I don’t need it to be my friend. I just need it to contain human violence by having a monopoly on it. You might see that as a negative, but I see it as a positive and history is obviously on my side as well, because we would have not achieved the things we have without states. You might think I lack imagination, that there are other possible systems but the truth is that all I have to do is look at the beings that are 99.99% like us to understand how we would exist without a state. We already lived like them and decided that giving the monopoly over violence to the few was better and led to more stability.

I agree with the sentiment though, humans will never be truly equal while some hold the authority to exert violence and others don’t. Once we invent God we can hand over the monopoly to it, and then we can be equal.

Yes I agree.

But the notion that no police at all is a good idea is absolutely ridiculous. I can empathize if you live in a place where the police force is fully corrupt but this is systemic, it’s the same thing that causes poor communities to have more crime. Now I could start saying that poor people are criminals and I would be flayed alive (rightfully so), but it is the exact same thing as saying that all cops are criminals or abusers. Some of them are, many of them maybe, and in some places most of them but that in itself is not a problem inherent of the concept of having someone to protect the peace and make sure that rules are followed.

It betrays a real lack of critical thought imo.

Damn generalizing a large group of people always works out great right?

I really hope you never need an officer for anything, but if you do I hope you’ll remember this conversation and maybe walk away with the right lesson.

I read lots of books. Maybe you should read more books, they help with empathy and critical thinking skills.

Not what I said at all. I said that because you both participate in society and have no option other than to participate in it you should be empathetic towards them. That’s all.

Just because you haven’t needed them yet doesn’t mean that you might need them sometime in the future. Best keep that in mind.

I don’t see any point in spreading vitriol about people anyways. They’re just like anyone else, a cog in the machine, trying to make a living. And just because some are bad, doesn’t mean that all of them are bad, and maybe we could stop more of the bad ones from popping up if we tried to understand what makes them bad. I’m willing to bet that the answer is the same as it is for any other worker that does a bad job: they’re being exploited with terrible working conditions, low pay (for the risk), high stress and peer pressure from others that strayed from their values because of the above. But I guarantee you that most cops don’t enter the force with bad intentions.

Yes surely having no police is a good idea. Leopards will definitely not eat your face.

Be nice to people, that’s all.

But I don’t see what’s productive about demonizing the police when we both know that the first thing you’ll do when someone breaks into your house or whoops your butt is call the police. Or do you think you can bring justice to perpetrators in your own terms with your own hands?

Until someone assaults you and you’re running like a bitch towards your nearest police station. We need to push for police reform, demeaning and treating them like enemies pre emptively will not help any of your causes, it only entrenches them further as tools of the state instead of protectors of the people (would you protect someone that hates you for no reason other than you are a part of the system, like everyone else?)

Yep, I especially appreciate the lack of apologies. An easy cop out would be to say he’s sorry but what would he be sorry for when he didn’t say anything wrong? This is a great response, and the only possible one. And still people will call it damage control.

I think trying to force communism is bad. Communism in my mind is inevitable, but we’re no there yet. Only when human labor is worthless and capitalism crumbles under its own weight will communism finally be viable and good.

Holy misinformation Batman! You don’t have to use the App store for anything on MacOS. Matter of fact many popular apps are not found in the AppStore at all.

iPhone and iPad may be walled gardens but I’ll go out on a limb here and say that MacOS is actually more open than Windows or at the very least it’s as open.

If Microsoft has a monopoly on gaming it’s not because they’ve made an effort to build one. It’s just that MacOS and Linux have never been actual competition. Linux because the user base was so small that making games for it was a big financial risk. SteamOS devices could change this but I doubt it.

And Apple just wont put the effort in for some reason. I’m sure they could make a huge dent on the market, as every iPhone and iPad with Apple silicon are pretty capable of running modern AAA games with a few tweaks, as are their computers. But they just won’t invest in making porting easier and cheaper and refuse to pay more devs to bring their games to the platform or to build a proper gaming division to support them. I’m convinced that Tim Cook just thinks gaming is for losers and doesn’t want it associated with the brand in any way.

Exactly my point. In lemmy I can still see all the posts, Meta’s algorithm will remove stuff from the feeds and push others and even hide comments. It is literally a reality warping engine.

I dunno, old forums were fun as fuck and they had no algorithm beyond sorting by most popular, new etc. Hey if it makes people spend less time looking at their phone it is still a win in my book— I type as I spend hours on my tablet. I’m a hypocrite, won’t lie.

I think the point of that article is closer to my own argument than what I myself would have thought. I do still think that the problem is the design of the algorithm: a simple algorithm that just sorts content is not a problem. One that decides what to omit and what to push based on what it thinks will make me spend more time on the platform is problematic and is the kind of algorithm we should ban. So maybe the premise is, algorithms designed to make people spend more time on social media should be banned.

Engaging with another idea in there I absolutely think that people should be able to say that Joe Biden is a lizard person and have that come up on everyone’s feed. Because ridiculous claims like that are easily shut down when everyone can see them and comment how fucking dumb it is. But when the message only makes the rounds around communities that are primed to believe that Joe Biden is a lizard person, the message gains credibility for them the more it is suppressed. We used to bring the Klu Klux Klan people on tv to embarrass themselves in front of all of America and it worked very very well, it’s a social sanity check. We no longer have this and now we have bubbles in every part of the political spectrum believing all kinds of oversimplifications, lies and propaganda.

The easy answer for me would be to ban algorithms that have the specific intent of maximizing user time spent on the app. I know that’s very hard to define legally. Maybe like I suggested below we can ban what kinds of signals algorithms can use to suggest and push content?

Like I said below I think the distinction is that a) I have access to a algorithm free feed here and b) lemmy (as far as I understand it) simply sorts content, rather than outright removing content from my feed if it thinks it will make me spend less time on it. I could be wrong about that second point though.

But correct me if I’m wrong (I’m not a programmer), lemmy’s algorithm is basically just sorting; it doesn’t choose over two pieces of media to show me but rather how it orders them. Facebook et al will simply not show content that I will not engage with or that will make me spend less time on the platform.

I agree that they are useful but at a certain point we as a society sometimes need to weight the usefulness of certain technologies against the potential for harm. If the potential for harm is greater than the benefit, then maybe we should somewhat curb the potential for that harm or remove it altogether.

So maybe we could refine the argument to be we need to limit what signals algorithms can use to push content? Or maybe that all social media users should have access to an algorithm free feed and that the algorithm driven feed be hidden by default and can be customizable by users?

While transparency would be helpful for discussion, I don’t think it would change or help with stopping propaganda, misinformation and outright bullshit from being disseminated to the masses because people just don’t care. Even if the algorithm was transparently made to push false narratives people would just shrug and keep using it. The average person doesn’t care about the who, what or why as long as they are entertained. But yes, transparency would be a good first step.