It’s tough to approach this materially when most of us are from nations with cities designed around car transport; not just the road layout but where buildings are located and such, which makes cars seem like a good solution to a world designed around them. Add on top of that the social aspects other users mentioned, such as ‘freedoms’ culture in USA, and the impressions given by their current public transport making it unpopular or even seen as a ‘poor person’ thing, I consider cars a status icon in most countries.

As a case study, Beijing has some restrictions on road space, such as [wiki] “restriction of cars that could enter common road space based upon the last digits of the license number on certain established days during certain periods in Beijing. The main objective of this restraint policy in Beijing is to reduce the amount of exhaust gas generated by motor vehicles.”, which were apparently successful, even if temporarily.

This kind of system, even though it’s not really what you described, is also being done similarly in other countries wiki: Road space rationing which lists:

• Athens, Greece
• Bogotá, Columbia
• Jakarta, Indonesia
• Mexico City, Mexico
• San José, Costa Rica
• Santiago, Chile
• São Paulo, Brazil

Along with other cities doing temporary schemes, mostly in Europe.

I know it’s a bit of a non-answer, and doesn’t approach the redesigning/sectoring you discuss, but food for thought on society and not driving cars in urban areas.

Note: The author of this post has repeatedly attempted to shift the burden of proof. They provided no evidence for the many broad claims in their original post, yet demands “peer-reviewed” sources from others as a dismissal.

At this point in time (3 days after original post), every claim in the original post has remained unsourced.

Examples of shifting the burden of proof in this thread:

• “Yeah, lots of vegan propaganda there. Blogs are not peer reviewed sources by the way.”
• “Gonna need a source for that claim buddy. / edit on your new sources: Those aren’t peer reviewed sources.” in reply to a simple denial of an unsourced claim in the original post.
• Deflecting a request for source with anecdote: “All the farms where I live”

Examples in other threads:

• Original post: entire claim is based on an unsourced, incomplete list. Claims “I have sources for this graph” but doesn’t post them.

• Dismisses arguments because the user linked to Wikipedia

• Another dismissal of Wikipedia being biased when it was only quoted for summarizing the findings of an academic study

• Original post makes dubious, unsourced claims

• False unsourced claim of Germany’s divorce rate increasing since 2002, which incidentally was another questionably cause fallacy.

You made the initial dubious implication that being increased meat eaters has a major role in Hong Kong’s longevity. You have just shifted the burden of proof; you never provided a peer-reviewed source (let alone any explanation!) of why meat eating would be impactful.

Supply initial evidence for your claim, hopefully addressing how it would be more impactful than their:

• universal health care
• safe streets
• substantial greenery in cities
• walkable city and cheap, safe public transport
• good weather
• culture (which encourages public group exercise at all ages)

Furthermore, the implied claim that high meat consumption correlates with high longevity is not true. USA is one of the highest meat consumers per capita and has a far lower life expectancy. Same with Argentina and Brazil, and almost all the South American and Pacific nations with notoriously high meat consumption.

Did you just say:

Blogs are not peer reviewed sources by the way.

and then try to debunk with a medium post?

At this point in time, I agree that raising children on a poorly-planned vegan diet is unethical, in the same way that raising them on any other unbalanced diet is (there is a similar problem, at least in parts of the US but easily possibly elsewhere, of children raised on highly-processed foods with high-fat high-sugar and high-sodium (you get the point) and with little-to-no fruit or vegetables beyond potato chips and tomato sauces).

I honestly don’t know if a well-planned vegan diet is adequate for children. My very quick review of recent academic literature had conflicting claims on whether a well-planned vegan diet could be effective. Ultimately, I would base my answer of ‘unhealthy/destructive to young children’ on a food science consensus and I’m not confident there is one.

Regardless, there’s some pretty broken arguments in the original post, including the descriptor ‘evil’ (what does that even mean in this context? malicious?) and the appeal to ‘natural’ as a positive argument in itself. Pasteurizing milk isn’t natural.

Vegan farming is unsustainable. Animals naturally help the soil become more nutritious.

Vegan doesn’t mean animals don’t exist, and theoretically they should be a part of the environment. If it were run by pro-animal vegans rather than merely for vegans, I would expect some kind of permaculture including animals. Also, I’m guessing there are industrial work-around like packaged fertilizer if that’s the implication.

Vegan foods are terrible for the environment. Mass produced mono crops destroy the soil.

Are you implying that mono animal farming is any better for the soil?

Take a iron deficient person and give them plant iron and it will be weeks to never before their iron returns. Feed them a liver and see it spike up in a day. The same can be said of vitamin A and many other vitamins

Is this meant to be an argument? The point is to plan a diet to not be iron deficient in the first place! Prevention > Cure

Every “Vegan” body builder got their start on whey protein.

Is this meant to be an argument? Most people aren’t aiming to be body builders, which is in fact an unhealthy, unnatural and destructive lifestyle itself. Also, [dubious claim, citation needed]

Hong Kong has one of the highest life expectancies on earth and one of the highest meat consumption rates on earth.

Correlation ≠ Causation. One country doesn’t form a trend. USA has a life expectancy of around 50th in the world. Brazil are around 55th. Argentina are around 65th. Samoa is around 115th. These are all nations that top the charts of estimated meat consumption per capita, USA by far.

Hong Kong has other social reasons for a high life expectancy. I really don’t think you can chalk it up to ‘more meat’. Take, for instance, their universal health care, safe streets, public transport & walk-ability, good weather, varied diet. Diet plays a role but evidently increased meat consumption doesn’t make a nations suddenly live the longest. It’s a very dumb argument and you should reconsider any source that you read that implied it was a good argument.

Furthermore, meat consumption is often associated with wealth, as it’s generally more expensive, and people with wealth have more opportunity to be healthy.

That’s an insightful point to make about (if I may paraphrase) recreational drugs being abused to cope with problems prescription-only drugs are more effective for. I agree.

To start a discussion, how do you think the media and politicians (and people) of your country are keeping a proper perspective about the war in Ukraine and seeing the full context?

They aren’t. It’s as simple as that.

As examples, most people think the conflict started this year, and I still hear people conflating Russia and the USSR.

I realize that isn’t starting a discussion but the filters defined in Manufacturing Consent are out in full force here and most people perceive no reason to care about the situation more than have pity for Ukrainian citizens and demonize Putin. I don’t even blame them, it’s a tragic situation but ultimately distant to our lives here. We only care because it’s in the news more than the Middle East and because of historical conflict with Russia.

There are a variety of options. Here are some I can think of:

0. Enforced moderation. See the rule list of gtio.io. Ask why these rules are chosed. Of course, this means very little if left unenforced. See the next point, lots of overlap.

1. Banning. The bottom line is, someone who won’t constructively engage with a community is a useless distraction at best and harmful at worst. There is often no benefit to tolerating them. Banning should be done with care, as it can easily lead to controversy if ban reasons are vague or gray, which may lead to allegations of political bias or personal interest.

2. Ostracisation/Neglect. A community that successfully builds a strong culture can self-defend by simply not engaging with worthless or malicious content. This is harder on politically diverse or larger forums, and requires new members become aware of the culture. Requires a consensus and social enforcement when violated, so it’s not common to see it working. Silently voting down posts can be a related concept. “Don’t feed the trolls” and other old memes are a demonstration of this.

3. Gate-keeping. If a forum has prerequisite knowledge and isn’t just an open general forum like this, it could be useful to require new members to prove they’re knowledgeable enough to constructively contribute by some vetting process. This makes sense for more specialist communities.

Everyone has their own perspective, so it’s not as of you’ll find people who aren’t ignorant of anything, and the problems of things like multiple valid definitions of terms, but it is annoying to see how widespread foolish stubbourn trivially-contradicted views are like the examples you gave.

@itsnc7 has a good point: pick your battles and know when to disengage. What do you aim to accomplish? Is disagreeing going to do that?

Do you think it’s productive to even debate with those people (online)

No. If someone is not open-minded enough to consider your argument, debate is an ineffective rhetoric for informing them. Tell us what it would possibly produce, beyond self-satisfaction.

I wish there was a way to find a community where people have some basic understanding about how the world work (or recognize when they are talking about something they don’t understand)

Well, moving away from the mainstream like reddit and twitter will quickly bring you closer (or further!) to people who have enough of a clue to at least bring value to the discussion. Hopefully here remains alright, we’ve got a (somewhat) wide range of views while maintaining civil discussion.

Capitalism is just the economic system. What about it would lead it to ‘favor intelligence’?

I think it is clear historically it favors nepotism and exploits intelligent people, such as Nikola Tesla as a classic example. To climb to the top of capitalism takes some cunning, but I believe that’s a different concept to favoring intelligence. Intelligent people are frequently kept down by capitalism, especially those who want to act in public benefit rather than personal benefit.

Ignoring the vagueness of the non-terms “left wing” and “right wing”, and the baseless assertions, the bottom line is that liberalism is mainstream, and large parts of the further “left” and “right” (like socialism, anarchism, nationalism, US-libertarianism) retreat to their own communities.

Who has a need for ‘free speech and no censorship’ places?

• (rare) People with extreme libertarian (left or right) ideals that are more important than other factors
• (common) People who get banned from even the more lax forums

I think it’s safe to assert that right-wing ideologies (extreme personal freedoms, or freedoms to kill unwanted peoples) tend to fit this description more. Unless someone has very unusual left-wing views, they will probably be able to find a popular place that allows them to express all the view they want to, and few will see a reason to hang around a place that is dominated by not just right-wing refugees, but the ones two noxious to be permitted in other designated right-wing forums. Why would they stick around? Hence, they are dominated by right-wing views: the further left or moderates will find constant rants about excluding races or sexuality just annoying and go back to their more pleasant forums.

What is the logical conclusion of your post? Are you implying that if the admin and mods here are extremely permissive, that socialist ideas just can’t exist? Or maybe are you implying that places like KiwiFarms are dominated by the right-wing because of reasoned ideological debate and not just edginess attracting like-minded people and revolting left-wing people more likely to be disgusted by the site topic and owner?

Kiwifarms is a very biased case. It’s based, at the start, about harassing ‘lolcows’ for kicks (usually people with learning disabilities like Chris-Chan). Furthermore, it is often seen as a haven for people who get banned from other more moderate sites.

Would you agree that this inherently attracts a more edgy and “right-wing” audience?

I find it interesting no-one has bothered asking for the source of the image in the original post. “These are the average IQ scores broken up by race” is a pretty useless statement without context; are these from a city in America? Nationally reported averages around the world? This is important information and a massive source of data bias.

Speaking of bias, the original poster has said not to use Wikipedia links as they are “beyond [bias] on the topic”. Wikipedia certainly has fundamental issues with bias in most political topics, but the idea that “bias” alone invalidates a source and all their sources is very ignorant. Essentially every source and analysis is biased. That’s how biases work. You have to account for the bias and judge how it influences the work, and whether or not that compromises it (which in Wikipedia’s sources cases, I don’t think it does). Should we invalidate the original poster’s statistics for not mentioning Ashkenazi Jews, who consistently score an average above all those groups mentioned in common IQ comparisons? Should we invalidate them for being anglo-centric while comparing a wide variety of races?

Recently I’ve found it to be highly taboo to talk about IQ score differences between races.

I find it’s because the people who bring up the topic only do so to argue for racial supremacy, and they tend to falsely assume that it can mean universally ‘that race is dumber’ or a limiting factor, contradicting recorded cases of (for example) Sub-Saharan Africans like Philip Emeagwali with a recorded IQ of around 190. It can’t be a racial hard-coded factor if these cases exist, and the average isn’t a particularly useful measurement.

Wikipedia states that race is a social construct so such differences cannot exist.

That’s not a logical conclusion of calling race a social construct. Race is a categorization, and different cultures have different views on what race a given person is (and even the same culture over time: are Irish people ‘white’? Are quarter-African people ‘white’?) Race is usually not directly based on genetics, they often correlate, but they are not the same. That doesn’t mean races can’t generally have differences, but in-group differences tend to diminish out-group differences in things like IQ so grouping that by race is currently seen by experts in the relevant scientific communities as unhelpful.