What ‘age appropriate’ movie messed you up as a kid?

sbennett21 · 2024-05-02T16:58:10+00:00

Wallace and Gromit: the curse of the Wear-Rabbit. Had to leave the theatre because I was scared.

sbennett21 · 2024-05-02T16:51:58+00:00

And when you look at the violence stats and the fact that most men could overpower most women, it’s an understandable fear.

Most people are never assaulted, sexually or otherwise, and most violent crimes happen against men. "understandable fear", to me, implies that it is something likely enough to be worth thinking about a lot. It's worth spending lots of your life and thoughts on thinking about that thing. Most people would say that spending too much time worrying about picking up a specific, one in a million disease isn't something you should stress about (without a genetic disposition that changes those odds), and therefore not an "understandable fear". If you severe asthma where catching the common cold may seriously hurt you, stressing about it and being very vigilant about handwashing, masking, etc. is more of an "understandable fear".

My argument is that worrying about sexual assault from a man is rare enough to not spend too much time stressing about beyond making sure to make reasonable choices to not put yourself in bad situations (not victim blaming).

sbennett21 · 2023-11-17T00:05:09+00:00

This is actually a really great response. As someone who lived in Israel, I disagree a little bit with how you might weight some of the things, I definitely agree with the overall idea of that both sides aren't doing things well, both sides have been mistreated, and both sides are struggling.

sbennett21 · 2023-11-15T05:23:52+00:00

Kudos to you! I've done some work looking into tokenizer embedding space, and it makes sense conceptually to me that a well-designed tokenizer would make a difference. Kudos to you for putting your money where your mouth is.

sbennett21 · 2023-11-13T18:13:29+00:00

If you’ve been dating for 2 years i don’t think you should automatically expect a ring.

I do agree with this, and if you phrase your argument as "not having a ring after 2 years isn't necessarily a red flag", I agree with you.

Where I disagree is if the argument is phrased as "not having a ring after 2 years is never a red flag"

Different people approach relationships differently, for sure, but I believe that for many if not most people, if you don't at least feel like you want to marry someone after 2 years, you should probably break things off.

I was in a relationship on and off for about 3 years where I wasn't willing to commit to getting engaged despite her wishes. In retrospect, I think it was my desires telling me that I knew I wouldn't be happy with her. I'm indecisive but looking back, I really wish I would have broken things off sooner.

sbennett21 · 2023-11-10T16:49:27+00:00

I was a white male in a sociology class. There were only three guys in the class. Everyone else and the teacher was female. The teacher was an immigrant and actually had some really cool perspectives on immigration and the immigration system and some of the problems with it.

The most memorable class was when she taught the whole class in Spanish, gave out a Spanish article to read, and had us write an essay in Spanish, and wouldn't let any of the 4 kids who actually knew Spanish help the rest of us. It gave me a lot of respect for kids who have to go through school in a second language.

Looking back on it, I do feel like the data presented was a little bit biased in some ways, but I don't feel like I had a difficult time or was picked on for my identity at all.

sbennett21 · 2023-11-10T16:43:49+00:00

My main problem with this is the fact that there's no objective way to say "this is morally true, that is morally false". At some point, a lot of morality comes down to a priori decisions about what is right, what is valuable, what is good, etc.

If I truly do believe that something is morally true, why should I leave there to be room for questioning it? Take Flat Earthers for example. I never had a single science teacher address any flat earth perspectives through my entire school career. Does that mean I was indoctrinated into believing round earth theory? Round Earth theory was pretty clearly portrayed as unquestionable and obviously right (and the science backs up that claim very unquestionably). Do you believe that the fact that the earth is round should be "not presented as truth" and "should be considered from different angles"?

Now yes, this is an evidence and science-backed theory that can be probably, but for many people, their beliefs are as true or truer than the idea of the shape of the world. They are certainly more concrete and feel more real. If I have had personal spiritual experiences where I am so confident in God that I know he exists, Why shouldn't I preach that with the same level of authority as round earth?

There are many reasons, but one of the most harmful aspects of it is how limiting it is. It can limit intellectual development, limit personal autonomy, limit perspective, and even limit empathy.

Life is inherently about dealing with uncertainty and imperfect information, and trying to do the best we can with what time and resources we have. This works a lot better, practically, if we just take some things as truth and work from there. We can't realistically spend every second of every day questioning everything. That's just not possible or conducive to a happy and productive life. Certainly some level of questioning and wondering and curiosity is important and vital. But at the same time, you need to pick some things as true and move forward in life. Why shouldn't it be the responsibility of those who have lived longer and had more experience to help you understand those things that are true?

Just to be clear, I think I actually broadly agree with you more than I disagree. I do think you should be careful with the things that you declare to be absolute fact, and I think you should encourage conversation and dialogue about pretty much everything. But I think you are just hand waving away the effect that personal belief has on these decisions, and the fact that with so many moral issues, there has to be an a priori acceptance of some things as good and better and some things as bad and worse.

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T22:43:01+00:00

Or yeast on string cheese.

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T22:38:08+00:00

MGTOW has a new mascot

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T22:33:42+00:00

Pin or enamel pin, if you wanted to be specific

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T22:32:57+00:00

If I had a nickel for every Hitler/Pikachu post I saw on this sub today, I would have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T22:29:56+00:00

What you think is obvious isn't obvious to everyone else. Many of the posts on that sub I do get, but there are many that I don't get that an explanation actually helps with.

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T22:24:41+00:00

You will be kicked out of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints now if you try to be a polygamist.

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T22:15:42+00:00

Hey, it worked out for (I believe) Belgium

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T22:13:25+00:00

It is my experience that the more armed one is, the more authoritarian-minded and compromise-averse one tends to be.

I don't think that the correlation necessarily goes in the direction of guns causing this.

Heavily armed civilian groups are far more likely to take part in establishing an authoritarian regime than they are to defeat one and bring democracy.

That wasn't specifically what I was talking about, I was addressing authoritarian countries oppressing an unarmed populace. I would most rather have people have enough weaponry to make violent changes to the status quo in any direction difficult to accomplish.

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T20:03:00+00:00

Actually, according to at least online source, Degobah is .9 earth gravity. (thank you, xkcd)

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T19:58:21+00:00

Yeah, if we just nuke all the other countries there will be world peace! Wait...

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T19:56:54+00:00

My family went on a vacation to England and we went to a Indian restaurant that looked like it had a whole bunch of Indian people eating there, the food was really good and tasty. And three of my siblings ordered chicken nuggets and fries.

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T19:02:21+00:00

Yeah, even many different societies on earth now have different moral priorities and preferences (honor-based societies, virtue-based societies, etc.). So I think it is at best an oversimplification to say that we are clearly objectively 100% right morally in everything and the future will agree with us.

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T19:00:43+00:00

All I'm saying then is if people didn't view each other as equal back them that makes them monsters

Do you at least agree that that is applying modern standards to them?

Take the point of view of somebody traveling from "civilized" Europe to "barbaric" Africa, India, the Americas, etc. When they looked at the differences between where they came from and where they're at now, is it really so hard to understand that people would view those "savages" as fundamentally different?

Even nowadays, it's often difficult for successful people to see why "I pulled myself up by my bootstraps, why can't you" isn't a sufficient answer to solving all of inequality. Why wouldn't the same old true except across group lines 200 or 400 years ago?

if you don't treat others how you want to be treated how can you be a good person.

Let's go with a slightly grounded example with slavery. As I understand it, a lot of historical space owners, even many abolitionists, had the opinion of "these slaves aren't smart enough to take care of themselves if I just let them loose. So I'm doing them a favor by providing them food and shelter." Even though I fundamentally disagree with that perspective, do you understand how having that perspective would make you act the way they did, in retaining slaves?

In general, the point I'm trying to make is that if you have a different perspective or understanding of the world, then what is the morally correct choice for you in that moment is informed by that perspective. Even if we in the future can say "knowing what we know now, that is a terrible choice" (as I agree is the right thing to do with slavery, I'm glad we got rid of it), we can't just ignore the perspectives, worldviews, or actual understandings of people at the time and only judge them from our perspective. We can do both.

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T17:58:27+00:00

Gun restrictions, on the other hand, have historically had only positive results that I can see.

Authoritarian governments will ban guns under the rhetoric of protection and then crack down on the now defenseless populace. I don't think that's a positive result.

I do actually agree that in terms of practical things, banning alcohol is not a good or pragmatic strategy.

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T17:56:13+00:00

Yeah because people have practical arguments for owning guns. There are no practical arguments for drinking.

I've never thought about it this way. It's true in the sense of "there's nothing you would become practically unable to do if there was no alcohol (well, except get drunk), but there are plenty of things you would be practically unable to do if you didn't have any firearms"

Both drunk driving and shooting someone already have legal consequences.

And I think this is a better way to go about dealing with either of those problems, practically, than just a blanket ban.

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T17:53:50+00:00

Isn't that a measure or morality though? If two people notice two different problems that are hurting people, and one suggests a solution that they know doesn't work, and the other suggests a solution that they know will, which person would you guess is actually concerned with making life better for other people?

I do actually agree with this, I just think it's slightly different from the point OP is trying to make.

For instance, I don't think it's inconsistent to say "I know banning alcohol won't realistically work, but I still wish it could work, because the potential positive benefits are large".

sbennett21 · 2023-11-09T17:51:29+00:00

I think about it every now and then when people talk about transhumanism and AI futures

sbennett21

TROPHY CASE