Kenshi

Thank you. I will look over these as time permits!

That’s, not really what I asked. You have an opportunity here to argue publicly for a position you believe in passionately, and are criticizing others for not holding… and you pass it off to me?

Why bother to preach if you’re not willing to teach? Or at least provide a link or two.

I’m curious what you suggest the US should do to rectify your criticisms? Do you advocate for the US to take a completely hands-off approach, withdrawing all presence and funding in the area?

Living in a world without nuance would mean experiencing life in a stark, black-and-white manner. Every situation, person, and idea is categorized as purely good or bad, leaving no room for complexity, shades of meaning, or understanding of different perspectives; A world where everything is simplified to extremes, leading to misinterpretations and a difficulty navigating more complex situations and interpersonal relationships. If worse/better doesn’t matter, there can be no difference between killing 1,000 people or killing 100,000 people.

You gotta use an escape character, specifically a backslash ( \ ), when dealing with *s on lemmy.

Otherwise you end up with “stufflike this!”

When it could have been “stuff*like this*!”

ETA: Damn, you’re good. Fixed it before I even finished this post!

I was trying, but it was yet another thing to manage when I already was barely able to keep up with the daily expectations of modern life. Ultimately, though, I am not sure it was that. My body had been adapted to a certain diet for decades by the point I’d given veganism a try, and given what we’re learning about cell memory, I wonder if my body/gut biome was mostly just mad that it had learned to expect nutrients in a certain format and struggled to adapt to the new way. Maybe, given more time, I’d have adapted. I don’t know. I just knew I couldn’t keep going on feeling like that while managing my depression.

Either way, I’m happy enough with my flexitarian diet. I eat very little meat that I didn’t buy on clearance from my local grocer. Saving already-butchered meat that’s imminently destined for the landfill helps me to feel less bad about my animal consumption, though I’m sure some people would say I’m still enabling the meat industry anyway. Some weeks there’s not much clearance meat available, though, and that’s fine. During those times I don’t eat meat, or pull from my freezer. Ultimately I feel that I’ve done more for the environment by choosing to have no children and avoid air travel, given what we know about the emissions numbers. I do own a car, but am working on moving away from using it as much as is possible given my circumstances.

I appreciate your concern, and your candor.

I generally agree that life is worth living, and don’t have any immediate plans to take the sort of drastic action you seem to be supposing. This is a good summation of my situation. I’ve been to therapy, and don’t currently feel that it’s needed. I’m doing well these days, overall, both economically and mentally. I’ve been dealing with my post-teen-angst depression for over 30 years now, and I choose not to medicate against it, as it’s not solely the product of a chemical imbalance, but rather primarily a reflection of the material conditions of humanity at large.

As for humanity being worth saving… we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I won’t cheer on its downfall, or vote for accelerationism, but I’ve yet to see compelling evidence that humanity is valuable to anyone or anything but ourselves.

Why should anyone value what you have to say? Are you just here to expose us to your misanthrope?

I didn’t ask anyone to value what I have to say. I’m here to express myself, just like everyone else. Sorry if I bummed you out.

Become vegan, you’ll feel better

No thank you. I’ve chosen a vegan diet in the past but it didn’t make me feel better about humanity. Worse, even. My physical health suffered, too, so I don’t want to repeat that experiment. I’m fine with my current flexitarian diet.

There was a time, ten or twenty years ago, that I cared; When you could strum those chords on my heart-strings. I used to think that humanity was worth saving. That each human life had some inherent value.

Human life is not inherently more valuable than the cow that died to make the cheeseburger I had for dinner last night. It had a family, too, and probably did less damage to the earth than any of us humans can claim to have done.

I’ve lost patience with my species and their constant bickering and one-upsmanship. Endless competition is tired and trite. I’m bored of it. We’re not each-other’s enemies in any material way other than the ways we’ve created in our own minds, and with our own geopolitical and financial games. We’re one species, and none of us are so valuable as we’d like to think. Frankly, at this point, I’d completely understand if I were one day killed by a foreign adversary intent on teaching my government a lesson. Without consequences, nothing matters.

I hate that this is what I’ve become, but it’s the honest truth of how I’ve come to feel about us. I don’t even know where that leaves me, but something’s got to give. I’ll hold on to hope, but I don’t think we’ve got it in us to come together to save ourselves. We’ll be fighting each-other even as the world burns around us.

Exactly. Actions should never have consequences. That’s how we maintain a free and fair society.

Murc’s Law.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/

This person lost 3 months of work because they couldn’t be assed to backup their data despite having three months to do so.

Never trust an OS, or a piece of software, to protect you. Protect yourself.

Looks like someone forgot about the 3-2-1 rule. Teachable moment.

Too bad more people didn’t have their minds changed by Paine’s “Agrarian Justice”. What a banger.

That’s totally fair, and to clarify my own stance: I don’t think it’s likely, or even possible that the human population will drop to 0 in my lifetime, let alone in the next few hundred years.

I’m primarily concerned about a compounding of factors that lead toward an increasingly higher probability of that outcome. I’m thus unwilling to take a “we don’t have to worry about human extinction because it’s statistically unlikely” stance. I’m also not attempting to assert that that’s your stance, either. I don’t know enough about what you believe to make any assertions about that at this point.

I really appreciate your reply, and I’m not trying to be snarky, here. I came to Lemmy, initially, looking for higher levels of discourse than are available on Reddit, and I get a little high-and-mighty about that. So I also apologize if I’m coming off as an ass.

Alright. I’m sorry to have annoyed you. I was just hoping for a discussion.

We have a difference of opinion and that’s alright. My concerns surrounding the Holocene extinction event triggering total ecosystem collapse need not be yours.

I’m a human behind a screen, just like you. It’s free to be kind to people, even when you disagree with them.

Look, I know it’s not something anyone wants to confront, but I’m not sending it out of malice, or to attack you. There’s no need to be condescending.

I simply want to be realistic about the world we live in. From my point of view it is better to be concerned about the possibility of human extinction and act as though it is a potential outcome, rather than to pretend that our species has wholly conquered the laws of nature and is indestructible.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-47540-7

Don’t miss this bit:

The bounds are subject to important limitations. Most importantly, they only apply to extinction risks that have either remained constant or declined over human history. Our 200 kyr track record of survival cannot rule out much higher extinction probabilities from modern sources such as nuclear weapons or anthropogenic climate change.

since English isn’t something you’re comfortable reading

I’m having a hard time figuring out what they said that merited this level of hostility. They weren’t even arguing with you!?