If it results in a basis of good values later in life, I’d say it’s definitely worth the time of OP.
However, it’s arguable whether making a post on Lemmy is the right way to get feedback on rights and wrongs, although I’m positively surprised by the comments here being so understanding and constructive.

I’ll try and answer seriously, with some non-exclusive options, in no particular order:

• Feeling ashamed, mostly because they’re realizing they’re either wrong or sounding stupid.
• Not wanting controversial stuff related to them to be “saved” for others to find and use for scrutiny.
• Honest mistakes (wrong community, thread, etc.)
• The post becomes a cesspool in the comments.
• Other personal reasons (feeling threatened, wanting a clean inbox, question got answered and they don’t care about historic purposes, etc.)

These are just my guesses though, and I try and not delete anything personally. I’m aware that anything I put on the internet will be immortalized, and that the healthiest thing I can do is own both my mistakes and my opinions, even if I’m convinced of my stupidity or ignorance at a later time. I’m only a human after all, and doomed to talk before I think. Best I can do is to learn as much as possible from it, and hope that others can also learn from my actions.

You seem to look at it quite pessimistically imho, but I’ll try and counter ;-)

developers won’t support a third platform

We’re not talking about a vastly different ecosystem. Probably Android-derived (which is open-source), very likely Linux derived. So compatibility is not going to be a huge issue, hence developing not hard. Developers will usually follow where user demand goes, not the other way around.

nor will customers move to a platform that doesn’t have the big apps that they need

Most of the big apps today have a smaller equivalent, check AlternativeTo.net.

Doubling your market share is easy when your market share is so low.

Generally true, but we’re talking a growth of millions of users a year. Millions of people is no small number. 5% of the US’ traffic are from Linux desktops, according to StatCounter (here’s an article with many links).

Nope, not in the tens of millions

You’re correct wrt. gaming, as 2.89% of 157 million active monthly users is about 4.55 million, which is not a small number either.  If you look at Linux desktop users in the US however, we’re talking over 5% of 347 million, which is 17.35 million users in the US alone, which is also not a small number. It’s more than the population of Greece and Bulgaria combined.

Purely because of the steam deck (wrt. Steam Linux users growth)

Do you have numbers? I can’t find any official numbers of active users on the Steam Deck, but there are estimations of 3+ million devices sold. I feel like I keep seeing posts of people who move over to Bazzite and similar distros these days for the sake of playing games, but nevertheless, both of these factors weigh in, and are steadily increasing the adaptation of Linux systems.

without [kernel level anti-cheat] it will never take off because the overwhelmingly most played games all have kernel level anti-cheat.

This is denying the antecedent. The amount of games, and money in games, without KLAC is plenty substantial to make a difference in the approach of both developers and DRMs, further increasing ease of adaptation by users. Do not undermine nor underestimate the potential of marginalities.

The Windows phone entered the market while the market was stable, and users had little reason to move away from what they were used to and comfortable with. These days users are getting more uncomfortable, hence why Linux is on the rise. Same with the push for more liberal software (FOSS). I believe if a company can do it right, and offer a stable and comfortable alternative, they can manage to be much more successful than the Windows phone was 10 - 15 years ago.

Disclaimer: I haven’t checked the statistics, but I remain optimistic, and continue making choices that align with my principles.

Availability in the US might be a bit of a challenge, as the Google/Apple duopoly has solidified greatly over the years there. Europe has the entire BoycottUS movement these days, so there are a lot of attempts at developing something independent there. But as with most new solutions, they have the added difficulty of being compared to these bigger companies who’ve already had many years to develop and perfect their solutions.
The choice boils down to how much you value your principles over comforts, and whether downgrading to physical cards is worth it. Personally I’ve recently done just that.

In regards to Android clones becoming worse, I saw GrapheneOS say on Mastodon that it won’t affect them in any significant way. Hopefully this is the case for most, and will remain the case.

/e/OS works with most, according to this list.

The founder of /e/OS has a blog where he talks about alternative payment solutions, and he mentions Curve being one.

I just recently ordered the Fairphone with /e/OS, and will be looking into this myself soon enough…

Not a lot currently, but what’s needed is for the snowball to start rolling. This means the early adopters will have to make the more difficult decision of choosing “lesser” options wrt. comfort and convenience, compatibility, and bang for your buck. All decisions matter, and it will have long-term effects en masse.

I feel like a lot of comments here suffers from The Paradox of Tolerance.

This is about a minister setting down their foot on what degree of tolerance outside of cultural and societal norms this country should have. Just like any other country. Look at for example at Afghanistan, Japan, and Estonia - are they any different? Better or worse?

Architects - Animals, specifically this drop. Makes sure I’m awake when I start talking.

I think you’re right on all these points, though it depends a bit on what part of the Fediverse you’re exposed to.

On the point of anti-capitalism, I agree, but (again, depending on the part of the Fediverse) there’s also an incredibly high amount of open-minded people here, compared to other more mainstream social media (like Reddit). I speak much from my perspective of being from lemmy.zip, which I’m impressed by the healthiness of the community since I joined. But there are also less “healthy” instances like lemmy.ml which is considered by many to be infested with tankies (anti-capitalism?).

And yes, the average age seems to be around mid-30s to me, based solely on how people speak and what they reminisce about.

Fair point. Though that’s why I think the term is composed with “violence”. The desire for chaos and destruction comes from the human in question, while the nihilism is what removes the barriers of committing to the desire. Nihilism goes both ways, and there’s nothing inherently good nor bad about it.

I wonder what other term would be accurate for these groups though?

Nihilism means there is no meaning. Whether that pertains to existence (existential nihilism) or morals (moral nihilism). Nihilism effectively works both ways: “Nothing matters, so I might as well kill myself”, and “nothing matters, so might as well make the most out of it” (constructive nihilism).

This I believe falls under moral nihilism, where there is no right or wrong, only what feels good or bad. Which the article hints at by mentioning that the actors seem to have no ideological goals.
So it’s not a completely irrelevant use of the term, imho.

I interpret it more as “since nothing matters, might as well have fun”, and “fun” is subjective and can be interpretted as enjoying watching things burn in unpredictable ways (chaos & destruction). Human nature can be a bit messed up in that regard.

This game is one of my all time favorites! The game engine is cool, love the story and it’s all its twists, and especially all the small hidden pieces of background info, like the alternate history you pointed out!

It also has some great puzzles and secrets hidden in areas that are interesting to explore every nook and cranny of. I feel rather clever for noticing things like “huh, this is a window, but this game has something called a ‘looking glass’… I wonder…”. And the verticality of a lot of these maps is so fun, giving you the possibility to approach enemies and puzzles the way you prefer (just like the Dishonored franchise, which I can greatly recommend to anyone reading this!).

I wish you a great time with it!

I used to use one of them in my passwords - it usually works fine, until I’m met with a platform where this key doesn’t exist (damn you, Nintendo Switch!)

It’s fun that one can use games for it, but it shouldn’t be difficult to do the same through AI-generated imagery either, which isn’t much more difficult.

Even though this method is flawed, one shouldn’t really use ID-only verification either imho, as it’s a security risk to upload any official document like that (ref. Tea app leaks).

The whole age verification that the UK wants to impose has been quite the impossible task from the beginning. Creating government-backed education for (future) parents about how to raise a kid and protect them in today’s digital society would be more efficient than this, if we really are thinking of what is best for the kids. But alas, there are zero requirements to become a parent…

Just to counter your arguments a bit:

• NATO does not forcefully enter any country; countries have to apply to become a member.
• There were already many weapons on several of Russia’s borders before NATO was there. NATO has only reinforced this (as part of the agreement signed with the country in question).
• “Economic warfare” (aka. economic sanctions) NATO has nothing to do with, that’s on the country’s government.
• Terror attacks on civilian targets? Please provide sources.

I think there are two more questions that need to be answered first, before being able to tell whether we should prioritize the many.

First question is what is the ultimate goal behind prioritizng the many? Happiness of the population? Infinite growth? To conquer the stars? Depending on what the goal is, there are occasions where minorities should be the focus if we want to approach the goal the fastest.
Example is moon landing: The amount of resources that was spent on “simply” building a rocket, space suits & equipment, and send a couple of humans over there was prioritizing the few. Despite a lot of people watching with curious eyes, it did not benefit the many’s needs much. There were several goals here: Being before the USSR, explore the unknown, satisfying shareholders, and more. By the many working hard to send the few, we approached all these goals faster than if we would allocate some of these resources towards the many’s needs, like health (prime days of smoking cigarettes).

The second question is what timeframe are we talking? Is it long-term or short-term success we’re aiming for? Because in many cases, if we want long-term success fast, the many are those who should “suffer”.
Example is where the long-term goal is the glorious evolution of mankind: In one way, we downprioritize the few who are those born with defects, either by culling them or by ensuring they do not make offspring. In another way, we downprioritize the many who are on- or below-average intelligence/capabilities. But then we get the question of how we quantify the few/many; where do we draw the line? And as we get more smart/capable humans, the average constantly shifts - what is the concrete goal?

Suffice to say that this is written without emotion, as that makes this discussion the soup it really is: Ethics, benevolence, discrimination, etc., as you mentioned.

It’s an interesting thought, one that has crossed my mind a time or two.

I think in reality, we don’t have anything that is “absolute” mind control, but we come pretty close through long-term exposure to biased information (propaganda). You asked for this to be an exception, so I won’t go into details there.
There is a famous study done by Olds and Milner in the world of psychology, where they hooked up rats’ reward center in the brain to some electrodes, resulting in incredible change of behavior. The rats were stimulated by them pulling a lever, and this felt so rewarding to them that they couldn’t think of anything else. After the stimuli was given, they kept pulling the lever to exhaustion, not even prioritizing food or sleep anymore. The scientists also attempted the reverse; to inhibit the reward system. The rats became lethargic, and didn’t have motivation to do anything at all, not even eat.

This is, to much smaller degree, effectively the same that happens with humans that are addicted. Whether it’s to gambling, porn, drugs, gaming, or social media.
So if one can spontaneously create an addiction in someone, you’re one step closer to mind control.

One show that caused a bit of a psychological unease with me was first season of Jessica Jones, where David Tennant makes an excellent performance of a character who can make anyone do exactly as he says. I think this is the kind of mind control that we fear, where we are completely aware of ourselves, but cannot help but do what we have been commanded to do.

Edit:

I forgot to answer your question: Yes, I think it will be invented (and to some degree already has), and total mind control is probably at least 50 years away, as we research the psychological basis that was found with the aforementioned research.

True, but I think if the book is given to the right (group of) people, their curiosity to figure out of the book will likely lead them to it being translated rather fast.