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Yeah I had them blocked for a bit over a day, but they're so prolific that I keep seeing other comments responding to theirs (without the ability to see theirs) which confuses me even more while reading my feed.

And this is just a personal thing, but I’ll often get more involved with arguments than with learning when my brain is spent from work. It’s easy (for me) to point out propaganda and cognitive dissonance, and yes to call people names. It takes more mental effort to learn or teach.

So you're here to play a game. To play whack-a-mole. I find that to be a disturbing approach to interacting with humans. I know I'm idealistic, but for anyone who (like me) is attempting to have real human-to-human conversation, someone coming in with the intent to just shout "fallacy!", "propaganda!", "wrong!" and play a game is extremely offensive.

For us (democrats, and US leftists in general), ignoring that fact got us Trump in 2016, and I don’t want to make that mistake again.

You have contradicted yourself here with another of your comments. In another comment you said

How often have you managed to convince someone of something by arguing with them on the internet? Or been convinced of something yourself? It’s quite rare.

And now you're saying you have a duty to convince others to change their mind by arguing with them on the internet. So is honest argumentation effective or isn't it?

It would be helpful if the vast majority of the “good faith” arguments in favor of Chinese policies didn’t so frequently turn out to be from state-funded actors pushing propaganda.

The ratio of truly state-funded actors to genuine human participation is nowhere near what you're implying. If you think it is as bad as you say, you should be able to prove that comment. Just because someone holds different opinions than you doesn't mean they're being paid to do so (if only that were true!).

Praise for China interjected seemingly at random, in a superlative nature is a common one.

Mentioning China where it truly is irrelevant is weird; mentioning China when it is relevant, but just because you don't think it is, isn't weird. If a thing is legitimately near the top of a particular ranking, then "superlative" praise of it is not superlative at all; that's like saying praise for the the #1 gold medal olympian is superlative--it's not, they're literally at the top.

Chinese shills are not as advanced as their Russian counterparts, in that they’re not allowed to criticize their masters and in fact gain points for effusively praising their masters.

You have a very active imagination. This is a satement about two different countries, so you have twice as much opportunity to find evidence that (at least one side of) what you're saying is true. Can you provide evidence that this isn't just your imagination?

The goal of a China shill is to say that China is superior. The goal of a Russia shill is to say that everyone is equally shit.

Again, you present this as if it's obviously true. It's not.

If you assume everyone is operating in bad faith and is a paid actor, why participate at all? You're not saving the world by fighting against an imagined state-funded actor foe. You're feeding on (imagined) outrage.

Yeah, that’s outside of my federation account.

I am so confused at your comments here. It's a webpage. You can point your browser to (or click the link:) https://lemmy.ml. You can do it on your computer, on your phone, on your refrigerator. It's a website. Just like https://youtube.com is a website. I don't know why you're even mentioning kbin here, it would be like saying you can't view facebook because you're logged in to kbin.

I understand the intent of the rule, but I’ve seen communities who require “only respectful discourse” get swamped by sealions and bad-faith “just asking questions” types with dogwhistles and veiled references. In my opinion, sometimes namecalling and insulting is a necessary counter to someone spreading a poisonous bad-faith idea

The presence of name calling and insults is always a problem. The absence of name calling and insults does not guarantee there is no problem. Moderation is still necessary even with "only disrespectful discourse" rules; any effective moderation needs to know how to moderate as well: moderators need to know how to spot and resolve types of detractive content that aren't simply name calling.

Name calling and insults are also not a productive way to address what you consider bad-faith conversation. You should attack an idea and not the person. There are already other rules in place to help address when the idea itself is harmful: there is a rule against bigotry, xenophobia, racism, sexism, and the like; there is a rule about knowingly spreading false information. I would also stipulate (and this is personal speculation but I feel it to be an accurate view): most people who are "spreading propaganda" are not doing it with the knowledge that what they're saying is propaganda and with the intent to spread propaganda; most probably believe what they say to be true for various reasons including their media exposure, the political climate in their interpersonal interactions and their community and country, their parental influence on their beliefs, etc. If you look at it from that point of view, what good is insulting someone who isn't actually acting with malice? They're going to be less likely to reevaluate their beliefs and look at what you're saying objectively if you're spewing emotionally charged personally attacks at them, even if you are mixing in valid logic and evidence. And you're hopefully not here purely to argue and throw insult; hopefully at least part of you wants to learn and help others learn. If that's even part of what's driving your participation, wouldn't you want to do so in a manner that's more productive to everyone involved? So, in my opinion: if they're not acting with malice, insulting them does nothing good; if they are active with malice, report them and if there's proper moderation it'll be removed.

Absolutely. Compared to gasoline, it might be better. And if there were literally no other alternatives for powering engines, it could be acceptable. But there's no point in taking "the lesser of two evils" when non-evil solutions do exist.

Biofuel is a renewable clean burning ethanol or methanol fuel made from grain or wood byproducts.

Can you explain how this works?

Only part of the reason petroleum products are an issue is because they are nonrenewable. The primary complaint is that their combustion produces CO~2~ (and other greenhouse gases like NOx).

Ethanol, methanol, and any other hydrocarbon that undergoes combustion produces CO~2~ (and other gases). That's how combustion works. For example, the combustion equation for methanol is: 2CH~3~OH + 3O~2~→2CO~2~ + 4H~2~O.

The only way around this while still performing combustion is by combusting hydrogen, where the combustion equation is simply: 2H~2~ + O~2~→2H~2~O.

Biofuel combustion still produce CO~2~, and I don't believe at a significantly different rate than petroleum combustion, even if it does have the added benefit of being renewable.[^1]

[^1]: Yes, this view is missing a few variables. For one, biofuel production itself can be less carbon-intensive than oil drilling and processing processes. Biofuels can also be used to "recycle" other carbon-containing (waste) material. That being said, combustion is still the largest problematic factor at play here.

I’m from kbin, so I can’t view the lemmy.ml homepage (to my knowledge) unless I navigate outside my fediverse account.

You can view it, by pointing your browser to https://lemmy.ml. This community is hosted on lemmy.ml, and as such, the instance rules apply in addition to the community rules. Just like on the rest of the fediverse.

The post is not "down", whatever that means; it pulls up fine for me. Either way, here is an archived version.

I think Lemmy needs a little bit of work on how blocking a user works. It gets confusing seeing new comments come through and not being able to see what they're replying to. You also have no option to report a comment if you can't see it. Even if you click the "show context" button, knowing that you're about to force a blocked user's comment to show, it just refuses. You have to open in an incognito tab and click show context. Basically, I want the ability to not see their comments in general, and not see them on the "new comments" feed, but if I explicitly ask to see their comments, let me do that.

I have blocked a large number of users who have consistently added nothing to conversation, or who routinely resort to personal attacks.

I am truly frustrated and disappointed that so many people:

• feel it acceptable to personally attack another commenter
• accuse everyone who disagrees with them of being a paid shill, or a troll
• use "shut down" words, with the intent to either entirely discredit the person they're responding to, or end the conversation where it is
• literally copy-and-paste the same reply all over a thread or targeting a person[^1]
• make bold claims with no sources, and when you reply correcting them and provide sources of your own, they downvote and don't reply
• engage in conspiracy thinking and go on imaginative expeditions, where connection to reality is secondary to consistency with their beliefs

I know it's naive to think people will be able to always get along. And I guess it is naive to assume that people actually want to learn, and try to help others learn. But that's what I want. I'd much rather converse with someone who shares none of my values or beliefs as long as they're level-headed, not resorting to trickery or fallacious reasoning, are willing to source their statements, and respect me in dialogue.

[^1]: I saw one yesterday where the person copy-and-pasted something like "Russia started the war" about 10 times across a thread, several times replying to the same person, sometimes other people. Every time, it wasn't actually directly relevant to the comment they replied to. It's just an attempt to brute-force shut someone down.

Instance rule 2 is

Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.

I suggest you read the linked page as well.

Unfortunately they don't care. They know what they're doing,

This discussion (and name calling) isn’t for you. It’s for the audience.

And yet they keep doing it, and defending it.

And it's not just this thread: read their comment history, and it's littered with name calling and personal attacks. I report their really egregious stuff but it's tedious reporting every single comment that has personal attacks.

You can tell malwarebytes is broken because it doesn't catch itself as malware.

Being arrested in China, placed on exit ban, tortured, or executed.

What do you plan on doing in China? You must have quite the crime spree planned.