ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
No bio...
User ID: 626
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
14d 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.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
15d ago
Remember how, at the outbreak of the Ukraine war, the overwhelming majority in this forum suddenly developed unconditional trust in consensus MSM reporting, if only on that topic?
No?
Trump won't do as much about global warming.
He didn't do much about global warming. I'm happy about that. Honestly worrying about something with consequences 20 years out feels a little silly at this point. It was nice when we had such long time horizons.
I'll take the other side of the issue here, and still argue that this argument is horrible. I'd love if we did something about global warming, but who the hell is doing anything? All the ideas thrown around are gimmicks with little effect on emissions, and Asia's growth in the last 20 years has already compensated for anything the US could possibly do, including magically cutting carbon emissions to 0. I don't see how anyone calling themselves a "rationalist" can spin this issue into a (non-) endorsement.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
16d ago
We are already doing most of these millenia-proven strategies.
Anyone with a passing familiarity with voting in any other part of the world will tell you that the US system is a joke when it comes to security and integrity, precisely because you don't follow these strategies.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
16d ago
How's your project going @Southkraut?
Thanks for asking. Please keep it up; it's expectedly motivational.
At this rate, I'm going to be the one who needs motivating. In my defense, I made several commitments leaving me with little time for Highspace. Some of them would actually make a good Tinker Tuesday entry, but *something something, never cross streams*.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
17d ago
Can you think of any other innovative tactics that could disrupt the election
Not today, federal agent.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
20d ago
Thanks for the links to your posts
Thanks for making this top-level post, I have to rate-limit myself, or this place would become a TERF twitter feed!
so there should probably be a way to search for them like you can specifically search for posts
Every once in a while I promise myself I'll start helping out with the code and add a few features like that for the benefit of users and mods, but I can barely find time to work on the projects I do for fun, so...
Anyway I don't mind people coming to similar thoughts to mine (quite the contrary), just couldn't resist the opportunity to say how I was doing this before it was cool.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
20d ago
and I'm much more of a political doomer than a science doomer.
I think the way you use the word "science" conflates the method and the process with scientific institutions. I'm an equal opportunity doomer when it comes to scientific and political institutions, mostly because scientific institutions have become transparently political, and this has happened precisely because we've entertained the idea of "evidence based policy".
MDMA is exactly the kind of situation I want to avoid. They held hearings on the scheduling in the 1980's, and sought scientific input. Neurotoxicity studies where central. They've since been critiqued.
It's not like the avenue of legalizing it is completely sealed off, you can campaign for MDMA's legalization, and try to convince voters that it's not toxic, and has benefits. I think that's a much better process than relying on experts.
If you disagree, that's fine, but my point that this isn't a precedent still stands, we've been doing this for a long time. Also, I gave you two examples where the question of expertise is irrelevant, which you haven't addressed. I don't care how many studies there are saying that surrogacy is great, it should still be illegal.
Strikes me as a false dichotomy.
I mean, that's a staple argument of all sorts of human-nature-denying idealists since forever. Communists will call "you can have free(ish) markets or poverty" a false dichotomy, pacifists will call "let he who wants peace prepare for war" a false dichotomy, and I suppose scientism-ists will call "you can have science or a regulatory state" a false dichotomy as well.
Science has varying degrees of confidence. In this case, WPATH etc are peddling what I believe to be bullshit science with bullshit confidence.
And those degrees of confidence that science supposedly uses were completely ignored by partisans in the scientific community, until other partisans said "no, go and evaluate the evidence properly" and even after that, these finding have to be enforced politically, because the scientific establishment is doing everything it can to ignore those findings.
Commissioned, but real science was done. Sounds good to me.
The question here is why did it need to be comissioned politically, if the scientific community is "mugged by reality" faster than politicians?
Easily the most challenging critique for me to contend with, but perhaps I'm just limited. On what principle should I argue against people voting for representatives that promise to put lead in the water? On one hand, I do think people have that right. On the other hand, I'm just sitting here with my dick in my hand wondering how I can escape this principle.
I don't understand why you're so torn over this. The possibility (which already manifested historically several times) of experts putting lead in the water doesn't bother you, because you believe the experts will auto-correct. I'm similarly not bothered by the possibility of people voting for lead in the water, because people will auto-correct. As a counter to your earlier point, I'm much more of a doomer when it comes to unelected bureaucracies than when it comes to legislatures that have to face their voters (though to be clear, I'm quite a doomer about them as well).
So how was the conversation "played out" if progressive PMCs were yet to realize that?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
21d ago
As I stated, legislators can eschew medical/expert consensus for anything they please.
How is this not already the case? We routinely ban various drugs (you brought up MDMA yourself), medical procedures (surrogacy, euthanasia)... how does banning this particular field of medicine set some dangerous new precedent?
Imagine the scientific consensus states that natal males in womens contact sports poses an injury risk. Well, Srkmetti would provide precedent that elected representatives can ignore that consensus
Good! This is the part that I wanted you to explain how there's anything bad about! If people want to have unisex sports, they should be allowed to vote for people who will give them unisex sports. These controversies should not be decided by the scientific community, and giving it this sort of power will only lead to a degradation of science.
No, I want both internal and external experts to study things without their findings being handwaved away by politicians with an ideological agenda.
And abolishing the regulatory state and applying your approach of "just sue the current bad thing for torts" to everything is the only thing that will give you this result. If you only use that approach for things that "experts" agree with, but allow them to ban things they disagree with via agencies like the FDA, AMA, etc., all that means is that the experts are political actors themselves, and will therefore jettison science themselves, or will be slapped down by someone more powerful. The regulatory state, not cases like Skrimetti are the things that are preventing experts from studying what they want, and having their findings be taken seriously.
The cass report led to a reversal in the UK
The Cass Review was commissioned through a political process to begin with, and it's enforcement is likewise political, which you can tell by observing that it's effects are constrained to the UK. If this was the scientific community self-policing, it would lead to a reversal in the entire anglosphere, if not the world.
But experts will be mugged by reality far faster than case law.
The case law in this case is about whether these controversies can be decided by the legislature, and I don't think legislatures are any less responsive than "experts".
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
21d ago
Eugenics in practice necessarily entails a certain level of limitation put on women’s sexual autonomy.
Progressives have absolutely no issue shaming women for pairing up with the wrong kind of guy. The bigger problem right now is that eugenics in practice would require that they'd shame women for pairing up with people in their client classes. The moment surrogacy or other forms of industrial reproduction become viable, they'll happily return to eugenics.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
21d ago
The precedent it sets can be argued in favor of the next Bad Thing(tm).
What I'm asking is what precedent is it setting? As far as I can tell it's nothing new. Are bans on surrogacy some "dangerous precedent"?
Just sue the current bad thing for torts.
Again, if that's what you're going for you shouldn't be arguing against Skrimetti, you should be arguing for the total abolishing of the regulatory state.
You guys are still doing the "he wasn't ready for Kamala" thing?
I wouldn't quite call it "believable" even at the peak of the media offensive, but at least it's with all the media being on-message they managed to generate enough hype that I could see where that statement could come from. Now? Trying to frame Trump's strategy as hoping the decrepit Biden stays in the race is bizarre (not in the least because everybody sneering at the supposed strategy was swearing up and down that Biden is perfectly fine). Are you personally hyped up for Kamala? If not, what on Earth are you talking about?
Well, I gotta applaud the consistency of taking away kids from their parents for transitioning them, because it's child abuse, and for not transitioning them, because it's child abuse.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
21d ago
Seemed like a smart idea at the time.
Yeah, I can't judge, I cosigned it too back then.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
21d ago
So I take it you'll also cheer the state taking away children from affirming parents?
Memory holing something that can be looked up with a single click of a hyperlink on your phone is harder than doing so for something you'd have to look up old newspapers or journals in a library.
The persistency of the Internet is somewhat overrated to begin with. My goto example is usually this compilation of epidemiologists saying Covid is no big deal.
But aside from that, it's not a question of accessibility, it's a question of who cares. In the linked thread I gave an example of a similar episode in medicine, where scientists were selling the idea of solving personal and social issues with brain surgery. The academic papers are there, the newspaper articles are there, the bestselling books and Hollywood adaptations are there... it's all just collecting dust, all these people are long dead, nobody cares.
Without a constant drumbeat of how we must Never Forget, this will be the fate of any atrocity.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
21d ago
Part of the thesis was a call against government expansion, which won't be the case if Skrmetti prevails.
No one arguing against Skrimetti actually wants to stop government expansion. What they want, as the Alabama brief eloquently argues, is to have political controversies be resolved by unelected, supposedly scientific bodies like the FDA, or the alphabet soup of medical associations.
If you actually want a government that does not interfere in science, you need to roll back the entire regulatory state. Otherwise the supposedly neutral institutions will simply become a political faction, and science will go out the window anyway (which is exactly what happened).
I'm confident that "gender science" won't hold for a hundredth as long as the precedence Skrmetti will establish
Well, first you'll have to explain what's so bad about that. Unless I'm missing something Skrimetti is just about banning / age limits on gender medicine. I don't see how it's qualitatively different from banning heroin or other recreational drugs.
An ideological legislature could dismiss that, and instead pursue their own policy, ethical, or ideological goals.
And if these controversies are settled through scientific institutions, all that will happen is that political factions will use underhanded means to take them over, and produce shoddy science that serves their political goals. Which, I repeat, is exactly what happened. The WPATH and Olson Kennedy did not fall from a coconut tree, as they say.
Trans issues were never going to be a permanent part of the Dem ideological setup
If it was so obvious, howcome you never said anything about it? The only thing I remember from you was you saying how the issue was played out by the Bush era.
because it’s precisely the children of PMC urban Democrats (ie NYT readers, DNC and associated think tank / lobbyist staffers etc) who are at increasing risk of coming out as trans
Didn't stop the from still being pro-gay. If there was nothing wrong with transition, the concept of "at risk" would make no sense.
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?
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