Dr. Holly Walters
More than that, I want difference. I want to see ideas I've never had. Art that doesn't speak to me. Ways of being that are nothing like what I know. I want a world of color and strangeness and new-old things that all have a place wherein we celebrate the possibilities of infinite diversity.
Dec 29, 2022 at 2:48pmWeb
Show threadDaryl GibsonDec 29, 2022
@Manigarm this sounds like my idea of heaven.
Show threadDr. Holly WaltersDec 29, 2022

@dgibson36 Right? I want endless possibility for me, for you, for everyone everywhere. The ability to explore that is, might be, or could be without fear and the constant desperation of basic survival.

That's what we **could** have, instead of this.

Show threadAviva GaryDec 29, 2022
@Manigarm yes! ✊
Show threadBill RossDec 30, 2022

@Manigarm Do you think rationing exposure to difference could be viewed as harm reduction? Is there a point where at least some people could legitimately have some sort of breakdown?

It sounds like Fox works by being a treadmill of sameness, but enforcing the Fairness Doctrine to break its cycle could be subverted by splitting it up across different feeds and stitching it together as today's feed at the customer's end.

Show threadDr. Holly WaltersDec 30, 2022
@phobrain In a sense, yes. Part of what makes extremist ideologies attractive is their claims to certainty, which is comfortable. The comfort of believing that your perspectives are universally true. But it's also the impetus for squashing difference. Because if you and the people around you see that there are other ways to be, other ways to think, and that those ways don't result in catastrophe. it demonstrates that your way is not universal; it reveals the fragility of your certainty.
Show threadBill RossDec 30, 2022
@Manigarm In that you describe the authoritarian mindset, maybe if openness can be simply ordered, such people will be at least as happy as under other orders. Ideally we'd each reflexively strive to keep our certainty as fragile as possible, but does everyone have a personal limit on what they can tolerate? My idea is that machine learning that one has trained oneself is ideally-suited to drip in enough sculpted randomness to keep the person learning.
Show threadBill RossDec 30, 2022
@Manigarm
Afterthought on catastrophe: thanks to happy talk, pretty much all the ways of thinking that are reality-based indicate a world headed that way, which I myself find hard to stomach in large doses.