drmanhattan16
No bio...
User ID: 640
I've been mulling over this answer and maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but I don't see how you're even disagreeing with me.
I wasn't really disagreeing, just offering my thought on how one would go about bringing in people from a more mainstream elite perspective.
Edit: FWIW I just took a look again at theschism and consider posting there occasionally to "see the other side" so-to-speak, but tbh that place looks, if anything, even more unhealthy.
What makes you say that?
Edit: Also, I think the kind of establishment liberal who would hypothetically come here would not be an uncritical accepter of the NYT or the Guardian, they'd be able to at least entertain and defend the credibility of those papers.
drmanhattan16
16d ago
Is that even good enough? My experience increasingly is that any place not straight-up banning people in accordance with progressive views will bleed away all the progressives posters, who'll explicitly state that they're leaving since they're not willing to share a space with -ists.
Progressives would be useful in the "thesis-antithesis-synthesis" framing which a lot of spaces with partisans, like this one, have. In this framing, you need maximally left-wing people so that we can let the arguments break upon each other and see what comes out at the end. If I were the stretch it based on my experience, you might make this space better by having pro-establishment liberals come aboard. But they would probably be turned away by the sheer number of people defending Trump.
drmanhattan16
16d ago
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.
Right, and my point was precisely that this understandable feeling of salt can and often does end up making you think the people who flame out are worse as people.
At least, that's been my experience with the communities I see - a string of bad impressions will make people earnestly say they are writing off the whole group. How serious of a statement this is can vary, something just one good experience can mitigate/eliminate the former bad ones. But spaces in which you have both good and bad experiences while still substantively disagreeing are rare, and I'm not sure if this one would qualify.
Entirely possible I'm projecting, of course. The tendency I'm describing is one that I feel at times and have to remind myself not to indulge in.
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
On that, I completely agree.
"No one is doing surgeries on minors" is something still being repeated by people who haven't caught up with what's actually happening.
I've been experiencing the exact same thing regarding certain right-wing arguments. I find that people who say that are often genuinely ignorant and/or refusing to apply their standards. Not necessarily even maliciously, just in a tribal fashion where you're hyper-alert for what your enemies say but you don't really care what your own side does. I dropped the gender war stuff, so I'll take your claim for the more substantial claim in my eyes - that people are lying (meaning intentionally) about the surgery thing.
drmanhattan16
17d ago
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
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. 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.
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
But we don't expect people to be just human. We expect a level of rationality and reason.
I'm not sure what you mean by "rationally dishonest".
I'm staring any my own response and trying to determine the same thing. How did I forget what I meant in ~24 hours? If I think of it, I'll let you know.
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.
Right, but we're talking about people who don't have that thick skin. The asymmetry means that if you want to hear their ideas, you'd have to "take it", as it were, when they say uncharitable and unkind things.
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.
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.
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".
I suppose you're more right than I initially thought - this space probably is as good as it could be for what it's aiming at.
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?
I'm the wrong person to ask this because I was constantly fighting against uncharitable depictions of wokeness even when I believed many of the same things the more prominent people here believe. 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.
I've never struggled in this regard. Not since day one. I can charitably describe the views of 2020 election truthers even when I vehemently disagree with them.
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.
Oh, then sure, I agree - people who can easily spaces to share their politics won't develop resistance to opposing views, and the left has this in spades online. I think your framing denies the majority the right to express discomfort with views without it being a stain on their character.
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 turbibg off the voting system, annd rate-limiting resonses 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?
I think the first definitely would, I've never seen the second proposed. I was and still am an advocate for the first, I suggested it a long time back as well. I think the second has some issues, though, because you'd have to control for the quality of the responses. It doesn't help if a bunch of incendiary and uncharitable commenters get there first. Or perhaps the people who get there first don't make good arguments?
It's a fundamentally difficult problem to solve, as I think you are aware. I suggested to Zorba that this space lacked left-wing chatter i.e comments which made it clear that any left-wingers/wokes/pro-establishment types were not without reinforcements. It's not rationally honest, but it's psychologically helpful.
Edit: Another idea would be to pressure people away from exo-sadism (the belief that your enemies only act they way they do to always hurt you no matter what). I believe this is a serious impediment to getting anyone who isn't already anti-woke to come here and possibly defend their ideas or critique yours. 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.
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.
drmanhattan16
19d ago
Maybe? It's not like you can tell if you get blocked and reported outside of what comes back every month, and most of the AAQCs tend to have high positive scores anyway.
"Make sure to like, comment, and subscribe!" say all the YouTubers. The existence of upvotes doesn't negate my point.
[the average poster] is in fact correct about their political outgroup being in the wrong/their desired self-enrichment is more destructive than their political ingroup- that's a consequence of having a community made up of people who get objectively right answers more often than not.
Even if this was true, you should never buy into your own hype.
drmanhattan16
19d ago
This may all be projection, but a part of the issue seems to be us accumulating cynicism as we grow older
It never had or has to be that way.
Personally I think it's because discourse is an existential threat to our ruling regime
Why on earth is that your conclusion when the far simpler one is that people don't remain in spaces they find uncomfortable?
drmanhattan16
20d ago
That can't be fixed. There is literally no way mechanically to prevent people from treating the AAQC report as a super-upvote. You would have to address it at a cultural level, but that would also be impossible without removing a big chunk of the people who come here in the first place.
That's a drop in the water though. 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.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
Trump had the opportunity to jail his political opponents and didn't even try.
Trump doesn't, in my view, have the competence or focus to get that sort of thing done, and he is opposed not just by people who disagree politically, but people who think you shouldn't throw political opponents in jail in the first place. Not trying is one thing, but not wanting is another.
Meanwhile, the democratic machine is going to extreme efforts to strain legal precedent in order to put their opponents in jail, and have had varying degrees of success.
Trump did things that were unprecedented, what a surprise that you have to "strain legal precedent" to get him convicted.
Regardless, I don't particularly care about how anyone sees Trump and his alleged crimes. The least people like OP could do is not be satisfied by fighting the Democrat in their minds.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
What hiring process are you referring to? Senate confirmations? Those account for 1200 positions, roughly, the president can appoint to roughly 4000, and they are absolutely able to replace people who were there from prior administrations.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
That's two separate claims, I'd like a source for both.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
I think that in reality if elected Trump would probably just spend all day tweeting and failing to implement his promises.
Voting for a candidate isn't just about the candidate, it's about the kind of people you can reasonably expect them to appoint. For instance, voting Harris means you can expect more people in the bureaucracy who are pro-diversity, pro-regulation, etc. With Trump, the appointments are going to be people doing conservative things like anti-diversity, anti-regulation, anti-taxes, etc. Moreover, Trump's last term is a learning point for his side - they are absolutely going to find rosters of people who are loyalists first and foremost to install into the bureaucracy.
It is not that I do not believe in evil. But I do find it odd when liberals perceive demonic evil in Trump, yet make excuses for vicious violent criminals (at least, as a class if not always individually) who are enabled by Democrats' soft-on-crime policies.
Criminals do not threaten the fundamental political order and norms themselves. No bank robber threatens the first amendment, no gang-banger threatens the existence of rule-based law. Democrats believe Trump explicitly wants to put his political opponents in jail and that he has no respect for the law, like when he contacted Pence and asked him to delay the certification of the 2020 votes.
This is a silly point, and it should have been obvious why with even a moment of consideration. At most, you're complaining that liberals are hypocrites for engaging in incendiary rhetoric, but such rhetoric has never been to convey some rational assessment.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
You said there wasn't even the concept of the Palestinian identity prior to 1948. Whether we should care is a separate argument. Do you acknowledge that your statement was wrong?
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
Is this COVID fatigue? Narrative control in a friendly media? Is it really a nothing burger?
The first one, most likely. Covid is done and unless you're highly ideologically for or against the lockdowns, some dude admitting that he violated the rules 3 years ago just doesn't do much. The nation's attention has moved on to the 2024 election. Moreover, it's hardly a new thing or unheard of, Gavin Newsom was criticized for this exact thing in 2020.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
You'd think it wouldn't cost that much to spin up some reddit clone but with alternative modding or some kind of free speech list of user's rights to balance mod power. Combine with twitter's userbase and now right wing people or even dissident left no longer need to ever frequent reddit.
It's simply too late for that - Twitter and its format have too much recognition. You can't guarantee people would stay on the new platform, and it wouldn't even make as much sense for governments and institutions use Twitter - a place to post updates about what is happening. Following the account of your representative makes sense, subscribing to a subreddit about them feels odd, at least to me.
I don't think Elon has any idea how to use Twitter for making free speech, er, freer. He does not strike me as the kind of person to have particularly nuanced thoughts about how to moderate speech to actually make for a better platform, he seems to have baby's first thought on free speech, "Oh, some people want me to ban others? I won't ban anyone they say!"
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
Why would that matter? We're still left with the fact that almost 3 decades before Israel was created, the people the Zionists were basically displacing had a distinct notion of being their own people, not just people of a broader identity who happened to be located in a particular place.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
There are certainly ways to support the rights of people who would enact violence on you - you say that even if a person desires to hurt you, that person still deserves protection from injustice themselves. They have the right to be free from a punch until they throw one at you, as it were. But I'm legitimately torn on whether that would get you far enough to make "X for people-who-want-to-kill-X" a rational slogan.
That said, you're spot on that there's a strong component of support for Palestine which is fundamentally anti-Israel, not just pro-Palestine. There are also ways to construct arguments in favor of that, but they're entirely unrealistic because short of an invasion, Israel isn't going to delete itself or change how it controls its demographics.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
Pre-1948 the concept of a "Palestinian" didnt even exist. They were just Muslim Arabs that happened to be located in a specific territory, but culturally were indistinguishable from their neighboring states.
Morris argues it began around 1920. Righteous Victims. pg. 34:
It was at this time, too, that a distinct Palestinian local patriotism or protonationalism began to emerge. This tendency or orientation—it hardly qualified as a movement—gradually groped its way forward, largely in reaction to the burgeoning Zionist presence. But in part it was also the product of other political, economic, religious, and social developments and realities, dating from the mid-nineteenth century...The first quasi-political Palestinian nationalist organizations can be traced to the last months of World War I.
A solidified identity didn't come around until years after 1948, iirc, but to say the concept wasn't there is wrong.
drmanhattan16
5mo ago
Straight Democrat in all possible cases.
drmanhattan16
5mo ago
I don't want to convince you your vote isn't meaningless, but I sense a free lunch here. Would you be willing to vote the way I ask, since you are indifferent to what the actual result of the election is?
drmanhattan16
5mo ago
Even taking your example, there is no clear indication that voting is a good solution. An unpopular argument is just as likely, if not moreso, to get downvoted than one that is maximally annoying.
But again, you don't have to engage. There is no limit on the bits available in the site. No one is getting their comments deleted if some people choose to post in bad faith the way you describe.
drmanhattan16
5mo ago
Why don't you like the upvote/downvote systems?
I hate that people use them as a means of enforcing what opinions are considered good or bad. I have very rarely downvoted, only doing so if I think a user is not actually trying to contribute to the thread, even if their opinions are unacceptably vile. Letting people indulge their desire to indicate a position's popularity is bad, doubly so for a platform meant to move us past shady thinking.
But a need to engage less is not actually an argument against voting.
It's an argument against fast forms of engagement, which you agree that voting is.
Just because you have ceased to cater to / platform / respond to someone, does not mean that person has ceased to exist.
No doubt. The question is whether a a person should be catered or responded to.
drmanhattan16
5mo ago
I also think votes, and especially visible vote scores can be a bit of a pressure valve. There are sometimes people that just feel the need to express in some way "I don't like your post/views". One way for them to do this is to downvote. Another way for them to do this is to leave a short comment to the same effect.
Why would I or anyone else who doesn't like the upvote/downvote system care about indulging this feeling? If you feel like you disagree with someone but can't explain why, move on. Don't engage. Instead, go do something else. No one is going to hold your participation or lack thereof against you. Not any of us, anyways.
God knows most people would benefit from engaging with the culture war less.
drmanhattan16
5mo ago
I don't follow... there has to be commonality for domination to work.
The commonality would just be colocation, right? I can't impact the people of China unless I live there. Not easily, anyways.
I do agree that it doesn't compete with themotte in volume. The latter has a value theschism doesn't - I can come here to see what someone might say from a right-wing perspective, even if that's not what the typical right-winger would say. The intellectual stress-testing of pro-democracy arguments is something I appreciate at times as well.
People have described theschism as quiet, which is fair and something I'm trying to change by posting more. But quiet isn't the same as unhealthy, and I've long suspected most people here could do with less engagement with culture war topics. I've seen at least two accounts I recognize go through some blackpilling over the Trans Question because they engaged with spaces which drip feed the latest bits of outrage.
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