They probably would have just called you names instead of openly engaging with your ideas. That's the norm in my experience. I sometimes wonder why I bother posting at all.

Then again, I do get some traction, and some representation of ideas outside the common narratives is better than none. But it does seem like if you aren't in lockstep with the popular narratives, you get a cascade of downvotes just for entertaining unpopular ideas.

People don't want you to think for yourself. They just want you to parrot their beliefs back to them and give them affirmation.

Shit, if all conservatives had that nice an ass I wouldn't mind listening to their opinions.

Ah yes, I knew Demolition Man was an accurate prediction of the future. Thanks for confirming the direction we are headed in!

I'm so glad I have a career where I'll never have to worry about crap like this. I'd love to see how the higher ups would like it if they had to be on camera the whole day with AI watching them for mistakes/phone usage.

Playing devil's advocate only makes you look like an asshole if the person you're talking to has a closed mind. The entire purpose is to bridge the gap between two sides in an argument by acknowledging the positives of something they disagree with.

In essence, if someone has to play devil's advocate with you, you're probably the asshole. Otherwise you would be able to relate to and understand people who disagree with you without treating them like a monster.

A good example of where this can help is in politics. Political discussion is full of people talking past each other instead of trying to understand each other. If you could understand each other, it would be much easier to find compromise, which would make everyone feel heard and lead to the most reasonable outcomes when you consider the voice of all parties. But it's much easier to label your opponent an idiot or a devil than to grapple with their actual problems.

This is a semantic argument made to ignore the issue. The reality is that social media platforms effectively have become the "town square" where ideas are shared. Stifling legal speech in that environment is very effective censorship of ideas.

You can argue that corporations have that right because they own the network. I disagree. Curation of what can be said on their platform turns them into a publisher, not a communications provider. Any lawyer active in that space could tell you how insanely detrimental it would be for that distinction to be made, at least in the U.S.

Imagine your phone company deciding you can't say certain words to other people using their service without facing dropped calls, suspensions of service, or being banned. All because your legal speech goes against the morality of the majority.

That's essentially what social media does at the moment. They are legally defined as, and receive the benefits of, a communications service. But they are acting like a publisher, deciding what is and is not allowed to be said. It's a serious problem.

Do you believe they should receive immediate massive military aid? Because we're basically in a Mexican stand off with Russia and China right now. As soon as we pass a line for what intervention Russia is willing to tolerate, we will start a cascade of events that will lead to WW3, and possible nuclear war. Most of us don't want to see the planet nuked into extinction over a small war on the other side of the planet.

Granted, I think war is inevitable. But that doesn't mean we should rush into it. The bloodshed will get exponentially worse the minute this war becomes bigger than Russia v Ukraine, and we're already very close to the tipping point in my estimation.

Why should a creator be responsible for the voiced opinions of their fans? That standard makes no sense no matter how you slice it. A creator's job isn't to police their audience, it's to provide information/entertainment.

Just because he has the power to censor people you don't like doesn't mean he should, or that it's a reasonable ask. Instead of passively alienating you by not acting, censoring those people would actively alienate them. He's much better off letting individuals take responsibility for their own comments, rather than joining any given side's thought-police.

As soon as you create the standard that you are responsible for what your fans say and do, you've lost. You can immediately be held accountable for the speech of the worst of them, and good luck regulating that.

We're always finding ways to interact with the world and perceive it from a different dimension/angle. This comic isn't so much inaccurate as it is exaggerated.

I'm pretty sure this is exactly how scientists felt the first time they developed microscopes, electron microscopes, and other technology that lets us experience the world in a different way. A mixture of "woah" and "mind-blown".

I understand 90% of the science behind what I do as a medical diagnostic technologist. It's still fucking magic as far as I'm concerned.

CTs and MRIs? Atom spin/relax releasing detectable energy waves that are somehow able to be read and aggregated by algorithms into a high detail image of the inside of a human body? Tell me that isn't magic and I'll call you a liar.