I am removing most of my accounts from the online social community at present, as I am essentially hard resetting my life in many ways.

I just wanted to say goodbye first, and wish you well.

I'll delete my account later tonight or tomorrow as I am going through things.

Best wishes to everyone :)

I'm wondering if anyone in that situation has asked the question "do your patients often lie about their sexual orientations?"

To make any rigorous claim, we need to start with some basic axioms, or principles so simple we can take them as given. This is especially true in a field such as social welfare theory, where the content cannot be reduced to the basic principles of number sense and operations. Any claim or thesis on this topic must start with certain axiomatic assumptions (whether explicitly listed or not) and the strength and validity of the claim can be measured in part by how obvious those axioms are. Here, our axioms are taken from the established core principles of social welfare theory, from ideas used by left-leaning sources, and from observable tendencies of risk aversion. Int he field of social welfare theory, the general assumptions discuss which of two possible scenarios is better or worse for a society, incorporating ideas such as each individual's material wellbeing, the extent to which the rules of that society are fairly applied, the extent to which promises made by the society are kept, and others. By combining those, we can describe the individual welfare of a member of that society as a function of xyr material wellbeing, whether the rules are fairly applied to xem, etc. We can then define the social welfare of the entire society as some function of the individual welfares of all individuals in the society, and are attempting to maximize that social welfare.

The axioms we assume are:

1) Any change that would decrease the individual welfare of all members will decrease the social welfare, and is therefore a bad change that should be avoided.

(This is taken as axiomatic whenever the risk of a climate catastrophe is discussed, so there should be no argument with it here.)

2) Any change that merely rearranges which members of which demographics (racial, ethnic, gender, etc,) have which individual welfares, this must be considered a neutral change.

(This idea is the basis for describing racism negatively. While right-wing extremists may take issue with it, we presume it to be axiomatic here.)

3) The social welfare should be a continuous function of individual welfares.

(Again, this is never seriously disputed,)

4) The social welfare function must be indifferent toward unaffected members.

(That is, if some people will be unaffected by the change, we can assess whether a change is good or bad purely by evaluating the people who are affected. This is frequently used when discussing changes, that we do not list off every person, even those uninvolved.)

5) When assessing which of two societies is better, we must ask ourselves “which society would one rather live in, assuming no knowledge of what our role in that society would be?”

This is called the “veil of ignorance” principle, and was developed by leftist economist John Rawls. Without it, we'd be hard-pressed to describe why social welfare is a good thing. It also allows us the powerful tool to relate questions of social welfare to questions of risk assessment.

6) Given a fixed probability of a fixed potential individual gain, there exists some potential loss small enough that the individual would consider it a worthwhile risk.

(This is an observable reality based on behaviors toward risk).

@Cepha  @Skittypryde Can you try posting here to make sure you have access?

• Recognize the IHRA definition of antisemitism (which incidentally forms the core of the definition of antisemitism used on our own site.)
• Officially recognize that the regressive/Rawlsian view of social justice (that all disparity is inherently unjust, that equality before the law is unfair, and that in any conflict, one should always side with the weaker party or group) is an inherently bigoted view and is a perversion of social justice, as proven in this video.
• For student groups:  Ban all student groups that are racist in any form, including Israel-related antisemitism.
• For student demonstrations:  As college is supposed to be preparation for the corporate world, it makes sense to treat the campus similar to a workplace in some ways.  In the workplace, freedom of speech doesn't work the same way as it does in public in the United States.  In public, the government cannot punish you for speech unless it presents a clear and present danger.  In the workplace, the standard is changed to "hostile work environment".  To reflect this, the rule should be that students who engage in loud racist protests on campus be suspended.
• Regarding DEI departments:  Having a DEI department is a good thing, but we can't forget that "equity" means "fairness".  Any employees in the DEI department who espouse Rawlsian ideology should be removed from their positions.
• For professors:  Professors often conduct research, and we cannot afford to politically censor who does/doesn't engage in scientific research.  However, there is also a problem with allowing lecturers to preach racist content.  As such, a common solution is for professors who use their positions to espouse racism to be forced to co-teach their classes with another professor who can call them out when they transgress.  This standard should be applied to anti-Zionist instructors. 

While we generally support critical discussion of the law, we do have some ground rules on this topic:

• Members may not advocate for legalizing pedophilic relationships or activities, including inappropriate sharing of nude photos or sexual role play.
• Members may not advocacte legalization of child pornography featuring actual children.  (The topic of fiction or AI-generated content can be discussed from a perspective of "what should the law be?")

We also can't allow this site to become a de-facto support group for pedophiles, as some of the support methods may be illegal and/or harmful to children accidentally.  As such, we issue the following guidance:

• If you feel pedophilic urges, you may state that you feel urges that would be inappropriate to act on and ask for advice, but cannot specifically state that the issue is pedophilia.  You can state that you feel attraction toward someone who does not want that kind of relationship, you can state that it would violate your religious values, you can name any more general reason why the relationship would be a bad idea, but you can't specifically state that the issue is pedophilia.
• If you were sexually abused as a child, you are allowed to discuss it, as long as appropriate spoiler tags are applied and keep it in the 18+ forum.  If you do not have access to the 18+ forum and think that you should, please message or email a staff member.

For our younger members, the rules are more lenient, as your actions/the advice you receive is less likely to result in harm to others:

• If you feel enilikaphilic urges, you may mention the issue and look for ways to avoid getting into a forbidden relationship.  However, you may not ask for advice on how to get into such a relationship, nor is anyone allowed to advise you to get into a romantic or sexual relationship under the circumstances.  Do note that any sexually explicit or implicit content should be properly labeled and spoilered (and placed in the 17- forum if it is explicit).
• If you feel an adult may be romantically or sexually pursuing you, you may discuss the matter to ask for advice on how to proceed and keep yourself safe.
• If you feel an adult may have touched you inappropriately, you may discuss it in the 17- forum.  This applies even if the contact was over your clothes.  We don't want this site to be the sort of place adults can go to read inappropriate stories of inappropriate things that happened to younger members.

I'm currently (and for the last 12 years or so) on disability, due to various issues. However, now that I am finally starting to get somewhere with support needs, and have a stable permanent home, I am looking at returning to education.

Given I struggle with learning, I am starting with a variety of free courses with OpenLearn in order to try to establish some sort of way that I can learn effectively. I dropped out of college three times and did not do well in school because there was simply not the support available, and still isn't now that I am older, but with these courses they are generally fairly short, I can study at my own pace with no time limit (I will set myself suitable goals to see how I get on), and I am hoping to eventually have them lead on to more advanced courses.

I have taught myself a lot of stuff over the years (primarily to do with Office, etc), all of which is stuff to help me develop my created universe. There is a lot of extensive work and effort put into them, so I am hoping that I might find some courses once I am ready to move to other things to build on some of the stuff I already know or work with.

I have in the past done various lower/mid management roles, but never had the qualifications, it was always through simply my work ethic.

I have tried schedules, and alarms, and all variety of things, but never seem to get anywhere with them, but I am currently being assessed for a social worker, and if that is successful then they would be able to nudge me each time they visit, or each week, to just remind me to do some of the studying, and hopefully I can just get into the routine of doing a few hours or so a week, and build up as I go.

I managed to create a budgeting workbook to manage my finances in 2023, and now I am half way through the 2024 one and have not fallen out of that, but I do love spreadsheets as it is what my created universe is largely based on too. But at least it is good that I have managed to stick with that when most other things seem to not last long.

I am hoping to eventually find some sort of work I can do from home, working for a charity or something like that.

A dysphemism is the opposite:  a word chosen because it deliberately sounds bad.

Elon Musk's recent problematic statement of "My son is dead, the woke mind virus killed him" got me thinking about the appropriateness of dysphemisms.

For those of you unaware, all of Elon Musk's children are alive, one of them recently transitioned to female.  This was the person Mr. Musk incorrectly described as his "dead son".

The logic Mr. Musk used to justify this classification was that the trans community uses the phrase "dead name" for a reason, and that by that logic, it was appropriate to say that the son he originally had was dead.

Here, we all know that's incorrect logic, and that nobody actually died in that story.  However, it does prompt the question of whether it's appropriate to use the dysphemism "dead name" as opposed to the more conventional "birth name."  At what point is it immoral to choose a word meant to make something sound worse than it is?  Presumably, it's less problematic when the word choice is meant more for comedic effect than as a moral judgement (such as referring to a dentist's chair as "the electric chair.")

Thoughts?