ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
No bio...
User ID: 626
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
10d ago
I think it's good because it reminds people what the better position is. Not just oppositional, but actually taking a stance which doesn't amount to rejecting one side or the other by embracing the opposite totally.
Well, the latter has the issue that sometimes one might hold a strong opinion, and feigning neutrality would be hard to pull off, and come off us dishonest anyway, but on the former I guess you're right, and I'll try to keep that in mind. I think I even managed to pull it off one time with words to the effect of "I do have my doubts sometimes, and if I'm wrong the opposing view that I find most likely to be true is...", followed by an expose on a group that holds a completely different view, which I disagree on the level of fundamental values. If that fits with what you had in mind, I guess it's something worth going for.
But I acknowledge that it's hard to say something like "you're saying the truth, but you should be more sensitive to presentation" when the issue might be so lopsided.
Funnily enough, that's something I'm willing to concede immediately. My tendency to sperg on some issues will probably get in the way of living up to this standard, but it's a standard worth aiming for.
But we don't expect people to be just human. We expect a level of rationality and reason.
I may have lost the track of the conversation somewhat, but I think that was my point. This is why I'm salty at all the people that outright flamed out - I thought we all signed up on for some baseline level of decoupling. But yeah, in the end we're all only human.
That's a tall ask, and I recognize that. I can't say I'd tolerate it if I was treated that way. So maybe this whole thing is doomed from the start.
To be fair, I see how the roles are reversed now. It takes a different form, but between the downvotes on unpopular views, and the constant background hostility to progressivism, it must take a pretty thick skin to post here, if someone is leaning left. The only thing I'll say in our defense is that it's still better than most mainstream forums, as we don't ban for disagreement, and are at least theoretically aware of the value of having dissenting opinions. But in any case, my hat is off for the lefties that still hang out here.
I think that often comes down to the vast inferential distance between the two sides. One man's hypocrisy is another's "clear distinct situations".
Sometimes, maybe even often as you say, but there are cases where it's really pants-down "you literally said this never happens" type stuff. "No one is doing surgeries on minors" is something still being repeated by people who haven't caught up with what's actually happening.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11d ago
Most point and click adventures had decent and enjoyable stories (since they were carried or buried by them), RPGs were hit or miss because they had a tendency to rely on D&D clichés, but unless you're referring to some B-list stuff, this seems flatly wrong.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11d ago
Of course, that's not counting "spontaneous abortion"
Oh please, this is like calling death by accudent, illness, or natural causes "spontaneous murder". It has nothing to do with the issue of abortion.
the online American right spending the final days before the election losing its shit over some squirrel seems like losing type behavior.
Huh... most of the stuff I've seen looks like they're having fun with it.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11d ago
Whether it's because I have more quokka in me or I am simply better at decoupling my anger at wokeness from the argument I'm willing to believe about it, I've always tried to muster the energy to take people to task for uncharitable arguments which are directionally correct.
"The argument I'm willing to believe about it" might be the crux of the issue here. Like you, I can charitably describe almost any view, but I'm having real trouble believing these views are held honestly. What good is my Charitable Steelman about accommodations for trans people being about alleviating the suffering of people afflicted with a rare condition called gender dysphoria, when people spearheading gender affirming care are putting up conferences where they say you don't need dysphoria to be trans, that schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder shouldn't disqualify you from transitioning, and for that matter maybe we should dispense with that pesky binariness, and start affirming eunuchs as an identity? At some point it's the steelman that caricatures actually held views, rather than the supposed strawman.
I think your framing denies the majority the right to express discomfort with views without it being a stain on their character.
That depends on what you mean by "expressing discomfort". I think we all agree that FCFromSSC improved when he abandoned the firebrand speeches about not wanting to share a country with the other tribe, and embraced exactly the kind of decoupling you were advocating for earlier. I wouldn't call it a stain on someone's character if they can't do that, it's far too human of a flaw, I can't pull it off myself most of the time, but it seems it's something necessary for both sides to do in order to create the kind of space you'd prefer.
I think the second has some issues, though, because you'd have to control for the quality of the responses.
I agree, but the advantage is that it's a structural, rather than a cultural measure. The latter, like your "no exo-sadism" suggestion has the issue of needing buy-in from the majority of participants. If the problem is the current culture, you're going to have a hard time convincing people who maintain it to do a 180.
It's not rationally honest, but it's psychologically helpful.
I'm not sure what you mean by "rationally dishonest". I agree that something that would signal "there are other people like me here" would help in drawing more left-wingers, but tribal chatter usually boils down to shitting on the outgroup, which is exactly what you want to avoid, from what I understand. Even if we found a way around that, is the idea here that the regulars here would perform such chatter to attract new left-wing users? Won't that fall apart rather quickly, the moment we discuss any issue of importance (and maybe that's what you meant by "rationally dishonest")?
Just as anti-abortion advocates would not remain in spaces where they are presumed to just hate women, your opponents are not going to show up if they are presumed to be evil, monstrous, inhuman, etc.
I'm not sure I agree with the premise. Back when we had a much more of a 50-50 split, we regularly had to field accusations of racism / sexism / xeno-islamo-trans-phobia, and we kind of had to take that on the chin. In fact, I kinda think that to the extent you're right, it's more of a product of Current Year culture than being some iron law of human behavior. I distinctly recall Christians, creationists, etc., showing up on atheist forums of yore, trying to convert us, no matter how much they got shat on.
Yes, there are people who, if accurately described, would fit that description. But in consequentialist terms, it would have greater value for the plurality of views if half the political spectrum wasn't treated as if it were the sworn descendant of Stalin himself.
This goes back to the earlier point about cynicism. I have no issues taking someone at their word when they say "I believe in X, but I don't want any of that crazy Y and Z stuff", the problem we're having is that for a while we've been seeing the "Y and Z are not happening, and it's a good thing that they are" pattern unfold several times. When we start discussing issues X', Y', and Z', I can take a specific supporter of X' at his word, but it's going to be hard to believe that the movement he's a part of is not going to push for Y' and Z' in short order. If specific charity is not enough, and group-charity is necessary... that's going to be a tall order.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11d ago
Voting is literally the only way the community can respond to a persistent troll the mods have decided to enable
There was only one instance that I recall where this was an actual issue, and it was Darwin, and by the time we moved here, even the mods were tired of his schtick.
I don't know why anyone would want to take that one recourse away from the users.
Because for every person that gets downvoted for being a troll, there are scores that get downvoted for having an unpopular opinion.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11d ago
I still consider it the best Western RPG ever made,
By Hordes of the Underdark it got to the level I'd consider "good", before that it was at most tolerable. There are mods that BTFO anything released by the studio.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
12d ago
tl;dr a lot of the devops/infra people know these tools are dumb/inefficient but the alternatives are endless red tape or deadlock.
Oh, that explains a lot. I'd off myself if I had to work for a MegaCorp, so most of my work was for small companies with little to no red tape.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
13d ago
and the Hertzner server costs 1/10th
This in particular has me regularly scratching my head as to how we got here. Surely, I must be missing something if the whole industry decided this is the way to go. But why is it that any time I run the numbers, cloud compute ends up feeling like highway robbery? "Noo, you don't understand, you can set up auto-scaling, so you only pay for what you're using at any given time!" Sir, at that price differential I can rent enough servers to cover peak demand several times over, and still have money to spare relative to your galaxy-brained auto-scaling solution. "Nooo, you have to use reserved instances, they're cheaper!" How is that not just renting a server? How are you still making it several times more expensive given the scale you're operating at?
Am I missing something, or did they play us for absolute fools?
It never had or has to be that way.
Sure, it doesn't have to, but surely you see how maintaining the levels of open-mindedness one had when they were 20, is fighting an uphill battle?
Why on earth is that your conclusion when the far simpler one is that people don't remain in spaces they find uncomfortable?
The question is why are they finding those spaces uncomfortable? We've had several high-profile flameouts stemming from tolerating too much Actual Nazism, racism and sexism, but basically none stemming from tolerating Actual Communism, CRT, and patriarchy theory.
When one holds views that are unpopular with the establishment, one has no choice but to develop a tolerance for pro-establishment views as they're being expressed everywhere, but there is no need to develop such tolerance when you're holding prop establishment views to begin with. You can always go somewhere where opposition to your ideas is not allowed to be questioned.
As to why I think open discourse is an existential threat to the regime, it's because they tell us so! Western governments are quite open about their need to control the kinds of views that are allowed to be spread on social media.
The other reason I usually hear for posters feeling uncomfortable boils down to being piled on. I have a lot of sympathy for this, but attempts to find solutions haven't really gone anywhere. I always suggest turning off the voting system, and rate-limiting responses to minority-view posters. Do you think that would help? Do you have any ideas on what could be done to alleviate feeling piled on?
Other than that have I missed something? Are there reasons for discomfort that don't boil down to tolerance for repugnant views, or being piled on?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
13d ago
The definition you were using earlier is "living a sin-free life", which is very different from "going to heaven", from what I always understood.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
13d ago
Did sainthood become something a typical person has a decent chance to attain, when I wasn't looking? If not, I don't see how that changes his point.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
13d ago
Does prepending "virtually" before "impossible" change anything significant about his point?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
13d ago
People tend to get banned for that when it's caught / suspected, the problem is that it's hard to detect, and prove objectively. What made you think that this is what happened here?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
13d ago
I agree, but the political lean has it's issues. For example I'm a big fan of the "post something wrong and wait until someone smugly corrects you" method of truth seeking, and it can't work if your wrongposting feeds into the bias of the community.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
13d ago
This place hasn't been healthy for a long time, and arguably wasn't even at its conception. Then again, one community's illness is another community's peak condition, so maybe I'm wrong and this place is good precisely for why I think it's ill.
It's an interesting question. It's not exactly healthy, in that it's not what I'd want to see in a community like this, but I think it's as good as it's going to get, given the circumstances. This may all be projection, but a part of the issue seems to be us accumulating cynicism as we grow older - I don't know how much I can play "steelman the opponent" post- gamergate, BLM, metoo, BLM2, COVID, and "WPATH to hell" - but more importantly I think it's less of a local culture problem, than a global culture problem. The culture of discourse that the rat-sphere sprang from is dead and buried. Personally I think it's because discourse is an existential threat to our ruling regime, and so people need to retreat to echo-chambers just to maintain society. From there, it's not exactly surprising that this place has become rather skewed in one direction, but the depressing thing is it's still better than the majority of alternatives.
I'm not terribly confident of the red-armband-man but that's because of the historical record of people like him, but I don't see the reason to apply that record to every would-be revolutionary. As a Euro we didn't put a lot of emphasis on the American revolution during history lessons, so maybe I missed something, but I don't think it was comparable to the Red Terror.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
13d ago
I'm sure civil war will respect all of those fine details you specified.
Not respecting all the fine details doesn't imply genocide either? Do you think the US respected all the fine details in Afghanistan? Or do you think they committed genocide? Or do you think neither, and therefore your entire argument is invalid?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
13d ago
Not gonna lie, gearing up on an absurd amount of survivalist gear for a long winter hike, only to head to the local bar and get shtifaced with the bros, does sound quite fun.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
13d ago
I will not be satisfied until young men leaving for the Hock each winter becomes a tradition.
He says it's actually the Russians funding the German Green party, not even hedging or speculating.
It was going around in the news a while back:
Has the Russian Federation been funding environmental activists around the world? A few more voices point in this direction.
WWF Germany, BUND (Friends of the Earth), and NABU (Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union), three environmental organisations who were avowed opponents of Germany's NordStream pipelines with Russia, dropped their opposition after Gazprom promised funding for environmental protection, according to a 2011 report from the European Parliament. A foundation set up by a German federal state, environmental organizations, and NordStream (controlled by Gazprom) had filled its coffers with €10 million with representatives of the environmental organizations sitting on the board. Did these groups drop their opposition to the pipelines because of Russian funding? Whether they did or not is anyone's guess.
Another striking example is Belgium, where the federal energy minister Tinne Van der Straeten (from the green party "GROEN") has sought to dismantle Belgium's nuclear energy capacity. Van der Straeten’s former job? Lawyer and associate at a law firm whose largest client is Gazprom.
It shouldn't really be surprising, as this is the straight-forward result of everyone's incentive's on the issue.
Greens were pushing for no fossil fuels,
The Greens were pushing first and foremost for shutting down nuclear power, at which they have succeeded last year. They would have done so sooner, but the Ukraine war erupted just as they were first scheduled to shutdown their last reactors, and the uncertainty over energy security made it impossible to shout down people raising questions like "uh... is this really the best moment for that?". Which doesn't mean they didn't try. They first said the shutdown process is in motion, and impossible to reverse for technical reasons, to which the staff of the last functioning power plant said "uh... we can run this as long as you want, it's just a question of getting more fuel", to which they tried to say "well, we can't get nuclear fuel on such short notice", to which the US said "we'll gladly sell it to you, with Amazon Prime next day delivery included", to which they finally had to say "fine... we'll keep it running for one more year, but don't think this will avoid the shutdown!".
They have done so with full knowledge it will increase carbon emissions, and only offering the excuse that a switch to renewable sources will drive it back down later on, in the long term.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
13d ago
Fair enough, in the end neither am I. Just remember someone posting about it on /r/stupidpol.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
14d ago
As I remember, the disputes were principally about factual questions that were relevant for the moral dimension
It may be a question of asymmetrical enthusiasm then. I don't think the overwhelming majority of the forum bought the mainstream narrative, but a disproportionate amount of skeptics may have decided to sit this one out. From what I recall of your posts, I'm pretty sympathetic to your perspective, but I didn't really bother debating the details of Ukraine's politics.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
14d ago
There was one on CNN or some other major news network, that they literally removed the day of Biden's inauguration.
Some follow-ups on past stories
Southport stabbing suspect accused of murder of three girls charged with owning Al Qaeda training manual
Previous discussion here, and here.
Part of the controversy was about how the right wing assumed the attacker was a boat-refugee and/or a recent immigrant, and while that part remains false, another part of it was about his religion, (see Al-Jazeera, Wikipedia, BBC, or even our own discussion) and how it was wrong / islamophobic to jump to conclusions this way. It now turns out that he was indeed radicalized by Islamists.
Algerian Boxer Imane Khelif Has XY Chromosomes And “Testicles” : French-Algerian Medical Report Admits
Previous discussion here and here, and here.
More than the object level of either of those stories, what I want to know is: what do?
I've had this discussion with @Hoffmeister25 about assuming the worst about your outgroup without any evidence. While I maintain that it's plenty of fun when your unproven stereotype-based claims are vindicated, I'm going to agree with him that this way lies madness, and that's no way to have a conversation on controversial political issues. On the other hand, I can't help but notice that this sort of recommendation for caution is asymmetrical. When mainstream institutions make a claim, that claim is itself treated as evidence, any caution goes out the window, and requests for evidence are met with ridicule. So how should we be approaching these controversies, given that bombshells like these hardly raise an eyebrow anymore?
As time goes on, I'm leaning more and more towards simply rejecting Rationalism, as it leads to cudgels like "falsely claimed without evidence" beloved by the mainstream media. Vibe Analysis has been the subject of some ridicule, but I think there should be some space to say "I don't have evidence for this, but my gut says there is something off here" and Reddit-tier "source?!" responses to that should not be accepted. At the end of the day we're only people, and our guts will influence us, no matter how much pretense of objectivity and evidence-baseness we'll put on top of that.
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