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Unknown Armies is kind of like this. Most magic requires obsession, and you don't get a lot of well adjusted, friendly, people who also, say, collects all many of coin and money (money is power) but won't spend any (that's giving away your power!)

There's a bunch of schools of magic but they're all built on an obsession and paradox. The book is really well written, too. (At least 2e is. I didn't spend much time with 3e)

Right, humans are bad about that kind of thing. I think it has to do with Dunbar's number? The monkeysphere? It's hard for us to model a lot of people as full people in our head, especially as they're more removed from us.

Like you probably don't really think about the garbage man as a fully fleshed out guy with hopes, dreams, a favorite band, a love that got away, and all that. When you have some absolutely rancid trash, you probably just throw it in the can and forget about it. But if it was your mother or best friend that was going to have to deal with it, maybe you'd be more careful. Wouldn't want the bag to rip and spray maggots all over Mom.

That's fine. That's all of us.

But I think there's degrees. Shades. Like you mentioned cell phones. Most of us accept the out of sight horrors that go with them. But, like, some people are absolute assholes to wait staff. Just treat the waiter like shit, are rude to the coffee shop people, whatever. I think most of us recognize that as bad.

Somewhere between those two points I think is "I'm going to build software to spy on people". Personally, I think that should be ok the far side of the line. The not okay side. Why? A bit of self preservation, a bit of ethics, and a helping of "I don't want to contribute to bad things happening to people, even ones I don't know".

This post is getting long. I think you're right that it's not as simple as "doesn't care about other people" but I think that's a factor.

this is a question I often want to ask the pearl clutchers.

I think some of them don't have an answer because they actually support the regime, and they're going hard on "non violence" because they don't want people to fight back

Some probably haven't thought it through, and don't have an answer.

Some probably have an answer that's a variation of "too late". You know, after they came for the unionists, the jews, the catholics, the mexicans, and there's no one left to stand with them.

Men are not okay

You know how scam emails intentionally include mistakes because they want to filter out smart people? Same idea.

Reasonably smart people will see this and go "this is garbage". The idiots will go deeper, and become loyal gop voters.

Did anything even happen to the cop that shot that journalist? Seems like everyone just accepted this instead of bringing charges or vigilanteism

I think this is one of those pearl clutching communities. Borderline collaboration, but it's their power to enforce their rules.

Oh I read something interesting about that once. I think it came at it as big city vs urban modes of thought.

Someone who lives in a big city surrounded by many people realizes quickly you need robust systems. You just don't have the time to handle every case as a unique circumstance. So you have laws and regulations to shift things earlier in the process when they're easier to deal with (eg: fire codes before the building gets built, instead of no codes and a fire hazard)

The other mode doesn't think like that. They can have simple laws on the books, and if there's a problem they'll just go talk it out with Brian the sheriff. Sure abortion is bad but you know little Suzie she just made a mistake, you can make an exception for her, right?

Obviously the "treat every case as special and rely on informal social connections" doesn't scale or consistently deliver fair, just, outcomes. But according to some half remembered post I read, that's how some right wing people view the world. You can have draconian laws, but the people enforcing them know when to apply them (against those assholes) and when not (for good folks who made a mistake)

So, I guess, corruption.

Single use plastic should he illegal for most things. Yes, it might be inconvenient to have to carry your own thermos or whatever, but filling the ocean with plastic is worse than inconvenient

It's too bad there's not going to be a prize when bluesky enshittifies, other than being able to say "I told you so"

He was a pretty smart guy, so I'm pretty sure he understood the ramifications. This isn't like a plumber working in a building that happens to house an evil company. This was directly working as a high ranking software developer at a shitty software company.

I've thought about that. But that seems like a terrible strategy, because it lets the Republicans do anything. The Republicans do a bad thing, or accuse you of doing a bad thing, and now you're incapable of responding to it?