Ask Lemmy

Because with time, this light is also putting an end to not just itself but every other form of life around it.

Whether the positives outweigh the negatives doesn't really matter when there's nobody left around. Once we get to the point where the climate disaster is bad enough and irreversible (it might have happened already), it doesn't even matter if humanity suddenly falls back into the middle ages and gets primitive enough to not do any harm anymore: certain processes won't just suddenly stop.

I don't think Epstein was a spy for any government. What kind of idiotic spy leaves thousands of emails as written proofs of crimes? I get it that he'd use gmail to seem inconspicuous, but you can easily delete your own emails. You rarely hear of spies, because they're very good at covering their tracks.

I think he was just a degenerate rich guy hanging out with other degenerate rich guys.

Communal anarchy is as valid a political orientation as any other

I think you should be able to hit any able bodied person once, without being charged with a crime.

You can’t just beat someone to hell. You’re still on the hook for any civil damages for serious injuries that occur. But if we just let anybody hit anybody else just that one time, I believe society would be a kinder place.

If we allow people with significant dark tetrad personality traits (narcissism, machiavellianism, psychopathy, everyday sadism) or social dominance oriented people to have any meaningful amount of power over others, including the ability to run for office or vote, they will eventually turn societies into… well, what we see now.

Unsurprisingly conservatism overlaps with those traits.

So, ironically, to be able to run a functioning democracy, you'd have to exclude a fairly sizeable chunk of the population from participating in it

Edit: and this includes directorial or managerial positions in any kind of organisation, because corporate psychopaths are common scarily common and very harmful

It's pronounced "gif"

We should riot and K!ll all billionaires

Humanity can't be fixed, will always be selfish, greedy, discriminating against other people who differ enough, since a bunch of these things are pretty much hard coded. You might not be, some people you know might not be - but statistically, the majority of humanity will happily watch others get oppressed (or worse) for various reasons. There will always be people who manipulate others for power/wealth, disregarding law, morals or the environment, and there will always be a fuckton of gullible/dumb/mean people who happily buy the propaganda for reasons above.

Therefore, no matter what kind of society you try to form, with enough time we will get back to where we are now, and humanity will never be able to break out of this downward spiral, due to its inherent fault.

...which leads to my main controversial opinion, based on the above: the only cure to the mass extinction and the worsening climate happening today is the eradication of the human species. Yes, it would be such a shame saying goodbye to all the great things we have achieved, dad jokes, poetry, the Backstreet Boys; all this means nothing if everything dies on a scorching/freezing planet. At least if we take out humanity, other forms of life could survive, and life as we know it isn't really found on every other planet.

Obviously there will be nothing wiping the human race off of the face of the Earth, and if it somehow ever disappears, it will be by its own doing - but chances are that will also take all other forms of life with it.

Looking at all the awful things humans have been doing to each other, all the pollution, all the ignorance, all the destruction, I wouldn't hesitate a bit if there was a red button in front of me that could magically make them disappear (including me, of course). In the blink of an eye. I would slam down on it as fast as I can.