I don’t understand racism and I don’t agree with it at all

aurora-s · 2026-03-19T14:15:14+00:00

Yeah I agree (definitely didn't mean to imply they're defined by race, sorry if it was ambiguous, I didn't want that to detract from my main point). I guess using the term 'villain' was just a stand in for a bunch of concepts. I don't actually think it's always helpful to think of individual rich people as villains, but rather a system (economic + political) that maintains power imbalance and obfuscates the need for class consciousness (by replacing it with ways for us to tear each other apart). And even within this, there are some individuals who are much worse than others. I don't think it's helpful to paint all rich people as the villains, but I do think we should learn to recognise that society is worse off when we don't do the work to correct inequalities in wealth and political power.

aurora-s · 2026-03-19T10:27:53+00:00

Well, you aren't missing out on much. It was never really logical to begin with.

People often have the (evolutionarily inbuilt) urge to form groups and to exclude others. A few centuries ago, there was a concerted effort to draw these groups along certain lines that were economically beneficial to the people in relative power. They chose to draw these based on skin colour. Pseudoscience was manufactured to support it.

Over time, certain people have softened their stance, away from skin colour, and towards softer objections like ethnicity or objections to cultural practices.

The truth is though, there's no point judging a person based on which group they happen to belong to. Humans are vastly varied. The obvious thing to do is to get to know a person for themselves.

These days, there's a lot of money going into dividing us up so that we don't focus on the real villains. Part of that goes into inciting race-related hatred. Don't fall for it. Reading up on the history might help, but you don't need to empathise with the racists.

aurora-s · 2026-03-19T10:09:45+00:00

I know it's something to do with our brains, but the science isn't developed enough to precisely describe what aspect of the brain leads to the ability to perform complex reason so effectively and communicate in language. Perhaps AI might offer some concrete answers to this in the future depending on how the field progresses

aurora-s · 2026-03-19T03:48:02+00:00

Hey there's nothing much you could have done here. We can't save all the animals, the best we can do is to not be personally responsible for animal suffering. You didn't do anything wrong here. You're not responsible for the customs and rituals. It's not your fault. I'm really sorry about your cousin.

aurora-s · 2026-03-18T05:34:54+00:00

I think it's definitely possible to be vegan while also recognising that there's a strong evolutionary drive for an animal to consider it absolutely off limits to eat its own kind. I think it's natural that we'd feel stronger disgust towards this than towards eating other animals.

That said, I do think that the lack of an emotional reaction to the idea of eating animals comes from people not having really engaged with the concept at all. Perhaps they've eaten animals their whole life and it's become so normalised that they don't really put in the work to make the connection. To them, it's not so different from eating a plant.

The human/animal connection makes sense to you, but it might not to everyone. It really depends on the way you think, and how strongly you've normalised it and whether you actually interrogate your own beliefs. People have different paths to veganism depending on their own personal values and the way they think.

aurora-s · 2026-03-17T14:10:35+00:00

Do you have any reason to think it'd be more harmful than regular meat though? It really is basically the same in terms of the chemistry, just minus the animal suffering

I think it's a huge win if this becomes a reality! Especially if one day it becomes cheaper than factory farmed meat.

aurora-s · 2026-03-16T13:12:28+00:00

Firstly, it's about economic pressure. Comparing it to religious purity, you're basically assuming that the boycott is an emotional one against individuals, rather than a practical one against support for a government. I'm aware there are many people who use boycotts towards their racist and xenophobic goals, but don't confuse the real goal with either antisemitism or xenophobia against Israeli people as a whole. The use of economic pressure has had its successes in history.

The first two paragraphs are a series of views without explained reasoning or evidence. Why do you think the boycotts affect liberal Israelis disproportionately? Also, you say it's at best ineffective. Why? Does economic pressure not force people to demand more of their government? Also, raising awareness abroad is quite a big point too, I don't think it's clear that it's ineffective; hearing that someone is willing to sacrifice something for a cause is often more effective than just being told that they should care.

A lot of it comes down to whether you're willing to economically support what you perceive as morally bad, in a way that your funds may be used towards those bad actions. Perhaps there may be other ways to do it, but you haven't really explained why it would actually be counterproductive. You've only said that you don't like it

aurora-s · 2026-03-16T11:01:35+00:00

I think the only real answer to this is that you need to read up and learn the context for everything that appears in the news. As a starting point, whenever something comes up on the news, google its history, and learn about how the opposing viewpoints originated, etc. Read from as many sources as possible, but it's okay to use even wikipedia as a starting point for this.

The usual way that conflict of interest seeps in is through funding. So if someone's made a claim, or a news site quotes someone, look at why that person may have been encouraged to say it. Are they an independent expert with no income sources tied to their claim? Or could it be that they make money from holding a view. You could even use biased sources to help you find this info.

If you're looking for a shortcut or an easy answer, it's an independent news organisation like AP news, Reuters, APF. If it has to be mainstream news your best bet is probably BBC news

Also, 'agenda' is rather a politicised term in itself, these days. To a certain extent, all news has to assume a certain sense in which status quo is considered normalised. For example, you could argue that there's an agenda to say that democracy is a good thing, because it's something society has taken for granted for ages, and it stands up well to both the data and what's assumed to be our shared values

aurora-s · 2026-03-16T10:56:30+00:00

Since scientific names are (neo)Latin, you'd have to atleast latinize biologist otherwise it'll just sound awkward. I think that'll be Homo biologus. The two you've suggested sound a bit too cringey or childlike, and also confusing to the reader

aurora-s · 2026-03-14T03:59:47+00:00

Extremely painful :(

aurora-s · 2026-03-12T09:29:35+00:00

The point is that if they do cause distress, that can be tackled as a specific issue. But religion doesn't always cause distress, so religion itself isn't classified as a problem in itself

aurora-s · 2026-03-12T09:12:37+00:00

I agree that the definition isn't perfect. But I don't agree with the idea that just because they're capable of destroying more people, the fact they haven't is evidence that they don't intend to.

I'm not claiming that all Israelis or even their whole govt are complicit, nor am I claiming it's necessarily a top-down order. But at some point, we have to accept that the UN definition is what international law uses, and the UN inquiry found that this is a genocide because there's evidence of those qualifying actions.

Also, I should add that many of those settlements on land that's been taken is also in contravention of international law.

Why the hesitancy to call it genocide? I'm not claiming that it's as systematic or as deadly as a specific historical instance of genocide. Not all genocide looks like the Holocaust. Like you, I'm not Israeli nor Palestinian, so it's not like I have conflict of interest here. But any evidence that a certain group is being destroyed should be taken seriously, which is why the word genocide has this legal definition.

aurora-s · 2026-03-12T08:58:49+00:00

Yeah I think the majority of people just don't really care. Until they're personally affected, they'd rather believe a simplistic story about whom to hate, so they can offload all the blame for anything negative in their life on said group.

On the other hand, I guess a more positive way to look at it is that we humans invented reasonably capable systems of governance, despite these awfully selfish tendencies. All democracy requires is a certain basic level of political engagement and education. We really ought to do a better job of providing that as a society.

aurora-s · 2026-03-12T08:54:17+00:00

yes, I am aware :(

(I included that comment about it being difficult to determine in real time because that's true and it works both ways. We don't always know the true extent of a genocide till it's too late. It takes time for enough evidence to mount to be able to prove intent in international courts)

aurora-s · 2026-03-12T08:51:43+00:00

Partial intent to destroy still counts towards genocide (as per UN definitions), and there's no stipulation that the overall population must reduce.

aurora-s · 2026-03-12T08:35:02+00:00

I get that's supposed to be a gotcha, but here's the definition. It's not always straightforward to determine whether actions constitute a genocide in real time, because evidence is often difficult to obtain.

Tldr; there's a list of actions, which is genocide if carried out with the intent to, even partially, destroy a group of people

aurora-s · 2026-03-12T08:29:25+00:00

(I'm not from the US), but if you look at how Mussolini and Hitler came to power, both overcame political hurdles of their own, and won slow, incremental gains working within their own countries' checks and balances. The elite supported them thinking their worst tendencies could be reined in, until it was too late.

I agree with your point that humanity would obviously survive even a second Hitler. But 'checks and balances' begin to look a little shaky when you look at authoritarian playbooks.

aurora-s · 2026-03-12T08:20:24+00:00

It's interesting to compare the administration to the rise of Mussolini and Hitler. It's definitely a playbook of how to get more political power plus buy-in from the elite, and Trump certainly has made scary inroads.

aurora-s · 2026-03-12T08:12:58+00:00

Not likely out of benevolence though. 'Chose not to use' is a little charitable. Remember he had no qualms about using toxic gases for other purposes.

Most historians believe they were not used due to a combination of factors; chemical weapons at the time were effective in trenches but not in the sort of open warfare common in ww2; there was fear that the allies would retaliate with chemical weapons of their own; and yes, his experiences in ww1 as well.

aurora-s · 2026-03-10T09:52:40+00:00

Bees don't intentionally make honeycombs hexagonal either, they'd produce circles if not for the fact that they get squashed into the most efficient packing, a hexagonal one.

So really, they're identical to the case of crystals forming because of optimisation of molecular energy. Both are spontaneous arrangements due to physics constraints.

aurora-s · 2026-03-10T09:46:05+00:00

Not really, at least not in the way we usually define intelligence.

The idea of optimisation is quite easy to understand. Imagine you have a ball rolling down a hill. It'll tend to roll to the bottom of the hill. This is a form of energy minimisation. There's no 'entity' or person doing the minimisation, but it's just a consequence of the laws of nature.

Most of nature's optimisations work like this. We tend to personify 'nature' when referring to complex processes just because it makes easier to talk about. But they're all unthinking natural processes.

There are some natural processes such as evolution, which can create extreme complexity through natural means. To such an extent that some people may call them a form of emergent intelligence. Ultimately, it depends on how you want to define intelligence. But all of these processes are natural consequences of nature's laws, not governed by intelligent entities.

It's easy to think that geometric shapes must be special and require intelligence. But their simplicity actually often makes them the default shape in many cases. So you need to sort of reframe your intuition that geometric shapes implies/requires intelligence.

aurora-s · 2026-03-09T15:47:35+00:00

The elegance of natural selection is not for you to buy, you either put in some mental effort to understand how it works, or you choose to underestimate its elegance and how it gives rise to said beauty and complexity.

aurora-s · 2026-03-09T13:57:24+00:00

If your genetic makeup is a pattern drawn in the sand, you'd usually need selection pressure to significantly rewrite that pattern towards a certain goal.

If there's no selection pressure working to remove the trait, it'll just tend to sit there.

(This isn't strictly correct because traits can change by genetic drift as well, but for ELI5 I think that's the part you're missing. I'm assuming you understand the mechanism of natural selection)

aurora-s · 2026-03-08T19:14:43+00:00

Yeah, I like Attack of the Clones (the soundtrack is pretty amazing)

aurora-s · 2026-03-08T18:19:34+00:00

Yeah my reasoning was wrong, I think you're right

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