I genuinely care about my friend. He's really into bee-keeping. I don't care at all about bees. But he cares about it, so I ask questions because I care about him. I have now learned enough about his bee-keeping to be legitimately interested in whether, say, his bees survived the winter or to be upset with him that an invading swarm killed them.

The simple answer to your question, I think, is that you probably can't "make yourself" care about a specific thing at the drop of the hat. But if you care deeply about other things, especially tangential things, it's relatively easy to learn to care about new things you learn about.

Giving someone, as in this thread, a genuine compliment that you mean sincerely isn't "flowery small talk" and it's sort of depressing that you think that it is.

No one in this thread is talking about your example except for you, and it would perhaps do you well to reflect on why you read things that way.

So tired of this "reacting to a dude who built a CSAM generator is the real cringe" horseshit from people who know exactly what they're covering for.

I think it's the excitement because it's a morally bankrupt organization. Some people really get off on knowing that the sum total of everything they do professionally is bent around making kids depressed to the point of suicide, and angry to the point of shooting up their school.

I assume that every single person who still works at Meta has done that personal calculus and decided that they fall on the "this is fucking amazing, important work" side.

And then people are shocked that no one wants the data centers for this shit built in their backyard.

> is because DEI is fundamentally a discriminatory movement that resulted in systemic racism and sexism at many companies, universities, and governments

Utter horseshit. “DEI” is just the latest boogeyman (it was CRT last election cycle and it’ll be something else equally fucking stupid in the next one), used to convince mediocre dudes that they weren’t hired not because they’re eminently mediocre and talentless, but because someone, somewhere, had some make believe quota.

Are there start-ups led by idiots suggesting that smacking yourself in the head with a hammer will help treat your diabetes?

If not, then perhaps there's a problem in your analogy.

You can make a confident statement and assume your readers are smart enough to understand it as "this may not be true in all situations always" but then they may be so desperate to insert stupid memes into their responses that they miss the point entirely, anyway.

> We would not abide by the electric company dictating a range of things, even of you have the option to run your own generator.

An absurdly dishonest comparison. Which you (hopefully) knew when you made it.

> This argument falls apart since there is no real freedom of choice

Absolute, unmitigated bullshit. You are not forced to buy an iPhone by anyone, ever.

> “it’s a corporation they can do whatever they want”

Then perhaps you should make the absolutely tiny mental leap to "And I don't have to buy if it doesn't work the way I want it to."

Apple has 32% market share - pretending you don't have any other choice is utterly fallacious nonsense.