If you’re going to break it down that far, why stop? Your “self” is not your central nervous system, but a portion of it - and not a very large one. It’s your consciousness. Most of what your nervous system does is not conscious.

Your self (and mine) are but a small portion of a single organ in a large network of organs and tissues and cells and bacteria. We developed because it was advantageous for our bodies - which predate our consciousness - to have pilots. We are periphery. We are a single part of an ecosystem. And definitely not the center of it

Thank you for the detailed explanation!

How is this fire related to climate change? Genuine question because I don’t understand the connection

I don’t have an answer to your actual question other than self-hosting. But, I doubt you’d ever get a “firehose of trash” on your main feed. Mainly because the trashy instances aren’t that populous, so I doubt their posts would be active or hot enough to float to the top. But I could be wrong.

You could always go directly to the instance you want to read and lurk. Unless you make an account you won’t be able to comment, but you’ll be able to get your firehose of trash

Edit: Just be mindful of how much you consume, you’d be surprised how easily hate can invade your mind. To this day I still have to self-censor every now and then thanks to the hateful rhetoric I grew up around, even though I’m long past it

What’s also fun is the few times I’ve been back to reddit to look at something. Each time I ended up seeing people in the comments with just terrible attitudes. And I thought to myself, “I’m weirdly glad reddit is still around because it gives people like you a place to congregate that I can avoid.”

In agreement with your broader point but a different approach: to say that we should die out as a species due to climate change is over-simplifying, imo. Yes, there are hardships ahead and we truly need to look at ourselves as a species and ask what needs to change for the sake of ethics and others. However, we have been in dire situations before, albeit with less foreknowledge. Would someone living in, say, 1840 have wished that humanity had died out in the bronze age collapse, when the near-entirety of known civilization collapsed due to climate change?

When considering the entire species we can’t take such a short term view. Yes, hard times are ahead. Yes, we will get through it. I say if one is inclined not to have kids, he should not have kids. But if one is inclined to do so, he should do so

You can block communities, or just curate your subscriptions

I could’ve told them that. Just gotta put your socks on and rub them on the carpet /s