muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
No bio...
User ID: 1018
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1d ago
I went on a walk and saw a child drowning in the river. I was going to jump in and save him, when someone reminded me that I should care about family members more than strangers. So I continued on my way and let him drown.
Great, I will keep this in mind next time I see a child drowning. I anticipate it is a rare occurrence, because skill of swimming is widespread, taught early to children, and most parents in my society don't let children who yet can't swim wander near bodies of water, and most popular swimming places have a lifeguard presence.
I wish someone would come up with an article that would encourage modern academic philosophy and its offshoots to throw "intuition pumps" to rubbish bin. "Saving child drowning in the river" is nearly nothing like what the author actually exhorts the reader to do; all the important pieces of context are abstracted away, so that reader is lead to a particular conclusion, then the author brings up he context again, presuming the conclusion should still apply.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1d ago
I have two thoughts.
Thought the first. If the AI content is supposed to be main contribution, the introduction up to and including "Here’s what it had to say" is unnecessary. Or if the first part was the main message you wanted to discuss (dislike of credit score) why bother including the LLM-written part?
Thought the second. Next time anyone tries to Turing test any forum, please please prompt it write succinctly and better. The cited argument is sloppy and rambling. Let's see one paragraph.
Finally, the U.S. credit score system embodies an element of collective responsibility that is reminiscent of communist ideologies. [Comment. 'reminiscent of' is a weak way to phrase a thesis.]
In many cases, an individual’s creditworthiness is affected not just by their actions but by external factors such as the financial stability of co-signers, the decisions of creditors, and even errors made by the credit bureaus themselves. [C: None of the listed factors have anything to do with collectivism. If your choice of co-signer for a loan and suffering the consequences is not use of your individual liberty, then what is not?]
Disputing inaccuracies in credit reports is often a bureaucratic and difficult process, reflecting the inefficiencies of centralized government planning. [C: Role of "government" here not argued for. Private American corporate and profit motive is capable coming up with bureaucratic and difficult processes to address end-user complaints if they find it profitable not handle them. Not handling "inaccuracies" is probably what makes the use of credit scores efficient.]
Additionally, the system’s reliance on predetermined metrics, rather than an individual’s full financial picture, enforces a uniform standard that does not account for personal circumstances. This mirrors the way communist states often treat workers as indistinct units within a planned economy, rather than as unique individuals with different needs and capabilities. [C: (1) You realize "lack of individuality" is kinda the Marxist critique of alienation? There is nothing communist about it. Time and motion studies for assembly line work were invented by the capitalists, in capitalism, for the capitalism. (2) Perhaps the predetermined metrics are mostly sufficient picture of individual's creditworthiness. For some reason banks run by managers interested in your individual needs and capabilities have been competed out by institutions that are not.]
In essence, while the U.S. credit system exists within a capitalist society, its structure and consequences exhibit traits that align with communist principles of control, social engineering, and collective financial assessment.
I don't think the argument was very good. Weakly supported claims and associations disjointedly related to each other. Would not like to subscribe to this newsletter.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
13d ago
A similar mechanism is already at work in our law: if you violate rights in obtaining evidence, that evidence will be thrown out, as otherwise it incentivizes the police to continue violating rights
This aspect of American legal environment is a prime example of failed incentive structure. It disincentivizes bringing to court evidence gathered obtained by violating citizens' rights, and nothing more. Thus the police may choose to use methods that violate rights and building the court case with parallel construction. Likewise, court cases that hinge on whether some procedural forms were followed in collecting evidence or testimony rather than whether the evidence is true and correct. Incentivizes rules-lawyering rather than finding justice.
I'd rather recommend sticking to system where defined violations are crimes that carry penalties as codified in the law -- or if some violations are deemed necessary for the functioning of the government, the cases for those violations are defined by the law.
Back to presidential pardons: sounds likely that instead of drawing the conclusion you propose, the courts and the government may learn a different lesson. There is zero direct incentives for increased respect for the law, more thorough investigations, or fairer punishments. Whether or not Biden's family-members were guilty of anything, or Jan 6 people received fitting punishment or not, everyone will note that the perhaps-crimes committed in service of the POTUS or favorably influence his re-election chances may be pardoned. In immediate future, the noblesse de robe will adapt to in anticipation how Trump will wield the pardon. Long-term, it incentivizes fights for the presidential throne to be more vicious.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
26d ago
Isn't it a fallacy of some sorts? Perhaps NVIDIA or Musk's companies would not exist exactly as they are if the immigration laws had been different and enforced differently. However, it is not like we can observe the counterfactual outcomes. Would not there be GPU companies in the US without the single individual Huang? According to Wikipedia article concerning NVIDIA founding, there were 70 graphics computing start-ups in the US in the 1990's. The market environment would have been similar without NVIDIA.
Musk's enterprises appear more singular and his interests idiosyncratic, so imagining alternative paths is more difficult. Some of the alternative paths could have seen less technological development and slightly more enshittified world today. However, it is not certain the alternatives would have been worse. Perhaps, with overall more stringent US immigration there would have been another innovative tech scene (or several) somewhere else and he would have migrated there. Stronger competition between the SV and other hypothetical scenes would perhaps have produced even greater technological innovation and varied, better outcomes for everyone. Or if there was no alternative to SV, they could have collected the points under the alternative immigration system at another life stage. (Or perhaps the people who would have prospered under a different legislation would have been more stellar and exceptional.)
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
Are you saying it's not justified to criticize Orthodox beliefs unless everyone who criticizes those beliefs is correct? Because that's impossible. There is no shared community between Anders Tegnell (who led the Swedish Covid response) and Alex Jones (a nut).
The content (the rigor) of the criticism does matter. Unjustified claims (such linked claims by Rogan) remain unjustified if the orthodoxy (as if such existed) was incorrect.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
(Most specialty coffee is absurd to me for this reason: because a lot of it is made to express the coffee flavor, and that flavor is bad- otherwise you wouldn't have to add sugar and cream and chocolate to it- so why would I want to spend 5 dollars on that when I can just get the cheap drip coffee and season it to the coffee-flavored-warm-milkshake taste that I actually wanted in the first place?)
... interesting point of view. Yet taste matters if you drink your coffee black. It is an acquired taste, but like most things in one's culture, it can be acquired.
(Coffee is easy taste to acquire -- it comes with caffeine which is nice. Same for beer, mutatis mutandis for alcohol. Capsaicin very concretely triggers a burning, painful sensation, yet there are several food cultures built on that.)
The reason I bring is up because one could tie this back to risk-taking, or lack of it. It is not unexpected that some people may look down on adult who doesn't take the culinary risk to acquire taste for common foodstuffs in his culture. Similar principle applies to failing to learn other habits expected of adults in his (to some extent, also hers) culture. The reason for pushback is simple: if enough adults avoid acquiring the expected culture, soon they define the default culture, which is changed and different (poorer, simpler, less complicated from the pushback point of view).
Returning to topic of coffee: It is lamentable that increasing amount of people seem to prefer "milkshakes". I presume coffee-flavored coffeine milkshakes can be produced without any genuine coffee beans. If everyone turns to drinking milkshakes, will there be any interest or capability for producing good coffee?
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
Grown adults who don't know how to cook proper meals and eat fast/convenience food for every meal should feel ashamed
I doubt that, say, King Louis XIV knew how to cook for himself. He had people to do it for him. Should he have been ashamed of himself?
("Hard work", "grit", certain senses of "self-reliance" - these are all specifically middle class virtues. They are not universal across all times and places and all cultural strata. The nobility have their virtues and obligations as well, but they are distinct in important ways.)
Cooking is too time and culture specific, I think. The quintessential Victorian parody of middle class office worker life, The Diary of a Nobody, describes everyday life and troubles of one Mr Charles Pooter, a London city clerk, who does not know how to cook, either. He has a wife and they employ a maid and a charwoman.
Agreed that hard work and grit are virtues for commoners. Self-reliance of a family unit is more specifically a rural virtue. Urbanites are reliant on each other and of the city: they make a virtue out of sophisticated understanding of city life. Personal self-reliance is an individualist virtue.
domestic courts
And herein lies the problem. Courts in Western EU countries are more loyal to Brussels-aligned worldview than anything else (ETA; anything else includes, the intent and letter of laws and treaties). During nearly all of the post-Lisbon treaty years, until 2020, everyone understood that the EU treaties did not permit the EU bonds. In one night, powers that be noticed the treaties are only worth the paper they written on, as nobody really understands what is written on them [1]. Consequently, they could re-interpret them as they pleased, and the EU "recovery" package (NextGenerationEU) was born. Some legal crickets remain, and are loudly ignored ("it does not appear completely implausible that the measure could be based on Art. 311(2) TFEU", the great legal standard of constitutional thought in Germany as it relates to the EU law.)
Similar re-interpretations of treaties have not proven possible (and I predict, will not prove possible) against mass migration. By iron law of bureaucracy, the EU bureaucracy exists only to make the EU bureaucracy more powerful, and by extension, serve interest of the social class of people who fill its ranks. For this class, mass migration is not a concern. Their vision of EU is a multicultural, multiethnicity realm. Import of new peoples is not at odds with the vision, and along the way found a way to make Bertold Brecht poem true -- with mass migration, the government may have found a way to dissolve the people and elect another.
[1] Unlike the US constitution, which generally defines the institutions and their powers, the EU treaties are written in vague legalese fluff. Compare:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States; [...]
Art 311 of TFEU
The Union shall provide itself with the means necessary to attain its objectives and carry through its policies. Without prejudice to other revenue, the budget shall be financed wholly from own resources. The Council, acting in accordance with a special legislative procedure, shall unanimously and after consulting the European Parliament adopt a decision laying down the provisions relating to the system of own resources of the Union. In this context it may establish new categories of own resources or abolish an existing category. That decision shall not enter into force until it is approved by the Member States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.
The US constitution grants the Congress power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to borrow money on the credit, and so forth. TFEU grants a "system of own resources of the Union" "without prejudice to other revenue" and way to establish a new categories of them, which apparently also included ability to borrow money on the credit of the European Union.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
I presume vast majority of the "cyber attacks" are the kind where the attacker doesn't care is the target the election official's laptop or their dishwasher (both can join the botnet for reasons not related to election at all).
Theoretically, hacking an digitized election system enables interference in the election outcome despite the paper ballots. If precincts use computerized system to track who is in the rolls, you can DDoS the precincts with unfavorable demographics; as queues mount, some of the voters will be turned off. If you want to stuff ballot boxes without too many accomplices among election officials, hack the system to see who did not vote, plant a false vote and flip the variable next to non-voter name claiming they voted. After the election, if done successfully, the numbers will match and the fraud will be difficult to reveal.
The problem is, there has not been news about computer problems during Romanian elections. The version that circulated around reddit was about governing socialist party making a miscalculation: they instructed the mid-level party bosses to campaign for Georgescu in order to split the votes of the opposition, hoping to face an easy opponent in the run-off. They didn't realize Georgescu was popular for unrelated reasons, and overshot. All of this is naturally internet rumors.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
Yeah, it sounds historically imprecise, both ways. There was artistic programs with manifestos before the left-ward turn of the cultural elites. The Renaissance was one broad program; one could argue that every western "art movement" ever since (including the post-WW1 self-declared auteurs defying the bourgeois society in trendy cafes) has tried to be the next Renaissance.
One more individual scale - architects were artists, before, too. Palladio had an individual vision and program in the 16th century. He was famous, he wrote treatises. St Peter's Basilica was a group effort that took a century to complete. Some its chief architects are known for their other artsy contributions, like Raphael and Michelangelo.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
2mo ago
I know little about Confucianism, but isn't there an idea that duties go both ways and generation to generation? Joe should cover for Hunter, but also should have acted as proper father in other respects by uprising an upright son; Hunter should cover for Joe and handle many other filial duties virtuously (acting like a proper father to his kids, too). The Biden family and Hunter specifically shows very little Confucian virtue. I have not much respect for Confucius, if he praises a single act that coincidentally aligns with Confucian virtue that otherwise continues a cycle of unvirtuous behavior.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
2mo ago
The hypothetical was an extreme to illustrate the point. Yes, in practice, enforcement isn't perfect, so a week is too short and you want escalating sentences. The point that effective policing is higher leverage than increasing sentences remains.
I am not convinced it is relevant to the point or real life. The police that appears within a minute to 100% of crime scenes is practically impossible yet causes major consequences of the stated hypothetical. You can make many points with similarly strong but unrealistic assumptions.
If I assume an existence of a 100% effective at 1-month drug and crime rehabilitation program (criminal turned into citizen who will never commit a crime and is no longer drug addict), it is obvious that we should use such program to rehabilitate all criminals. I believe lot of progressive politics are result of median democrat who believes in such program, that with "enough" social services, one could disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline, problem solved. To some extent modern prisons are outgrowth of similar Victorian era ideas. The problem is that such programs don't exist.
Coincidentally, I agree that the legal processing time from arrest to punishment should be reduced. It is more effective to discuss it more realistic assumptions .
Isn't most crime committed by young people? There's a steady supply of fresh young people, and arresting them 5 years after they're young isn't even going to stop them from having kids to form the next (on average) generation of criminals. Like the US, today, does up arresting most violent criminals for long periods of time eventually, and it hasn't fixed the crime problem.
Your hypothetical did not stipulate age limits, by the way. Most criminals start young, too, as teenagers, so a shoplifting 14-year old would be in prison before they turn 20. And even in the US, most prisoners go free eventually. Most crime can't committed by re-offenders unless they have an opportunity to re-offend. If you get to "tag" every criminal today and put them all permanently away with 5 year lag, all habitual criminals are gone after the first wait period, and there will be left only those criminals who started committing crime during those 5 years. Further 5 years down, they are also permanently removed from society. Within the rules of thought experiment, I think this should work to reliably but slowly reduce the number of criminals around.
I agree that realistically it wouldn't be like this, but again, the experiment as specified is not realistic.
This is, IMO, just true. Consider a hypothetical: Prison sentences are capped at a week, max. But, within a minute of attempting to shoplift or steal a car, the police arrest you, take back the stuff you stole, and send you to jail. What do you think would happen to crime? Conversely, consider another hypothetical: Life sentences for stealing at all, but you'll be arrested and put to jail sometime around five years after you steal. What do you think happens to crime, given how bad at planning for the future low IQ criminals are? I think crime in the first scenario would be much lower than today, and crime in the second scenario much higher.
First hypothetical: Many, many police officer hours will be needed to achieve it. Perhaps, within a generation, people will learn not to steal.
Let me present a small variation to your first hypothetical. The police will appear within a minute of attempted theft in 90% of all attempts, and everything happens as you write, the thief gets a week in jail. In 10% of cases, nothing happens to the thief. It is still super unrealistic clearance rate in any country not governed by totalitarian surveillance dystopia of magical fairies, but more realistic, as there will no be human society where the police are 100% effective.
In this altered hypothetical, I expect that thievery will be extremely common. What is one week in prison for almost unlimited amount of free stuff, and you get to network with other prisoners? I expect the police would be so demoralized that they soon stop enforcing the rules. They may join the thieves, even, and the whole 90% rate will collapse.
In your converse hypothetical, assuming it happens as stated, with 100% effective police but 5 year lag period for enforcing a life sentence to thieves -- my conclusion is totally opposite. I presume that stealing will dramatically drop in after the 5 years lag, and possibly wither to nothingness in following decades. If you read statistics in the ACX post, it is quite clear that most crime is done by repeat offenders, who are incapacitated in prison. Some or many first-time offenders become repeat offenders as they enter the criminal way of life in prison, but in your hypothetical they have life sentences without parole and that is not a problem.
Again, realistically, it would be terribly expensive and assumes magically competent cops. Thieves would also become more violent if there is only a little difference between the punishment for a theft and murdering witnesses to the theft.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
2mo ago
The entire reason job tracks(with a few exceptions like teaching and law) go through university is so that they can have gen ed requirements attached
"Gen ed requirement" is distinctly a US feature, found mostly in US universities and universities influenced by the US model. In the UK and continental Europe, you get to pick a specialization and perhaps may pick an elective or minor, but no always.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
2mo ago
A peace activist might say that nobody wins in any war, as the price measured in material cost and human lives is often enormous compared to any gains.
While Russia is not winning by its original stated victory conditions, Ukraine is not winning either by its own stated conditions (no territorial concessions), which look more unlikely for Ukraine to achieve by each day. Slow Russian progress implies that currently Russia is *losing less'.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
2mo ago
And both of you can be honest with your feelings rather than bottling them up.
Never believed this nugget of folk psychology. If emotions were truly something that are better dealt with outbursts of profanity rather than "bottled up", it would imply people most eager to use profanity and insults would be the most emotionally balanced. After all, if the folk theory is right, they should have nothing bottled up because they regularly let it all out? In my experience, it is rather the other way around. It is the constantly decently mannered, outwardly respectful people who are most likely to show good quality of character, are more likely to do genuinely nice things and avoid gossip, rude comments and dominance plays. More constant the decent behavior, more honest the character. More profanity-prone person, less likely you want to stay around them.
It is an observation that plays nicely with CBT that I've been exposed to: emotions are more like habits or a muscle than pressure cylinders you can't control: the purpose of the therapy is to build habit of not entering the destructive or unproductive mental states. Not far-fetched that embracing a behavior playfully makes it easier to habitually access associated mental space in other context.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
3mo ago
Do you prefer to deal with the man who is upfront about what he wants, or with the one who obliquely implies it, forcing you to guess what the price may be or if you are ever going to get what you ask for in the first place?
I don't think this a useful way to think about the situation. It won't come down to choosing between dealing with two different men, but one man in either of hypotheticals. Keep track of the rest of the society where these hypothetical men can operate, too. If you get a corrupt official who keeps up the pretense that s/he won't take bribes, s/he wants to avoid getting caught. This means they may still process your paperwork, only slower. The official who is openly corrupt will expect a bribe for anything favorable to happen. More open the expectations, more sure there is nothing you can do about it. It would suck when dealing with a low-level clerk. You won't deal directly with POTUS, but openly corrupt POTUS won't likely cause less corruption in the government.
The only good thing about a publicly known corrupt guy is not the public knowledge, it is that public knowledge can be acted on. There is nothing good about a known corrupt authority when everyone knows them to be corrupt and everyone also knows that everyone knows they won't be successfully prosecuted and stopped.
If your argument for voting for Trump comes down to arguing he is publicly corrupt, where does this leave you?
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
3mo ago
Perhaps if you think that brand of corruption is a good thing?
What good will come from public servant being blatantly corrupt? When everyone knows that corruption is against the public mores and generally not done --- some people will choose to do evil anyway, covertly, but the effort not to get caught in public is a tangible cost. Some people on the margin will be uncertain of the cost and choose the public mores. When everyone knows it is permissible and can be done out in the open, within a generation it is becomes the definition of public mores. The rare few who don't do it are those who are weird enough to have their own moral code for no visible benefit. Others will call it prudishness, or soon call them opponents to public mores.
Happens to be one of conservative arguments against licentiousness that I find persuasive.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
3mo ago
If slaves had a possibility of having a child (and of course, no all of the Gaul was enslaved, merely administered), it does not make "losing a war and either dying or becoming a slave" a good procreation strategy in Caesar's Rome. The dead, naturally, have less children than those who live. Many of slaves had fairly unpleasant jobs that expedited their death. Unwanted infants were let to die off by exposure. If allowed to live, slaves' kids were going to have much worse nutrition and ahem quality of life and employment prospects compared to option "my parents did not lose a war and become enslaved", which contributed to their ability to procreate.
The best one can say is that the part sof W-European genetic ancestry who were not well-adapted to alcohol has had many of generations to die and get replaced by better adapted parts of the gene pool. If excess use of unwatered Roman wine was a contributor to how the Gaul lost to the Romans, it demonstrates the process was not a pretty to look at.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
4mo ago
I am the son of these people,
Are you certain? After the Gaul population lost to the Romans, significant portions died and-or were enslaved. If we take Caesar's claims at face value, about one third of the population. If it is a propagandist claim inflated by factor of 10x or 100x, still humongous amount of people who never had descendants.
They lost their culture to the extent that precious little is known of pre-Roman Gallic culture and the language spoken in France is classified as Romance language, heavily descended from Latin.
Presumably the people least adapted to unmixed wine have died off by natural selection during the generations.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
4mo ago
Alternatively, societies with lower baseline murder rates and longer lifespans can tolerate negative effects of alcohol use. They remain in relatively good place after the alcohol-related problems have taken taken their toll. Whereas if your society has problems ... there are very few societal problems that can't be made worse by increasing the number alcoholics and other addicts around.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
4mo ago
Gorbachev wasn't that much younger. Andropov was 1914, Gorba 1931, barely 17 years difference. Why fixate on Gorba? There have been younger presidents since forever. TR had 15 years on his predecessor, JFK 27 years, both promised plenty of new policies. (Kennedy was born during WW1 while Eisenhower and Truman fought in it).
The Soviet gerontocracy problem was not simply about age of the general secretary. The problem that in 1980s, the politbyro had been staffed by generation of Brezhnev, implementing Brezhnev policies since Brezhnev. Then Gorba decided to try to implement large-scale changes to the Soviet state that weakened the authority of the dictatorship.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
4mo ago
The term "neo-liberal" originates from a 1951 Milton Friedman essay, Neo-Liberalism and its Prospects.
...A new faith must avoid both errors. It must give high place to a severe limitation on the power of the state to interfere in the detailed activities of individuals; at the same time, it must explicitly recognize that there are important positive functions that must be performed by the state. The doctrine sometimes called neo-liberalism which has been developing more or less simultaneously in many parts of the world and which in America is associated particularly with the name of Henry Simons is such a faith. No one can say that this doctrine will triumph. One can only say that it is many ways ideally suited to fill the vacuum that seems to me to be developing in the beliefs of intellectual classes the world over. Neo-liberalism would accept the nineteenth century liberal emphasis on the fundamental importance of the individual, but it would substitute for the nineteenth century goal of laissez- faire as a means to this end, the goal of the competitive order. It would seek to use competition among producers to protect consumers from exploitation, competition among employers to protect workers and owners of property, and competition among consumers to protect the enterprises themselves. The state would police the system, establish conditions favorable to competition and prevent monopoly, provide a stable monetary framework, and relieve acute misery and distress. The citizens would be protected against the state by the existence of a free private market; and against one another by the preservation of competition. The detailed program designed to implement this vision cannot be described in full here. But it may be well to expand a bit on the functions that would be exercised by the state, since this is the respect in which it differs most from both 19th century individualism and collectivism. The state would of course have the function of maintaining law and order and of engaging in “public works” of the classical variety. But beyond this it would have the function of providing a framework within which free competition could flourish and the price system operate effectively. This involves two major tasks: first, the preservation of freedom to establish enterprises in any field, to enter any profession or occupation; second, the provision of monetary stability....
I agree that afterwards, it has became a poorly defined slur, used most often by leftist academics opposed to neoliberalism and adopted by nearly no one.
But if we map the arguments we've heard here, and in the other thread, to your analogy, we'd be getting things like "the Church of Mormon is a myth!" or "I'm a Christian, and if there was such a thing as Mormonism, I think I would have heard about it". It sounds like blanket denial, even as the other side is pointing at church buildings and the missionaries standing on the street corner.
I can think two better mappings. The crux that makes it different from most of other is that "cultural marxism" is a descriptive term that was never widely used as ingroup denominator, though it makes sense as theoretical construction.
During the George W. Bush years, many leftists here in not-the-US drank all the US leftist messaging about then-political enemy of American Evangelical Christians without much critique. Some people honestly think the US teeming with sex-crazy corrupt religious religious cultists called "Evangelicals", lead by nightmarish ministers who look something that crawled from 1st season of True Detective and Witchfynder General, who are generally corrupt and fully intend to subjugate women and instill visions from Handmaid's Tale.
If I thought it would matter, I could say things like "I have met Evangelicals, they are different from us bu not like the media portrays" or "if there was a conspiracy to turn Handmaid's Tale into reality, I would have heard about it" (and be not believed).
Another example: Patriarchy, as defined by feminism. Yes, there have been social and cultural organization models where men had more rights than women. Yet also the strong forms of "patriarchy" as an all-encompassing cultural force that must fought everywhere, all the time, that both needs to eliminated in our minds to remove hurtful notions and social expectations and also in the social world to remove privileges and old boys networks by setting up quotas ... yeah, we do get arguments lke "patriarchy is a myth" and "I am a man and if there was such a thing as patriarchy that supports me with my career, I think I would have heard about it".
There is some truth to this, but it also sounds like a teenager's excuse how he came to possess a VHS tape of Emmanuelle. It is a variation of "the grass is less prude on the other side of border" effect, and not very good one. I don't think a pretty lady in skimpy outfit is divorced from sexuality anywhere in Europe. There is only a local difference in where the lines in previous battles for standards of public mores have been fought and lost. In general, Paris, London, Berlin and other big city urban cultures have had a different mores than more conservative small town - rural cultures. In some countries the urban mores have gained more ground than in others.
Concerning Dillermand show, I think Danish religious conservatism decidedly lost during springtime of people's and definitely by around WW1, something to do with industrial pork agriculture urbanizing the rural areas and parliament's iron grip of church providing no ground for a Christian revivalist movement. (Church of Denmark has no archibishop, they are ruled in name only by king and directly by parliament, resulting in a church ruled by concerns of secular non-believers.)
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