I can’t say you’re wrong, but is there a person who more than 50% of citizens would actually be happy to vote for? The options we’re presented aren’t great, and I’m certain a better one could be chosen. But reaching a full 50%+ seems like a tall order in the current political environment.

I could be mistaken, but many years ago I believe I learned that plywood is generally made by spinning a log while slicing a thin veneer off the surface, then stacking multiple of those veneers into plywood. The grain on the surface would be notably different when cutting wood with this method compared to sawing planks

Perhaps. In theory, you’re definitely right. I just feel that this is something where building the momentum during a single election cycle isn’t feasible. The most likely result of voting for a third party without laying this groundwork would be splitting the vote and giving a landslide victory to the greater of the two evils.

Formally organising online would make it possible to demonstrate how much support each candidate actually has without giving an official vote to a candidate that the general public isn’t confident enough to vote for. Watching participation grow and third parties receive substantial semi-official support could build excitement and lead to a third party being trusted to have the sway to win.

I’d love to be proven wrong though. If we can organize enough support for a third party within a single election cycle that it’s reasonable to risk voting for that candidate, I’m open to it. I already have too much on my plate, but if no one has built this service by the time I have energy for it, I’ll definitely be thinking about it

I suppose it’ll continue until enough people believe that it’s possible for a third party to win.

I think ranked choice voting would make it much simpler to foment that change. People need to be able to trust that breaking from the party line has a real chance of success, but that can’t happen without demonstrating support.

If we can’t have real ranked choice voting, a third party could build a website to let people coordinate votes according to ranked choice, and hopefully carry the result as a unified bloc to the polls. Have an agreement that if a certain threshold of participation is met, vote for the ranked choice result. Otherwise, lesser of 2 evils.

I didn’t learn of any rhyme or reason to it in German when I took classes on it. In fact, in a few cases, the gender changes the meaning of the word. Der See und die See, for example. One means lake and the other means sea/ocean.

All those negative effects would happen with or without religion. I think the real issue is blind trust of hierarchies. Many of those who ascribe to organized religion have a tendency towards that (the loud ones do at least), but religion isn’t the only pathway by which conniving subhuman trash controls the masses. Anything that can enforce an in-group/out-group think is a pathway to this form of control that leaves people more vulnerable to allowing despicable acts in the name of God, the public good, safety, liberty, freedom, democracy, progress, etc. Pick your symbol of idealism, and you’ll find someone who committed untold atrocities in its name.

If you’d prefer to succumb to hate, that’s your prerogative. And I wouldn’t necessarily consider it naive to prefer hope anyway, although having lived in hate in the past, I can understand why you might feel that way.

Any “helmet” you could wear is something that others would call delusion. It’s always a lens by which you choose to warp reality. Hardened pessimism is no more realistic than blind optimism. It all depends on what you want to protect. Your own corporeal form and possessions (in which case, please keep your armor of selfishness and cynicism), or something less tangible, like emotional resilience and a belief that there might be a dream that’s achievable.

Regardless of all that, and in spite of your attempts to shame me for grammatical mistakes, I’d like to thank you for inspiring some thought-provoking questions.

Is living while rejecting hope actually living? Personally, even if there won’t ever be change. Even if the future is truly a lost cause. I would rather delusionally hope for a better future than succumb to a form of realism that demands an expectation of progressively worse suffering. So, I choose to believe that improvement is possible, regardless of whether there is evidence for it, but also becuse there is evidence that it can happen.

We honestly should just replace every single fixed dollar amount in every law with an algebraic formula. It’s ridiculous that we design laws to become dated and require replacement.

Minimum wage should be tied to worker productivity, and wealth tax should be tied to the median personal income, including that of non-working adults. Welfare programs should be tied to regional cost of living. Limits on rent should be tied to changes in regional median income.

We’re already tracking most or all of that data anyway, might as well put it to maximum use.

And you also do not know where you are in Dunning-Kruger Club

I’d also like to hear what your idea is. I don’t know of a platform to solicit someone building your device at a price you’ll be wanting to pay, but there are forums to help you learn how to do it yourself if you’re motivated enough.

If it’s cool enough to pique interest, you could try posting the concept in an electronics community and seeing if anyone’s interested in the challenge, or an ideas community and just floating it for people to choose to run with.

It’s also possible the device already exists and someone can suggest an easy option for you

Well, I’ll admit it might be poorly suited, but I know it supports comments, posts, and user signups. Users would sign up with a sbscriber role, you’d verify them somehow, and then you’d update their role. It would be a little janky but should work with little adjustment

Easiest? I’d say WordPress on a Digital Ocean droplet if you’re going super small. Allow people to sign up and vet them, and you have a functional standalone platform pretty much as soon as you can get users. I don’t know that it would take off or have a sustainable userbase though

It’s a problem, but I don’t think it’s as unsolvable as that. Figuring out how to overcome the strategies being used to divide us could rapidly repair the damage. Education, both in and out of school, is a crucial element of that. The ones frothing over “liberal tears” clearly don’t want to find common ground, so we would need to learn how they communicate and why they won’t listen, then find a strategy to break through that barrier and help them on their way to broader skepticism. In essence, once we cure the disease, we need to vaccinate them to mitigate the next outbreak.

There’s been some focus on this area of research. We have evidence that “strong men” rise to power by capitalizing on fear and anxiety. They set themselves up as a savior who will get rid of the scary problem by blaming someone/some group that is innocent but unknown (and therefore a suspicious stranger) to their base. They start with (comparatively) small lies and build trust among their following. Once the more suseptible slip into this form of groupthink, they’ll fall for bigger and bigger lies, and are very difficult to recover. The question is, how do we wake up they who scream of “sheeple” without an event so tragic it traumatizes an entire generation? The last few times involved massive wars or similarly harrowing events. Events so massive they dissillusioned the followers and forced them to confront the fact that they got played by a charismatic (to them) narcissist with a superiority complex.

Unless we can figure out how to snap these people put of it relatively peacefully, we’re most likely going to be in for a really, really bad time before it gets better. With any luck, at least in the US, maybe Trump will get thrown in prison and the Republican party’s leadership will turn on Trumpism or collapse before they can take control. Maybe if their chosen authority figure is imprisoned and disowned by their team they’ll be able to see clearly again.

Fair enough, regulating the specific ways that people speak is challenging and prone to either overreach or being ineffectual. The only way I can think of to attempt it would require a law that is algorithmic. Speech that matches a specific pattern, and whose reach is sufficient to be a threat to our democratic process, would be analyzed in court with a team of linguists and psychologists doing their best to explain the problematic bits to a judge and jury.

I don’t think the general public (or probably congress, for that matter) would accept such a high profile a law that was algorithmic and only understandable to a small subset of the population though, so this isn’t really feasible. And new charlatans would find a way to work around it anyway.

Yeah, that would be crucial too. Antibioitics and the risks of antibiotic resistance need to be included. But to create and purify effective antibiotics, you also need to start with the scientific method, then branch into chemistry, biology, etc. Glassware and procedures to minimize contamination would be important to effectively extract helpful ingredients from potentially harmful molds/other sources.

Depending on the starting scenario, it might be possible to skip much of that at first if we had leftover supplies from a prior civilization. If this site is to be believed, it sounds like making penicillin at home is quite a process, but doable if you’re able to get the right supplies. I don’t see any efficient pathway from here to there if we had to start from zero though.

I read it as “what do you have enough knowledge of that you could aid in the birth/advancement of a new civilization?” Doesn’t matter if you have it fully figured out, just what knowledge can you provide that would be highly valued if all knowledge were otherwise lost.

• Crafting bows to hunt. Wood selection, shaping, tillering, natural bowstring materials.
• Some edible wild plants
• Some basic farming knowledge
• Some construction/shelter repair techniques
• Algebra and concepts of calculus, and why they’re useful
• How to preserve foods
• Basic concepts of electricity’s importance and how to make it, but someone would need to explain how to go from raw material to a functional wire, find some rare earth magnets, and figure out how to make LEDs or something else worth using the electricity for.
• The scientific method
• Concepts of how to engineer/design a solution to a problem
• Troubleshooting techniques
• Some basic concepts of boat stability and construction
• Some concepts of modern psychology
• Concepts of critical thinking and rejection of groupthink
• Basic physics. Loose explanations of kinematic equations, gravity, friction, pendulums, air resistance, aerodynamics, basic concepts of rocketry and flight/parachutes/gliders
• Evaporative cooling? I could describe the concepts of modern air conditioning, but that doesn’t seem useful yet.
• I could probably work out how a windmill works, how to make a wagon, how to purify water, how to make water-tight storage.
• Germ Theory
• The Paradox of Tolerance
• How pasteurization works
• Fermentation, concepts of distillation
• Basic oral hygiene? Habits of at least rinsing sugar out of your mouth afterwards, if brushes aren’t available.
• Use of alcohol and heat as antiseptics. Suggestion to use honey in a pinch
• Basic concepts of how magnifying lenses work and why they’re important

It sounds like since we can clearly articulate the types of strategies used to rile up the masses and bypass critical thinking, it should be possible to create a law that would make this type of rhetoric illegal. While I’m generally opposed to limitations on speech, I would make an exception for limiting the tactics that allow the rise of fascism, particularly since it doesn’t limit sharing of ideas, and simply limits the same type of behavior as shouting “fire” in a crowded theater.

Next time the opportunity arises (next time we have a major event that snaps the zealots back to their senses), we should be pushing our representatives to implement an amendment that bans this behavior. It’s a necessary restraint on freedom of expression to protect the democratic process. This should specifically be an amendment because:

• Implementing as a regular law would likely be blocked by the supreme court as an infringement on freedom of speech.
• It’s too important to allow future legislators to easily overturn.

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Yeah, that’s definitely some fucked up shit. You didn’t deserve to be tormented like that. There are some really fucked up people, and you’ve met far more than your share of them. If you don’t have the strength to get up, I get it. It’s understandable. And they did fail you. your parents, your teachers, your police force, and every authority figure who could have intervened but didn’t–all of them bear the blame for what you went through.

I don’t have the time to respond in detail, but I can say a few more things:

• I can attest that I won’t deliberately hurt anyone. I’ve lashed out at people verbally when I was in a bad place, but that’s the extent of it. Hell, I was bit by a random dog a few months ago and my first thought was “what happened to this dog that made it afraid of me?”. I know there are tolerant people because I talk to a few regularly, and because I do my best to be one myself.
• I don’t know what you’ve tried, but there’s a therapy called EMDR that is designed to help people with PTSD. Basically, you sit down with a trained professional and go through the memories that are stuck in your head while following some specific exercises that help you avoid getting sucked too far into them. I’ve heard it’s really helpful for some people.
• I get the feeling you recognize that I’m not the same person who hurt you, but if not, please try to remember that each person is unique. Some of them are assholes, some of them are neutral or even helpful. And if you approach anyone with aggression, you’ll usually find they respond with either fear or aggression. If you go to a bar or a crowded public park and just say “hello” in a somewhat positive tone to a few people, I bet you’ll get a range of responses. Some of them might be suspicious or want to be left alone, and some will likely be open to a conversation.