Alright, have fun, just remember; don’t drink the Kool-aid!

If you squint, the Star Citizen logo kinda looks like the symbol for The People’s Temple

https://web.archive.org/web/20230408153242/https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/21/dead-bugs-on-windshields/

I’m curious as to which side I was taking before I submitted this discussion. Because I think it’s quite clear that I simply thought this was just another battle in the middle east sparked by land and racial tensions, and despite one side being much better equipped for extermination than the other, it wasn’t particularly notable. My language doesn’t feel pro Hamas, maybe It could be seen as pro Israeli because of that though. But I feel like that’s exactly what everyone in this thread has been pointing out, that there aren’t just two sides, and people aren’t picking between Israel and Hamas (or even Palestine for that matter).

Heck I’m not even arguing with anyone here except you, so what do you think I could possibly be trying to achieve? Let me remind you the community we’re currently discussing this in is !outoftheloop@lemmy.world .

Ah, I see. Given those numbers it’s pretty clear that Isreal is pretty much going scorched earth when it comes to Gaza. Good to know, thank you. I had just assumed the damages to infrastructure weren’t as extensive as they were.

Edit: I also hadn’t known about the active blocking of humanitarian aid, so that alongside some of those numbers really speaks volumes.

Edit 2: also no need to apologize, I mean I’m the one asking all the questions and you’re graciously taking your time to answer them. The fact that you’re splitting them makes sense to me. You’ve overall been very helpful and I can imagine that anyone that stumbles across this entire thread will likely also leave equally as informed as I have after reading most of it.

Alright, some of the side taking makes sense to me now.

Yes, I get that, but at what point do you start considering future children over the current children? Accelerationists are not deontologists, they are consequentialists. A child lost now is valued against the amount of children saved at some calculated point later.

No, the best way to convince an accelerationist that accelerationism is not the right play is to show that there will be no decently positive outcome. Which I’m inclined to agree with, since I can only imagine the continual election of populist figures such as Trump will only increase the divide between voters of the two parties. This’ll create more violence, possibly destabilize the US, and could destabilize large parts of the western world due to policy, military vacuum, and emboldening of alt right groups. Now measure all those consequences against the possibility of an improvement in the political system and multiply that by likelihood. This, to me, seems like a very low gain, for the high likelihood of increased losses. So it should be preferable for accelerationists to go with Biden, since he’s likely to bring about accelerationists goals too, but with less risk, but much slower.

Regardless, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s incredibly hard to vote earnestly rather than strategically.

Ok, from what I can tell, most of what people care about regarding the current conflict doesn’t really involve around belligerents. So I think we can safely put that on the back burner. At least for the current wave of side taking. My one question after reading most of the comments is this, how many of Israel’s violent actions against civilians directly target civilians vs targeting Hamas and have civilians stuck in the crossfire? Because I’ve heard of Hamas using civilian areas as staging grounds as an attempt to ward off enemy fire. Is Israel going and killing civilians outside of these instances?

Slightly unrelated question, are many people taking sides in the general occupation of Palistinian land, or is this newest wave side taking mostly focused on the civilians in Gaza vs Israeli force.

I was kind of under the impression that Hamas was a defacto ruling party in Gaza. Given their support (according to some in this thread) that Isreal has given to them previously to maintain Gaza, and their previous political standing in West Bank, as well as all the coverage surrounding the conflict. Perhaps I shouldn’t of over generalized by referring to Palestine. Because Gaza seems to be the only Palestinian state actually involved in this war. But then again, I’m also attempting to use the same language to describe the scenario as I see it as many of the media sources and supporters of either side do.

Would you say Hamas isn’t attempting to eradicate Israelis when convenient? Obviously they’re not as effective as Israel’s attempt to eradicate Gazans, but to me it seems like they want Israelis dead even more so than the Israelis want Gazans dead just due to the actions they have taken.

Idk if I’m back on the accelerationist train or not yet. Not that I can vote in the States, so it doesn’t matter. Regardless, I feel like it would be hard for anyone that even slightly cares about the future to vote for either of these two earnestly. As a progressive, you’d have to weigh the pros and cons of the value of the Dems possibly reevaluating and restructuring if Trump gets back in, vs the absolute abysmal reactions and policies that Trump will cause if he does, especially outside the US. But then if you vote the Dems in again, the neo-nazis around the world will feel less empowered, and there will be less terrible decision making in the short term. All at the cost of Dems not having to change the status quo, and effectively being the lesser evil for the foreseeable future.

Actually, I don’t envy the American voter. And I certainly wouldn’t want to vote in this election.

There’ plenty of reasons, most of which have to do with the human psyche and error. I imagine it’s largely due to convenience. And then one may rationalize that initial thought by assuming that most of their potential audience uses Discord anyway, so they won’t consider other options due to just how damn easy to setup and monitor their community via a Discord-like app is. They may not consider searchability, or information access at all. They may give very little weight to the fact that their entire potential community is subject to Discord’s whims. They simply may not be aware of how beneficial other options are.

Humans do not act based on reason. They act on a mixture of emotion and intuition, and only reinforce their initial position with reason, of one form on another. There is no point of attempting to apply logic to why the people (generically) do anything because of that. On the other hand, attempting to look at this scenario from why something should be done a certain way, as opposed to why it is done a certain way, has merit, as it allows us to influence a decision before it is made in the instant it is conceived.

I don’t think participation is the problem. If you think about it, you wouldn’t want just anyone to post something on a platform without first engaging in said platform. That can only have a neutral or negative effect. People asking stupid questions or people cursing out users. The act of signup ensures that the would-be poster has to signup first and rationalize their post during that process.

Therefor, the problem must be something else, it is the information gateoff (amongst other things) that makes Discord and similar apps unfavorable for community management and information distribution.