Aliens are here to unite us (/s).

I think that if the age of consent is gradual, the age difference allowed should too.

First scenario, two 15 year olds decide to start their sexual life together. They’re fully informed. Nobody is taking advantage. It’s very different to a second scenario where a 17 year old is dating a 36 year old.

It’s funny because the problem is usually described with terms these specific French philosophers used: power dynamics. It is too unbalanced. The adult has way more power than the teenager and that’s not healthy, it can even be dangerous.

I would argue that we should be careful with age differences until our early-mid twenties, even if the law gives us a free pass from our 18th birthday. But, anyway, yeah, in the second scenario the teenager is older than the first ones, so we’d assume that if the first ones were okay the second too, but the age difference matters IMHO.

A recent comment of mine:

In an old interview, Mr. Narcissus [Elon Musk] said he may have bipolar disorder; he said he experiences “great highs, terrible lows, and unrelenting stress”.

He has doubts because his highs and lows follow events in his life, whereas episodes from bipolar disorder often appear without triggers. […]

We’d know if he went for an evaluation/possible diagnosis, but I cannot even imagine him doing it.

Kanye West is usually manic when he acts this way. I guess this supports Musk’s suspicion.

I partially agree with you, but also with the rest here. Yes, as people, we should be united fighting against the elites which don’t let us live the life we deserve (because we are receiving less than we should considering our productivity, and because many problems can be solved already). We are all on a planet that we need to save, even if only for selfish reasons. We should be together. But the elites have seized the opportunity to divide us with ideologies such as economics, identity politics, etc. If they need an unfair war against a country to exploit it and extract its resources, they’ll say it’s about patriotism or security or something like that, and many people will believe it and support it. Just look how divided we are about current affairs.

The left usually goes against these interests. Thus the red scare, the fake leftists that only makes us look bad, etc. They need to disband the left, and they have an army willing to do so for free. Here’s where these opinions enter. As long as an elite, yes, but also all their supporters go against us and against basic ethical principles, we cannot sit and say: “people, do not trivialize wars on social media, it is not nice”, “oil is cool, but saving the planet is cooler”, etc.

I believe in stronger actions, for example, the sabotage people are doing against the shipping of weapons that are meant to kill civilians in Palestine or the blockages against deep sea mining. These are actions that can save lives without actually hurting others as the economical damages are not going against individuals but big institutions that can manage the losses.

I also believe in dialogue. I actually dislike how we stop listening to each other as leftists: how moderate, often liberal-leaning leftists censor radical leftists such as marxist-leninists (“tankies”) or gender critical feminists (“TERFs”), without listening to them. No, they do not necessarily promote hate and they have valid points that may need further exploration. That said, I believe in the censorship of hate speech, explicit hate speech like the videos circulating about how others deserve to die or deserve to suffer. That’s unacceptable, no matter the group of people you are talking about. Indeed! If we say that we need to kill white supremacists, it is no better than them saying they need to cleanse the population. Still, we need to keep their hate and all hate out of the normal discourse and we need to defend ourselves in case others turn to violence.

In a nutshell, it’s about defending the wellbeing of beings in the most peaceful and civil way possible. It is about defending ourselves while doing that, because the people in power and their supporters won’t often like it.

Do you want a crude example? Read about the people defending the wild life in Mexico. Politicians and organized crime want to profit off those lands. They rob lands from people, often indigenous people; they get into illegal or non-sustainable logging; they enlarge the black markets, hurting and endangering populations; they transform regions, affecting the whole ecosystem. There are people, usually biologists, who warn against this and dedicate their lives to the protection of the forests, rain forests, etc. They end up dead. It is very dangerous to protect the monarch butterflies, the wolves, the big cats… Isn’t that ridiculous and terribly sad?

This is how it has been for a long time. Speak words of freedom in the kingdom and you might lose your head. Stop the machines and they’ll justify killing you. I mean, read Lord Byron’s defense of the luddites and then think about how they dismissed it…

Personally, I do not see rightists as my enemies, I see them as people tragically going against others’ and their own interests. The ones that are in power are blinded by it, and the ones that only follow are blinded by hope: “Someday I’ll be rich, if only I defend the status quo a little longer”.

My personal enemies are the horrid ideas, feelings, and values that accompany most of these acts I disapprove of. Selfishness, vanity, etc. Some people, many people (I am no exception), naturally tend to them in varying degrees, and I can only feel disappointment for the number of people that embrace them. That leads me to my secondary enemies, the things that make people do not defy them. Cowardice, apathy, dogmatism, etc.

Edit: And I do not have final answers. I do not know if we are in need of a revolution, a reform, an extinction, time… I know very little.

I am very sorry you got caught in one of my rambling, ranting comments. My point is that it is not a situation in which two sides are equally wrong, but a bunch of the population that sides with the tyrants you yourself allude to in your comment. People who still deserve our respect; that respect doesn’t mean passivity when they actively affect others.

You are absolutely right and we need to fight against corruption and many other things, and that’s why I consider myself a leftist: you name it whatever you like. These are my attempts at rationality and correctness, and, while I might be a minority in the details, I know I am in good company in the broader ideals. Many of us disagree in a very trivial way… Sorry, and thank you for reading this far.

Have you heard the “I don’t suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it” quote? They meant it, huh?

You are the only ones I recognize. Oh! And that account with the name and photo of Margot Robbie.

I’d say this is a good way to introduce a difference many do not consider. There are opinions on matters of taste or preferences, and there are scientific facts.

But aside from these two, there is at least another category that, the way I see it, are attempts to grasp other areas of reality which remain unknown and, by their very nature, seem impossible (or impossible right now) to pursue via scientific methods. Examples can be epistemology, ethics, logic and metalogic, etc. In universities, philosophers are the ones that study them.

Back to the comic, I might be debating on the internet about, say, philosophy of mathematics. Fancy terms may fly around: ante rem structuralism, mathematical anti-realism, abstract object theory! But we might never agree on the ontology of numbers or those kinds of questions.

I will say something that pertains to this category: I believe everything will ultimately end up in this kind of debate. Being poetic, it all flows like rivers to the sea of philosophy. So, the comic will remain true. It seems that humanity will always argue about this chaos we experience that does not make entire sense to us.

Some months ago, I found a video about chronotypes. I don’t know how much of it can be considered scientific, but the websites have some interesting statistics about the number of people that fit in each of the categories. Apparently, only a minority is an early-bird or lion-type or morning-person. It has some associated traits that may explain why that schedule prevails (extraversion, leadership, good health), but it is unhealthy and unproductive for the rest! It’s not okay.

Apparently, Lemmy doesn’t believe the man who writes misogynistic lyrics can be sexist. It’s the same all over the internet. Quoting Reddit users:

a) Rammstein’s lyrics can be rather extreme, as they often include rape, incest, death, sex tourism, necrophilia, etc etc. But are they sexist? No I don’t think so.

b) A lot of their songs are out of someone’s perspective. Like Ausländer can be perceived as a sexist song written from a perspective a dude (Till lol) shagging his way around the world and seducing local populace with his foreign allure and hilariously low effort “knowledge of the local language”. […] On the other hand what the band actually intended to do is criticize colonialism.

One does not need to believe the sexual allegations to see that, still, something’s fishy, especially about the lead singer. The lyrics, the orgies, etc. For years, I have disliked songs and interviews because of this, but it all gets the “It’s satire” or “It’s symbolism” pass.

Some areas or fields have a difficult time reaching men, including young men, and it’s not because they are not wanted. Let’s take psychiatry, for example. Many people already believe psychiatry is nonsense; add to this the common idea that psychiatric treatment is for cowards—and that cowardice is mostly for women (because women can be many bad things, but men can’t)—, and that’s a recipe for men scoffing at the idea of visiting a psychiatrist (and a psychotherapist, by extension).

I’ve also heard people complaining about a lack of role models, but there are excellent role models. I hope I am not wrong about them, but I admire Stephen Fry, John Oliver, Keanu Reeves, Bill Nye… I also like many small influencers. Some of them talk about being a man with great insight, such as @watchfulcoyote on TikTok.

I cannot say with certainty how free these radicalized young men were to choose a better path than the one they are on, and it probably varies from case to case, but I know there were and are normal and decent people watching out for them.