guajalote
1yr ago
It's hard to make legal interpretation truly outcome blind because even if we're talking about strict textualism, often the text of the law cares about outcomes in some way.
To take a random example that comes up in my line of work, here's 28 USC § 1404(a): "For the convenience of parties and witnesses, in the interest of justice, a district court may transfer any civil action to any other district or division where it might have been brought or to any district or division to which all parties have consented."
To interpret and apply this statute, the court has to care about what outcome is best for the "convenience of parties and witnesses" and "in the interest of justice." There's no way to apply this statute in an outcome-blind way because the text of the statute explicitly cares about outcomes.
Even when we're talking about laws that are less explicit in their reference to outcomes, it's hard to actually interpret those laws in a vacuum without understanding the context of outcomes. Let's say I argue that the 2nd amendment guarantees me the right to keep and bear a copy of my neighbor's house key, because a house key can be used as a weapon for the purpose of self defense. If we are naïve about outcomes this seems like a valid enough argument. But in practice, it's an absurd interpretation of the 2nd amendment to say it gives people the right to posses copies of their neighbors' house keys, and clearly the outcome of such an interpretation is contrary to the text and original intent of the 2nd amendment.
The entire concept of "shaming" seems like a relatively new concept to me, in much the same way that "gendering" is a relatively new concept. It used to be understood that some things (like being fat) were just inherently shameful by nature, irrespective of whether anyone was engaged in the act of "shaming." Now the idea is that things only become shameful as a result of the act of shaming, i.e. of being assigned shame by someone. I feel like a similar transformation took place around the concept of gender, from being a description of a state of affairs to being the result of "gendering," i.e. external assignment or perception of gender.
None of this is denying that shame and gender are socially constructed. But there's a big, unacknowledged leap from "X is a social construct" to "X is only real if individual people choose to acknowledge it." If I say my friend John is wealthy because he has $10 million in the bank, I'm describing a social construct. Money is a social construct, and the concept of what qualifies as "wealthy" is a social construct. But it doesn't follow that John ceases to be wealthy if I stop treating him as though he is wealthy. Even I refuse to acknowledge John's wealth, he still has $10 million of purchasing power. Even if everyone who John knows pretends like he's broke, he's still not broke.
guajalote
1yr ago
The system can tolerate a lot of corruption, but Hunter has just been so incredibly sloppy and his corruption is so undeniably blatant that it represents a bridge too far for a lot of people.
I think this is basically the same reason why Trump was and is subject to such extraordinary scrutiny. His level of corruption is in the same ballpark as other recent presidents, but he is too sloppy and is unable or unwilling to correctly play the plausible deniability game.
guajalote
1yr ago
At least in some recorded cases the Romans seemed to feel quite sorry for the Christians they killed. There are a bunch of accounts of Roman judges basically pleading with Christians not to make them sentence them to death, saying things to the effect of "listen, nobody cares if you want to worship your god, just go through the motions of paying obeisance to the emperor's genius and be done with it." The Christians would often be given long periods of time to reconsider their obstinacy and save themselves from the lions. The Romans generally didn't see true belief as a necessary component of religion, it was all about the ritual, so couldn't understand why Christians wouldn't just go through the motions like everyone else.
I think you're getting hung up on the word "judging" and reading in connotations that aren't there. Maybe a better neutral word would be "evaluating." In situations where we need to evaluate someone (to determine whether they should get a job, get admitted to a club, qualify for a particular government benefit, etc.), the classical liberal approach says we should only evaluate them based on personal characteristics, not based on group membership.
So how is this Conservative/Classical Liberal valorization of judgement really much better than, or different from, what Poilievre is criticizing the "woke" for?
It's better because we're evaluating the person based on characteristics they actually possess, rather than imputing group characteristics to them that they may not actually possess.
guajalote
1yr ago
Depends on what you mean by "quality of life." If quality of life corresponds to revealed preferences, then people in the heartland are getting more of the things they want than ever and are therefore enjoying a better quality of life than ever. But it so happens that what they want is meth and McDonalds.
If by "quality of life" you mean "the things that people should want," then that's a harder question. We'd have to come up with an objective way of figuring out what people "should" want, and then measure whether they're getting more or less of that.
guajalote
1yr ago
The question for the floor is: why the high degree of correlation? Is there an underlying principle at work here that explains both positions (opposition to AA plus opposition to debt relief) that doesn't just reduce to bare economic or racial interest?
In practice, I think things like party affiliation are the driving factors behind the correlation. But I also think there's a rather simple "underlying principle" that ties both decisions together.
Let's do a thought experiment. Imagine you find an intelligent person who's fluent in English but totally ignorant of American history and law. You hand this person a copy of the US Constitution and have him read it carefully. Then you ask him to answer two questions based on his understanding of the plain text of the document:
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Does the Constitution allow the government to treat people differently based on their race?
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Does the Constitution allow the president to spend money without congress's approval?
The answer to both questions is clearly "no" if you're just reading the text of the document without bringing any external knowledge or biases to bear. In order to answer anything other than "no" to both questions, you either need to come up with complicated interpretive arguments or you need to just not care about the text of the Constitution.
So I think a rather simple underlying principle unifying both decisions is: "the plain text of the Constitution is binding."
guajalote
1yr ago
That's fair, I don't actually think "cis" is a slur, but I do think it bothers some people for reasons that don't apply to terms like "straight."
guajalote
1yr ago
The main difference compared with those other examples is that not everyone agrees the relevant axis (gender identity) exists or is coherently defined. By using the term "cis" you're implicitly buying into the premise that gender identity is a real, coherent thing.
guajalote
1yr ago
Yes, I love that show as well, perhaps should be part of the list above.
guajalote
1yr ago
Unless you're a veteran of souls games I would not call it easy. It's probably the hardest game I've played that's come out in the past 10 years (though I have never played a souls game before ER). Also there are ways to make it even harder, such as not using summons.
guajalote
1yr ago
Have you played any of the early access for BG3? I have been holding off but a couple of my friends have told me they're unimpressed with it. I'm trying to reserve judgment.
I have. It's an extremely limited amount of content so it's hard to judge; I assume it's around 5% of what the final game will be. It reminds me of Divinity visually and in terms of gameplay. I really enjoy the DnD 5e rules system so I like that aspect of it as well.
guajalote
1yr ago
I consider all of the following shows to be basically one single show since they involve a great deal of overlap in the people involved and have a similar style of humor: Mr. Show, Tom Goes to the Mayor, Tim & Eric Awesome Show, John Benjamin has a Van, and Nathan for You. Would nominate those collectively as my favorite.
guajalote
1yr ago
I'm not sure if it completely counts as an RPG, but Final Fantasy Tactics is an incredible game with one of the best storylines I've ever seen in a video game.
I enjoy Divinity Original Sin 2 and am looking forward to the full release Baldur's Gate 3, which is made by the same company and appears to be a similar game except using the rules of DnD 5th edition.
guajalote
1yr ago
I don't know if comedy always ages like milk, even if it's very "of its time." For example, Beavis and Butthead is very characteristic of 90s "dumb idiot" humor (Homer Simpson, Adam Sandler movies, Dumb and Dumber, etc.) but has stood the test of time quite well IMO.
guajalote
1yr ago
I think the rise of cringe humor is mostly due to the popularity of The Office and its various copycats. I also feel like cringe humor was more of a 2010s phenomenon (the way "random" humor was a 2000s phenomenon) and this decade we're seeing more of what I would call "saccharine" humor in shows like Ted Lasso where the goal is to making jokes that no one could possibly find offensive (and I therefore find totally unfunny).
guajalote
1yr ago
I don't see how it's possible for either framework to be "objective"; you have to make some discretionary decision about which mental traits to consider...
I'm not saying the choice of traits is objective, I'm saying it's possible to choose objectively measurable traits that are not based on stereotypes or culturally contingent facts.
... and then make some decision about how far of an outlier you need before the category can flip.
The objective threshold would be "if the traits are more similar to the modal member of the opposite sex than the modal member of the same sex."
guajalote
1yr ago
I don't think it's offensive because it's a stereotype, it's offensive because it's using the word "girl" as an insult.
guajalote
1yr ago
I don't think I agree with that definition of "stereotype." A stereotype is something that is associated with a category in a contingent rather than an innate or necessary way. For example, "black people have darker skin than white people" is not a stereotype because it's an innate or intrinsic fact about the differences between black and white people. The statement "black people are better dancers than white people" is a stereotype (even if it's true) because it's a culturally contingent fact rather than an innate property of the categories.
guajalote
1yr ago
As I note above, I am not actually arguing this on the object level, I am simply pointing out that there exist definitions of what it means to be "trans" that are not in any way dependent on stereotypes or cultural "gender roles" and can be based purely on objective factors. Whether these definitions are particularly useful is another question.
guajalote
1yr ago
If mental sex exists as a biological reality, then it would refer to a fact about normal biological development independent of culture or stereotypes. It would be no more of a stereotype than statements like "men are stronger than women" or "women have larger breasts than men." The fact that these statements are not true 100% of the time doesn't make them stereotypes.
I think this is the best way to keep politics out of gaming - just don't reference anything remotely political and let people do whatever they want.
Also, the game is based on 5th edition DnD, which is a fantasy setting where basically anything is possible. A high level wizard can easily change their gender or species if they so choose simply by casting a spell. A 20th level wizard can cast True Polymorph on himself and become a dragon (permanently if he so chooses). Or he can cast Magic Jar and inhabit someone else's body (permanently if he so chooses). Real-world concepts of gender identity barely even make sense in this sort of setting.
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