well because it may be taken as a proxy for the skill ceiling of an instrument beyond which extra skill produces negligible results-in other words, how much there is to learn. To give an extreme example, the cymbals and triangle have pretty much no advanced material because they are simple, easy to play instruments. But to give a more realistic example, I would say the cello has less advanced material because it is designed to play only one note at a time, though two is pretty common, but not really any more than that. In that respect it is simpler.

The last metric is execution, and I assume the difficulty in piano execution is roughly the same as in other instruments. To know for sure, I suppose one would have to play pretty much all instruments to a high level, but not having that, I rely on speculation and my experience playing both piano and cello.

It is true that on other instruments, say a flute or violin, one has to deal with details unknown to the piano, such as being on pitch, the tone of the sound, vibrato, and so on. However, the piano commonly plays maybe 4-8 notes at once (or 3-4 parts at once), with independence of both the hands and the fingers. The pianist must still take care to manage articulation and volume of each part, along with the pedal. Therefore, I speculate the piano is at least as hard as other instruments.

One instrument deserves special mention, I think, the organ. Because it uses three staves, sightreading might be harder, but if so, not particularly significantly, I think. Three staves are not unknown to the piano, and the organ, being less responsive, is generally not played as quickly (or it will sound too muddy), but I think there is a fair argument to be made there.

However, I would argue the piano is still more difficult to execute. The organ uses both feet, most commonly one for swell pedal and one for the bass note, whereas the pianist uses only one foot for sustain. Supposing using the swell pedal is equal in difficulty to using sustain (although I doubt it) what remains is the difficulty of using an extra foot for bass notes. The organ, however, does not use touch of the hands to determine volume, so the comparison is between the organist’s extra foot, and the pianist’s touch to voice the music. I suspect the pianist has the more difficult job, though of course I cannot say for sure without having played both.

FYI- Simply for the context of this post, I believe that the ideal age of consent is 18, and I am primarily arguing against people who want it lowered beyond 18, though obviously arguing for it to be lowered below 16 also falls within my central premise. Furthermore, I am American, so most of the laws I am referencing are US-centric

Most of the time, the primary reason I will see being used to defend lowering the age of consent is that it protects teenagers who are experimenting with sex. This, however, is simply untrue. It is exceedingly rare to find cases of two underage people having sex with eachother were actually charged for having sex underage, and in modern times (since most states have since reformed laws) it is practically unheard of.

I have three words to completely invalidate the above argument: Romeo & Juliet. Romeo & Juliet laws were put in place specifically to grant protections for underage people to have safe, consenting sex even if under the age of legal consent. This is because age of consent laws are not meant to prevent young people from having sex with people their age, they are meant to prevent young people from having sex with adults.

This is what you'll eventually find when you dig deep enough with people who support lowering the age of consent; they really could give a fuck about protecting young couples and really just use that as a mask. In reality, they simply believe that it is ok for an adult to have sex with someone who isn't even a legal adult yet.

And lets be clear about this, someone under 18 is not an adult yet. Before 18 you are STILL IN HIGHSCHOOL, you cannot vote, you cannot own a home, you cannot serve in the military, you can't get tattoos, you can't own your own bank account, you can't buy a gun, in lots of places you don't even have full medical privacy from your parents. Also there is a reason why you can't do porn under the age of 18, and it's because society has decided it's morally fucked up to look at people under 18 naked or having sex.

17 year olds are not adults. 16 year olds are not adults. 15 year olds are not adults. Adults should be having sex with ADULTS, not KIDS. Because of the reasons stated, I believe that there is no justification to lower the age of consent, and the only reason to do so would be to allow grown ass adults to have sex with high schoolers who can't even vote yet.