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Net Neutrality Getting Repealed Owns


Zaraphayx
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I know most of you ignorant jewified sheeple disagree with this from the outset because I see the viral posts you keep retweeting that end up on my feed. Thankfully none of you vote so your opinions don't matter. But I do vote and I have a really big brain so mine do, implicitly, and I'm going to share them with you for your edification. You're welcome.

First off I want to address images like this I keep seeing passed around like a slut on prom night.

 

image.png.774650f2ecf0137f3b2ca025c81bfdb4.png

First off, I'm going to take for granted that this kind of retarded-ass service plan would actually exist. Spoilers: It wouldn't, because it isn't profitable for how convoluted it is and customers are turned off by having to make this many nuanced decisions in order to purchase a service. Whoever provides the simplest, most intuitive plan would reap the windfall of the aversion to decision fatigue which would just shift market trends back towards the current models where you pay for network speed and bandwidth.

Secondly, I currently pay $60 a month for a 100mbps connection.

Under this plan I could actually *save* money by only purchasing the services I wanted to utilize instead of all of the ad-ridden junk that infests the web.

Pandora? Napster? Rhapsody? Fuck that shit. Streaming services blow ass. If I like an artists music I'll buy the album from them or download it from Russia. -10 dollars for me.

YouTube? Hulu? ESPN? Netflix? YouTube has been sliding progressively into a giant fetid pool of shit ever since Google acquired it and started shoving ads down my throat like a Brazzers actress. Netflix is only good for documentaries about Hitler and weed and I actually read books so no thank you, video streaming websites are productivity traps for the unmotivated and dull who can't even entertain themselves. -10, next.

I don't need any of the news sites, they're all utter trash where nothing of value is ever written. I would be more embarrassed about my browser auto-completing to CNN than e621. -10.

That leaves what, video games, e-commerce and search engines? And Twitter is free? Cool my internet bill is now $45. Which brings me to my next point.

Tiered service is actually good for poor losers like you who can't afford the good internet, because it opens up affordable access to the essential web-services without attaching a premium price tag to subsidize your neighbors who are all binge watching Netflix in 4k and throttling the entire neighborhoods bandwidth.

netflix-and-youtube-are-americas-biggest

Multimedia streaming currently accounts for approximately 70% of bandwidth usage in North America. These are not educational services, job-seeking tools, or even international communications between individuals for the exchange of information. They are leisure activities for those with too much time on their hands and no friends. So every time one of you sad nerds goes on a tirade about internet censorship on social media networks like Twitter and Facebook which are currently enacting purge protocols for wrong-think I want you to come back to this thread and look at that graph and punch yourself in the face for being stupid, then personally apologize to me for the impulsive, ill-informed, and alarmist response you're about to respond to this thread with.
 
Finally, the only reason ISPs like Comcast and Verizon have such a stranglehold on the market in the first place is because of anti-competitive government deals made at the local level. So maybe if you want shit to change go write your mayor or congressman and stop tweeting your 25th unfunny "Trump is an orange" joke this week.

Thanks 4 reading XoXo Zara

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Some good points, although:

-Voting in a democracy makes no real difference when it comes to big-picture policies (eg foreign policy, money supply, monetary policy) but it might have a minor local effect if on the off-chance someone who isn't part of the major parties and hasn't sold out gets elected in a local seat.

-Accessing information relating to other parts of the world whether in tables, graphs or just plain words is almost always very light on bandwidth usage compared to streaming video and music. Even if you spend 90% of your time job seeking / looking at statistics  / other educational purposes it only takes a few 1080p videos for most of your bandwidth usage to show access to streaming content.

I'm not saying that all or even most people do this, just that certain data is usually not very bandwidth intensive.

-You can stop ads completely by using uBlock Origin for Firefox (optionally with NoScript to preemptively block scripts which complements uBlock Origin nicely).

Yes you can even block in-video ads on Youtube using uBlock Origin.

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On point 1, I hope this was a good lesson to people about what I have been talking about for years: Most of our government is run by unelected officials who don't answer to anyone, and voting doesn't really do much to change things that affect us directly.

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The average person doesn't possess the command of the facts necessary to make informed decisions on social policy issues. The function of representative democracy is to elect resourceful individuals with experience in law and government to make these decisions while staying faithful to the platforms on which their constituents elected them. 

Just because you don't like the system doesn't mean the system doesn't work. In fact it seems to be overwhelmingly successful. 

 

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This is a mindset, this is how Rassah thinks, it's funny, but it's also very troubling. No, that is not the way our democracy works, we've had free and fair elections, we've accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them and that is what must be expected of anyone making a post on a furry forum during a political discussion. You know, President Obama once said if you're whining before the game is even finished it just shows that you're just not up for political discussions, let's be clear about what he is saying and what that means, he is denigrating and talking down our democracy and I for one am appalled.

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5 minutes ago, Zaraphayx said:

The average person doesn't possess the command of the facts necessary to make informed decisions on social policy issues. The function of representative democracy is to elect resourceful individuals with experience in law and government to make these decisions while staying faithful to the platforms on which their constituents elected them. 

Just because you don't like the system doesn't mean the system doesn't work. In fact it seems to be overwhelmingly successful. 

 

In theory that's what democracy is about. In reality, the "representatives" spend much of their time campaigning and arranging deals to fund their campaigns.

The government bureaucracy itself barely changes over time. If a politician wants to be more than a local representative of some forgotten backwater that means having to make allies in higher places. The higher you want to go the more powerful allies you'll need and the more powerful interests you end up serving, whether it's media companies/banks/food companies/etc or the central bank if you want to get near the political "top".

It's funny that in the vast majority of countries money can buy almost anyone out (or buy out others to influence/remove them) yet no one pays attention to the central bank, which controls the supply of money and monetary policy. How can you claim to be a democracy when the single most influential organization is privately owned and answers to no one?

If it's any consolation Australia isn't a real democracy either.

As for success, I'll admit the US system has been overwhelmingly successful in channeling wealth into fewer and fewer hands and maintaining the most powerful military. Bravo.

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On 12/19/2017 at 10:24 AM, Zaraphayx said:

First off, I'm going to take for granted that this kind of retarded-ass service plan would actually exist. Spoilers: It wouldn't, because it isn't profitable for how convoluted it is and customers are turned off by having to make this many nuanced decisions in order to purchase a service.

But cable/satellite TV already does that.

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On 12/20/2017 at 3:48 AM, Zaraphayx said:

The average person doesn't possess the command of the facts necessary to make informed decisions on social policy issues. The function of representative democracy is to elect resourceful individuals with experience in law and government to make these decisions while staying faithful to the platforms on which their constituents elected them. 

That's a nice theory you got there. Would have been cool if it actually worked, instead of those individuals just being corporate cronies who don't have to answer for what they do.

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On ‎12‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 9:24 AM, Zaraphayx said:

First off, I'm going to take for granted that this kind of retarded-ass service plan would actually exist. Spoilers: It wouldn't, because it isn't profitable for how convoluted it is and customers are turned off by having to make this many nuanced decisions in order to purchase a service. Whoever provides the simplest, most intuitive plan would reap the windfall of the aversion to decision fatigue which would just shift market trends back towards the current models where you pay for network speed and bandwidth.

HAHAHAHA!! You actually believe that ISPs like Comcast and Verizon give a flying fuck what their customers think? They spent millions upon millions to ensure that net neutrality gets repealed, not to mention the fact that the FCC chairman is a former Verizon employee, who Trump appointed into office. There's not a shadow of a doubt that the ISPs won't hesitate to use these practices once they have the chance, they already got what they wanted. The only thing that's preventing them from doing it is that they have to wait for Congressional approval and the courts to allow it.

Let me tell you, the GOP controlled Congress doesn't give a fuck about us and President Trump sure as hell doesn't give a fuck about us, the only people they serve are their donors. This country is now a corporate oligarchy.

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1 hour ago, VGmaster9 said:

HAHAHAHA!! You actually believe that ISPs like Comcast and Verizon give a flying fuck what their customers think? They spent millions upon millions to ensure that net neutrality gets repealed, 

Um, Comcast was one of the supporters of this misnamed "Net Neutrality" law that got repealed, along with other mega corporations, who all spent millions and millions to try to keep that law on the books.

 

Btw, if ISPs didn't do this for the first 30 years of Internet's existence, why would they now?

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2 hours ago, VGmaster9 said:

Let me tell you, the GOP controlled Congress doesn't give a fuck about us and President Trump sure as hell doesn't give a fuck about us, the only people they serve are their donors. This country is now a corporate oligarchy.

Funny how this rhetoric only comes out when it's Republicans in power and not when Democrats piss away billions of dollars in handouts to Comcast and then do literally nothing to enforce accountability when those payments result in a net zero improvement to communications infrastructure.

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1 hour ago, Rassah said:

Um, Comcast was one of the supporters of this misnamed "Net Neutrality" law that got repealed, along with other mega corporations, who all spent millions and millions to try to keep that law on the books.

 

Btw, if ISPs didn't do this for the first 30 years of Internet's existence, why would they now?

Source?

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4 hours ago, VGmaster9 said:

Let me tell you, the GOP controlled Congress doesn't give a fuck about us and President Trump sure as hell doesn't give a fuck about us, the only people they serve are their donors. This country is now a corporate oligarchy.

If it's any consolation, it's been like that for a while. Major General Smedley Butler does a good job describing the military-industrial-complex during World War 1 (though it's been a corporate oligarchy much longer than that of course):

https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

2 hours ago, Rassah said:

Btw, if ISPs didn't do this for the first 30 years of Internet's existence, why would they now?

The 2010 Comcast vs FCC case was to do with Comcast interfering with peer-to-peer traffic. The court ruled that the FCC couldn't do anything about it due to the way that ISPs were classified.

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On 12/20/2017 at 2:12 AM, WileyWarWeasel said:

In theory that's what democracy is about. In reality, the "representatives" spend much of their time campaigning and arranging deals to fund their campaigns.

The government bureaucracy itself barely changes over time. If a politician wants to be more than a local representative of some forgotten backwater that means having to make allies in higher places. The higher you want to go the more powerful allies you'll need and the more powerful interests you end up serving, whether it's media companies/banks/food companies/etc or the central bank if you want to get near the political "top".

It's funny that in the vast majority of countries money can buy almost anyone out (or buy out others to influence/remove them) yet no one pays attention to the central bank, which controls the supply of money and monetary policy. How can you claim to be a democracy when the single most influential organization is privately owned and answers to no one?

If it's any consolation Australia isn't a real democracy either.

As for success, I'll admit the US system has been overwhelmingly successful in channeling wealth into fewer and fewer hands and maintaining the most powerful military. Bravo.

Hey idiot the U.S. isn't the only liberal democracy on Earth. Literally every place on the planet worth living is some form of representative democracy. And because of these systems and those who maintain them you're granted the freedom to go online and spout vacuous conjecture instead of living in a constant state of existential dread.

13 hours ago, Rassah said:

That's a nice theory you got there. Would have been cool if it actually worked, instead of those individuals just being corporate cronies who don't have to answer for what they do.

It's a more stable and equitable arrangement than basically everything else that's been actualized. It's naive and stupid to think that human beings can exist without power hierarchies and oppositional relationships. They're innate to our biology.
 

11 hours ago, VGmaster9 said:

HAHAHAHA!! You actually believe that ISPs like Comcast and Verizon give a flying fuck what their customers think? They spent millions upon millions to ensure that net neutrality gets repealed, not to mention the fact that the FCC chairman is a former Verizon employee, who Trump appointed into office. There's not a shadow of a doubt that the ISPs won't hesitate to use these practices once they have the chance, they already got what they wanted. The only thing that's preventing them from doing it is that they have to wait for Congressional approval and the courts to allow it.

Let me tell you, the GOP controlled Congress doesn't give a fuck about us and President Trump sure as hell doesn't give a fuck about us, the only people they serve are their donors. This country is now a corporate oligarchy.

They care what customers think to the extent which their profits are effected, yes. Also Ajit Pai was appointed to the FCC by Obama in 2012; Trump designated him Chairman. This isn't a partisan issue you mouthbreathing chimp.

It's like you  contrarian proto-humans read any statement defending an institution you dislike for reasons that don't matter and assume the person you're disagreeing with believes the opposite extreme end of what you do. Go outside.

 

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2 hours ago, Zaraphayx said:

Hey idiot the U.S. isn't the only liberal democracy on Earth. Literally every place on the planet worth living is some form of representative democracy. And because of these systems and those who maintain them you're granted the freedom to go online and spout vacuous conjecture instead of living in a constant state of existential dread.

One can post whatever one wants because it doesn't matter, it's like shouting into a hurricane. It is naive though to think that democracies actually represent the will of the people on major issues (wars, interventions, bailouts, etc).

I'll agree that the most livable places do tend to be democracies of some sort, though it doesn't take much to be better than the current alternatives.

2 hours ago, Zaraphayx said:

It's a more stable and equitable arrangement than basically everything else that's been actualized. It's naive and stupid to think that human beings can exist without power hierarchies and oppositional relationships. They're innate to our biology.

Primitive tribes tended to be more equitable, not because of innate altruism but because the leadership had no degree of separation from those they led which meant it was difficult to overstep their bounds without dire consequences. Also the fact that there was barely any surplus which meant that everyone had to be focused on the basic needs which hindered the formation of separate classes (that came around the time of agriculture).

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18 hours ago, VGmaster9 said:

Source?

https://corporate.comcast.com/comcast-voices/on-the-internet-day-of-action-comcast-supports-net-neutrality

Other megacorps that are some of the richest corporations in the world who were trying to keep net neutrality were Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, just to name a few.

10 hours ago, Zaraphayx said:

It's a more stable and equitable arrangement than basically everything else that's been actualized. It's naive and stupid to think that human beings can exist without power hierarchies and oppositional relationships. They're innate to our biology.

No one said anything about existing without power hirearchies. It's just that some types of power hirearchies, like businesses, answer directly to the people (their customers), while others, like various agencies under the executive and various state and local departments only answer to the one politician you get to choose once every few years, so not really to anyone. Especially if that politician isn't able to be elected again.

Accountability in hirearchies matters. Bureaucracies are the best at spreading it around until you don't know who's responsible.

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On 12/22/2017 at 5:13 AM, WileyWarWeasel said:

One can post whatever one wants because it doesn't matter, it's like shouting into a hurricane. It is naive though to think that democracies actually represent the will of the people on major issues (wars, interventions, bailouts, etc).

I'll agree that the most livable places do tend to be democracies of some sort, though it doesn't take much to be better than the current alternatives.

Cool I'm glad that you agree that in thousands of years of human development, representative democracy is the greatest societal arrangement we've actualized, and the alternatives aren't even close.

On 12/22/2017 at 5:13 AM, WileyWarWeasel said:

Primitive tribes tended to be more equitable, not because of innate altruism but because the leadership had no degree of separation from those they led which meant it was difficult to overstep their bounds without dire consequences. Also the fact that there was barely any surplus which meant that everyone had to be focused on the basic needs which hindered the formation of separate classes (that came around the time of agriculture).

Are the subtleties of human interaction completely lost upon you or something? Just because power isn't overt and in your face doesn't make it's influence any less impactful. Human beings exert dramatic influence over eachother even on the microcosmic scale. If you think that wealth disparity is the only measure of power you're not paying attention.

On 12/22/2017 at 12:58 PM, Rassah said:

No one said anything about existing without power hirearchies. It's just that some types of power hirearchies, like businesses, answer directly to the people (their customers), while others, like various agencies under the executive and various state and local departments only answer to the one politician you get to choose once every few years, so not really to anyone. Especially if that politician isn't able to be elected again.

Accountability in hirearchies matters. Bureaucracies are the best at spreading it around until you don't know who's responsible.

You don't know the furrst thing about business if you actually believe this.

Corporations answer to their shareholders first and foremost and if their interests happen to align with those of their customers then all the better. It's often the case that these interests *don't* align and then we get fun little events like the Equifax security breach, the 2013 horse meat scandal, and a little piece of history you might remember if you actually read anything but ancap memes called the 2008 financial crisis.

We've erected these regulatory agencies for the expressed purpose of keeping these sorts of things from happening because smarter men than you were aware of the dangers of an unregulated market and hoped to safeguard against it. 

Ultimately all of these constructs, private or public, are going to be as imperfect as the men comprising them. To think that systemic purity is the answer to a problem rooted in the human condition displays a profound lack of perspective on your part.

Both of you go read a book and stop wasting my time with this garbage.

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1 hour ago, Zaraphayx said:

Cool I'm glad that you agree that in thousands of years of human development, representative democracy is the greatest societal arrangement we've actualized, and the alternatives aren't even close.

The most palatable modern arrangement, perhaps. Compared to the old tribal arrangements it is not as equitable.

1 hour ago, Zaraphayx said:

Are the subtleties of human interaction completely lost upon you or something? Just because power isn't overt and in your face doesn't make it's influence any less impactful. Human beings exert dramatic influence over eachother even on the microcosmic scale. If you think that wealth disparity is the only measure of power you're not paying attention.

That's not quite what I meant. I meant that in a tribal setting, everyone knows everyone else and is in direct contact with everyone else. The people who make decisions that affect others directly interact with each of those other people on a regular basis.

In the modern world, a few political and business leaders make decisions that affect billions around the Earth but they don't socially interact with those that the decisions affect to any significant degree.

Obviously on a small scale people exert influence on each other, but it is only with large-scale organization typically found in civilizations that relatively few people can make decisions that significantly impact other people that they'll never even meet in person.

Perhaps those subtleties were lost on you ;)

2 hours ago, Zaraphayx said:

You don't know the furrst thing about business if you actually believe this.

Corporations answer to their shareholders first and foremost and if their interests happen to align with those of their customers then all the better. It's often the case that these interests *don't* align and then we get fun little events like the Equifax security breach, the 2013 horse meat scandal, and a little piece of history you might remember if you actually read anything but ancap memes called the 2008 financial crisis.

We've erected these regulatory agencies for the expressed purpose of keeping these sorts of things from happening because smarter men than you were aware of the dangers of an unregulated market and hoped to safeguard against it. 

Ultimately all of these constructs, private or public, are going to be as imperfect as the men comprising them. To think that systemic purity is the answer to a problem rooted in the human condition displays a profound lack of perspective on your part.

Both of you go read a book and stop wasting my time with this garbage.

I have been reading about societal and economic arrangements in both tribal and modern societies.

The last eleven thousand years of "development" are an anomaly in the roughly 250 thousand years of homo sapiens history. In the process of creating larger and larger organizational structures, civilized humans:

-have lost individual and small-group autonomy. Nowadays people are reliant on global supply chains just for the basics like food.

-started performing tasks that are increasingly unrelated to the direct acquisition of food, shelter and water. In many cases the tasks are pointless or even destructive for the rest of society (eg lobbyists). Almost all daily modern tasks are now completely different from the everyday tasks that humans and their ancestors evolved to do over millions of years.

-have lived and worked in increasingly unnatural conditions.

-have pursued leisure activities increasingly disconnected from each other and their natural environment.

-have seen their power structures radically shift towards small groups making decisions that affect the rest without interacting with them socially. See previous part.

-have used increasingly intensive methods of resource extraction and dissipation to grow their numbers far into overshoot territory. Biological history shows time and again that when a species goes into overshoot, its population numbers crash after a time. The more severe the overshoot the more severe the crash.

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Mmm yeah no, it wasn't about them passing or changing the price structure of the net, and that's kinda hard to do in ways because there's always new sites coming up. However, it was about the companies shaking down other sites for more money to get priority on their network.

That was already done with Netflix. The biggest reason for this of course wasn't just it taking up 70% of the bandwidth (though long ago the government funded these wonderful ISPs to build a better infrastructure since we still have one of the worst services compared to other countries...and they pissed that $$ away...on...fuckifIknow...maybe hookers and blow). It was pulling away from the other traditions of media service, ie cable tv and premium channels. So let's not kid ourselves into thinking these "poor ISPs are suffering bandwidth problems" it's more like their stubborn refusal to try to really change with the times and the only way to control that was to throttle it.

The throttling will happen to make their preferred service get priority, they're not gonna give consumers some +5 buck plan a month to get CNN, they're more likely to slow down CNN until they  (CNN) pay more while they pump out their preferred news service.

Basically this is like another version of the mp3 fight that first broke out, big guys spending money to slow or try to control something that was out of their hands, now that it's late in the game of course they can't go with their original plan.

It's not that I don't get that streaming services do take up resources, but they were given opportunity to have better internet long ago, which other countries do better even with metered plans. It's just if not for those hungry services that many people use today....they would have been fine with the old way of dealing entertainment though stupid package deals that most just kinda shrug at these days.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Olive said:

Net neutrality is just meant to distract us from the real problem, which is the attack on our military veterans. We need to improve their quality of life before we start ranting about the internet. 

The internet isn't real, while as military veterans are. Let us not forget this. 

lmao

This is so random.

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4 hours ago, Olive said:

Net neutrality is just meant to distract us from the real problem, which is the attack on our military veterans. We need to improve their quality of life before we start ranting about the internet. 

The internet isn't real, while as military veterans are. Let us not forget this. 

Veterans aren't the only ones not receiving adequate support.

Besides one could say that net neut is distracting people from many other problems also.

Or perhaps one could say that modern western society faces multiple issues and that this forum topic has been dedicated to talking about net neut.

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3 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

Veterans aren't the only ones not receiving adequate support.

Besides one could say that net neut is distracting people from many other problems also.

Or perhaps one could say that modern western society faces multiple issues and that this forum topic has been dedicated to talking about net neut.

WRONG, we need to ignore all other issues until this particular one is solved! We can't pawsibly focus on more than one at a time!

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1 hour ago, Revates said:

WRONG, we need to ignore all other issues until this particular one is solved! We can't pawsibly focus on more than one at a time!

Wait a minute, the vets are getting a bit hot under the collar because of GERBIL WERMING. We can't do anything about net neut until we deal with the vets but we cant deal with the vets until we deal with werming but we need net neut in order to openly talk about gerbil werming!

We have a CONUNDRUM.

Also it looks like Olive has disappeared. THE GERBILS GOT OLIVE #freeolive #oliveneutrality

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I hate when ""woke"" people say "This is distracting us from the main problem". And then dont elaborate on what this nebulous looming main problem is...

We could be disgruntled about the most pressing shit humanity has ever faced. 

"Earth is about to be struck by a gamma ray burst that will deplete our Ozone layer and cause mass global extinction. We are all going to die..."

Some politically conscious moron: "Ya'll focusin' on the wrong stuff. This is what they WANT us to be distracted by. Rise against the status quo. #woke #thirdeye #howcanmirrorsbereal..."

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9 minutes ago, Tsuujou said:

I hate when ""woke"" people say "This is distracting us from the main problem". And then dont elaborate on what this nebulous looming main problem is...

We could be disgruntled about the most pressing shit humanity has ever faced. 

"Earth is about to be struck by a gamma ray burst that will deplete our Ozone layer and cause mass global extinction. We are all going to die..."

Some politically conscious moron: "Ya'll focusin' on the wrong stuff. This is what they WANT us to be distracted by. Rise against the status quo. #woke #thirdeye #howcanmirrorsbereal..."

It doesn't help when most of the "news" is sensationalist rhetoric anyway. Oh noes, some celebrity insulted a politician because of an offhand remark WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN.

Here in Australia there have been a few traffic fatalities and injuries over the holidays (like every other holiday season). The mainstream media contains headlines like "calls for more safety measures" but our national trends for road-related injuries and deaths have been overall down for the last couple of decades.

That's the sort of crap we get here, even though the leading cause of death for 5-45 year old people is suicide and the rates have been increasing for both younger and older people.

On the flip side we get news of how well retail sales are apparently doing, but no mention of Australian household debt-to-GDP ratio being the second highest in the world (about 120%, Switzerland is 1st with a bit more).

 

Anyways back on topic: bring back Olive and net neut. @Revates As the all-powerful murrderator I petition for this thread's title to be changed to "Net neut Getin Repd Wns" or a shorter title.

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47 minutes ago, Quiet Poultry And SALAD said:

You would make fun of it only because YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND. If you understood then you would be helping us instead of FIGHTING for their side. 

You want the discussion to be about net neutrality when it should be focused on military veterans. Get your head out your ass and PAY ATTENTION. The only reason to talk about net neutrality is to identify that it's unimportant and only a distraction. 

Eo94oQ7.jpg

shut up

damn nerd

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"Whataboutism" is a common tactic designed to distract people from an issue or problem.

Warning to the wise: "What about (other issue)" is often (but not always) employed by people who don't actually give a shit about that other issue, and who mostly want to kill the discussion about the issue that's currently on the table, but know that they can't quite get away with just telling people they just shouldn't care at all.

Don't fall for it, guys. Nine times out of ten, it's a ruse.



 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/19/2017 at 8:24 AM, Zaraphayx said:

Thankfully none of you vote

wow rood

You see this red box over Jill Stein?

jill.png.69412778743dd38624337f8d3a410976.png

I am one of the 3731 people who voted for her in my state. So don't say I don't vote. I'm part of the 0.3%! :^)

 

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On a more serious note, is there not a possibility of charging more for usage of competing brands and sites and/or websites they don't want you accessing without net neutrality? Like charging more for websites that have political leanings a particular company doesn't agree with. Or making a deal to charge more for usage of Google than for Yahoo or something like that? Is that not something to be concerned about, that people would be actively encouraged to see certain political views over others due to cost efficiency?

And what makes you think people don't use a shitload of different websites on a regular basis? Websites that theoretically would have different price tags attached to them?

 

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@Battlechili

Jill Stein was never going to get many votes, her media coverage for the entire presidential campaign was 36 seconds.

Bernie Sanders never had a chance of even becoming the main democratic presidential candidate, his media coverage was less than 1% of Trump from the very beginning even when he initially had the same popularity as Trump.

In fact Trump and Hillary received almost all of the media's attention. Trump was even labelled as "anti-establishment" even though he was a part of the business establishment and regularly associated with other high-level businessmen.

His victory wasn't some miraculous blow to the establishment on behalf of the people, it was handed to him by the media.

On 12/20/2017 at 12:54 AM, Zaraphayx said:

Thankfully none of you vote so your opinions don't matter.

The political system and media is setup so that only those with rich backers (or are part of the rich business class themselves) have the best chance of becoming one of the two main candidates for people to vote for. Both candidates serve the same sets of private interests so when it comes to major issues (war, foreign policy, bailouts, tax loopholes, etc) it makes no difference who you vote for. Sure you can vote for a third-party candidate but the vast majority of people will vote for one of the two main candidates which renders your vote meaningless. In such a farcical system it would not be unreasonable to wonder what is the point of voting at all.

@Battlechili

There's already been at least one case of an ISP interfering with web traffic:

On 12/22/2017 at 1:15 PM, WileyWarWeasel said:

The 2010 Comcast vs FCC case was to do with Comcast interfering with peer-to-peer traffic. The court ruled that the FCC couldn't do anything about it due to the way that ISPs were classified.

 

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ITT guy who thinks that human evolution just stopped 5000 years ago and that humans haven't been sexually selecting for traits useful to civilization also thinks that the media "handed Trump the election"

You must have committed unspeakable sins in a previous life to get reincarnated into a clueless nerd that loves to ramble online. I weep 4 u

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14 hours ago, Zaraphayx said:

ITT guy who thinks that human evolution just stopped 5000 years ago and that humans haven't been sexually selecting for traits useful to civilization also thinks that the media "handed Trump the election"

You must have committed unspeakable sins in a previous life to get reincarnated into a clueless nerd that loves to ramble online. I weep 4 u

I never said human evolution stopped. Living conditions within civilization (especially once it entered the industrial phase) have been changing much faster than the humans within it. Don't put words in my mouth to construct your straw man.

Also do you think that Trump would've gotten anywhere if the media ignored him? It was either going to be him or Hillary because they garnered the most attention by far in the mainstream.

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6 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

I never said human evolution stopped. Living conditions within civilization (especially once it entered the industrial phase) have been changing much faster than the humans within it. Don't put words in my mouth to construct your straw man.

Also do you think that Trump would've gotten anywhere if the media ignored him? It was either going to be him or Hillary because they garnered the most attention by far in the mainstream.

You cited the last 11 thousand years of human development as a time frame and then use a bunch of vague pseudoscience nonsense phrases like "unnatural living conditions" and want to now accuse me of misrepresenting your position because you're either too lazy and stupid to do the intellectual legwork that a claim like yours requires or you legitimately think you're smarter than me and will "get" me with stupid nerd rhetorical tactics like invoking logical fallacies that you don't even understand.

Your second claim is vacuous because the media never fails to cover the presidential election nor the candidates from the two mainstream parties.

Try harder.

 

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3 hours ago, Zaraphayx said:

You cited the last 11 thousand years of human development as a time frame and then use a bunch of vague pseudoscience nonsense phrases like "unnatural living conditions" and want to now accuse me of misrepresenting your position because you're either too lazy and stupid to do the intellectual legwork that a claim like yours requires or you legitimately think you're smarter than me and will "get" me with stupid nerd rhetorical tactics like invoking logical fallacies that you don't even understand.

My post was already getting long and off track enough as it was, but since you're apparently clamoring for details I'll go into more detail then.

Admittedly the claim is somewhat vague if you're not familiar with ancient history though it is not pseudo-scientific at all; there is clear anthropological evidence of how our ancestors lived compared to how we live now. Before the advent of agriculture homo sapiens was living as hunter-gatherers. We have lived as hunter-gatherers for 240 thousand of the roughly 250 thousand years that the species has been around for, and homo sapiens' ancestors were hunting/gathering/using fire long before then.

Compared to the amount of time spent as hunter-gatherer tribes the advent of agriculture was pretty recent for our species. While the lifestyles and organization of agriculturalists changed rapidly (compared to the pace of change hundreds of thousands of years leading up to agriculture) the drives and instincts that evolved over millions of years changed much more slowly. This divergence in the rate of change between civilization and the innate evolution of the species got wider over time, especially when civilization's change picked up significantly during the Renaissance and again during the industrial revolution.

Given the fact that only about 5% of homo sapiens time has been spent conducting agriculture and the rapid changes in living conditions during that time relative to our much slower innate evolutionary changes it is safe to say that we are indeed living in unnatural conditions.

As for apparent laziness I was trying not to diverge too much from the thread's topic by posting walls of text that weren't related to it.

 

Also you have clearly misrepresented my position.

On 12/26/2017 at 11:05 PM, WileyWarWeasel said:

The last eleven thousand years of "development" are an anomaly in the roughly 250 thousand years of homo sapiens history. In the process of creating larger and larger organizational structures, civilized humans:

-have lost individual and small-group autonomy. Nowadays people are reliant on global supply chains just for the basics like food.

-started performing tasks that are increasingly unrelated to the direct acquisition of food, shelter and water. In many cases the tasks are pointless or even destructive for the rest of society (eg lobbyists). Almost all daily modern tasks are now completely different from the everyday tasks that humans and their ancestors evolved to do over millions of years.

-have lived and worked in increasingly unnatural conditions.

-have pursued leisure activities increasingly disconnected from each other and their natural environment.

-have seen their power structures radically shift towards small groups making decisions that affect the rest without interacting with them socially. See previous part.

-have used increasingly intensive methods of resource extraction and dissipation to grow their numbers far into overshoot territory. Biological history shows time and again that when a species goes into overshoot, its population numbers crash after a time. The more severe the overshoot the more severe the crash.

 

On 1/10/2018 at 2:23 AM, Zaraphayx said:

ITT guy who thinks that human evolution just stopped 5000 years ago and that humans haven't been sexually selecting for traits useful to civilization also thinks that the media "handed Trump the election"

My accusation of you misrepresenting my position is not due to laziness or stupidity. It is due to you falsely claiming I thought certain things even though I never once made statements pertaining to what you claim I think. In this case you are flat out lying about what I am thinking about.

 

4 hours ago, Zaraphayx said:

Your second claim is vacuous because the media never fails to cover the presidential election nor the candidates from the two mainstream parties.

You missed the point of what I was making regarding the media and elections. I never claimed that the media doesn't cover the presidential election nor did I say that the media doesn't cover candidates of the two major parties.

The point I was making is that one candidate from each major party is given the lion's share of media coverage, the other candidates from the major parties receive very little coverage and candidates from other parties receive next to no coverage. As a result the candidate that tends to become president is one of the two that was given the majority share of media coverage from the start of the campaign to the finish.

We saw that happen in the last election with Hillary and Trump getting the largest share of media coverage almost from the beginning of the presidential campaign.

4 hours ago, Zaraphayx said:

Try harder.

If you need more details about something I posted previously please do not try to fill in the gaps with your assumptions and then argue against those assumptions.

All you have to do is ask for clarification on something that I have posted and I'll likely provide it.

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6 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

My post was already getting long and off track enough as it was, but since you're apparently clamoring for details I'll go into more detail then.

Admittedly the claim is somewhat vague if you're not familiar with ancient history though it is not pseudo-scientific at all; there is clear anthropological evidence of how our ancestors lived compared to how we live now. Before the advent of agriculture homo sapiens was living as hunter-gatherers. We have lived as hunter-gatherers for 240 thousand of the roughly 250 thousand years that the species has been around for, and homo sapiens' ancestors were hunting/gathering/using fire long before then.

Compared to the amount of time spent as hunter-gatherer tribes the advent of agriculture was pretty recent for our species. While the lifestyles and organization of agriculturalists changed rapidly (compared to the pace of change hundreds of thousands of years leading up to agriculture) the drives and instincts that evolved over millions of years changed much more slowly. This divergence in the rate of change between civilization and the innate evolution of the species got wider over time, especially when civilization's change picked up significantly during the Renaissance and again during the industrial revolution.

Given the fact that only about 5% of homo sapiens time has been spent conducting agriculture and the rapid changes in living conditions during that time relative to our much slower innate evolutionary changes it is safe to say that we are indeed living in unnatural conditions.

As for apparent laziness I was trying not to diverge too much from the thread's topic by posting walls of text that weren't related to it.

 

Also you have clearly misrepresented my position.

 

My accusation of you misrepresenting my position is not due to laziness or stupidity. It is due to you falsely claiming I thought certain things even though I never once made statements pertaining to what you claim I think. In this case you are flat out lying about what I am thinking about.

 

You missed the point of what I was making regarding the media and elections. I never claimed that the media doesn't cover the presidential election nor did I say that the media doesn't cover candidates of the two major parties.

The point I was making is that one candidate from each major party is given the lion's share of media coverage, the other candidates from the major parties receive very little coverage and candidates from other parties receive next to no coverage. As a result the candidate that tends to become president is one of the two that was given the majority share of media coverage from the start of the campaign to the finish.

We saw that happen in the last election with Hillary and Trump getting the largest share of media coverage almost from the beginning of the presidential campaign.

If you need more details about something I posted previously please do not try to fill in the gaps with your assumptions and then argue against those assumptions.

All you have to do is ask for clarification on something that I have posted and I'll likely provide it.

I don't require clarification; i have no interest in your layman conjecture and this isn't a debate. This is me mocking your truncated analysis of human origins by reducing it to its logical conclusions. You're so illiterate in the subject that you seem to think that sexual selection in response to technological advents hasn't resulted in genetic bottlenecks in human populations and go as far as to call these conditions "unnatural" when they were quite literally spawned from the mechanisms of evolutionary adaptation. 

The specifics of what you believe are irrelevant to me so long as they remain rooted in flawed premises.

I don't know what it is about my tone that has convinced you that i consider you an epistemic peer but thanks for the essay anyway nerd.

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1 hour ago, Zaraphayx said:

I don't require clarification; i have no interest in your layman conjecture and this isn't a debate. This is me mocking your truncated analysis of human origins by reducing it to its logical conclusions. You're so illiterate in the subject that you seem to think that sexual selection in response to technological advents hasn't resulted in genetic bottlenecks in human populations and go as far as to call these conditions "unnatural" when they were quite literally spawned from the mechanisms of evolutionary adaptation. 

The specifics of what you believe are irrelevant to me so long as they remain rooted in flawed premises.

I don't know what it is about my tone that has convinced you that i consider you an epistemic peer but thanks for the essay anyway nerd.

Once again I never said that human evolution stood still or that sexual selection didn't change in response to civilization, merely that homo sapiens innate biology changed slower than the rapid social changes wrought by civilization.

Are today's civilized humans less suited to living in the wild than our ancestors? Yes. But while certain parts of the human have changed relatively quickly (in particular the more adaptable parts of the brain) other parts have changed far more slowly. "Slowly" doesn't mean it hasn't happened at all or that we haven't evolved towards a bottleneck over time.

The push towards agriculture was indeed an adaption (most likely due to over hunting/gathering in a few areas leading to food shortages), but quite a radical departure from the living conditions experienced for 95% of our species existence. Using the following definition of unnatural: "contrary to the ordinary course of nature; abnormal." one can say that current living conditions are indeed unnatural because they are contrary to the conditions that humans experienced over the course of almost their entire existence (5% time spent on agriculture vs 95% time spent on hunting & gathering).

It's quite reasonable to say that what the species has spent 95% of their existence doing is the norm relative to the significant changes in conditions over the last 5% which were a departure from that norm (aka abnormal/unnatural). Rather than getting caught on such semantics I'll admit it would've simply been easier if instead of saying

On 12/26/2017 at 11:05 PM, WileyWarWeasel said:

-have lived and worked in increasingly unnatural conditions.

I had said "have lived and worked in conditions radically different from conditions experienced for 95% of our species existence". There, now that I've clearly spelled out what I mean by "unnatural" in this case and you've stated what you mean by "natural" we can at least put that matter to rest.

 

Once again you're making assumptions and then arguing against those assumptions. I suppose in that regard the specifics of what I believe are irrelevant because you keep making up arguments on my behalf and then arguing against that regardless of what I say, which indeed is not a debate.

 

TDLR: If you're not interested in clarification that's fine, but don't try to put words in my mouth or falsely claim what I am thinking based on whatever assumptions you've made up.

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49 minutes ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

Once again I never said that human evolution stood still or that sexual selection didn't change in response to civilization, merely that homo sapiens innate biology changed slower than the rapid social changes wrought by civilization.

 

This doesn't mean anything; it's like saying that the air conditioning in my car cooled me off faster than the car was driving; they are two variables with no implicit causal relationship.

The overall point you're tasked with substantiating within the context of this thread is that contemporary human power structures are 1.) out of alignment with our biology and 2.) said biology is maladaptive.

All you've done is argue poorly by making a lot of reckless claims and then backtrack into abstractions when I make fun of you for it.

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P.s. stop crying like a moist bitch about being "misrepresented". When you make postive substantive claims you have the option of supporting them with data and/or argument. You have elected to not utilize data and your argument was sloppy and ridden with vague unscientific verbiage that had unfortunate implications for you that you didn't like.

Next time try "i am an inarticulate buffoon, thank you for pointing that out". I respect admissions of incompetence far more than whining about intellectual dishonesty from someone who talks like he's high on a TEDX talk.

 

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