/townhall/ - Townhall

Reading through this thread I just want to comment that I find a lot of arguments about collectivism vs individualism kinda pointless and rooted in a flawed reductionist framing wherein the two concepts are treated as mutually exclusive and that cultures are treated as exclusively one or exclusively the other when in reality most cultures fall somewhere in between the two and analyzing and comparing cultures is more productive when one ask questikns like how each culture is collectivist or individualist or when it's more one than the other.

Would certainly be a whole hell of a lot better (and frankly more honest) than stand-offish arguments about whether or not one should even exist or arguments over who's was worse. It's especially absurd given that there really isn't such a thing as a truly homogeneous culture.

>>11157
Personally, I'm an absolutist about individualism.
So it'd probably not pan out any different for me.

>>11157
Not gonna lie, every time I post here I worry that some day this place is going to show up on the evening news.

This person may know nothing at all about computers. I don't know anything about computers but I know enough to disregard anything that they say on the topic.

Visual rendering happens almost entirely on the GPU, as stated above. Less stated is that 3D rendering is almost entirely the same calculation. Rendering is fairly unique in that it involves thousands of fairly trivial calculations that don't impact each other so they can be run on thousands of minimal processors simultaneously. Traffic management is minimal and solved in hardware. Some of your most expensive operations you can do are read-writes that are not generally necessary in how a GPU operates. And the 3D rendering possible has strict rules to simplify the linear algebra involved and make it as convenient for a computer as possible. It's why rendering "polygons" are always triangles and never squares. I recommend skimming the Red Book even if you only play games. It's a fascinating read and easy to find free.

By comparison opening a menu is an enormous operation that is limited to a single logical thread. It isn't hanging up because rendering a rectangle on the screen is that hard. It's hanging up because rendering that rectangle is the last step in an enormous data operation and I feel like anybody who even knows what programming is would be aware of that. Word processors and other data programs don't hang up because the letter 'a' is soooo hard to render.

Also there's the priorities. If a primitive just vomits all over itself and the rendering goes tits up for a single frame, or if a frame gets pushed out half finished or missing completely then nobody will care. It matters for 16 milliseconds. In other applications, especially online where packet security is important and data may arrive corrupted or missing portions and so there may be expectations to recover damaged or missing data through a communications delay that can be noticed by humans. Again the lag isn't in rendering a rectangle with letters on it. The lag is in the work you don't see solving other, generally more urgent problems that are designed so you don't notice anything went wrong but a brief second of unexpected waiting.

>>11105
>By comparison opening a menu is an enormous operation that is limited to a single logical thread. It isn't hanging up because rendering a rectangle on the screen is that hard. It's hanging up because rendering that rectangle is the last step in an enormous data operation and I feel like anybody who even knows what programming is would be aware of that.
25 years ago, CPUs were 10 times slower just by clock speed alone, but they were still pretty snappy at 2D GUI rendering.  My home machine running Linux on 8-year-old bare metal with a lightweight desktop environment is pretty snappy.  I think Windows is slow due to bloat, useless eye candy, built-in spyware, and no real attempt to keep latency under control.

Somewhat related: https://danluu.com/input-lag/

>>11107
That's interesting.  That's a kind of slow.

In your original post, I was thinking more of cases where you select Edit in Microsoft Office and it takes 7 seconds to draw the menu, or something.

>>11089
Probably not new laws, but the charges would need be after the changed decisions.

>>11089
Ok you're trying to answer hardcore constitutional law questions that are going to be up for serious legal debate for years with some middle school civics.

>>11091
Are you arguing with Sweet Panda and/or Mellow Eagle's answer or my restatement of their answers?

>>11083
If you'll pardon the song form, I think this does a good job of exploring that notion;

War is not pleasant, to be sure, but conflict and violence are not inherently wrong.
There's a time and a place for such things. What we must always remember is the cost, that we don't act unduly.

>>11084
Would you consider that a maximally progressed society, or would those people strive for progress themselves? Would you imagine such a civilization would remain indefinitely, unchanged for millions of years, or might they have their own ideas of advancement? I don't mean to suggest these are easy questions, but it bears putting forward the implications of a "perfect" utopia being reached.

>>11085
I like the song.  It's a good point -- if you are building a utopia without war you have to ensure there aren't reasons people would want to go to war.  I suppose at the very least you'd have to say no war, and no oppressive police state.

In the end, I do believe violence is wrong.  Or maybe more generally trying to hurt people is wrong, as your song talks about starving people, which might not be violence exactly, but I think you have to count that as under the umbrella.  Or more generally still, trying to hurt people who are not credibly trying to hurt you is wrong and, even then the hurting should be at a minimum and preventative of harm.

And if my utopia starts at peace, nobody will have a reason to make war.  I have to assert there will be societal organizations and sufficient per capita resources to keep people reasonably content, so although there will be rivalries and conflict, things will be stable enough that groups will not desire the extermination of other groups.  Which I guess is utopian, but that's the tread.  :)

>>10920
In a just world, it would be up to Chris.

>>10920
The wealthy rarely do anyway. In a practical sense, this may well be a stronger punishment.
Assuming he remains banned for the set time, anyway.

>>11060
It's not an irrational fear. It's fact. Conservatives are engaged in bigotry in terms of political actions such as this Flordia measure, and people are dying as a result. It should all stop.

>>11065
I've yet to see evidence that this particular bill is killing anyone.

>>10979
>>11019
>>11013
>>11012
i'm not even gonna bother linking all the violating posts, just yeah, you were asked to tone it down and completely ignored that warning. You have a history of this kind of posting on townhall and honestly i think the place is just bad for you and your mental health, so i'm issuing a permanent ban (townhall only). You are free to appeal if you want.

Also, locking the thread since we already gave it a chance to recover once.

>>11051
>Fascists are antigovernment, though, that's why they organize as militias.
Fascists are authoritarians first and foremost.

>They're also against tyranny and oppressive states.
Definitely not.  No.  What is your definition of fascist, if it's not most simply first and foremost a totalitarian state?

>Hence why if you look up the Oath Keepers specifically you see them justly described as far right and fascists.
By who?
Why?

I can find sources calling Obama an Islamist. Didn't make it true

>>11063
Are you really not able of understanding that Amercisn fascists claim to be patriotic, libertarian, antigovernment, and so on in opposition to the current U.S. government as a part and parcel of their agenda of replacing it with a right-wing state to benefit right-wing people?

>>11067
It just appears downright contradictory and conspiratorial besides.

I've no cause to believe these groups want to replace the US with a fascist totalitarian government.

>>11059
I agree. Shame you take such strong issue with it.
Pointing out the objective fact that the MSM has significant bias in pharmaceutical interests shouldn't be controversial.

>>11061
Pointing out the objective fact that scientific reporting still exists that educates shouldn't be controversial.

Again, I hope to God you wake up at some point and put down the kool-aid.

>>11068
I agree. It's a good thing I never said it didn't exist. You keep trying to make these gotcha's out of stuff I've never said nor ever stood against.

There's no Kool aid beam drunk here, you are jumping at ghosts

This is a great argument, and it's well presented. Thank you.

I like it.

>>10924
It's rather likely that mass use of advanced electronic technology in justice is such a new thing in terms of human nature that it can't be scientifically studied yet, even if we have ideas right now? We need more time? Maybe? I agree with you. I wonder how it all shakes out. All very interesting.

>>10926
I guess I just think it's interesting because I've been trying to think of ways to use smartphones and other small devices to do science.  And you think about all that data that's out there, or could be out there.

The counter-arguments that come to my mind are: encryption and bottle-necks.

If the Nazi's had encrypted everything they recorded, they would have only needed to destroy the crypto keys.

And then, although there are countless cameras to record war-crimes, assuming you plan to take control of the region and take possession of all digital storage what matters is the data getting out before then.  And that data is mostly going to go through cell towers or broadband internet.  If your fist move severs those connections, you may be able to render the region just as information-dark as if you were marauding a village in medieval times.

>>10928
It's certainly possible that all that could happen, agreed. Not sure what future post-2000s/post-2010s military conflicts will look like.

This thread blatantly violates rule #2 (ad hominem and straw man arguments), locking.

>Under what circumstances do you feel that suicide is a moral good and/or ethical?
When the individual who is suiciding so chooses.
If you cannot determine when your life is to end, you've no autonomy.
That is solely the purview of the individual involved.

I feel like both ethically and legally individuals should have the right to end their own lives.

At the same time, though, suicide being one of the leading causes of death for young Americans is a sign right now of a fundamentally diseased culture, and it probably can't be denied if everybody started acting like Mister Rogers from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood that said suicide rate would plummet.

Ultimately, basic human niceness should be more common.

>>10851
Don't you usually seek asylum by going to an embassy? Assuming you 1st cross over to the nearest neighborhood neighboring country as is required by International law as I understand it.

I don't think I quite understand the question.
Shouldn't asylum come before entry?

>>10877
A lot in the U.S. will argue that asylum seekers tend to be inherently flawed people (such as being uneducated, being susceptible to health problems, being impoverished, being unable intellectually to learn sufficient English, and so on) such that shouldn't be able to even start the process in the first place.

I don't agree personally, but I see such a belief as being kind of popular.

>>10877
>>10879
I should be clear that I've seen this only from social media and not from actual elected people, so I genuinely don't know how widespread this anti-refugee viewpoint is.

I would think that given circumstances right now most Republicans and Democrats in actual office are kind of generally alright with refugees? They're (the refugees) getting a lot of positive news coverage now? I guess?

I know a better form of government, but I can assure you many would be inclined to disagree heheh.

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time..." - Winston S. Churchill, 11 November 1947 ( https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/ )

I can't agree more.

>>10856
No, but it's better than most alternatives.

Either way, a raw democracy, one vote for every issue, would be terrible, which is why we have the system we do.
Especially in regards to the separation of powers. Local matters ought be controlled by the people it affects.

The biggest thing of all, and one I think is mostly overlooked these days; Democracy is not inherently right, nor does something being voted in by the people make it good.
Whether it's a dictator, a king, a president, or just a law passed by the mob, your rights are absolute. A violation of them is a violation of them. It's wrong, regardless of what created that break.

Isn't that more like the government unruling that they had to pay for testing?

i have, a big stack of free tests c: you can get some, in the mail!

https://faq.usps.com/s/article/At-Home-COVID-19-Test-Kits

Coronavirus testing should've been more easily available due to large-scale government action months and months ago, but I still appreciate whatever public actions are still being attempted now.