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why do i automatically find other people's attribution of their beliefs (as cause and effect for things) so distasteful? its a fucking video about a sick kid, but all i want to do is scream "its not god its medicine and doctors and education and a little luck saving this kid".

what the hell is my problem.

im glad your organism that you pieced together by shooting DNA at each other is still functional.

thats as sincere as i can get. how lame.

im totally going to carmelize some onions this weekend.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'rem' to 'rem, everybody hurts, automatic for the people, 90s, 1992, depression' - edited by kronosposeidon

Tags for this video have been changed from 'rem, automatic for the people, 90s' to 'rem, automatic for the people, 90s, bergamot and vetiver' - edited by calvados

Okay, because I can't sleep I'll weigh in on this one more time.

I really, truly can appreciate both sides of this issue. I really can. Though I already stated my position and still stick to it, I also recently mentioned elsewhere that I don't like echo chambers, and if you block out every single voice with which you disagree then you will have effectively created your own echo chamber. I hope that's not how this new tool is used, but if it is then so be it. However, keep in mind that people who routinely tune out opposing points of view already have a filter set in place, and it's called the "brain". I guarantee that virtually everyone here, even the most open-minded among us, has a mental check list of at least one or two users whose comments they already ignore or skim lightly at best. Therefore this tool will aid in ignoring only a little more than what we already do automatically, really. And when a comment thread becomes incomprehensible because of blocked comments, even the most diehard blockers will probably temporarily unblock an individual on their black list, if only to understand what the hell is going on.

Regardless of all the if's and and's of the previous paragraph, lucky's last comment is probably the one that really drives it home for me. No one should have to feel harassed by profile comments, either private or public. I've never been harassed here, so it saddens me to learn that more than one person here has had it happen to them. Therefore I think it really does come down to the lesser of two "evils", if that's the word one wants to use:

- Ban the harasser, or
- Block the comment

To me, blocking the comment is the lesser of the two. And let's be clear: Just because you think you're not being a harasser doesn't necessarily make it so. Maybe you think you're only being assertive or just inquisitive, but if someone is being annoyed to the point that he or she feels like leaving because of your profile comments, then chances are you're a harasser. It's not an automatic conviction; some people are too sensitive, I'll grant you. Still, if you're being blocked because of the profile comments you leave, then it's time to take a savage moral inventory, IMHO. And even if you're not a harasser, then it's still better to have your comments blocked than to have a Siftquisition called to have you banned because of your comments. Even if you're exonerated in the proceedings, I imagine it would leave a bad taste in your mouth.

In my mind there are no easy answers. Still, I believe dag and lucky's solution is the best, all things considered. However I hope and pray that no one says that the victims need to get thicker skins or toughen up. Sure, maybe they could. And when they do then maybe they might feel compelled to counterstrike, and then that brings about another counterstrike, etc. And then we have a flame war. Yeehaw! And those are just a riot, ain't they? So before we let every bad exchange turn into a shootout at the OK Corral, let's at least give comment filtering a try.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'skinny dipping, automatic for the people' to 'skinny dipping, automatic for the people, septembers coming soon' - edited by calvados

Interesting post bamdrew, although I can't say I totally agree with the logic

"Similarly, empathy for the situations of others is automatic for some people, to the extent that they might imagine the pain or desires of others to an unhealthy degree."

How is it possible to have an unhealthy degree of empathy? Surely the Iraq war and other Bush adventures so far have shown that simplicity and hate are only useful if you wish to escalate a terrorist attack into a full scale war.

The only thing that will save us from this down spiral is if people admit they were wrong and truely attempt to understand and respect each others rights to exist. Instead of all this finger wagging and bullshit WMD excuses for invading countries.

As for the 15,000 imprisoned Iraqis, I would suggest taking a good hard look at the conditions of their imprisonment, and who was responsible for selecting them for jail time. I'm only guessing here but i'd say more than 75% would be guys that have been pulled from their homes during a raid by emotionally charged soldiers. These soldiers are filled with rage that someone had the gall to attack their home country(or their friends with IED's), and in doing so imagine each middle age man they come across to be the next leader of Al Qaeda.

Solution? get the f*ck out of the country and leave it to be governed by its own people, release the prisoners, admit defeat.

The way I see it, liberalism and conservatism are seperated by degrees of empathy and simplification.

Simplifying a situation is an important skill, but it can be innappropriatly applied.

Similarly, empathy for the situations of others is automatic for some people, to the extent that they might imagine the pain or desires of others to an unhealthy degree.

Empathy severely limits simplification in times of strife, and is neccessarily often suppressed. A more simple objective can be healthier for unification, like good vs. evil and other black and white distinction. But with more details and more information the story gets complicated, and eventually a point can be reached where individuals decide they can no longer ignore the grey areas, and start to lose the good-guy bad-guy point of view.

Case in point, people are noticing that we have 15,000 Iraqis imprisoned within Iraq with no trial dates, no set jurisdiction from which the trials will refer to, and no way of proving their innocence until these are decided. Depending on which section of the empathy vs. simplicity bridge you are on in this situation, you can argue that we need to keep these certain, probably or possible bad people off the streets or you can argue that for all the bad people imprisioned there are also a lot of 'possible' bad people who we're unintentionally giving a great excuse to be problem-makers upon release (where they'll find no employment, no family or friends who want to be seen with them, a distrust of the government they had no say in, etc.).


Anyhow, that was a bit rambling, but I hope someone will read this and swing a comment my way. ; )