A little bit of neuroscience and a little bit of computing
Possibly, but when scientific knowledge and problems were smaller, one person could actually make a mark alone IMO. And if they happened upon a new discovery or insight then they’d appear to be geniuses, all alone.
At some point, when the work to make a discovery requires more than one person and the amount of theory involved in understanding its significance is too much for one person to be authoritative on all of it, then it’s a team sport.
Yep. There’s a whole world of people happy to work very hard on research for the rest of their lives … and instead we have them writing emails wrangling spreadsheets for … ??
Sometimes “shitty” work needs to be done, obviously … but I think it’s far less obvious that the pool of things that need to be done lies entirely in the random inefficient shit the business world just accepts. Instead, that’s just where the money flows.
Absolutely. It’s a shit show.
And interestingly, making the general public more aware of this is likely quite important. Because 1, they have very idealistic views of what research is like, and 2, just about everyone is entering research blind to the realities. It’s a situation that needs some sunlight and rethinking.
IMO, a root cause is that the heroic genius researcher ideal at the base of the system’s design basically doesn’t really exist any more. Things are just too big and complex now for a single person to be that important. Dismantle that ideal and redesign from scratch.
As someone who has worked in science, this passes the sniff test.
That is, science isn’t perfect, at all and is a constant process. Trying to win an argument by “citing the science” is often unscientific, however problematic it is that this can be leveraged by unscientific folks pushing an agenda.
Its absurd that you all think that vegans of all people would tolerate hurting an animal or reducing its quality of life in any way.
What do you all think vegan even means?
Yea … they way some get abusive and accusatory against vegans or pro-vegan people around topics like this is really revealing. Strawman arguments, thin presumptions and generally unfriendly behaviour … all to avoid talking/thinking about a moral issue. You can tell that for some it’s a touchy issue that they’re not comfortable with because for so many other things plenty of people are happy to admit that they’re fallible and shitty, like we all are. But somehow this issue seems to get under people’s skin, which to me only indicates that there’s some serious cognitive dissonance going on.
Yea flagging like that is definitely NOT (edit!, sorry) available.
But a mod/admin can post “as a moderator” which kinda counts. Beyond that a discussion can be had with the mods of a community to establish an understanding some new rules if necessary etc, and if negotiations breakdown, the community can be moved to a new instance in an orderly fashion.
It may not be enough for some situations, but seems like a reasonable starting point to me. AFAICT, there may have been a bit of a freak out from the admin in the original incident (which happens, it’d just be good to see if any lessons are being learned).
Thanks for the chat!
That is beautiful! Thank you, made my day.
Thanks for the post! (Highly relieving compared to some of the abusive stuff some are hurling).
Remove posts that have a serious potential to seriously harm cats, by making newer vegans believe it’s okay to feed cats a vegan diet?
Removing posts is arguably a pretty severe act when applied to discussion. I don’t know what the original incident was (thus my original questions), censorship around “dangerous” topics doesn’t need to be absolute and runs the risk of being dogmatic I’d say.
EG, How easily persuaded are “young vegans” and what else can be done to ensure no false impressions are made? Is outright banning the conversations actually preventing damaging behaviour or encouraging it by burying the issue and pushing it into more niche environments?
Also, it’s not irrelevant here, and hopefully common ground, that the underlying motive on both sides is to reduce harm to animals.
As someone whose FwB works with pets professionally, it’s difficult to be more wrong …
I have to say that given all of the concessions or potential issues with the pet food industry you go on to detail, this line seems strange.
In the end I appreciate your expertise and effort here (a great deal actually), but I think the only thing you’ve really convinced me of is that this could be an interesting discussion without posing any risks to cats.
It’d be interesting to know how good/bad some mainstream/popular cat food is and how it’d stack up against a decent attempt at a plant-based version and how well or badly it could be done.
Which doesn’t mean I’m about to go torture my cats with an experimental diet. Not at all! Many vegans, IME, care about their food (and of course animals), and so I find a default concern of vegans going off to do something stupid kinda weird and probably condescending.
Right … so talking about whether a vegan cat diet is possible is some form of intrinsically bad animal harming behaviour …
… but needlessly killing and eating cows to put up figurative middle fingers is … all good?
OK, so some counters:
All up, pets are absolutely subjected to human codes of ethics and values … they’re pets and subjecting them to our needs, desires and demands is exactly what owning a pet is all about (for better or worse).
If you have problems with that, I personally understand, but modifying their diet without wanting to sacrifice their health is very much the type of thing that pet ownership is generally all about. The lines being drawn here seem to me to not be about the specific issue of whether a vegan cat diet is feasible … and merely talking about it a reasonable thing … but about how one feels about vegans in general.
On which, accusing vegans of animal abuse is certainly a choice. From what I’ve seen, any conversation about this from a vegan was always starting from a position of caring about the dietary requirements of cats (which may be more than what some pet food manufacturers and pet owners do) and being informed about them. Whether that’s what happened in the relevant incident, I’m not sure, but the bits I’ve seen certainly indicate that it could have been reasonable too.
Which all comes back to my original point … what is moderation to bring to such a conversation and situation and what are its aims?
Any chance the relevant incident could be unpacked and used as a demonstration of how these changes would alter the outcome or encourage a different outcome?
As someone who only saw pieces of it after the fact, I am potentially in the dark here about the purposes and context of these changes.
That being said, from what I did see, it seemed very much like an instance admin imposing themselves and their superior power on a community when there were probably plenty of other more subtle action that could have been taken, where subtlety becomes vital for any issue complex and nuanced enough to be handled remotely well. I’m not sure I’m seeing any awareness of this in this post and the links provided.
For instance, AFAICT, the “incident” involved a discussion of if or how a domestic cat could eat a vegan diet. Obviously that’s not trivial as they, like humans, have some necessary nutrients, and AFAICT the vegans involved were talking about how it could be done, while the admin involved was basically having none of that and removed content on the basis that it would lead to a cat dying.
And then in the misinformation link we have:
We also reserve the right to remove any sufficiently scientifically proven MALICIOUS information posted which a user may follow, which would result in either IMMINENT PHYSICAL harm to an INDIVIDUALS PROPERTY, the PROPERTY of OTHERS or OTHER LIVING BEINGS.
In the context of cats and their food … which “living beings” are being harmed and who is encouraging or discouraging this harm?
Whether you’re vegan or not, this seems to me formally ambiguous and on the face of it only enshrines the source of the conflict rather than facilitating better forms of communication or resolution (perhaps there are things in the by-laws I’ve missed??).
Two groups can have exactly the same aim and core values (reduce harm to living beings) but in the complexity of the issue come to issue a bunch of friendly fire … that’s how complex issues work.
So, back to my original question … how exactly would things be done better?
Cheers! Very much appreciate the love!
Cheers! Actually not sure exactly why you’re saying this (I’ll take the good vibes though) … but if you’re keen to join in in any way you are most welcome!
Cheers for the shout out! Yea the idea of that community is to be a kind of study group.
Whenever I’ve posted a thought or idea, that’s part question part experiment part pondering, I’ve gotten great replies from others.
Also two people have been running twitch streams of running through the book. Sorrybook is nearly done I think (they’ve been going for half a year now which is quite impressive).
The community is at a point now I suspect where some of us have learnt rust well enough to spread out into projects etc, so it’d be nice to work out how we can do that together at all.
Part of my initial idea with the community was to then have a study group for working through the lemmy codebase, treating it as a helpfully relevant learning opportunity … as we’re all using it, we all probably have features we’d like to add, and the devs and users of it are all right here for feedback.
Additionally, an idea I’ve been mulling over, one which I’d be interested in feedback on … is running further “learning rust” sessions where some of us, including those of us who’ve just “learned” it, actually try to help teach it to new comers.
Having a foundation of material such as “The Book” would make a lot of sense. Where “local teachers” could contribute I think is in posting their own thoughts and perspectives on what is important to take away, what additional ideas, structures or broader connections are worth remembering, and even coming up with little exercises that “learners” could go through and then get feedback on from the “teachers”.
I suppose pointing out MS also owns linkedin isn’t the talk down you’re looking for?
If you’re a dev, this along with GitHub, and your employer using teams, is a pretty severe panopticon.
But remote development is a killer feature to me and they seem to be prioritizing it.
Which is definitely interesting and cool. (Also, before this AI “moment”, their main selling point, along with taking graphics more seriously, and rust I suppose).
I mean he’s walking right into this isn’t he!
Macs are outrageously priced for the hardware you get.
Yea sure, we all know this. But we’re talking about software here. Not to be too snarky, but the part you actually use. The differences might not be worth it to you, or maybe you need a gaming PC, but for some, it’s just fine.
First, no need to apologise.
Second, no I don’t think you summarised the video, IIRC, it mostly gets into the theory of the techniques used and what can be done to do a better job.