Forestluv

Ironically, there is a lot of humanity in their experience. The second video is sad story of abuse and alienation. Yet the ending had glimmers of acceptance and human connection.

The neck pressure / tracheal constriction was just one component. An expert pulmonologist the trial demonstrated how Floyd’s left lung was compressed to the point of having no reserve capacity. As well, the person would need to be restrained so that the couldn’t use their arms to rotate their body such that the right lung momentarily had space for breath. I also think that some apathy was involved, yet what happened after minute 5 moves from apathy to reckless disregard for life imo. Medical experts at the trial showed that Floyd had a massive brain seizure at minute 5 and went limp. Yet the officer kept up the pressure on a lifeless body for over three more minutes. Even after a paramedic told Chauvin that Floyd had no pulse, he kept up the pressure. Paramedics had to physically pull Chauvin off so they could get Floyd’s body into the ambulance. If this is apathy, it would be apathy so extreme that it could move into “reckless disregard for life”. I’m seeing manslaughter2 is minimum and more likely murder 3. Yet if the defense can get 1 juror to believe the force didn’t “substantially” contribute to Floyd’s death, it becomes a hung jury with no verdict.

It’s possible to do restraints in the prone position with a low risk of serious injury. A meta study in Canada showed over the last decade or so there were over 3,000 police interactions with restraints in the probe position. There was not a single case of serious injury or death. A small percentage of police interactions will involve prone position restraints. We may be able to reduce the number via de-escalation strategies, yet there will still be situations in which a prone restraint is needed. If we genuinely want to reduce serious injury and death during prone restraints, we would be wise to look at improving technique - like modeling Canada. What Crowder is doing is disingenuous and turns a blind eye to the issue.

Crowder makes a valid point that heart disease, drugs and adrenaline are complicating factors - yet he is not doing this in good faith. He is being highly manipulate. His “re-enactment” is nowhere near the actual compression forces. And he makes extremely misleading statements like “Floyd’s fentanyl level was 3X the lethal level”. Crowder is not “exploring”. He is pushing a a disingenuous agenda. If Crowder wanted to genuinely recreate an accurate scenario, he can easily afford to hire a pulmonologist to recreate the compression forces and go through the process without a safeword. Yet Crowder has no interest in a genuine exploration. Crowder puts himself in a much milder situation and even says “I have it worse than Floyd did and I’m doing ok”. That is very low. Yet it’s hard to say if it’s a “new low” for Crowder since he regularly goes low.

The consensus of medical experts in the trial is that Floyd cardiovascular system was weaker than average due to heart disease and fentanyl intoxication. Yet they also agree that these were secondary factors and the primary factor was compression. One of the witnesses was a high-level pulmonologist who went through all the videos and calculated force compressions and lung capacities. By his calculations, an average person could not have withstood that force for 9.5 minutes without serious damage. Yet I am curious how strong a person would need to be to survive unharmed. Other medical witnesses have addressed a “study” that claims the human body can easily absorb the force compression Floyd was exposed to, yet there are several problems. First being that it would be extremely painful to subjects and life-threatening. It’s hard to get governmental approval and volunteers for those studies. And the researchers would have huge liability risks. Second, all the participants in the “study” knew they were in a safe space, they had a safeword and could tell the administrators to immediately stop. That is a very different situation than being powerless in a life threatening situation. As well the force compressions / distributions were wrong. In the above picture, not only are the knee positions wrong, the forces are as well. Both of Chauvin’s feet were off the ground, meaning his entire weight of 182 lbs was on Floyd. That’s about 91 lbs on the neck and 91lbs on the chest. And the force was emitted through a concentrated area of a knee. If the force applied is no big deal for a normal person, the defense could do a recreation. Yet it wouldn’t be a good look once the person starts begging for mercy, goes unconscious and paramedics are doing CPR.

GOP leadership has already stated in advance that not a single R will vote for the infrastructural bill in any form. The GOP stated that they will not negotiate. The negotiations are within the Dem party at this point. If half a committee says they will vote “no” and refuse to negotiate, the other half of the committee has to do the work themselves. In terms of reducing polarity, ranked choice voting helps. And it seems to be gaining support.

Why republicans need voter suppression and gerrymandering:

Is it not a combination? Consider the forum. Isn’t the language expressed on the forum decided by both forum culture and forum rules?

Yet what you propose doesn’t just affect extremists. It affects everyone. To take it to the next level, imagine we had the resources to hire a police officer for every person. The police officer follows and monitors the person 24/7. This would massively reduce crime by 99.9%, yet it is also extremely invasive. People don’t want to live with a police officer looking over their shoulder 24/7. There is a balance between harm reduction and invasiveness.

This is the strategy China uses. Lots of people like it, yet others don’t. There are pros and cons. I would prefer a moderate level of moderation coupled to education and increased consciousness. Ideally, people will treat others decently because they live in a decent society - not because they are under constant surveillance and fear consequences. Yet the reality is that a lot of people are harmed. The question becomes what is the best way to reduce it? There are also others ways to reduce harm. For example, identifying susceptible people and providing them resources. Hate groups and cults recruit vulnerable people that don’t have support networks. They are vulnerable mentally/financially/socially and get sucked into white supremacy groups , Qanon etc.

Language and assaults are inter-related. Language itself can be an “assault” and language is connected to physical assaults. Trying to separate the two as if they were two unrelated categories will lead to myopic views. It would be like saying “Let’s discuss how we should treat alcoholics. Yet I only want to talk about the alcoholic’s violence. I’m not talking about when he drinks alcohol”. Separating the alcohol from the alcoholic’s violence will create a distorted view since his drinks, getting drunk and acting violently are intimately inter-connected. When considering public policy on internet moderation, it’s important to consider the relationships between intention, language and harm.

Tried generating mine. The algo may need some tweaking. ?

Why does one man shave his facial hair and another man doesn't shave his facial hair?

Because I'm not going to waste my time engaging with every theory. There aren't enough hours in the day and it's non-productive. For example, there are lots of people that don't believe in germ theory. They don't believe germs actually exist. I'm not going to waste my time with that type of nonsense. Similarly, I'm not going to waste my time discussing whether Hitler was a hero, whether homosexuality is immoral, whether the coronavirus is a hoax, whether Bill Gates is trying ito mind control humanity etc. Engaging in that type of stuff is not how I want to spend my life. I consider it to be low consciousness. And there is the issue of good faith. If someone may approach me to discuss the nature of germs. They may try to come across as open-minded to "explore different perspectives". Yet it soon becomes clear that they are not oriented to "explore" anything. They have a pre-conceived agenda - such as trying to push an idea that germs don't exist. If they cannot go meta to that filter, there entire perception and interpretation will flow through that filter. It's a waste of time to engage with that. However, there are grey areas. For example, it seems like there is some evidence that sars-cov-2 originated as a lab leak. However, reasonable evidence and theories are also being contaminated by whacko B.S. I just don't have the time to sort through all the reasonable evidence/theory and B.S. The issue isn't that important to me and there are other things I want to do in life. The further a mind expands it's cognition, the less patience it has for low level B.S. That is not at all my orientation. My mind does not work in binary constructs. Rather, my mind is oriented toward seeing spectrums and relativity along various inter-connected lines within a holistic system. Seeing good/bad reasons for (not) wearing a mask, good/bad reasons to (not) take vaccines etc is entry-level stuff. Within each of those good/bad reasons there is a spectral degree of good / bad along. And if we look at any particular good / bad component there are smaller good / bad components inside. As well, each good / bad designation is relative and malleable. For example, you could give me a good reason for wearing a mask. That is along a spectral degree of "good" (from mildly good to extremely good). And there are multiple planes emanating from that good reason. Along one plane, it can be mildly good. Along another plane, your reason may be very good. And within that good reason there exists both aspects of goodness and badness. There is also relativity. Yet I generally don't speak in these terms because it takes a very fluid mind that can perspective jump and hold ideas with lose handles. Most minds don't work like this and most minds are too lazy to put in the effort.

You are pointing at a nuance: capitalist have a shady record. They don't have a sunny record and they don't have a dark record. They have a shady record. We could also say that capitalist companies have a checkered record. Many people will categorize pharmaceutical companies as "good" or "bad". Yet this is inaccurate because it deletes data points. Imagine we flip a coin 100 times and get 48 "heads" and 52 "tails" (48% heads). However, we filter out the 52 data points of "tails". Now we are at 48/48 heads - 100%. This will give a distorted view and inaccurate conclusions. We cannot give a critical analysis on this data. This may seem like Captain Obvious, yet people do this all the time. They filter out specific data points. If our filter only allows shitty things pharmaceutical companies have done, then our conclusion will be that pharmaceutical companies are acting shitty right now with the covid vaccine. For example: This selective filter will lead to distortions. A mind cannot think critically with such a filter. Similarly, if our filter only allows virtuous things pharmaceutical have done and filters out the shitty, then our conclusion will be that the pharmaceuticals are totally acting virtuous with the coronavirus. Given these data sets, these conclusions would be 100% logical and rational. However, if we include data showing pharmaceuticals have done both shitty and virtuous things, it totally changes the evaluation. It becomes more complex and takes more effort to critically evaluate. 95% of humans are so intellectually lazy, they don't want to put the effort in. There are many possibilities. I agree that pharmaceuticals have done many shitty things and I'm skeptical. I teach a class on bioethics and point our various crap pharmaceuticals have done (including the opioid crisis). Here, I consider pharmaceutical executives to be guilty of massive acts of violence that severely injured / killed millions of people. They caused more harm than 1,000s of heroine dealers and faced no consequences. This evil act highlights the inherent evil that lurks within pharmaceuticals, yet doesn't mean they are 100% evil. It is context-dependent. In the context of covid / vaccines, I would say that phramaceuticals are acting mostly good, yet with underlying unethical motivations. Yet those unethical motivations are being held in-check within the covid environment. For example, pharmaceuticals have a conflict of interest between R&D, and manufacture for the public good and profiteering. This excessive greed for profiteering has led to a lot of social harm. Yet in those situations, the pharmaceuticals tried to maximize profits by avoiding investment into R&D, getting people dependent on the drug and price gauging. For example, hypertension medication or insulin has a good profit margin, because people are dependent on it. This was why opioids were so lucrative for pharmaceuticals. However, vaccines are totally different. Pharmaceuticals hate investing in vaccines because the profit margin is so low. Vaccines are one-and-done. People don't have to take vaccines everyday. And pharmaceuticals can't charge a huge amount for a vaccine shot. They can't get away with charging $10,000 for one vaccine shot, yet they can easily get away with price gauge $10,000 from someone dependent on hypertension medication. An important point in the covid context is that pharmaceuticals have been paid upfront by the government and are continually paid. This completely removes risk and guarantees profit for the companies. This greatly reduces the toxic profit motive of pharmaceutcials. It's still there, yet at a much lower level. Covid is a very different environment than the opioid crisis. However, this does not mean that things will stay static. Things are dynamic. In a year from now, pharmaceutical executives may not be satisfied with zero risk and guaranteed profit. This is an inherent negative of capitalism - the quest for unending profit growth. Right now, pharm execs may be celebrating their good fortune of aero risk and 1 trillion in profits. Yet what happens six months from now if covid decreases and that 1 trillion in profit is only 0.5 trillion profit? To us, that seems like good news, since covid is going down. Yet it's not good news to toxic capitalists because they have a conflict of interest.

"Overcoming the past in a meaningful way is relative". Do most Germans consider Hitler a hero? Are there hundreds of statues of Hitler all over Germany glorifying him as a brave hero who fought for a good cause? Is there a massive 20m Hitler statue in the center of Berlin glorifying the bravery of Hitler? Do most Germans take pride in the fact that their descendants were Nazis - as if it was a noble thing? Do German communities and government fight against anyone who tries to deface or remove a Hitler statue? Are there laws against defacing or removal Hitler statues? If not, Germany is relatively more advanced than the U.S.

Notice usage of terms. This construct has multiple seperate things: god (1), suffering (2) and god's creation (3). This is the common construct of traditional religions - that there is a separate entity (god) that created everything and allows suffering. This is the classic religious dilemma: if there is an all-powerful god that created everything, then why would this god allow suffering? Yet there is another understanding in which "God" is not a separate being.

Compare Germany's relationship to the Nazi flag / Nazism and America's relationship to the confederate flag / slavery / Jim Crow. Germany is at a higher developmental stage and part of that progress involved narrative control and banning certain words / symbols. Imagine if the majority of Germans believed Nazism was a "Lost Cause" and Germany would have been better off if those criminal allied powers minded their own business in the 1940s and allowed "freedom of speech" by Nazi Germany.

This is creating two categories called "conspiracy theory" and "different perspective". How we define the boundaries between those two categories is relative. For you, is any belief simply a "different perspective". Imagine a group believed that Angel Merkel was an alien from the planet Xenon and was working with Bill Gates to develop a vaccine that will transform humans into Xenites. The coronavirus is a hoax to distract the public. We are in danger and must unite to fight the evil Xenonites and Bill Gates. . . Would you consider this a "different perspective" that is just as valid as the perspective that Merkel is a human being and the coronavirus is a real virus? Would you seriously engage with someone who was trying to convince you of an alien invasion from Xenon as if their beliefs had merit? I think most people would agree that the alien Xenon takeover story is a batshit crazy conspiracy theory. Yet it's not always cut and dry. there are different degrees: some narratives may be a mixture of conspiracy and realness. For example, it looks like there is some evidence that the coronavirus originated as a lab leak. Yet, this evidence has been mixed with some ideas that seem conspiratal. So where do you draw the line? The challenging part is doing introspection to examine one's belief. One's own beliefs seem reasonable to that person due to assumptions and lack of introspection. To someone who believes in an alien invasion from Xenon, it is reasonable. It is their perspective. They assume it is true, so they don't question it. They seek out confirmation from others to confirm it and they avoid cognitive dissonance of conflicting information. As well, we could say the belief "the coronavirus is a hoax perpetrated by the government to take over. Masks, lockdowns and vaccines are all part of the government mind control plan". For most reasonable people, this would be a "conspiracy theory", yet the person holding those views doesn't see it that way. They believe they are awake and everyone else are sheep. They won't look at any evidence of the existence of viruses. All that "evidence" is part of the plan. Yet as I mentioned, it gets much more complex. It's not as simple as either "different perspective" or "conspiracy theory"

That’s a reason I tip my hat to someone like Conner Murphy. He built a YT personality and massive following, then suddenly let go of his 90% of his base and ideology. That’s not easy to do.

Unfortunately, this realization is really hard for people that have not been impacted by regular racism. Such people have an inherent self interest not to realize this.

That is a great example of how tricky moderation would be. It's very context-dependent. Saying the n word within a diverse group of people gaming is a different context than using the n word with a white supremacist group planning an armed "rally".

I would say "making things right" involves acknowledging and addressing asymmetry as well as distributing our resources proportional to that asymmetry, This is not "restarting the wheel in the opposite direction". That is a framing those on the "good side" of the asymmetry commonly use. As a detached example: imagine 80% of lead contamination was found in the water system of the south side of Chicago and only 20% of lead contamination was found in the north side. However, the north side has always received 80% of the lead removal budget (this is why only 20% of lead contamination is on their side). This is an asymmetric problem and a mis-allocation of resources. However, re-allocating funds to a 50:50 split will not address the asymmetry. The best allocation is investing 80% of the lead removal budget to the south side (since 80% of the contamination is there). However, people on the North side are use to getting 80% of the budget. Only receiving 20% of the budget would seem like an injustice in the opposite direction. Even a 50:50 split would seem like an injustice since they have been conditioned to receive 80%. Once funds are re-allocated to the south side, eventually the lead contamination will be roughly 50:50 on each side and a 50:50 split of the budget is justified. But many on the North side will not be able to see this because their individual and collective consciousness is identified as a "North sider" and they will perceive through a lens that is preferentially biased toward the North side and the wellness/survival of the North side. This is why some men aggressively try to smokescreen the asymmetry that is strongly tilted toward male violence against women. Acknowledging that asymmetry makes it much harder to rationalize maintaining an unequal share of power and resources. So they come up will all sorts of obfuscations that the asymmetry isn't so bad. And some simply try to sidestep the issue. This is a common feature with a variety of asymmetric harm dynamics. The group benefitting from the asymmetry will avoid acknowledging and addressing it.

This is a challenging issue, yet just because something is challenging doesn't mean we should go for it. I would say that there needs to be a panel that has broad diversity that has credibility and support. A type of internet judicial system that includes experts in internet crime, risk detection, tech companies, academics, lawyers and also some everyday people. I also think it's important to be transparent with the public and a genuine effort to be objective. There are lots of gray areas, yet an effort needs to be made to communicate clear rules with the public that applies to everyone - so noone feels like they are being targeted. Of course this is easier said than done and their are potential problems with abuse. Yet our current system isn't working. Social media giants like Twitter and Facebook have vague moderation rules that are not consistently applied. And they have a major conflict of interest. Inflammatory, toxic, quasi-violent speech is great for business their business model. I agree we need higher resolution in regards to banning phrases or words. Yet algorithms cannot do it well enough and examining case by case is extremely time consuming. One of the nonduality teachers I listen to has to use codewords for things related to covid. When she uses terms like "lockdown" or "coronavirus", her nonduality videos get automatically taken down by a YT algo. Yet in now way is she using the terms in any type of conspiratorial or harmful way. And creating these codewords disrupts communication. She can't keep track of the codewords, changes them and mixes them up sometimes. She will say something like "the sauce pan has contributed to psychological problems in society. . . " And then pause and be like "wait a minute, which one was 'sauce pan'? Did I mean to say "shoelace" or "sauce pan". Not time I won't have them start with the same letter". At first it was funny, yet it can disrupt communication and gets annoying. Yet I would also support having moderation on some of the most intense slurs that are used 95% of the time for hate.

@SS10 There are various degrees and contexts regarding racism. I would advocate for an internet judicial system, similar to traffic violations. Illegal parking is a lesser offense than drunk driving, which is a lesser offense than sex trafficking of children. Similarly, there would be a range of severity for online offenses. For traffic violations, the vast majority are resolved with a warning or a ticket. Only a small percentage of traffic violations go to court and have prison sentences. Similarly, most online offenses would result in warnings or a "ticket". Only a small percentage of cases would make it to "internet court" with serious consequences. I think many people would rebel against the idea, yet if it was implemented properly I think most people would adjust and prefer it. I'm old enough to remember people that resisted mandating seat belts in cars and laws against drunk driving. Yep, back in the 1970s, many people did not like the idea of mandating seat belts be put in cars of DUI laws, because it was government over-reach and infringements on personal freedom. I remember my dad talking about how in the "good 'ole days" if a police officer noticed you were driving drunk, he would give you a ride home and ask you to be more careful next time. Then those pesky Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the government got involved. . . Today, nobody would buy a car without seat belts and 95%+ people support laws against drunk driving. There are a lot potential problems with internet moderation, yet if done decently I think most people would support it. I predict that 30 years in the future there will be a system of internet moderation and the vast majority of people will it (even though they will complain about it from time to time). If most people on the forum really thought about it, they would want moderation on this forum (even though it is not perfect). Having no moderation would mean the forum gets over-run by trolls, spambots and illegal activity. Then all the "normal" people leave and the forum is destroyed.