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> It really is amazing, that's why we really need to appreciate and protect what we have. The incredible abundance we currently have is not the norm. It was not even 100 years ago that people were starving in the US during the great depression.

This is fine and a good exercise (like a gratitude journal). The problem is that this is often used to tell people indirectly that they should stop with their political complaints, which may be well-founded. Like...

> Think about this every time someone promotes extremist violent rhetoric.

Like this?[1] I don’t know what extremist means here but there are real political problems out there, and some of the solutions are “extremist” (like e.g. some of the solutions to climate change).

Violence is less debatable and should be reserved for when it it truly necessary.

[1] If you make vague gestures I in turn have to guess.

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As far as I use the term, extremists are people who advocate for tearing the system down via revolution and rebuilding from scratch. They have no idea what it takes to build this modern world, but they love the idea of guillotines.

Some people complain about taxation on tea or the lack thereof instead of appreciating how privileged they are to have access to Oriental tea.

Not having a representative vote in parliament was kind of annoying, but what do I know

Nitpick & a tangent, but:

Being properly represented in a democratic system is not the same as being able to vote for someone.

Fair enough, the chant as we learned it was “no taxation without representation”, so you win this one. But my point was that it wasn’t just childish tantrums about taxes, it was also about being forced to buy into a monopoly, not getting any say in the matter, having local business blockaded, etc.

For what it’s worth: I wasn’t at all disputing your general argument, just wanted to elaborate on a pet peeve of mine. Cheers!

Sometimes you actually do need to rewrite the whole project in a new language. FORTRAN just isn't the tool for the job anymore. But you'd still benefit a good deal from being highly suspicious that any person suggesting that course of action is naive to how much time and suffering it will entail.

Arguably, the American revolution wasn't even necessary. A lot of people died as a result. England would have potentially ended slavery decades earlier if the US was still a colony. Canada and Australia wound up in roughly the same spot without a revolution (though possibly as a second order effect of the American revolution).

>FORTRAN just isn't the tool for the job anymore.

This underscores the problem with generalities. I know of some applications that would be considered high-speed (both literally and figuratively, since they are related to rocket testing) that still rely on FORTRAN. So I think your statement needs some qualifies (what kinds of jobs?)

I guess I should have put quotes around that. It was intended as a specific example of when that decision might make sense; you're using the wrong language for the job because it was the best choice when you started the project decades ago. I didn't mean to suggest that FORTRAN is not the tool for any job.

Why is modern Fortran no longer the right tool for a job?

Those people didn't have abundance at that time, there were many better systems they could pick that they knew about at the time.

What do you call people who attach speculative pejorative labels to those who dare to suggest that action should be considered because the status quo may be similarly risky?

Don't forget: the status quo is what got us into our various pickles in the first place.

I think most people would consider liberalism rather mainstream.

Depends on your point of view, and what you're referring to.

The word means two different things, depending on your side of the spectrum.

Weird vague-posting.

Are you aware of some mainstream liberalism that didn't kick off with guillotines or muskets? Then make it clear.

I understood the "extremist violent rhetoric" to refer specifically to accelerationists (in the states, we have the Boogaloo boys, but there are others), whose explicit goal is to accelerate the (from their perspective) inevitible collapse of the current order, to replace it with their own order. Often times, but not always, this is married to a both a doomsday-prepper I-can-go-it-alone mentality, as well as a libertarian theory of government.

There are currently many different extremist groups out there. So I don’t know why you went with that.

Because unlike other kinds of extremist, violent, revolutionary political movements, those from the accelerationist + prepper mindset are explicitly opposed to modern life. Think Ted Kaczynski (that is, the Unabomber).

Not all violent extremists are focused on tearing down the modern technological order. ISIS, for instance, is only interested in the end of modern morality, but (evidently, based on their PR/recruiting arm) have no special qualms with modern media technology, industrialization, etc. The Red Army Faction was only opposed to the modern (at the time) government of Germany and a poorly defined concept of capitalism. But there is a specific kind of violent extremist who thinks that computers and mass production and factory farming are the problem. And I understood the GP to be referring to them.

> The problem is that this is often used to tell people indirectly that they should stop with their political complaints

It's a tell that you conflate political complaints with extremist violent rhetoric.

I would say that in this forum we try to be charitable to each other and it's certainly the way I like to conduct myself.

The poster you're replying to has so far merely provided you with an opportunity to clarify or expand on what you would consider "extremist violent rhetoric".

We're all pretty curious people here, and I would say reasonably opinionated, so I don't think it's unreasonable for someone to ask you to clarify your position.

We're not going to get to the high level of discourse we like and expect in this space without a bit of curiosity and generous assumptions to our fellow posters =)...

Like I said, when you vaguely point to something in the Zeitgeist I have to guess. I made my assumption clear so don’t try to make this into a gotcha.

Specifically extremist, violent, political[1] rhetoric is subsumed by political complaints in general. So if you mean conflate as in draw an equivalence then that is clearly a wrong inference on your part.

[1] This adjective wasn’t in your original comment hence my guess.

You don't seem to be following the site rule of "charitable interpretation" here. This reads more like "legalistic nitpicky interpretation" - that is, like bad faith.

(Yes, good faith/charitable interpretation can lead to misunderstandings when some things are left unsaid. No, I don't think maximum nitpickiness is the answer to that.)

I have no idea what you’re talking about.

I was intentionally vague and not picking sides. Extremist violent rhetoric encompasses communists and fascists and anyone else willing to kill people to tear the system down.

If you think I'm talking about the Israel / Palestine thing. It was not what I was thinking about. I was thinking about the US specifically but it also applies to other nations with strong personal freedoms, rule of law, and general economic prosperity. Advocating for revolution in such places is very dumb.

Are you aware that the system we have today needed people willing to kill to tear the then existing systems down?

Yes, for freedom. What would a modern day American revolution be for?

For freedom, what else? The communist revolutions were also fought for freedom.

> Extremist violent rhetoric encompasses communists and fascists and anyone else willing to kill people to tear the system down.

It seems that at the end of the day you are not against anyone willing to kill people to tear the system down.

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