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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   37110 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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Right, but have you ever been the only one dialing into a conference room? Everyone else can see, and all you have is sound.

Sure, and the primary reason that's a problem isn't that other people have visuals, and I do not, it's because other people are present in a 3 dimensional space, and I'm not. The sound that I do get is flattened and muffled, just as the sound that they get from me. We know this, because no one decided that demanding participants state their sex and attire helps to communicate in that situation.

When Bob in network engineering asks me to limit the use of resources on the mainframe on Fridays, I should also consider the mundane reason the most likely one, though it is possible he is training Skynet, the mundane is almost always correct, in my experience.

The big difference is that even though you might choose to trust Bob, his claims are verifiable. People asking that you comply with an arbitrary request, who's utility is not only unproven in the instant, but is fundamentally unprovable, tends is not typically explainable by mundane reasons.

Many peoples tequests ate not verifiable in a way that matters though. I may in yheory be able to find out if my new customer asking to be. called Mrs Jones is or is not married, but I am not actually going to bother.

Taking people at their word has served me well for the last 50 odd years, and my experience is the vast vast majority of people are not hiding some complicated reason behind a mundane one. People largely are mundane. If blind Paul asks to know what colour everyone is wearing its very probably because it helps him navigate his world in some way, and very unlikely to be because he is trying to play some kind of power game.

Many peoples tequests ate not verifiable in a way that matters though. I may in yheory be able to find out if my new customer asking to be. called Mrs Jones is or is not married, but I am not actually going to bother.

Doesn't matter. My point is that theoretically verifiable claims, that no one is ever going to bother verifying, are still fundamentally different, and more trustworthy, than unverifiable claims.

Taking people at their word has served me well for the last 50 odd years, and my experience is the vast vast majority of people are not hiding some complicated reason behind a mundane one. People largely are mundane

Petty psychological games are pretty mundane, and not complex.

Also your 50 year experience rings hollow when compared to the recent 1-2 decades of watching some of the most cruel and manipulative people take over entire cultures, and destroy lives of good people, by making arbitrary demands that others swear are based in good, mundane, intentions.

If blind Paul asks to know what colour everyone is wearing its very probably because it helps him navigate his world in some way, and very unlikely to be because he is trying to play some kind of power game.

That's your assertion, but it's largely unbacked by evidence in this conversation.

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