Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Thursday, November 14, 2024

Germaine's Quest update: Bluesky, pragmatic rationalism and the communication problem

I have a real problem. Today I saw an article that said that lots of Trump opponents are leaving X for Bluesky. I immediately researched and found that Bluesky, which is still puny compared to X and Facebook, allows anonymity. I see that as an opportunity. I signed up under the moniker Germaine2 because Germaine was taken. 

That's me on Bluesky, no posts yet
Not sure what to do next, but I'll figure it out

What I wanted to do was start a channel, or whatever it is called there, focused on rational politics based on pragmatic pragmatism. That led me to Perplexity and a long series of questions about how to do that, what to emphasize and whether pragmatic rationalism even makes a lick of sense. What I got back was a huge mess of complexity, but mostly encouraging.

To help me, the input data I fed to Perplexity was my incredibly long, August 2015 post on self-criticisms of pragmatic rationality and my responses thereto: Objective politics: Criticisms and responses - https://dispol.blogspot.com/2015/08/objective-politics-criticisms-and.html

The answer I got back from Perplexity was that in essence what I wanted to do to describe pragmatic rationalism is a fool's errand because (unless I misunderstand, which I might) Bluesky posts have a 300 word limit: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/how-can-a-new-person-on-bluesk-V8b9vMAsQYihRUMm5zBTDw

The Q&A following my initial Q to Perplexity is massive. Probably longer than my 2015 self-criticism and answer blog post. But, being a persistent cuss, I don't care that what I want to do will necessarily be imperfect. I want to do it in defense of secular democracy, civility, civil liberties, the rule of law and transparent, honest, competent government.

I'll re-engage with this problem tomorrow. Maybe I'm barking up the wrong side of the tree, but maybe not. 


Regardless, I am looking for new ways to defend America from impending tyranny and kleptocracy, Maybe this is one.

And there is your update for the day.

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