fionwe1987

Exactly. All the “threats” imagined are a severe reach and a sign of a seriously biased observer. Ugh.

I don't think anyone disagrees with this. The two aren't mutually exclusive, but you cannot win hearts and minds at scale. You or I can attempt that with sincerity and maybe affect that change in one or two people. Maybe. A protest's job is different. It isn't to have one-on-one dialog, it is a registration of disgust/displeasure in public, en masse. I don't quite see how one can have a preference for one over the other. They work on different scales.

I, for one, am thrilled. Who wouldn't want to see Gollum captured by Aragorn, taken to Mirkwood, then escape with the help of the Orcs all floating in wine barrels as Legolas does woodland Parkour again. Who doesn't think Gollum's character deserves a deeper dive, with hours of footage of his two halves arguing with each other, because one powerful scene in the original trilogy was clearly not enough? And can anyone say no to watching Gollum's first date with Shelob?

To add to which, if you leave no pathway to redemption, then people will have fewer incentives to stop doing awful things and try to change.

As does "winning hearts and minds", as does "working out differences". I'm really baffled by your point here. "I personally dislike protests" is one thing. "Protests can be misused, and mobs can claim to be protestors, so protests are disreputable" is something else. The first is a puzzling, but personal, view. The second is just bonkers, given that protest movements played such huge and successful roles in ending colonialism, segregation, apartheid and in the struggle for rights for workers, women and LGBTQ people.

Not sure why you brought up Jan 6th and the Trumpanistas in the first place, then. They also claimed Charlottesville was legitimate protest. So what?

Are you seriously asking this question belonging to the human civilization? We've ignored and continue to ignore the sentience of scads of species, mine and log and establish monocultures while wiping out entire ecosystems that are beneath our notice. Why are you under the impression this will go down with technological advancement? We're currently discussing sending humans to Mars, without knowing if there are bacterial or other single celled species already there, guaranteeing contamination with our own single celled organisms that will happily go for the ride and adapt to local conditions if they can sustain life! This seems to be a trend with you. You seem to expect characters and cultures to show a level of wisdom and intelligence that we ourselves do not possess, and claim it is "unrealistic" that they do not. This I agree with, but its worth noting there's less of a "galaxy ending" vibe with this season.

Again, why are we assuming protesters don't listen? Also, incredibly vague. You could label anything you dislike as "not winning hearts and minds". And murderers will claim self-defense. Doesn't mean you should abolish, or dislike, the concept of self-defense!

That's about generative AI specifically. And on the whole, I think gen AI has hurt humanity more than it has helped, and building helpful use cases takes more effort than building harmful ones.

Indeed, but you seem to think the protesters need to do the listening, except protests are about making those in power listen by making it harder for them to sweep the issue being protested under the rug. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Protesters can and do listen. If nothing else, the fact that their tactics change and evolve prove that they have an ear to the ground. If they fail to do that, the protests fizzle out and nothing happens. Which is the normal way of things! When you’re not in power, you are forced to listen to a lot of bullshit and take it without the ability to contradict or discuss any of it. That’s why protests break out, when the suppressed feel their viewpoint is completely ignored.

Both of those are part of nonviolent protests. Just not the parts the media bothers to cover.

I’m hardly saying they’re all equal. That’s not the debate we were having. And this is where coordination and flow of information comes in. As does understanding who is which part of a protest while assessing one. But all this is far afield from what was being discussed, which is about nonviolent protests not being effective, or whether they’re actually violence or theft.

Yes, you've said that. I'm still waiting for the mechanism by which you're proposing we do this that doesn't involve non-violent protest.

Protests rarely drive the nutjobs on the other side underground. Not really clear why you think that happens. It often does the reverse. Brings the nutjobs out in the open, makes them overreact, and helps clarify the narrative and the stakes to a broader audience.

But it does. Not in a direct sense of "I saw you protest, now I've changed my mind" sense, but in the "huh, lots of people seem really pissed about this, and look at the lengths they are going to to make their point, wonder what that means" sense. Its like ads. They rarely work directly. But they plant seeds. In the case of protests, they plant seeds of doubt, they disrupt the existing narrative, they create political breaches. They are messy, and not something you can cleanly target, which is why they also give the opposition ammo to justify further entrenchment. That's a given, in any back and forth. Doesn't change the fact that protest can and does work, often. How do you do this at a mass scale, though? Like, what's the mechanism of doing this outside of general chatter boards of long defunt fantasy series and subreddits (neither of which are all that effective at convincing people anyway)? That's fair enough. And we can end it here. But I do wonder why you dislike it at all. Seems to me you have some unrealistic alternatives you hold non-violent protest against, but I haven't seen those in action, let alone succeed at doing anything.