this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
52 points (98.1% liked)
Casual Conversation
3259 readers
306 users here now
Share a story, ask a question, or start a conversation about (almost) anything you desire. Maybe you'll make some friends in the process.
RULES (updated 01/22/25)
- Be respectful: no harassment, hate speech, bigotry, and/or trolling. To be concise, disrespect is defined by escalation.
- Encourage conversation in your OP. This means including heavily implicative subject matter when you can and also engaging in your thread when possible. You won't be punished for trying.
- Avoid controversial topics (politics or societal debates come to mind, though we are not saying not to talk about anything that resembles these). There's a guide in the protocol book offered as a mod model that can be used for that; it's vague until you realize it was made for things like the rule in question. At least four purple answers must apply to a "controversial" message for it to be allowed.
- Keep it clean and SFW: No illegal content or anything gross and inappropriate. A rule of thumb is if a recording of a conversation put on another platform would get someone a COPPA violation response, that exact exchange should be avoided when possible.
- No solicitation such as ads, promotional content, spam, surveys etc. The chart redirected to above applies to spam material as well, which is one of the reasons its wording is vague, as it applies to a few things. Again, a "spammy" message must be applicable to four purple answers before it's allowed.
- Respect privacy as well as truth: Donβt ask for or share any personal information or slander anyone. A rule of thumb is if something is enough info to go by that it "would be a copyright violation if the info was art" as another group put it, or that it alone can be used to narrow someone down to 150 physical humans (Dunbar's Number) or less, it's considered an excess breach of privacy. Slander is defined by intentional utilitarian misguidance at the expense (positive or negative) of a sentient entity. This often links back to or mixes with rule one, which implies, for example, that even something that is true can still amount to what slander is trying to achieve, and that will be looked down upon.
Casual conversation communities:
Related discussion-focused communities
- !actual_discussion@lemmy.ca
- !askmenover30@lemm.ee
- !dads@feddit.uk
- !letstalkaboutgames@feddit.uk
- !movies@lemm.ee
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I love how much knowledge we have at our disposal. If we can accumulate generational knowledge on how to navigate such a dense information landscape then I think we'll be fine.
We just don't know what to do with all this info and how to protect ourselves from needless outside influence.
My big optimism is that the diffusion of knowledge has been one of the most stable and powerful drivers of equality throughout history.
There has been an unparalleled explosion in knowledge availability in the past 75 years. With the introduction of broadcast television, then cable television, then the early Internet, then services like Wikipedia and beyond the amount of knowledge available to the public has snowballed exponentially. This is so obviously true that denial is risible on the face of it.
But what is also obviously true is that over that same time period the threat of authoritarianism has been on a steady rise. At first the domain of "communist dictatorships" and a bunch of little countries here and there with right-wing assholes in charge, the world is now faced with rising tides of populist authoritarians where there was one presumed-healthy democracies, and with tightening grips in places that had already been authoritarian.
So this seems sus.
We all see inequality rising. So, yeah, the forces driving inequality are stronger than those driving equality right now.
I was paraphrasing Capital in the Twenty First Century. Knowledge diffusion is consistent, and it definitely decreses inequality. Its also been happening for all of history. As well, it is hard to remove diffused knowledge from a population.
That's what I mean when I say:
I left out that the drivers of inequality can be much stronger, but I wanted to talk about the part I was optimistic about. I am told from every friend and media outlet that inequality is rising. OP seemed to be more down lately so I wanted to share something nice.