Senal
@Senal@programming.dev
- Comment on Lutris now being built with Claude AI, developer decides to hide it after backlash 1 day ago:
Greater compared to human code? Not sure about that, but I’m not disagreeing either. Greater compared to verified able programmers, sure, but in general?..
Both.
The reasons are quite hard to describe, which is why it’s such a trap, but if you spend some time reviewing LLM code you’ll see what I mean.
One reason is that it isn’t coding for logical correctness it’s coding for linguistic passability.
Internally there are mechanisms for mitigating this somewhat, but its not an actual fix so problems slip through.
I don’t think I’m getting your point here. Do you mean by that, the code basically lacks focus on an end goal? Or are you talking about the fuzzyness and randomization of the output?
The latter, if you give it the exact same input in the exact same conditions, it’s not guaranteed to give you the same output.
The fact that its sometimes close to the same actually makes it worse because then you can’t tell at a glance what has changed.
It also isn’t a simple as using a diff tool, at least for anything non-trivial, because it’s variations can be in logical progression as well as language. Meaning you need to track these differences across the whole contextual area.
As I said, there are mitigations, but they aren’t fixes.
- Comment on Lutris now being built with Claude AI, developer decides to hide it after backlash 2 days ago:
Let’s assume we’re skipping the ethical and moral concerns about LLM usage and just discuss the technical.
it makes an impression on me as if human code would be free of such errors
Nobody who knows anything about coding is claiming human code is error free, that’s why code reviews, testing and all the other aspects of the software development lifecycle exist.
To me it sounds like nobody should ever trust AI code
Nobody should trust any code unless it can be verified that it does what is required consistently and predictably.
because there can or will be mistakes you can’t see, which is reasonably careful at best and paranoid at worst
This is a known thing, paranoia doesn’t really apply here, only subjectively appropriate levels of caution.
Also it’s not that they can’t be seen, it’s just that the effort required to spot them is greater and the likelihood to miss something is higher.
Whether or not these problems can be overcome (or mitigated) remains to be seen, but at the moment it still requires additional effort around the LLM parts, which is why hiding them is counterproductive.
At some point there is no difference anymore between “it looks fine” and “it is fine”.
This is important because it’s true, but it’s only true if you can verify it.
This whole issue should theoretically be negated by comprehensive acceptance criteria and testing but if that were the case we’d never have any bugs in human code either.
Personally i think the “uncanny valley code” issue is an inherent part of the way LLM’s work and there is no “solution” to it, the only option is to mitigate as best we can.
I also really really dislike the non-declarative nature of generated code, which fundamentally rules it out as a reliable end to end system tool unless we can get those fully comprehensive tests up to scratch, for me at least.
- Comment on Lutris now being built with Claude AI, developer decides to hide it after backlash 2 days ago:
Think of it like a jeweller suddenly announcing they were going to start mixing in blood diamonds with their usual diamonds “good luck finding them”.
Functionally, blood diamonds aren’t different.
Leaving aside that you might not want blood diamonds, are you really going to trust someone who essentially says “Fuck you, i’m going to hide them because you’re complaining”
If you don’t know what blood diamonds are, it’s easily searchable.
I’ll go on record as saying the aesthetic diamond industry is inflationist monopolist bullshit, but that doesn’t alter the analogy
Secondly, it seems you don’t really understand why LLM generated code can be problematic, i’m not going to go in to it fully here but here’s a relevant outline.
LLM generated code can (and usually does) look fine, but still not do what it’s supposed to do.
This becomes more of an issue the larger the codebase.
The amount of effort needed to find this reasonable looking, but flawed, code is significantly higher than just reading a new dev’s version.
Hiding where this code is make it **even harder ** to find.
Hiding the parts where you really should want additional scrutiny is stupid and self-defeating.
- Comment on Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii says English translations inevitably strip away a lot of a game's "flavor" 5 days ago:
Iirc the situation is similar in the UK, for hunting and “pest control”
- Comment on Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii says English translations inevitably strip away a lot of a game's "flavor" 5 days ago:
Technically there should be some legal recourse, perhaps jail, whether or not that comes to pass is subject to the same shenanigans law afforcement usually comes with.
But that isn’t what they were saying, they were saying that in japan almost no-one is allowed guns so the likelihood that a person was defending their house with a legal gun is very low.
I agree it wasn’t totally clear.
- Comment on System76 on Age Verification Laws 1 week ago:
By the sound of it, the disagreement is mostly in how direct an impact AB1043 will have on government plans for data collection and authoritarianism.
That’s not really the original disagreement i was referencing, nor is it a position i’ve taken, we agree that the local only bill isn’t the big bad.
You twice referenced the slippery slope fallacy when replying to comments clearly describing future actions, i was pointing out that it doesn’t meet that criteria because there is a reasonable assumption that the described escalation will occur.
Your original responses to which i was referring:
This is a slippery slope falicy. Just because the option is provided to self-identify age, doesn’t mean that it will be replaced with more complex and direct data collection (which I am against, if it wasn’t clear) later
You’re again relying on slipery slope falacy to say that because I’m okay with this one specific form of age gating, I’m okay with every other one, which I have repeatedly made clear is not true.
The first one is the main issue i was pointing out, the second one isn’t how the fallacy is applied at all.
As no one is taking the position that AB1043 is the actual danger most of what you are arguing doesn’t really apply.
Similarly with the Overton window, where it has been standard practice for over a decade to have a “are you at least 18?” popup, and for every single service to ask you your age, if not more. We absolutely need more data protections for systems such as this (ideally an outright ban on saving this information) but this doesn’t seem to make it worse.
Emphasis mine.
Hard disagree, moving the responsibility of this from individual websites to the OS is a big jump in scope.
The same kind of jump as making it the ISP’s responsibility if they serve illegal content from individual websites ( as has been suggested ).
Aside from that it centralises the surface area for future changes and enforcement.
Basically, from my understanding, this isn’t a step towards data collection or authoritarianism, and provides no significant benifit to either of those causes - its effectively a technical standard.
This is the disagreement, i (and obviously many others) are pointing at the long and comprehensive list of similar initiatives, both recent and historic, that were stepping stones to further encroachment and saying “oh look another small step in the continued and provable encroachment upon privacy” and you seem to be advocating for the benefit of the doubt.
Like, if this age-verification flag was proposed by the Linux Foundation, and agreed to by others, would the backlash be this big?
If the linux foundation had the same history of shenanigans, then yes.
Similarly, I don’t see any contradition between wanting a ban on storage/sharing of user data, and the implementation of a flag like this - even if we are able to ban all storage of user data, this law would be unaffected. That’s what I’m trying to figure out - how do people think that this leads towards those end goals? How would blocking it improve anything?
Ignore the technical implementation of this one step, nobody is saying this is the endgame big bad.
Think of it as a prevention measure, a single ant in the kitchen isn’t a problem in and of itself, but it’s almost certainly an indication of a larger potential future problem.
You are arguing it’s not a problem because the ant only has 5 legs, everyone else is saying the leg count doesn’t matter it’s still an ant.
Is it just a difference in opinion about the signicance of the Overton window?
See above
Is there a technical aspect I’m missing?
Not necessarily , it’s just that you are arguing a single technical issue in a conversation about perceived intentionality.
Is there some legal advantage this provides to survailance that I’ve missed?
See above
Right now, it seems like everyone is arguing against a strawman, implying that I support the idea of government/corporate surveillance and censorship, that I don’t expect that they’ll continue to be evil, or they’re simply saying its bad because its cosmetically similar to laws that do impede on freedoms. Given how unanimous the backlash is, I must be missing something?
That you are using a point nobody disagrees with to imply correctness in a context where said point doesn’t really apply makes it seem like you are coming at this in bad faith.
When bad faith is assumed, people look for underlying reasons.
- Comment on Avocado. Is it really so untasty or I am doing something wrong? 1 week ago:
Or the avocado is bland? not all avocado are built equally.
I would hedge that the penis consists of more than just regular skin there is a fair amount of erectile tissue in there as well, though i can’t vouch for a scientific difference is the taste experience.
- Comment on Bird Law 1 week ago:
In the case of ducks, that’s quack on quack crime
- Comment on Avocado. Is it really so untasty or I am doing something wrong? 1 week ago:
- Comment on System76 on Age Verification Laws 1 week ago:
Ah, i think i see where the difference in opinion is, claiming this event leads directly to (as in the very next step is) AI/ID verification could be considered an unreasonable jump i suppose.
In my case i was interpreting the argument as this event will almost certainly lead to further encroachment events into privacy, one of which would probably be the AI/ID verification.
To me this is a reasonable assumption because it’s what has happened in pretty much all of the recent instances of similar event occurring and therefore not a slippery slope fallacy.
TL;DR
On further examination, the technical things you mention seem to be correct if you assume that this bill alone is the vector for privacy encroachment, but they don’t pan out at all if it is assumed that other steps will follow; which, given precedent, is highly likely to happen.
On the technical implementation:
The reason its a slippery slope fallacy is the assumption that this law is a direct attempt to implement those systems, in spite of the fact that AB1043 implements a system that would be redundant with AI or ID based methods,
As an aside i’m not sure anyone is claiming that this bill is a direct attempt at a hard AI/ID verification system, rather they are claiming that this another step in a series of encroachments that will lead to escalating requirements and enforcement, AI/ID verification being an obvious step in that series.
From a technical standpoint you are correct, it outright states that photo ID upload isn’t required, yet.
Opinion : A cynic might see this as indication that the politicians understand that political and public appetite for full photo id requirements is less than optimal, so this is just a small step in shifting the Overton window on this subject.
technically doesn’t offer any good way to transition into an AI or ID based system (since it all has to be done locally),
That is only correct in a very narrow set of circumstances, that local requirement isn’t set in stone at all.
All that needs to happen to go from this to full ID checks is to mandate they use a “trusted” service for verification. It wouldn’t need to be an always online thing either, think of how the bullshit online verification systems that already exist work, i.e. you need to go online every x days or your system/service/app will stop working.
opinion: I fully expect any “trusted” service they designate to be something that serves the governmental and corporate desire for as much data as they can get away with, this isn’t even a stretch, just look at the service discord was trying to implement, the one with deep ties to palantir
and legally, imposes additional data protection laws that are likely to interfere with AI-based age verification.
This isn’t wrong as much as it seems naive, we are talking about bills that change laws, any law introduced can be revoked, superseded or have “exceptions” carved out, such as the current favourite “think of the children” thin veneer they are using.
It wouldn’t take much to move from “all data is protected” to “all data is protected, unless we need it to protect the children”
That’s not even taking in to account that the laws are only as good as the system upholding them, the current US system is sketchy AF, other countries have similar issue with uneven application of laws.
Not to say we should throw out hands up, say “what’s the point?” and just do nothing, but pretending that these laws aren’t susceptible to the same issue affecting everything else doesn’t help anyone either.
The problem with AI and ID age verification isn’t the age verification. Its the data collection, limits on personal freedom, and to some, the inconvenience.
Agreed.
So far as I can tell, AB1043 doesn’t have a significant impact on data collection (it does add another metric that could be used for fingerprinting, but also adds stricter regulation on data collection when this flag is used,) or personal freedoms - esspecially not when compared to what is already the existing standard of asking the user for their age and/or if they’re over 18.
Mostly agreed.
the points i’d raise are that the whole idea of age verification is an encroachment upon personal freedoms for some, so there’s an aspect of subjectivity to that.
I addition, relying on data collection regulations at this point is almost dangerously naive, corporations and governments alike have shown that they will basically ignore them outright or make up some exception, this isn’t conjecture, this is something easily searchable, think flock, ring camera’s, stringray , PRISM, anything palantir is involved in, cambridge analytica, broad warrantless data requests etc.
There is absolutely no reason to give the benefit of the doubt to parties that have repeatedly proven to be doing sketchy shit.
- Comment on System76 on Age Verification Laws 1 week ago:
The fallacy is the expectation that following escalating events would arise from the event in question.
It’s only a fallacy if it’s unreasonable to expect the subsequent steps to occur or in this case, be attempted.
Does that mean it’s a guarantee, of course not, just that the fallacy doesn’t apply.
The intention or plan for escalating steps doesn’t have to be laid out perfectly to draw the parallels between this and previous similar events that were then subsequently used as foundations for greater reach.
Your reasoning around the technical implementation of such escalation isn’t applicable here (in the conversation about whether or not the fallacy applies)
If you want to argue that they won’t escalate, or it’s not possible , go right ahead, but raising a fallacy argument when it doesn’t apply isn’t a good start.
If you want i can address your arguments around implementation directly,as a seperate conversation?
- Comment on System76 on Age Verification Laws 1 week ago:
If you’re going to reference the slippery slope fallacy so much, you should probably read where and when it actually applies.
From the wikipedia entry:
When the initial step is not demonstrably likely to result in the claimed effects, this is called the slippery slope fallacy.
You yourself just acknowledged that the worst-case is already happening, so the assumption that the worst case will continue to happen is reasonable.
Unless you wish to argue that :
The worst-case scenario is already happening
followed by you saying
Okay, but
isn’t an acknowledgement ?
- Comment on Apple Accidentally Leaks 'MacBook Neo' 1 week ago:
Not who replied to you originally but,
You aren’t wrong (you even stated that more is probably better) , just not necessarily presenting the whole picture.
Ram compression isn’t a benefit only scenario, there is a cost in processing power to make that happen.
So it’s a trade off of memory utilisation vs processing requirements.
Whether or not it’s worth it is down to circumstance, though i agree that generally i think it’s worth the tradeoff.
Unified memory is useful in specific circumstances, most notably LLM/ML scenarios where high vram utilisation is part of the process.
It’s not an apples to apples comparison by any means.
- Comment on The same people who rage against authority love moderating communities where their ideology is the only one allowed 1 week ago:
I appreciate it.
Yeah, I’m on the default but i’ll explore the other ones now, see if there is anything i prefer.
- Comment on The same people who rage against authority love moderating communities where their ideology is the only one allowed 1 week ago:
You’re making quite a lot of frankly weird assumptions.
I’ve clearly stated what i’m referring to and how i got there, if you think there is an unsupported statement then reference it directly and i will respond.
That being said, fuck, i think i’ve seen two posts next to each other and missed where it changed from them to you.
That’s entirely my bad and i apologise, my response was supposed to be for the other person.
- Comment on The same people who rage against authority love moderating communities where their ideology is the only one allowed 1 week ago:
“You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves in to.”
Though it is occasionally possible to point out how their arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny and get them to engage on it.
Only works with the ones not doing it on purpose, however.
- Comment on The same people who rage against authority love moderating communities where their ideology is the only one allowed 1 week ago:
key words there are discourse and discussion.
As is explained in a few responses to your paradox of tolerance reply (that you seem to have conveniently not replied to so far), the kind discussion or conversation they are referencing requires both parties to be working in good faith.
from your own reference
as long as we can counter them by rational argument
If one party can’t or won’t provide logic or reasoning to their side of an exchange, that’s not a discussion because there is nothing to discuss with someone not willing to engage in good faith.
There are absolutely places that are ideological echo chambers, despite claiming otherwise, but banning someone for the inability (or unwillingness) to engage in good faith isn’t a removal based on ideology it’s a removal based on not adhering to the basic tenets of how discussions are supposed to work.
If it just so happens that most of that kind of banning happens to people with ideologies you subscribe to, perhaps it’s worth considering how you can help these people understand how to have an actual conversation.
That all being said, from what i’ve seen here I’d guess you’re on the purposeful bad faith side of things so I’m not expecting any reasonable consideration, but feel free to surprise me (or block me, i suppose).
- Comment on The script is mysterious and important. 2 weeks ago:
They even had an ending in the movie that was closer to the original , but they cut it/changed it because it didn’t test well.
I’d guess that was because it was an ending that followed the original storyline and didn’t make sense without the rest of the movie also following the original storyline.
spoiler
It turns out (or is apparent in general) that the “zombies” are sentient/sapient and to them he’s the monster in the dark(or daylight as is the case here), from their point of view he’s basically been abducting people for experimentation and killing anyone who comes looking for their abducted family. The zombie/vampire guy at the end is just looking for his partner to rescue her, once he has her, he leaves. www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKwZOa6CL6U
- Comment on "Being vegan is unnatural" 2 weeks ago:
I’m not sure a strictly maths based ethics is the way to go, that’s where you get into sociopath greater-good style considerations like “If i take out the managing team of <Big Meat Corp> , eventually they’ll recover but i’ll have saved approximately X animals in the meantime”
Don’t get me wrong, i’m not against that kind of thinking, i’m just not sure it’s a viable long-term lifestyle.
In order to produce 1 steak, a cow has to die.
In order to produce n steaks 1 cow has to die.
Arguably it’s probably slightly more than 1, given the morbidity rate of cows before they reach the “production” stage.
In order to produce 1 phone, many different people have to work to produce it, enslaved or not.
In order to produce 1 phone a non-zero number of people will (likely) be maimed/outright killed while working under slave labour conditions.
If you include the more realistic cost/benefits i suggested above does that change the calculations involved for you ?
The following is an aside to the main conversation:
It was been pointed out that some electronics are as good as necessities for most people, while i think there’s a subjective aspect to “necessity” I’ll concede some electronics use it’s not the same as meat consumption. Though i would further argue that under today’s food production and distribution systems, meat consumption could be argued to be a necessity in some situations.
But that’s almost certainly an entirely different conversation.
- Comment on "Being vegan is unnatural" 2 weeks ago:
In reference to my other conversation regarding the comparison of products that use electronics vs meat consumption, I would ask if “convenience” was a valid justification.
Given the horrors of the electronics supply chain (slavery, horrific working conditions, cartels etc) im not sure why convenience electronics (phones, laptops, pc’s) use would be OK, but meat consumption would not.
Im not saying the horrors are equivalent and it’s not a dig at you, I’m genuinely trying to figure out why one kind of horror is OK, but another is not and how people make those calls.
- Comment on "Being vegan is unnatural" 2 weeks ago:
Hope this helps <3
It does and your points are valid, but i’ll respond to a couple if you don’t mind.
Honestly, if someone is truly aware of the horrors of the animal agriculture industry and is totally fine with it, I would be very, very surprised.
As would i (outside of the sociopath possibility you also mention) , i was thinking more along the lines of people who fully understand and then accept it as something they can live with.
The comparisons of the meat industry to electronics i mostly agree with, except for this last part, not because it’s incorrect as such, i just didn’t provide enough context.
Melting metal, pouring it into moulds to make circuitry, etc. doesn’t hurt anyone directly, it’s capitalism and the drive for maximal profits which cause issues in electronics. I’m a huge proponent for the abolition of capitalism for this reason too.
I mentioned electronics because it’s easy for people to at least shallowly understand how much they use them, what’s not so obvious is the horrors of how they are produced, in a similar way to how people as a whole don’t really understand how the meat industry is run.
Long before the metal pouring and assembly you have the rare earth elements industry that uses horrific limb-removing slave work camps to extract these minerals. it’s not all of them, but it’s significantly more than zero.
There are also cartel like warlords involved in some of the extraction sites.
Think of it as a similar situation to conflict diamonds, but more entrenched and critical to nation state interests.
I mentioned cobalt because it’s the easiest to find credible documentaries, reports and discussions about, but it’s not just cobalt.
Honestly a lot of the big industries are supported by modern day slavery and inhumane conditions or experimentation, i would also assume that extends to the non-human animals as well but i can’t honestly speak to that.
Textiles (clothes, shoes, trainers), agriculture (avocado’s have cartels because of course they do, coffee), pharmaceuticals, non-meat food (chocolate for example).
I keep coming back to the phrase “There is no ethical consumerism under capitalism” which aligns with your stance on the abolition of capitalism, but i tend to think of it as there is no ethical consumerism in general (at least right now) because i can’t think of a way we could ethically overcome the sheer density of population using the level of logistical technology we have available and that’s not even taking into account the (subjective) apparent nature of how human’s deal with such large populations.
But me not being able to see how we make the jump from now to a post scarcity, fully equitable society is almost certainly just a failure of my imagination.
My main question is how do people seem to be able to decide they can live with limbless kid electronics but slave labour clothes are too far, cartel avocado’s are an unfortunate necessity but meat is monstrous.
I understand that not all of those things are equal and battles need to be picked but it doesn’t seem like the subjective severity is the deciding factor and how are the battles picked.
- Comment on "Being vegan is unnatural" 2 weeks ago:
See my answer below for context on why i asked
- Comment on "Being vegan is unnatural" 2 weeks ago:
and then , once they acknowledge that ?
The reason i ask is that I’ve never heard an opinion from someone with the viewpoint it seems you hold talk about what they’d think in that situation.
and my follow up would be to ask why meat and not electronics (explained below) or textiles or megacorps ?
In general i struggle with why people place these ethical and moral rubicons in the places they do (i do mostly understand why the lines exist)
I mentioned in another comment about the horrific shit that goes in to basically all electronics (there are numerous documentaries and articles on the horrors of cobalt mining for instance) and it seems odd that people are ok with that but not the meat industry, or perhaps fine with both of those but draw the line at baby animals.
Again, i understand why the lines exist, it’s the seemingly arbitrary nature of where they are placed for different circumstances that eludes me.
I’m asking so i can gather opinions enough that hopefully i can understand, eventually
- Comment on "Being vegan is unnatural" 2 weeks ago:
OK, so if negative fucks were a thing that would be how may fucks in general i give about the actual argument you are having.
That being said, to me it seems hypocritical to be throwing shade about intentional animal cruelty unless you are somehow posting these replies without using any electronics whatsoever.
Almost all electronics require materials sourced or processed off the back of rare earth minerals not even mentioning the supply chain and assembly.
As you said, people are animals too, slavery and workplace mutilation are animal abuse.
I’m not whattabouting your argument, both things are fucked up and one doesn’t cancel out the other and as i said, i’m not supporting either side.
but the stunning lack of awareness (or acknowledgement) of the hypocrisy of your argument is offensive.
- Comment on "Being vegan is unnatural" 2 weeks ago:
Real question, what if there is no cognitive dissonance.
Like someone who knows exactly what’s going on and says “fuck it, it’s delicious” ?
- Comment on "Being vegan is unnatural" 2 weeks ago:
Ah the tried and tested “it’s ok if it’s my property” which historically(and currently) is a universal guideline for what is and isn’t ok.
- Comment on Littering 🚯 2 weeks ago:
TL;DR;
My only point has consistently been that your statements lacked important supporting context and are written like they are the only correct option, that weakens them.
Questioning your weak statements seems to have upset you and rather than actually responding to my only actual point you’ve constructed multiple other positions i’ve not taken.
When asked for examples you moved to “you are discussing in bad faith” (still no examples , i might add).
A discussion is impossible with someone unwilling to engage (or unable to understand) the actual position of the other party.
The rest is just a long winded version of this, feel free to skip it.
Literally nothing is required. What’s your point? Are you just trying to argue about nothing? …
My whole point, which i have stated multiple times, is that your statements are weak.
things like “and it does need to be done.” implies that it is the only answer, when it isn’t.
There is a problem with lead bullets. There’s also a problem with a lack of natural predation. We should try to solve these problems. We don’t have to solve any problem, but what’s the point in starting arguments with people online saying we don’t need to solve anything?
Again, point to where anyone said we don’t need to solve anything ?
If you answer to someone questioning the validity of your statements is to say “fuck it, obviously you just mean we shouldn’t solve anything” then i can expect there’s nothing further to gain from a conversation.
I had to go back to see what was said. I didn’t say anything was special about it being natural, like what you implied by saying it was magical. I said it’s kept naturally healthy by predators, as in nature had a mechanism to keep it healthy. This isn’t an appeal to nature, as you implied. It’s a statement of fact. It isn’t saying natural is better. It’s saying there is a natural thing. Doing it without nature accomplishes the same goal. So you did “quote me” in that you used two words I also used, you didn’t include anything else surrounding it, and made it say something it didn’t.
I literally quoted the surrounding sentence in that reply, not just the two words, if you didn’t read it , that’s on you.
As i’ve said, multiple times, there are mechanisms in place for balance and/or collapse, healthy is subjective.
As I said. We could wait for evolution to take its course. I don’t think waiting centuries with booming and crashing populations of animals is a particularly smart idea. Maybe you do, but you haven’t said anything other than “we don’t have to do anything.” Again, no shit! Stop writing these long comments saying literally nothing.
In your reply to me, yes, in the original response, not so much, which again i will remind you is the actual issue i’ve been mentioning this whole time.
My original reply was basically , “i don’t agree or disagree with your points but perhaps add context so your arguments aren’t so brittle” everything after that is responding to your questions. Its seems my responses aren’t to your liking but i’m not sure there’s anything i can do about that.
I’ll add a TL;DR; for you so you can skim.
No, we don’t. We don’t need to discuss magical fairies taking care of the problem. We don’t need to discuss finding a magic lamp to solve the problem. Some things can safely be ignored because they’re so unlikely to happen.
I never said discussion was needed, i said that ruling out options is a part of how decisions and policies are made, if you think magical fairies being ruled out requires discussion, that’s on you.
In the actual context on this thread of discussion i think that artificially increased predation could be (and historically has been) a viable solution to overpopulation.
Ceding areas to wildlife has also been used.
I said specifically that a shitstorm would probably be the result of dropping our current measures without a replacement that doesn’t mean other options can’t be discussed.
And that whole reply was again to point out the statement you made was an implied objective fact.
You aren’t making any argument besides that we should do everything but discuss how to solve these issues.
I mean…no , i’ll quote my repeated statements of my only arguments :
I don’t know if it’s on purpose but your answer seems to be ignoring a lot of the realities of how the things you are proposing would work (or not work, as the case may be).
I don’t necessarily disagree(or agree) with you, but i absolutely think your arguments need work.
My only argument has been that your statements were omitting what i would consider important context.
and then in this response
“i don’t agree or disagree with your points but perhaps add context so your arguments aren’t so brittle”
If you want to attribute some other argument to me (that isn’t a direct response to your questions) I’d appreciate if you could point out where it was made.
This is my last reply unless you actually want to have a discussion. If you do, discuss in good faith. We do not have to rule out things that can’t reasonably happen.
All of my responses were in good faith, if you don’t understand that dismissing something because it is unlikely is literally ruling out an option i can’t help you with that.
We should assume that suffering is at least somewhat negative.
I don’t know what yo mean by this but I’m fairly sure i haven’t argued to the contrary.
We should assume that environmental experts saying prey populations need to be culled are correct.
Again, i haven’t argued against this, only that it’s not the only option, as was implied.
If you don’t agree to these, there isn’t a discussion to be had.
I agree, “If you don’t agree to these things I’ve unilaterally stated to be true with no contextual support or citations then your responses are in bad faith” isn’t a discussion, it’s a personal echo chamber.
- Comment on Littering 🚯 3 weeks ago:
Yes. That formal enforced regulation needs to exist, and I don’t know anywhere that it doesn’t. In the US, you need a license, and you can only kill a certain number of the animal per season, and that’s all based on how many of the animals need to be culled, and it does need to be done. Equilibrium is maintained through this regulation.
Animals don’t need to be culled, for the maintenance of the current pseudo equilibrium it’s probably a good idea, but it’s not an absolute requirement.
I never said “naturally healthy”
I literally quoted you.
I said they evolved to have a certain percentage of losses. If that isn’t maintained by other predators, we need to do it. It’s naturally (in its current state) unhealthy. Hunting is required to keep it healthy.
Hunting is the one of the current mechanisms we use to (roughly) maintain the status quo, it’s not the only mechanism, nor is it the only option, it’s just one of the ones we are using right now.
Healthy is relative in multiple ways, there would be a new equilibrium on the other side of the shitstorm that would probably arise from us dropping our current efforts with no replacement.
That might be subjectively bad for us, but it would exist.
Sure. That’d be another solution. If we’re discussing policy, I think we can safely ignore it though. There’s a lot of solutions that are not going to happen. We don’t need to rule out all of them to discuss what we actually can do.
Unless there’s some sort of magic book that already has the answers to what is and isn’t viable then we very much do need to rule them out, that’s how decisions and policies are made.
No. They boom and collapse. This repeats, until evolution takes it’s course maybe, which will be quite a while. It doesn’t reach an equilibrium state because they evolutionary pressures were different when they evolved. Maybe this isn’t true for all prey animals, but many, such as deer and rabbits, it is. Population booms, they eat all easily available food, they die off from starvation or disease, then they boom back.
I’m not sure what the no is about given the following sentences basically say the same thing i did.
If they aren’t fit they die off, a new equilibrium is reached or the ecosystem collapses.
“They boom and collapse.,This repeats, until evolution takes it’s course maybe, which will be quite a while.” is one way an equilibrium is reached if the species(singular or plural) don’t die off.
A lot of your argument against hunting is that it requires regulation. No one is arguing against that. It is needed, and this is already recognized and enforced. We just need to now enforce participation in a way that doesn’t create negative externalities from lead poisoning.
I’d be interested to see where you’re seeing an argument against hunting from me as, afaik, i haven’t said anything to that effect.
My only argument has been that your statements were omitting what i would consider important context.
- Comment on Littering 🚯 3 weeks ago:
Sure, you can hunt without guns. I don’t really see an argument for not using them though, as long as there’s no lead.
In the isolated context of lead poisoning alone, sure, banning lead is an answer.
In the greater context of gun ownership in general, it’s more tricky.
But i wasn’t advocating either , simply pointing out that banning guns and allowing hunting aren’t mutually exclusive.
What’s really the ethical or environment argument in favor of only allowing bows, or whatever?
There are some , but i wasn’t pushing for any so i’m not sure they are relevant here.
I see the emotional appeal, if people have a negative view of guns. Not a logical appeal though, besides maybe making them harder to access to prevent deaths by firearms.
Either you haven’t thought this all way through or you are intentionally ignoring the whole host of other emotional and logical arguments around gun control.
If you can ban hunting with firearms, you can also just ban using lead ammo, so I don’t see how banning them is the best option in general.
As was said previously, in this isolated context you are probably right, in any kind of wider context, not so much.
I didn’t make any proposals in my above comment. It’s entirely statements of observations. I don’t know what you mean by saying you don’t see how they would work or not. I gave explanations of why hunting isn’t negative, and is often positive, but not any proposals of how anything should be done. Would you care to elaborate?
That’s possibly my bad, i meant more that you were making statements without any (written) consideration to the wider context in which they were made.
I don’t necessarily disagree(or agree) with you, but i absolutely think your arguments need work.
Examples:
I will preface this by saying that my perspective on “nature” is that we are part of it, even will all the fucked up self destructive stuff we have going on , so it’s not like we can really do anything “unnatural”, i use the term natural below to mean nature if we didn’t have such an outsized effect on natural processes.
From an environmental perspective, hunting keeps pray populations in naturally healthy levels, since most of their predators are driven out of populated areas, because people don’t like to be attacked by wild animals.
That’s only true in an ecosystem where the predator (us) and the prey are in natural equilibrium, which I’m sure you’ll agree is absolutely not the case.
Without that natural equilibrium you need formal and enforced regulation to make this work.
This magical “naturally healthy” state of existence glosses over a lot of problems with that statement.
It also doesn’t consume many resources, as they’re just living their lives in nature.
Also requires a natural equilibrium or regulation as a baseline.
I don’t think there’s any valid argument against hunting honestly, besides just being grossed out by it. I can’t construct a good argument against it though, and I suspect you can’t either.
Overhunting and ecosystem collapse, trophy hunting, selective hunting (think ivory), disease control, hunting for “sport” (think fox “hunting”).
Those were just off the top of my head.
and remember animals dying and being eaten is natural, and frequently necessary to maintain an equilibrium that was evolved to be maintained by external factors
an equilibrium, not the only equilibrium, it also mentions evolution of equilibriums but is presented from a perspective that the equilibrium presented is now fixed (it is not).
we are also animals, so us dying and being eaten also fall under this, so by that rationale another effective solution could be to reintroduce more (non-human) predators and a few of us die here and there, but the animal populations now stay under control.
Deer, for example, will die horrible deaths of starvation, and do damage to the environment, if they aren’t hunted by humans.
Until a new equilibrium is reached, because that’s how ecosystems work (or collapse, depending).
- Comment on Littering 🚯 3 weeks ago:
Crazy ape comment aside (i’d put it closer to apes with delusions of grandeur but that’s just me), not shooting guns and allowing hunting aren’t mutually exclusive.
Especially given all the hunting that happened pre-gun.
I don’t know if it’s on purpose but your answer seems to be ignoring a lot of the realities of how the things you are proposing would work (or not work, as the case may be).
