Sorry, guys. I’m voting for the only candidate that can end global warming.
Giant Meteor / Butt Stuff ‘24!
This time we’ll get it in the end!
BOHICA.
Do you have a newsletter I can sign up for?
Please don’t play with my emotions
Black hole sun, won’t you come
And wash away the rain
This is the 3rd party I’ve been waiting for.
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Where are all the Russian plants, oops I mean true progressives, at to tell us we’re just not leftist or progressive enough and Jill is totally definitely only ever trying to improve things for the country, ignoring her meeting with Putin and aides, and also Kamala is literally no different than Trump! Universalmonk, verdantbanana….i need you to straighten OP out! /s
Jill is too mainstream, I’ve voting for Rachele Fruit of the Socialist Workers Party!
Vermin Supreme for Every Elected Position 2024. The one true choice.
A mandatory tooth brushing law is the most un-American bullshit I can think of.
Not the hero we deserved, but the hero we needed. Nothing less than a knight, shining…
I was gonna try and write a comment 1upping you because I didn’t think Rachele Fruit was a real person, but then I decided to look her up just to double-check. Nope! She’s actually a real person.
She’s the next President of the United States
Hail to the Fruit
Oh you’ve changed the candidate you’re backing, huh? You are a very serious voter with real principles and values, Mr. Monk.
If you only care about the duopoly or third parties every 4 years when the Presidential election rolls around, then I regret to inform you but you have fallen for a grift.
If you actually gave a shit about breaking the binary you’d be boots on the ground working to legitimatize third-parties where they’re actually viable - local and smaller scale elections.
I’ve said this so many times before. Only not as succinctly.
These kids think that they can become activists only one year out of every four, and still have a chance to be the change they want to see. Time and time again, it’s been explained to them that this isn’t how shit works- and what do they do?
They delete, ban, and report everthing that tries to show them how this doesn’t work.
The mind reels at how many properly decent and intelligent people have had their political career stillborn because all these “superior” asshole non-voters never bothered to cast ballots for School Board and City Council on up the electoral ladder.
But you see… that would require… making an effort. And we can’t have that, now can we? God forbid! That would mean… soiling those pure, innocent, silky-smooth hands with actual democracy homework.
They’d always much rather sit their lazy, ignorant asses at home, lovingly yet distractedly fondling their purity, then sniffing their fingers.
A trolley barrels towards a bunch of construction workers stuck on the tracks.
- If you pull the first lever it will divert and only kill one person.
- If you don’t pull the first lever it will kill 100 people, including that one person from before - he’s standing before the track change.
- But, and now this is key, there is a second lever to the right of the first that says “Display lever only, does nothing.” It does nothing.
What do you do?You blame someone else. It’s definitely not your fault, it definitely cannot be that.
I couldn’t possibly pull either lever, that would put blood on my hands! Instead I spend all day on Lemmy urging everyone to pull the display lever. This is different from me touching any levers directly, because reasons.
Get on the tracks with them. We die together.
You pull the first lever. I dunno why nobody is answering.
Is doing my Jason Russell impression an option?
The trolley problem does not have a correct answer, and a very popular way of thinking is that “if I do not engage the lever, whatever happens next is not my responsibility. If I divert, I will have killed that one person.”
I’m not American, not here to tell anyone who to vote for
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Why should I accept the assumption that a trump presidency means 100 times more people killed, whether involving American weapons or not?
You don’t have to. It’s a tongue-in-cheek scenario. I’m not actually comparing real numbers of people who would die. The killing of construction workers in this thought experiment just embodies any negative outcomes, not necessarily just the amount of people who will die, and you can internalize whatever ratio you want to it. Or don’t, idc.
I said throw shit onto the track to try and stop the trolley once.
The philosophy majors did not like me pointing out it was ridiculous to imagine the problem existing in a void with an absolute limit on possible courses of action.
They liked it even less when I reminded them that the problem was invented to make fun of them by a philosopher who was arguing that both courses of action were ridiculous conclusions to reach given the broader context of a trolley crash not existing in a vacuum.
Thought experiments in the void is how we got the declaration that feathers and lead weights were affected by different rates of gravity.
The philosophy majors did not like me pointing out it was ridiculous to imagine the problem existing in a void with an absolute limit on possible courses of action.
Holy shit you did it! You beat philosophy! ^^^/s
If reminding a bunch of people that trolleys are typically built in places with a lot of stuff that can be thrown on the track is all it takes to “beat” philosophy, then maybe the philosophers didn’t have anything to say worth listening to in the first place.
Especially when they’re trying to ask questions to determine a moral course of action, why does anyone have to die when some property damage would do the trick just as well?
That’s why the question was devised in the first place, to illustrate how ridiculous the two schools of thought represented by either decision were when taken to their logical conclusion.
The original correct answer was to do something more productive than just standing around with your thumb up your ass debating utilitarianism vs not taking a direct action to kill someone.
The point of a thought experiment isn’t to creatively invent your way out of answering. It’s to give you a lens to examine your beliefs. The trolley problem can be a train problem or a giant falling safe problem or a two-bombs-with-a-button-to-switch-detonators problem. The specifics aren’t there for you to fantasise they’re there to give context to one of the most entry-level problems in ethics.
You didn’t impress your philosophy buddies by refusing to engage with a hypothetical. You made them groan and then they laughed about you when you left the room.
If such a faulty experiment is the basis of our ethics it’s little wonder why the world has become such a cynical and nihilistic place.
Suggesting an alternative isn’t refusing to engage with the hypothetical, it’s engaging in the hypothetical in a way that someone who thinks they’re so smart for studying philosophy should really fucking know how to entertain.
And again, the whole question was devised to point out that both answers are horrifying, morally bankrupt, and a logical conclusion of a faulty school of ethics, so insisting the question is “basic ethical philosophy” is just damning the entire foundation even more.
You’re not making a case that I should feel embarrassed about a snafu in philosophical thinking, you’re making a case that the real trolley problem is whether I should have gone back and shot the philosophy majors you think were snickering behind my back before they could do any actual damage by indoctrinating someone with actual deciding power into their effective death cult school of ethics where never thinking twice about “someone dies anyways” outcomes is perfectly reasonable.
Your “foundational ethics question” is equally as ridiculous as asking if I’d cheat on my SO if it would cure their cancer and also they wouldn’t forgive me for it. That’s not how anything ever works and insisting there’s some deep meaning in it is a farce, and the author of the question itself intended for it to be a farce, and trying to defend it as anything but a farce just makes you a farce
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says philosophers should exercise more intellect
gets called anti-intellectual
There’s weapon’s grade something in this discussion but if it’s anti-intellectualism I ain’t the one bringing it son.
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The quote was a hyperbolic answer to someone sarcastically suggesting I was trying to act smarter than everyone else because the question is an infamous example of self styled philosophers simultaneously over and under thinking questions.
Overly obsessing the meaning they’ve read into what was originally posed as satire, and yet underthinking the details and implications of the scenarios they’re describing.
We are expected to take the question as if we were there in person and yet they are not expected to adhere to a setting in which we could be there in person.
It’s very “rules for thee…” and the fact that self proclaimed philosophers go so out of the way to insist on this supposed deep and foundational question really shoots the credibility of the profession to pieces if such a faulty question is actually as important to the lot as the people trying to insist I’m some uneducated ape for pointing out that “someone will die anyways” scenarios are inherently suspect.
I’m being completely serious here: if you have trouble understanding the concept of a hypothetical situation, you might be on the spectrum.
Dude wants to de-rail the trolley. Hes so worried about the people on the tracks he forgot about the people on the trolley, and he’s the one saying the trolley problem can’t exist in a vacuum. Well motherfucker, why have an empty autonomous trolley?
Cool, so if you dont vote for Harris, you’re wasting your vote.
I also think philosophy is mostly dumb. But there is a vacuum here, shitty democracy or fascism. You can throw shit on the tracks, that just means one less vote against fascism
I was talking about the philosophy problem itself not the FPTP vote. As you could probably guess from the context of me dunking on the philosophy majors so much.
I said throw shit onto the track to try and stop the trolley once.
So you think the right thing to do is something that everyone knows wouldn’t make the slightest improvement to the situation?
https://www.ncesc.com/geographic-pedia/what-can-stop-a-train/
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Trolleys aren’t trains
Fair enough… It would have been better stated as a train problem than a trolley problem. But I personally wouldn’t ding the philosophy majors too hard for that.
And still, I have no idea what you could throw in front of a trolley to slow it down appreciably with only a few seconds to think.
Anything not bolted down, benches, trash cans, hell if it’s small enough you could try throwing stuff at it directly to tip it off the track
Maybe the most egregious example of this was something I saw yesterday, which was somebody saying “Tim Walz needs to go vegan”. When pressed about why him and not, say, Donald Trump, they said that people on the left and center were more likely to actually be swayed. It wasn’t worth engaging any further, but I thought it was pretty hilarious that they bothered to try to push the 60-year-old VP candidate to go vegan, but not the 40-year-old VP candidate. Like, you know that you’re not pushing the needle for anybody with that post, right?
It’s about as useless as making a post saying that JD Vance should hang dry his clothes instead of wasting energy running a clothes dryer.
Suggesting it’s easier to convince a Midwestern football coach/car dad to go vegan than an NYC germaphobe is a level of optimism I have never seen
Look pal, the general said “sow division” amongst whatever socio-political lines we can see, ok? Why Do You Hate Black Vegan Catholics???
(/s obl.)
If they spent that energy campaigning for election reform instead of harassing Lemmy users I’d find it more convincing.
And vote in every local election. So change can happen. I doubt they even do that.
Third parties are obviously the way any intelligent person may choose to vote. This video explains why they are currently not viable in America. Ranked choice voting has to come before third parties. It’s not a moral thing, it’s voting math.
Gonna vote third party as soon as the Democrats and Republicans implement ranked choice voting
It some places it is taking place. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States
seriously though is there any way to get to ranked choice voting other than a violent revolution?
A couple states have started using it. Just needs enough willpower.
This requires organizing. Even the revolution requires organizing, so I think you’d get more traction with rank choice voting vs a revolution.
Yes. We’re already starting to use it in some places!
Strikes, boycotts, or anything that hurts their donors’ wallets. There actually is some political will for it too, just not enough for individual politicians to push through. They need to be able to point to external unrest.
They’re not here in good faith and I don’t believe they ever were.
Discouraging 3rd party voting hurts democrats more than anyone. Studies show that 3rd party presidential candidates largely bring out people that would not have voted otherwise and largely benefit the democratic party down-ballot.
Don’t tell your apolitical friend about how they shouldn’t vote for Cornel. Don’t tell your friend about how voting for a 3rd party is pointless. Don’t tell your friend to vote for your person. Tell them to vote.
Edit: here’s my receipt.
Independent voters supported Democratic candidates over Republican candidates, 49% to 47%, according to the exit poll by Edison Research for CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS. According to the AP VoteCast survey for The Wall Street Journal and Fox News, independents supported Democrats over Republicans, 42% to 38% … While independents nationally voted for Democratic candidates by just 2 points, they supported Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly over Republican challenger Blake Masters by 16 points, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock over Republican Herschel Walker by 11 points (in the Nov. 8 election), and, for senator from Pennsylvania, John Fetterman over Republican Mehmet Oz by a whopping 20 points. ( My note on Fetterman, this was before the stroke)
And from a casual perspective, telling people their vote is pointless is (a) a way to show them you’re an asshole, (b) mostly pointless, and © quite possibly true regardless of how they vote.
Its more accurate to say the worth of a vote can approach but never be zero. Maybe people struggle with the fact that in a presidential race, their vote is one amongst tens or hundreds of millions.
What you wrote is true in systems that use the popular vote. It’s not true for states that use winner take all under the electoral college.
What’s the difference? If you are a minority voter in a non-swing state, your vote is worth zero. That’s slightly, but importantly, less than 1/300,000,000.
Is your take that if your vote doesnt go to the eventual winner then its worthless? You factually cannot say that anyones vote is worthless at this point in time.
On the other hand, I believe we all have a duty to make fun of Russian propagandists
I like it. Tell them to vote, then encourage them to vote for Harris (especially if you’re in a swing state).
You can try that, but they should be separate conversations. Have one conversation about how voting generally is good. Then have another conversation about candidates. Trying to roll it all in one will still discourage those types of voters for the partisan appearance.
I like this approach, just encourage people to vote. I don’t care who or what you vote for, but take 30 minutes and read up on a few issues and then go participate every single time in all the elections.
ITT: people skipping over the 39 days bit. Time and place. Let’s save the Republic then we work on everything else.
tbf people have been saying this as far back as Clinton’s term.
There was even discussion of Biden only running for one term before he was elected, yet lots of people here refused to believe anyone who wanted a new candidate was actually a republican in disguise.
Still, no point voting for a non existent grassroots third party. Green party more or less exists for people who don’t want to vote, not a valid anti corporate solution, despite having a decent group of members.
BUT THIS TIME ITS REAL PROMISE!
Where’s that universalmonk blyat?
You can’t call any of them by name, unlike Beetlejuice. You have to post something positive, even mildly so, about the Harris/Walz campaign. Then all the little rats come scurrying over to tell you how you’re a genocide stan and any real American should be voting for Cornoliverill Stein de la Fruit, and it’s definitely not because daddy Putin said so.
I broke the script the other day when they said they were ok with a trump second term. That they weren’t afraid of trump. I highlighted the conservative judicial appointments impact the working class and minority groups and they simply couldn’t address it.
I don’t have to explain anything to you.
🗣️🧠
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look i have had the choice for with or without lube for half a century now. Thing is saying I don’t want to get sodomized at all just results in the default of without lube. I hate it with lube but I really, really hate it without.
Well thats an awful perspective. Have you tried looking at things in a less black and white type of way? You haven’t literally been fucked without lube have you?
nope but destroying useful goverment infrastructure and moving the tax burden to regressive taxes taht hit me harder and deregulating things easy do that metaphorically.
I like the name of your lemmy instance a lot.
From the dude who runs it faq page:
Why ‘moist’?! wtf is wrong with you?
It's comically unmarketable
What does MRW mean? I’m old.
I fcking knew it. These people can’t go one minute without bringing that place up. It’s disgusting.
My Reaction When…
Cool, thank you
Bad faith actors are out here trying to channel energy into a psuedo-democracy instead of participating in bottom up politics.
If you care about stopping fascism, join a socialist org. Donald Trump isn’t some anomaly, he is a result of systemic economic forces that bring imperialist violence back to our shores as global resistance makes our imperial influence overseas wane. Democrats (the people who control the democratic party, not like, voters) do not want to bring an end to the system that creates this phenomenon, they directly profit from it.
You can’t base your opposition to fascism by voting for a party that supports the conditions that are creating fascism. I dont care who you vote for, go hog wild, but join a socialist org if you care about stopping fascism in the long term.
Why are the centrists so antagonistic this week ?
