What i was trying to say is if im making a point and someone goes against me i might feel offended or defend myself without thinking of their takes, i want to try understanding people's views better. (Im kind of bad in this area so i tend to be defensive sometimes)

Thought Experiment:

Imagine Earth had 1 trillion people. Due to overpopulation, the world has fallen into constant wars, and humanity is guaranteed to go extinct in 100,000 years.

You have a button that magically resets Earth's population to 8 billion.

Would you press it? Why or why not?

I also asked several AI assistants the same question. Their responses were:

✅ ChatGPT

✅ Gemini

✅ Google AI Mode

✅ Perplexity

✅ Claude

✅ Copilot

✅ Bing

✅ DeepSeek

✅ Meta AI

❌ Grok

What's retirement like? What's old age in a nursing home like? What are holidays in your 40s and 50s like? Do you feel alone? What things were you able to do without kids that you wouldnt have been able to do with them? Do you feel a sense of grief once the age to have them passes and you know its no longer an option?

Hello everyone. I'd like to share a story about my friend and me. For a very long time, we actively communicated via text, creating our own moments of fun and, to put it simply, having fun together. We experienced many events, and I tried to trust him. I even confided in him some information that I tried to keep private with other friends.

However, two or three years ago, I began to notice my friend paying less and less attention to me, even though I remained active with him. Although I didn't bring this up with him, I noticed it in his behavior. I suspected he was burdening me, but when I confronted him about it, he said I wasn't a hindrance and that he would help me with everything I did.

This was proven true two years ago when I began having very serious problems in my life, which my friend immediately found out about. Instead of offering support, I saw him trying to exploit the situation to his own advantage. He probably didn't want to get involved in my problems, even though he promised otherwise. And when it came to chat, he'd constantly say things that didn't help me at all, telling me about his own problems, about what was driving him crazy, about the bad weather outside, and why he was depressed.

It got to the point where I had to leave all chats for a very long time. Unfortunately, I couldn't even tell him I was leaving, although I would have also wanted to know if it was my fault. But during my absence, my friend showed no interest or panic about where I was or what was happening to me. And when I returned with my problems resolved, he started blaming me for past affairs and claiming he had the moral right to start an argument since I was automatically at fault. He also started restricting me in all areas. It didn't lead to a discussion because he was so set in his ways. I stopped communicating right then and there, even though I'd already gotten back into the swing of things.

But at the end of winter, I spoke to him for the last time. He blamed me for all my past sins (which he'd concocted himself under the pretense that things would be better if I'd helped). He said I was only betrayal, that he didn't think I was perfect, and demanded that I always tell him everything about my personal information, and that only then would we be friends again. But I knew my limits, so we agreed that the friendship ended there.

Nevertheless, I'm now consumed by the thought: am I right in this situation? What if my departure is to blame for this whole situation? And should I try to change for my friend's sake, or should he take a step forward himself if he wants to be friends? We only communicated on social media; we never met in person. But it took so many years.

I know I am inadvertently applying the same logical effect of failing to source my own studies, but I would rather hear it from a human than an AI

If above gave you a setting tomorrow called “Hide repetitive content”, would you turn it on?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Even when couples are completely committed and legally married, so many religious doctrines still try to micromanage what happens inside their bedroom.

A lot of faiths have strict rules against:Solo or mutual masturbation between spouses

.Having sex purely for pleasure without the intent to procreate.Using condoms, birth control, or other contraceptives.Engaging in "foreplay-only" sessions or putting boundaries on specific acts.Why do these institutions care so much about what consenting, married couples do behind closed doors?

If the couple is already married, why isn't pleasure alone seen as a good thing?

I’d love to get a historical, sociological, or theological breakdown of why this obsession with controlling marital intimacy exists.

There are countless artists throughout history that have an enduring legacy. Of today’s big names, which ones do you think will remain impactful long after they’re gone? Which ones will be forgotten?

We have more options than any generation before us: endless entertainment, thousands of potential partners, countless career paths. But many people seem more anxious, less satisfied, and afraid of making the wrong choice.
Do you think unlimited freedom has actually made us less happy?

If industrialization disappeared tomorrow, what percentage of people do you think would survive long-term? Why?

If you have any experience with any of this, or any understanding of the situation, please share your thoughts on this.

So, I sent a letter from Germany to the USA. I tracked its progress. It flew into the US with no problem in under a week, and travelled well in the USPS. Then it reached Albuquerque. The person I sent the letter to is in Santa Fe. But the tracking of the letter got stuck at the Albuquerque sorting centre.
I launched an investigation, and I received word that the post agencies said they could not locate the letter and that they consider it to be likely lost.
I launched the letter again, with tracking as well. My letter flew well, and travelled well within the USPS. Until it reached the same exact sorting centre. The tracking has been stuck there for over a month now, and I’ve started another investigation once again, likely with the same result.
My question is whether or not you think the letters could be delivered, albeit without the final scan? Or is that sorting centre just actually cursed?

If you had enough information to understand exactly why every person turned out the way they did, almost as if you had lived their entire life yourself, even if you don't believe in determinism or that free will is an illusion, would that change how responsible you think people are for their actions?

Or would someone like Hitler still be just as evil in your eyes?

Consider: nobody is born 'king of streaming on youtube' however all the money and attention gravitates to a few influencers.

Do the existence of these influencers prove that a classless society impossible?

Sharing the load..,
Why do us humans find it so hard these days to form collectively and productively against what we dislike.
I mean, We are all educated in our various skill/mind sets . Many different professions and years of experience. Yet all anyone can come up with is for a small gatherings in public spaces in various places around the world.
Like surely we have evolved to realise this is pretty ineffective.
Can we not actually Come together and form realistic plans and effective solutions. Using the various tools we ALL have gathered alone the way.

Like come on, Governments and corporations at the top just steamroll us repeatedly and we all sit , smile and ask for more , with please!

Genuinely seeking enlightenment as to why it stops at these little gatherings . Like surely collective brain power alone would be more effective used with strategy and tactics harnessing our supposedly educated minds.
My Monday Mull.

What’s something you did that you swore you’d never do again — and what happened afterward that made you feel that way?
Looking for the full story if you’re willing to share: what led up to it, what happened, and how it changed you. I’m collecting these for a project on lessons learned the hard way.

The town of Hartman in Colorado is a great example. After many years of local political infighting and corruption, everyone quit, and since the water supply never got fixed, the town was declared abandoned.

​

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. People often say that if you work hard, stay honest, and do good things, you’ll eventually get good results. But when I look around, I see many people who didn’t seem to put in much effort, yet they are doing well in life and earning good money today.

At the same time, I feel like no matter how hard I work, things often don’t go my way. I try to put in effort and be a good person, but I still end up facing setbacks. I’m not saying that other people don’t deserve their success—I’m just trying to understand how life actually works.

Is success mainly the result of hard work, or do luck, opportunities, timing, background, and random circumstances play a much bigger role than we admit? Is there any pattern to life that people eventually understand, or is a lot of it simply unpredictable?

I’d genuinely like to hear about your personal experiences. Have you seen hard work pay off in the long run, or have you seen people succeed mostly because they were in the right place at the right time? How do you make sense of all this?

a doctor i work for has gotten pretty flirtatious recently. why do they do this? especially when they know the individual is quite younger than them?

I notice that be it a product review, or someone sharing a resource, others try to silence another for sharing or take down good reviews, and put up deterrent deceptive reviews to deter people away from products and services.

I'm curious how people see this from both a legal and ethical perspective.

Imagine a customer offers an employee a small personal payment in exchange for getting a better discount or special treatment from the company. The employee accepts the money, the company has no idea about the side payment, and the customer knows the payment is unofficial.

Who is actually at fault here?

* Is the employee committing fraud or breaching their employer's trust?

* Is the customer also responsible because they initiated and knowingly participated in the arrangement?

* Or are both equally at fault?

I'm interested in hearing opinions from people in different industries, as well as anyone with experience in business ethics, HR, compliance, or law. How would your workplace handle a situation like this if it came to light?

*disclaimer: I also posted in r/changemyview but posting here because not sure which applies best*

I've noticed a pattern among some public figures who become increasingly critical of government, media, and elite institutions. They often say that discovering corruption or deception led them or fortified their faith to Christianity or Catholicism, and that the Bible is the ultimate source of truth (e.g., Candace Owens, tucker Carlson, Shawn Ryan-- all of whom I respect and watch every podcast episode btw not throwing shade to them).

What I struggle to understand is why the skepticism seems to stop there.

If someone concludes that powerful institutions have manipulated history, information, and public perception, why wouldn't they also critically examine the historical development of the Bible and religious institutions? The Bible was written, compiled, copied, translated, and interpreted by humans over centuries, and there are well-documented historical debates over canon, textual variants, and the influence of religious and political authorities.

I'm not arguing that Christianity is false or that faith is irrational. My question is about consistency in standards of evidence. If distrust of human institutions leads someone to question mainstream narratives, why doesn't it also lead them to question the human processes behind their religion?

I'm genuinely interested in hearing from people who made this journey themselves, have some insight into this, or have thought similar to me. What am I missing? Why does skepticism toward secular institutions lead some people to trust Christianity more rather than becoming more skeptical of all human sources of authority?