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blackroseraven · 4 years ago

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You know, you really don’t have to engage with bad-faith arguments. You can just ignore them or make fun of them for being dumb.

I do try and respond in good faith to most things on first blush, but it’s easy enough to pick out when someone doesn’t want to actually listen to you, they just want to be listened to. There’s hundreds of tropes that you get used to seeing and identifying, like “free speech” and “do your own research.”

Free speech is incredibly important and the First Amendment is the first one for a reason: yes, yes, people say “but guns” and like I get why that’s so important to some people - and I’m not even being entirely mocking - but like, without freedom of speech, a free press, a right to assemble, the government just says “oh yeah we had to imprison Jerry for breaking the law” and like. No one’s going to know that Jerry wasn’t actually breaking the law. Oh sure, there’ll be rumors, but people like feeling safe and comfortable, and a lot more people will be happy reading and following the party line and believing that the government is only punishing the bad people rather than Jerry.

You might scoff at it but just look at how quickly people turn on someone that’s accused of a crime - especially crimes we find particularly repugnant as a society. Or in microcosm, how Jenny can show up with bruises and you know Peter’s always yelling at her but it’s probably nothing and she probably does something to deserve being yelled at, anyway, it’s not our business and we shouldn’t get involved, Jenny’s got friends to help her out anyway. “It’s not my problem.”

But freedom of speech doesn’t mean that telling you to shut up or why you’re wrong is censoring you. That’s answering speech with more speech. Likely, the First Amendment means the government doesn’t get to punish you for your speech; it doesn’t mean that you can’t get kicked off a platform for being an asshole. Unless you’re saying companies aren’t allowed to do whatever they want without government approval, that is, which is. You know. Communism or fascism or whatever today’s word de jour is.

A huge part of freedom of speech is the freedom other people have to respond to our speech - that’s “their” speech, it isn’t just a ME ONLY thing - and freedom of association means I can choose who I hang out with. Just because you really want to cling to me like a circa 2010 teenage girl to Justin Bieber doesn’t mean you can unless I allow you to. Telling you someone to “go away” doesn’t violate that. Blocking someone doesn’t violate that. Bragging about how “I never block anyone!” and “that snowflake blocked me” just makes you look desperate for attention and approval. I mean, if you don’t block, for example, a person who has made it their mission to send you goatse or worse every day, but you pride yourself in being sent that every single day, uh... what are you exactly getting out of that?

Actually maybe I don’t want to know, thanks.

Research is great; I write stuff, I research all the time. But research isn’t looking for an answer that suits you the most: research is asking a question, and looking for people with knowledge and expertise to assist you in finding an answer you can understand. Research is finding facts, not making an assertations and looking for pleasant lies that “prove” you correct.

We like to think of ourselves as logic-driven, but we’re often much more emotionally-driven and, in many unfortunate cases, “righteous” driven. Admiration or love for a person can make us overlook glaring character flaws. We develop particular worldviews that we absolutely do not like being challenged, and we assert that people we like or enjoy must be “like us,” and that means they can’t be cocaine-driven assholes, like James Woods.

James Woods was a fantastic Hades and is a great actor. He’s also a lunatic and a monster who hounded an anonymous commenter dying of cancer who was rude to him online with pointless but expensive lawsuits until the day he died, where he then celebrated “killing” the person who was rude to him.

These days especially, there is a lot of money to be made, and attention to be had, by creating alternate facts for people. Grift is not always obvious, especially when you set in motion a more long-term goal: what if I just recognize there’s a willing audience out there if I create some comforting pablum about how nothing bad is going to happen to you if you contract a certain virus, and then I monetize these videos? What if I create an asshole character for myself to play who does nothing but make the right people angry, and then I announce a tour to places that don’t want me, and fundraise when “my tour was cancelled by those snowflakes?”

It’s not always grift, of course. People who are prone to believing in conspiracies tend to be people who want to impose order on a chaotic world, often as a defensive mechanism. Combine this with the internet and the human need for socialization and reassurance, and things like believing that school massacres are false flag events make more sense. It eliminates the chaos from the world, the fear of pain or injury from some random, uncontrollable event, and creates an easy narrative that’s far simpler to digest. No one actually died: they were all actors, paid for by a shadow cabal, an evil, powerful, but tangible villain. People explain this to each other and it develops a mythos of its own of “theories,” and now you have friends who “understand” and that you feel connected to.

Sure, at first the fact the Deep State is everywhere seems like it would be terrifying. But think of the comfort! The Deep State is responsible for all evil, and if you could just defeat it, no one would ever suffer again. You lost your job? The Deep State saw you getting too close to the truth and is trying to distract you. If it wasn’t for the Deep State, you’d be rich, successful, happy, and independent, and there would be no wars, no partisan divide, and everyone would work together in harmony.

In other words, there is chaos in the world because the Deep State creates it, which ironically makes the world safer and structured.

Understandable.

And in today’s day and age, where you can “do your own research,” you’re now a soldier in the war against the Deep State. You can grow your community and reach out to people to try and get them to understand, and fight the Deep State with you! It’s exciting, isn’t it? Being a hero without ever having to leave the safety and sanctity of your own home. The protagonist of your very own adventure in real life.

A bizarre combination of magical thinking and delusion.

Okay, I’ve rambled and gone a bit off topic.

But the point is, like, you don’t have to engage these arguments. You don’t have to engage with magical thinkers, with trolls, with the willfully-deluded or anyone who doesn’t actually want to listen to what you have to say and just wants to proselytize to you about how they are correct and you are not.

You don’t have to “save” them, “help” them, or “correct” them if they don’t actually want any of these things, and you don’t have to debate or argue with someone just because they scream “debate me!” at you or sealion their way into a conversation or they goad you.

You can just ignore them or mock them or shrug. Online or, shockingly, offline as well. I mean, yes, I know. There are exceptions. People we can’t get away from, people we have to deal with or try and be nice to. That will eternally be a problem humanity will be faced with and it’s above my pay grade to solve.

But you don’t have to feel guilty or oblige strangers with more than a courtesy. Technically not even courtesy, but you know, I’m Canadian and all. And too many of us get dragged into pointless debates with people who thrive off abusing the social dynamics that are often trained into us from a young age.

The short version? People are dumb and often wrong. Save your time and effort for the people you actually value having in your life and who aren’t going to forget about you the moment they move on to their next target.

#politics

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kingdomofthelogos · 4 years ago

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Discernment

Read Luke 2:8-20

Download a printable version here.

Discernment is something that is very important in the life of the church, for the forces of darkness are not content to remain in their own yard. They are coming to knock on your door and slip into your house to kill, steal, and destroy. Wolves in sheep’s clothing take pleasure in stealing into the house of both you and your neighbor, for they desire to corrupt you to the point that you cannot tell light from darkness. We in the church must put on the whole armor of God and work to discipline ourselves in the task of discernment. This is not only to protect us against the darkness, but also to make us better evangelists.

Fallen creation, life on this side of Eden, is not merely filled with valleys of the shadow of death but also valleys of the shadow of deception. Understand that no topic is exempt from the attack of deception. God warned us in Exodus 20:7 that “you shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.” God knew that people would use even His Name to deceive. If people will try to use God’s Name to deceive, rest assured they will also deceive you with issues you like and topics you hate. This is how hell makes very effective trojan horses. The deceiver is hungry to deceive, and the darkness is delighted when people are cut off from the light. Moreover, the darkness is even happier when people are trained to hate the light. This is where we find ourselves today, a world where people are happy to remove truth from the public sphere, eradicate God from the foundation of life, and make room for the devil. Yet, we must persevere in ministering to the lost with Christlike love all the same.

God loved us despite our sinful ideas, and chose to redeem us even as we were ungrateful and unworthy. Therefore, in reflection of His mighty power and love, we must seek to love both our neighbors and persecutors alike that we might work with Christ to snatch them from the hungry jaws of deception.

In Luke 2, the shepherds receive a heralding message from above. They are told that Messiah has been born in the City of David. However, this is not a mere piece of sensational news to get worked up about and then forget when the next big story comes. This is good news. Not just positive or feel good news, but good news. This is a monumental event, and it will not only change lives but also restructure time itself.

The shepherds are not left in confusion on what to do next with this, or even in confusion of whether or not this is true. God knows that there are always forces trying to deceive people into false hopes and false truths, and God is not one to be petty. Therefore, His angel gives the shepherds tools for discerning the truth of the Messiah’s birth.

Aside from the great sign that is the sheer fact of meeting an angel, they are also given a sign to discover. They are given a metric to weigh this message against. There will be fruits in the world that match this good news if it is true. God is not using the shepherds as puppets, but instead He gives them the miraculous gift of visiting His Son’s birth. Moreover, He gives them tools to discern that this really is the great advent of the Christ. God does not treat the shepherds as mindless drones, who do as they are told but know nothing, but instead lets them discover the truth of His Son in their own lives. He does not have to censor anyone, villain or otherwise, but let’s truth have its day.

There are a few important takeaways we can learn from these verses in Luke 2; and, after consideration of the larger body of Scriptures, we shall see that this is indeed a method for discerning. Firstly, God has revealed something to the Shepherds. Secondly, there are good fruits that match this revelation. This is how we discern truth.

Even if we do not have angels come to us, as did those who lived at the time of Christ’s birth, we do have the great revelation of Scripture itself. We must be familiar with it, studying it in constancy, and realizing that it should change how we live. Regardless of our own emotions or personal opinions, we must understand that the truths revealed in Scripture are larger than ourselves.

With a foundation in Scripture, we then weigh the fruits of the world against God’s revelation. Let me be clear on this: one must weigh fruits, not just words, which can be dressed up and disguised, nor emotional appeals, which can also be highly manipulative. Just as Christ taught us in Matthew 7:15-18, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? 17 In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.

Discernment is important when standing for truth in our world; namely, because it helps us identify truth. Furthermore, we also need to be able to discern what sort of evil we are dealing with. This brings us to a distinction between half-hearted evil and whole-hearted evil. For the sake of clarity, this distinction is not being drawn to suggest that one form of evil is more capable of sending one to hell, for any sort of sin can lead to hell. The purpose of this distinction is for believers to wrap their mind around what they are dealing with, so that they might be better equipped to stand against such evils while also ministering to the people possessed by them.

Half-hearted evil can be understood as the child who gets caught stealing from a cookie jar, and, upon being caught, instinctively tells a poorly constructed lie. The child did not wake up in the morning planning to tell such a bad lie, but nonetheless did so when caught. When dealing with this sort of evil and sin the guilty person can still receive instruction and reason.

In Luke 1:18-20 we find the priest Zechariah stumbling into this sort of sin. The text reads: 18 Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” 19 The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. 20 And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.” Zechariah probably did not wake with a plan to spite one of God’s archangels when he brought him good news about a prophetic son. However, when he found himself in this situation, he instinctively reacted with ingratitude and unworthiness. On a side note, if one wants to avoid such unworthiness in such an unexpected meeting, the antidote is to have an attitude prepared for the miraculous good things of God, for they might come like a thief in the night.

In response to this half-hearted evil, which is still sinful and destructive, Gabriel responds with discipline and teaching. Those who fall to half-hearted evil can still be reasoned with and receive teaching. These people may need to reap some amount of what they have sown, but they are willing to respond to truth, mercy, and reason.

Now we get into the category of whole-hearted evil. This evil is purposefully idolatrous and has two hallmarks and one necessary response. Firstly, it cannot be reasoned with, for it presents itself as if you must bow to it and there is no other alternative. Secondly, it presents itself as innocent and good, not bothering to even acknowledge God, goodness, or truth; moreover, it can bear a striking resemblance to innocence. The necessary response to this evil is that it must be defeated. As opposed to half-hearted evil, which people stumble into unexpectedly, whole-hearted evil wakes up in the morning plotting how it might kill, steal, and destroy.

Whole hearted evil has stolen into every institution in our world. Scripture shows us how we deal with this. In Revelation 12:7-9 we read: 7 Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. There is no reasoning with the dragon. He must be defeated.

But the dragon is not human, and God does not desire that men and women be ended in such fatal destruction. So what then do we do? In Matthew 8:28-32, we see Jesus respond to people possessed by whole-hearted evil: 28 When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. 29 “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?” 30 Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. 31 The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.” 32 He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water. Jesus does not bother to reason with the demons. Furthermore, He does not even talk with the men possessed by the demons. Jesus understands that He first must eradicate the evil in order to bless those afflicted by it.

Many things in our modern world are nothing more than manifestations of whole-hearted evil. People are trained to turn their minds off to truth, and many people are actively hostile to the light. Therefore, we must understand that our task is not to negotiate with them, but to shine the light and let the Holy Spirit do its work. This means we will have to make a ministry of standing against such evil where we call it out for what it is. After doing so, we must declare God’s truth, and let the Holy Spirit do its work.

Discernment is important to revival. We are not in an era where people are assembled around the common good, but an era where the old pagan ideas are both alive and dominant in our culture. Let us give praise to God for His great gift of discernment.

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ntrending · 6 years ago

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Last week in tech: Where's that robot with our burrito?

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/last-week-in-tech-wheres-that-robot-with-our-burrito/

Last week in tech: Where's that robot with our burrito?

If 2018 was the song “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen, we’d be in the slow emotional part that winds down the track after the operatic section and the guitar solo. It’s almost over. But, even as the year winds down, this chaotic year has stayed very much on-brand, at least in the tech world. We saw more data breaches, tech CEO testimonies, and robots ready to hit the streets. So, fire up your Queen playlist on Spotify and read on to catch up on everything you missed last week while you panic-shopped for the office Secret Santa you totally forgot about until three hours before the exchange.

Google’s CEO went to Washington

Until this week, Sundar Pichai’s name was notably absent from the list of tech CEOs asked to testify in front of Congressional committees this year. But on December 11th, Google’s CEO sat for roughly 3.5 hours and answered some of the most ill-informed and sometimes downright pointless questions you could imagine. We did learn a few tidbits, like Google has been internally workshopping a search product that could work on the censored internet in China, but has no plans right now to go back to the country it left in 2010.

Your private Facebook photos were less private than you’d probably like for a little while

From Sept. 13 until Sept. 25 of this year, a Facebook bug allowed developers using the Facebook Photo API unauthorized access to user photos. The bug reportedly affected the images of roughly 5.6 million users who will be getting a notification (if they haven’t already) about the issue.

YouTube’s own video is the most disliked clip of all time

Right now is the time for media companies and platforms to recap the year’s biggest trends. YouTube put together a look back at 2018 and users of the site quickly clicked the “thumbs down” button more than 13 million times at the time of this post. That’s compared to 2.3 million likes. Honestly, I don’t see how it could possibly have gone any other way.

You may lose some YouTube followers soon, but they weren’t real in the first place

Every so often, big social media networks need to scrub out some of the fake and spam accounts that clutter up the services. Last week, YouTube went on a year-end bot-bashing spree to wipe out bad accounts, so if you saw your subscriber account fall, that may be the culprit. It could also be that everyone got bored of your repetitive ASMR videos where you rub various flavors of Pringles together to see if you can get a different tone from Sour Cream & Onion than you do out of Screaming’ Dill Pickle.

Postmates built a burrito-delivering robot that’s functionally adorable

The face on the front of the Postmates autonomous delivery robot sure is cute, but it’s also functional. Those expressive digital “eyes” were created to communicate with people as the rover tries to navigate terrain like crowded sidewalks with up to 50 pounds of takeout food inside. Unfortunately, this version, doesn’t have the capability to frown if your delicious bowl of pho spills during transit.

A facial recognition kiosk kept a lookout for Taylor Swift stalkers at one of her concerts

An unassuming kiosk showing video footage at a Taylor Swift concert earlier this year was reportedly a facial recognition system on the lookout for stalkers who may have come to the venue with bad intentions. When a concert-goer looked into the camera hidden in the kiosk, a scan of their face made its way to a control center where a system could check it against a database of known stalkers.

Puma made a computer shoe in 1986 and it’s coming back

Name a piece of clothing and there’s a good chance you can buy a “smart” version of it today, but that wasn’t the case when Puma released its RS-Computer running shoes in 1986. The company is only re-releasing 86 pairs of the decidedly retro shoes, which can keep track of your step count. Of course, you could always just use a smart watch, or a fit bit or just count every single step you take at all times.

Instagram now lets you send voice DMs

As Facebook continues to emphasize the direct messaging functions in Instagram, the company recently added the ability to send recorded voice messages through the DM feature. Sending a photo with a voice message attached seems like a gateway drug to getting users into video chat, which Instagram added earlier this year. I would try the new voice message feature to tell you how well it works, but I’m pretty sure anyone to whom I sent one would stop being my friend and ghost me forever.

Smartphone screens have holes in them instead of a notch to make room for the camera

The front of every phone needs to have as much screen on it as possible, even if that means making weird, distracting gaps to fit essential pieces like a front-facing camera. The new Samsung A8s doesn’t have a notch, but rather a circular hole through which the camera peeks out. The Samsung isn’t the only device taking this track: Huawei also has a phone with a little dot on the screen.

Written By Stan Horaczek

#Technology

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