I just showed you an example of where "centre" as commonly defined is not between left and right, but opposed by both..
I guess the point is, I think those definitions are deficient, and using them as a guide to understanding what is good or true is probably a flawed methodology. It's kind of reminiscent of Fox News' old "fair and balanced" slogan (which never was, but also just missed the point of what journalism is supposed to be about, which is truth).
Could you to the sub-C measurement test enough times to show that it just empirically works, and then use it on that basis? Or are you saying that the sub-C measurement would prove that it doesn't work (and it produces random noise)?
Cochlear implants are a form of this, and are already commercial. I remember having a conversation with a guy at a doof about 10 years ago, standing right near a loud sound system, and it took me 20 minutes to realise he had one. He was completely deaf without it on.. I can only assume the tech is much better these days.
Similar things exist for vision (though maybe not yet commercial?).
And/or (i suspect this is more likely) it will threaten to do so, and mastodon.social/.online will update their TOS to fix the problem identified in the bug report. Either way it's a win for federation, in that migration is relatively painless for the user..
I'm also really appreciating the speed and depth of the response to this from the community (e.g. all the comments on the bug report). It's cool to see!
edit: Also, Eugene's response is reasonable and levelheaded - seems like there will be some TOS improvements eventually.
That it also changes in time and is not absolute. And also, in many ways, that it does it does not exist (in the sense that the "centre" in one dimension might be correlated with extremes in another)
But left and right aren't absolute positions, they change in time. E.g. democrats now hold a lot of similar positions to what the republicans held in the 1980s (and also a lot of different ones).
Left and right are also a unidimensional approximation of a multidimensional value space.. E.g. most people on the left disagree with nearly everything Marjorie Taylor Greene says, but they agree with her that the US should not be supporting Israel's war on Iran.
There are also people on the left AND the right that oppose global economic liberalisation, but what is often called the "centre" supports it - clearly not a "middle" stance.
So how can you meaningfully define what is led and what is right, for the purpose of your reading?
Depends how interesting or important or complex the thing is. If you tell me that your foot is 25cm long, I'll believe you without question. If you tell me it's 52cm, then you're going to have a hard time convincing me (unless you've already convinced me that you're a talking kangaroo).
This is why it's much more important to be skeptical of people's views on political issues too, because the situations are always complex, and important to different people in different ways.
How do you define the centre? Do you account for existing wide-spread social biases? E.g. systemic racism, or the neoliberal belief that we can have infinite growth on a finite planet?
Is it though? Aren't the molecules constantly breaking apart and reforming?
Is this some kind of Ship of Theseus, but extra wet?