Christian

intrinsic critical thinkers whose nature overcame their upbringing

I’m going to push back on this because I don’t think it’s true and also because I think it’s harmful.

There are not people who are naturally inclined not to think critically. Just as much as upbringing can shape someone’s worldview, environment can shape willingness and capacity for introspection. People don’t think critically when they’re naturally predisposed to do that, they think critically when they’re either adequately distanced from the disincentives for reflection they’ve known forever or when the incentives for reflection create enough desperation to overwhelm.

I say harmful because is there anyone who sincerely doesn’t picture themselves as an intrinsic critical thinker? Everyone is already there, so the “intrinsic critical thinker” worldview means assuming some people you meet will be worse at it. “I’m naturally better at critical thinking than this person” is a mindset that provides a shortcut to dismissing this person’s viewpoints without actually evaluating them.

I never went further right than voting democrat, but I used 4chan occasionally for a good decade and I’m convinced that support of Trump’s campaign on there was well-understood to be a running joke until people unaware it was a joke started joining to participate. I’ll admit I wasn’t using it much anymore at all by that time, but when I saw comments about Trump support start popping up the first couple months my thought was “this is hilarious”. The idea of actual Trump supporters existing was not something I was capable of imagining at that time.

Ace and Demi have sex, it’s just not a primary motivator.

I am totally ignorant here, is there a difference between a low sex drive and asexuality? My expectation was that sex is not a primary motivator for someone with a low sex drive while someone who is asexual is not sex-motivated at all (like having sex is entirely treated as caring for someone else’s needs).

I’m hoping this reads as sincere, I always worry about whether my phrasing will come across as rude whenever I’m this spectacularly out-of-touch.

I am 100% certain, I’ve done this many times over the past few years.

I always had to look up how to use the dd command until a few years back I saw somewhere that you can literally just use cp and the results won’t be worse in any way.

cp image.iso /dev/sdX

I mostly agree with this. The reason I stick with arch has nothing to do with finding it technically superior or more convenient to use than other distros. There is almost no way I would be using arch if their wiki wasn’t leaps and bounds more helpful than other distros’ documentation. Some other distros can meet my needs just as well or better, but arch’s documentation allows for a more straightforward learning process through tinkering.

I do think repository differences can potentially matter a lot. I have a lot of respect for hyperbola being ultra-hardline in removing proprietary packages and any hint of uncertainty in licensing, but the fact that that kills off texlive makes it untenable for me to use. Keeping manual installs up-to-date is a hassle, so I can definitely understand someone limiting themselves to distros supporting a certain set of packages.