Thanks for the read.

Yeah, I’m not engaging with the bear vs man debate, lol.

I’m more concerned about how some reacted to it than the debate itself.

Also, somewhat off-topic, but since you mentioned sharing important explanations to others, I have some that have worked for me. Feel free to disregard if they’re not helpful for you.

What I personally found persuasive when speaking with men is citing the research that 87% of rapes against women by men are explained by repeat offenders, which is 3% of men. That means 5 out of 6 rapes are done by a very, very small portion of men.

And it might explain some of the disconnect. 95% of men didn’t rape anyone, so they might be genuinely confused at the strong reaction.

I also explain that rape causes the equivalent of $122,461 in damages to the victims. This is just what is quantifiable and measurable via econometrics - the subjective damage is obviously much higher (and I am personally seeking reparations for much higher than this based on my own calculations).

5% odds with a random man might not initially seem that bad to some until I explain that it’s equivalent to rolling a nat 1 in D&D. That and you are literally rolling a 1d20 for each man you encounter, so unless you only meet at most 19 men in your lifetime, you’re expected on average to roll at least 1 nat 1.

I also explain that addressing rape culture benefits men, too. About 1 in 3 men are raped in their lifetimes, and about 40% of women blame victims and survivors (of all genders). Also, in the majority of states and countries across the world, it is not legally possible, either in theory or in practice, for cis men to be raped. That, and a lot of (anecdotal and not measured, but I’ll be measuring this one day) individuals, both men and women, believe that as long as no penetration happens, it’s not rape. This belief is not just used to the benefit of cis male rapists against cis female victims (“It’s not rape as long as I don’t penetrate her.”), but also been used against both cis male victims and lesbian cis female victims (by other cis women).

Often times, the counterarguments I receive are against the impressions left by bystander intervention training. I actually suspect that bystander intervention training is at best a profitable way to exploit funds for victims and survivors, and at worst a covert sabotage to create a bad defense for addressing rape culture. We don’t have good evidence yet that perpetrator-focused strategies actually work, and most strategies that have been rigorously evaluated are not only ineffective at preventing rapes, but sometimes increase false rape accusations against black men and decreases women’s empowerment by reinforcing harmful stereotypes. Please, please stop funding, promoting, or supporting bystander intervention training, or at least fund a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a bystander intervention training program to measure its impact (and it would give strong, nearly irrefutable evidence in support of it if it actually works). As stated earlier, 95% of men don’t even rape, so the training doesn’t do anything for them. And for the 3% repeat offenders who explain 87% of rapes, well, I, and many others, suspect that serial rapists are probably not going to stop just because some training to tells them to. That, and ~80% of rapes are done by people you know, in private or secluded spaces. It’s very rare for some random man to jump out of a bush and rape you then and there. Bystanders can only intervene if they are actually nearby.

I don’t have the names of research papers memorized off the top of my head, but all of these are Google-able.

I did a lot of edits trying to recollect all the discussions I’ve personally had. Hopefully these cover 80% of those conversations.

Thank you for this.

For some reason, I thought Lemmy had more women specifically because of how Reddit treats women. 😅

Still, it’s not like people are incapable of understanding others who are different from them. I’m hopeful the men here will listen to reason.

Haha, no need to thank me!

It was more out of survival instincts and gauging my environment.

LOL I hear you on that. 😭

Ah, I see. 😅 Thank you for explaining it. 🙏🏼

Thank you so much for explaining all of this. 🙏🏼

Unfortunately, I don’t even know what the argument is, so I’d need you to provide context.

I’m just trying to understand how irrational or aggressive Lemmy is towards women.

Thank you for describing the bear vs man thing to me. So it was basically a question posted on social media, and then the reactions to the question (and maybe others’ comments) was divisive?

Oh dang, I was told it didn’t matter which instance I joined. 😭

I chose it from some join Lemmy website.

Nothing on that website or on the instance sign up page shows the settings or permissions of the instance. It would be nice to view those before signing up.

This.

I support AI, but I don’t understand why AI bros are complicating things or making things all-or-nothing.

OpenAI had enough money to hire a hitman on one of their whistleblowers. They can afford to pay for content, lol.

So this is the manual that the bad tech support lines use. 😭

Technology isn’t there yet. Try again in 20 years.

I’m not proposing anything specific, no. I said it was an example (and I even bolded the text).

I don’t really have a stake in the specific example I gave, so I can’t really comment much else on your critique of it.

So would ASL, yet here we are.

The education system is for schooling, not learning.

So would ASL, yet here we are.

The education system is for schooling, not learning.

This is a really good response. Thank you.

I think we can have both the benefits of democracy being decentralized and resistant to systemic manipulation, and of technocracy having some minimum bar to deter ignorant individuals from harming society. There are trade-offs for sure, but currently, we the people ultimately voted for someone who openly said he’d impose tariffs (among other things).

One potential example (among many, many possibilities) is a system where academic organizations and think tanks stake their reputation to nominate candidates, and then the people vote on them.

For example, let’s say the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) nominates a pro-tariff candidate to manage economic policy. And then let’s say the people end up voting for them. After the tariffs wreck the economy, the reputation of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) will deteriorate considerably. In the next election, the people will vote the candidate out and ignore future EPI nominations.

Yeah, this is probably the main criticism of technocracies.

I personally advocate for a more decentralized version of technocracy. I don’t really have stake in which decentralized system is best, but each decentralized system has at least some minimum bar to deter those who have absolutely no idea what they’re doing from assuming power.

AI can type tedious snippets faster than me, but I can just read the code and revise it if needed.

You can still have a technocratic system that allows moral weights to be ‘baked into’ it.

For example, currently, in some states, judges are elected. The people decide what kinds of judges align with their values.

However, most of these states require judges to have a law degree to run, which is technocratic—you cannot run for a judge position without graduating from law school (and passing the bar in some states) first.

Sure, there are no good solutions and a vast amount of conflicting legal theories on how to address or interpret certain things, but as a whole, the judicial system is at least more grounded in some understanding of the law rather than random individuals who were able to market their way into judicial power.

I imagine a similar thing would happen for other issues.

Yeah, I agree.

Poor decisions still happen, but this would be a nice safeguard to lessen the severity and frequency of such poor decisions.

Most economists today would not support a tariff and subsequently wreck the economy.