I assume from the vagueness that the point is that this applies in any situation because the key factor is “your values”. Which are personal to you and only you can know them.

It usually gets complicated. We’re at the point where you basically have to decide what level of unethicalness in any system is acceptable to you. Would help if you put that in your OP probably.

I already have a magical rectangle my dumb ass likes to look at already. I don’t want another.

It’s a great connection. Beyond Descartes, the Wachowskis explicitly cited Buddhist philosophy as a primary influence, specifically the concepts of Maya (illusion) and Samsara (the cycle of suffering which people unfortunately tend to misunderstand a lot).

The “There is no spoon” scene is a direct nod to Sunyata, or emptiness. It suggests that “reality” isn’t just subjective; it lacks inherent existence. In this view, it’s not just the world that is a construct, but the “self” perceiving it as well. Lana Wachowski has also stated that the trilogy was designed as a “meditation” on the nature of choice and the self, influenced by their interest in Eastern philosophy.

There’s also an Upanishadic mantra in the third movie soundtrack, appropriately:

Asato mā sad gamaya (from the unreal, lead me to the real)

Tamaso mā jyotir gamaya (from darkness, lead me to the light)

Mṛtyor mā’mṛtaṃ gamaya (from death, lead me to immortality)

Unpacked here (a bit, but it’ll correct the likely, immediate misconceptions people unfamiliar with eastern philosophy would get)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoEcSc064YY

Okay? No. Normal? In the context of that person’s life, yes it’s normal, else they wouldn’t do it.

Being hurt by perceived rejection is normal and valid. Making another person “wrong” for holding a boundary for whatever reason is not valid, though it might be understandable which is NOT the same as excusable.

People need to learn more non-violent communication, and general understanding of boundaries.

Some people really can’t detect sarcasm without the /s, huh.

Careful. This sounds a lot like encouraging people to take personal responsibility of their consumption habits. That’s literally fascism. We need government regulation to stop us from doing things, that’s freedom.

Someone might throw the Mr. Gotcha meme at you.

It’s people not being educated anymore to tolerate divergence of opinions and, a lot more worryingly imho, not being able, because of that lack of proper education, to listen to nuanced thoughts and ideas and to be able to understand that we can disagree without having to hate on one another.

What’s most worrying to me is that people don’t even know why they AGREE with the opinions they agree with. For example, most people would agree that bigotry is bad (which it is), but they don’t know how to argue about it.

They’ve got the moral instinct, sure, but zero intellectual grounding. And that’s a problem. Because when people don’t understand why something is wrong, they’re just one propaganda push away from accepting a new definition of “bigotry” that serves whoever’s in power.

We’re seeing it happen in real time. People repeat opinions like they’re reciting scripture - no thought, no critique, just blind agreement. And now, even asking people to think critically about why bigotry is wrong is seen as suspect. It’s an immediate failure of purity testing. You’re not supposed to arrive to the conclusion that bigotry is bad by thinking for yourself, you are just supposed to keep repeating the correct slogans. That’s not just lazy, it’s anti-intellectualism, the exact kind of mental rot that populism and fascism thrive on. That’s exactly the kind of bullshit that got USA in the state it is right now.

I have literally been called a fascist for telling people to think for themselves.

I actually did scroll past that.

You are the problem, and so are the people who upvoted you without at looking for themselves at all.

My point is that we can’t rely on parental oversight only because some plain won’t… and in your case, even actively trying may fail (it’s not your fault). And there’s always going to be loopholes in every system. Clever kids will get by most verifications, and if they don’t, that’s likely to mean the verification gets too invasive to be worth it. The best, though not perfect system is to have parental oversight + impartial verification + platform responsibility. This will reduce but not eradicate the problem.

Great idea, let’s get parents to raise their kids.

Now, how do we suddenly make them actually do that? Last I checked this idea has been around about as long as people have been around but it’s still not happening.

Parenting matters, but it’s not the only layer of protection. We don’t rely solely on parents to keep kids from walking into bars or buying cigarettes, we have laws and systems to back them up. Why should the internet be different?

Despite our current parliament sucking ass, I still have some general trust in my country’s government (and culture). So with that in mind:

Our government bodies already have my basic data. Healthcare, census etc. and we use our online banking services to verify identity when accessing the data. It’s simple, and extremely widely used. I really don’t see why it would be so hard to make a relatively simple service that just gives sites that need to know a yes or no answer on if I’m over 18. They don’t need to know my birth date or any other information.

Not let a government or age verification authority know whenever a user is accessing 18+ content

This should be possible but of course the question is if one trusts the government to actually uphold this. Again, with my background, it’s a bit easier for me to speak.

Make it difficult or impossible for a child to fake a proof of adulthood, eg. By downloading an already verified anonymous signing key shared by an adult, etc.

You’ll never patch all the holes. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. In a perfect world, parents would actually parent their kids and monitor their internet use. Access to adult content doesn’t even come close to being the biggest problem in many cases where some kids parents are fucking up their duties. Drugs, gangs, petty (and not so petty) crime comes to mind. Collective responsibility would be great but since we don’t live in a perfect world where everyone can just agree to a good idea like “take responsibility of your kids”, I’ll settle for trusting a democratic government to have some capacity to pick up those that fall.

I happen to agree with age verification laws. This is a tangent but I would also go a step further in saying that MAINSTREAM internet should not be possible to use without verifying that the user is a real individual person. This would be another yes/no question via a service. Outwardly they don’t have to reveal their identity but even JizzMcCumsocks needs to have a backend verification as a real person. Basically, if any government member uses some service with their own name and has a verification about that, that service must also have a way of verifying that any user is a real person. We have given Xitter way too much power and at the same time, allowed anonymity. Meta services too of course but I think Xitter is one of the worst due to easy and straight forward use. Humanity has shown that we are not equipped to handle the kind of (mis)information flow there is in these spaces. Spaces such as Lemmy can and should operate in full anonymity, as there are natural barriers to entry here, plus it’s less appealing when it’s not even really intended for the kind of use mainstream social media sites are. Here we have a collective and individual responsibility to account for the anonymity and the challenges it brings.

You realize the OP is doing a melodramatic bit, right? It’s funny, at least to me.

You say that they are full of false assumptions but your arguments against them hinge on the assumption that they have been asking for banning for words. Can you point to a single instance where he says this?

Dude.

You are literally arguing for the right to be mean to others without consequences.

If they don’t have meaningful power, then neither do people who would abuse any space they’re in, rendering moderating wholly pointless. But people sure don’t like that idea.

I don’t think OP is suggesting we sympathize with the ideology or the harm it causes. There is a vital distinction between empathy as an alignment and empathy as a diagnostic tool.

Understanding the cognitive or mental health mechanics that lead to radicalization isn’t about giving someone a ‘pass.’ It’s about having the clarity to see the situation for what it is. If we don’t understand the ‘why’ behind how people are manipulated, we can’t effectively dismantle the systems that recruit them.

True compassion in a political sense isn’t about being ‘nice’ to someone spouting hate; it’s about having the clarity to address the root cause of the behavior rather than just reacting to the symptoms with more hate. It’s possible to hold a boundary against someone’s actions while still being mindful of the human vulnerabilities that landed them there.

The fact that they still exist in an authoritarian system hardly argues in favor of them.

No hard feelings :)

Not sure what theme you’re using but at least for me the default one makes it a bit hard to separate replies. I still like it most of all for just lurking.

You’re making quite a lot of frankly weird assumptions.

Find a single line from me where I’m saying that people who don’t engage in rational discourse shouldn’t be kicked out.

In fact, have a honest think. How much of your response is based on a knee jerk reaction instead of actually looking at what I’ve been saying in this thread?