thesmokingman

I don’t think you understand what “outside my realm of expertise” means. I’m not trolling, so I must be a simpleton. As a simpleton, my general perspective has always been that it should be safe to ask questions about things you don’t understand so you can better understand. In this case, it’s very simple to say “from my uneducated eye, this appears to be a strong source that contradicts; that doesn’t seem to jive with the narrative so can someone help me understand why it doesn’t?” You seem to feel simpletons aren’t allowed to ask questions or grow, so we’re done here. I will take my specialized, domain-specific knowledge (which I’ve forgotten more about than you will probably ever learn) and sit in my simpleton castle knowing that’s all I ever get to know because it’s not okay to ask questions on the internet in a community based on discourse.

I’m was just hoping for a solid rebuttal, not necessarily a fancy one! If you’re able to explain why the criticisms you mention mean that specific study is bad, that would be great! I’m assuming you’re not from China and mistakenly think wherever you’re from doesn’t suffer from similar issues, meaning we can only trust you as much as the article.

It would be great to have some citations for that so I can point to things when I get into these discussions! That was part of what I asked for. You seem really passionate about this so you must have that available to help me out. Thanks!

I’m not sure you read my post if you think I trust any of the studies I linked more than anything else. It might be good to reread it!

It looks like someone else linked one of these studies in a different comment while I was writing my own. I don’t feel as crazy now. I don’t care one way or another; I just want to make sure I can respond correctly! I wonder if the emphasis on fluoridated water is itself linked to industry capture?

I want someone who knows about these things to respond to this 2012 metastudy that ties naturally fluoridated groundwater to neurological problems. I have used this the past decade to say “well the science is unclear;” I found it back then (2013 at the latest) when I was trying to disprove a crank and really questioned my shit. There was a(n unrelated?) follow up later that questioned the benefits. Since this is very far from my area of expertise, I’m not championing these; I just want to understand why they’re wrong or at least don’t matter in the discourse.

(Edit: for the educated, there could be a million ways these are wrong. Authors are idiots, study isn’t reproducible, industry capture, conclusions not backed up by data, whatever. I just don’t have the requisite knowledge to say these are wrong and therefore fluoridated water is both safe and useful)

Update: great newer studies in responses! You can have a rational convo starting with these two that moves to newer stuff.

I personally feel like you’d be justified continuing to report in that situation until the sidebar tells you not to. Getting yelled at in Discord is not a lemmy conversation and it’s not open at all. Your point about differences in mod opinions carries a lot of weight here because, as a user, if it’s not in the sidebar it doesn’t exist.

I am very happy to jump on the anti-FS bandwagon in other threads. I just don’t think this is a good example and it’s very easy to put myself in those shoes here. Thanks for the analysis! I appreciate you.

So they’re not co-moderators in this situation? That definitely changes my analysis. I feel like instance mods have some shared responsibility for the health of their instance so I wouldn’t say it’s completely not his job; the rest of my understanding was wrong if they don’t share responsibility!

I disagree that Blackbeard wouldn’t “clarify which ones you do and don’t want to receive.” Blackbeard laid out their perspective for moderation of the community, which, if FlyingSquid is not a co-moderator, is what flies, not the opinion you and FlyingSquid share. I didn’t think that was unclear at all; FlyingSquid just didn’t agree.

It’s very easy for me to say from my armchair that I’m not going to take shit from a moderator over unclear rules; if it’s not in the sidebar fuck off with telling me what I can’t report. I think you and I both agree Blackbeard was shit at trying to resolve conflict here.

I agreed with you up until you said “FlyingSquid saying he won’t flag anything is super reasonable.” If I’m working with a peer and I’m an asshole to them about our shared responsibilities and they say “well fine I just won’t do the thing both of us are supposed to do any more,” I’d argue that’s childish. Granted I started it and drug them down to my level, but they’re down there too. Both sides get real fucking dramatic after that. It’s pretty clear Blackbeard started swinging and FlyingSquid came along for the ride.

To me, the long discord screenshot is just evidence that FlyingSquid had a bad day and said some dumb shit to someone pushing his buttons. I don’t think it contributes to the evidence that he’s a bad mod; that has to come from elsewhere. If we had evidence that FlyingSquid drops down into the mud a bunch with users, not fellow moderators, that would be sufficient.

The study talks to 16 Mastodon admins who got to say what they thought Mastodon did. It’s not really a study, it’s just a survey. Being posted here is just confirmation bias. For Mastodon to increase citizen empowerment, there has to be something measured and a control group that isn’t on Mastodon.

From the abstract

In this paper, following a pre-study survey, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 Mastodon instance administrators, including those who host instances to support marginalised and stigmatised communities

You really have to read beyond the headline. This isn’t Reddit.

You started with a straw man tho?

Since we’ve turned this into a gish gallop

1. (original comment) this has nothing to do with Hieronymus Bosch: never countered ergo conceded; whole premise is pointless
2. (original comment) genAI slop is bad: you say capitalism is bad not genAI, I say tech isn’t there and wasting energy is bad; you’ve yet to prove that capitalism being bad (your core argument) means genAI can actually work or that since capitalism is bad burning energy is okay
3. burning any energy for the current model is bad: you say capitalism is bad; this addresses nothing
4. NFTs are bad: we agree
5. making fun of people that swallow genAI proganda is always correct: you conceded the original point and also dropped when I pointed out that making fun of NFTs made things better
6. there is a fundamental misunderstanding about how capable the tech is, proganda aside, and a basic review of genAI art slop highlights this: you do not provide any analysis here; general tech consensus is that AI is very far from doing anything useful
7. your blog contradicts your online persona: you’re trying very hard to be mean here so either you’re writing your blog understanding you’re the asshole in the room that no one disagrees with or you’re incapable of self reflection.

We both agree that capitalism is bad, you provide no evidence aside from ad hominem to contradict the most superficial analysis of your midjourney, and you have swallowed way too much genAI propaganda (coincidentally called out many times and left unanswered) without applying any of your development critical thinking skills. You want to burn energy on dumb shit to support billionaires while saying billionaires are bad, I think that’s stupid and enjoy poking fun at any engineer stupid enough to miss the forest for the trees.

Oh my goodness simpler words would be nice since we’re struggling with “non sequitur” and “strawman” and “basic connections to underlying language.”

I appreciate your summary! Here’s mine:

• (original comment) this has nothing to do with Hieronymus Bosch
• (original comment) genAI slop is bad
• burning any energy for the current model is bad
• NFTs are bad
• making fun of people that swallow genAI proganda is always correct
• there is a fundamental misunderstanding about how capable the tech is, proganda aside, and a basic review of genAI art slop highlights this
• your blog contradicts your online persona

Why is this hell? This doesn’t look at all like any of the representations of hell that Bosch has done so we’ve got a different hell maybe? Maybe the issue was that the midjourney prompt had nothing to do with your joke?