stoatherd
1mo ago
I'll note that @oats_son asked you:
Take a look at @stoatherd's post: what behavior are you trying to change, specifically?
Your answer:
the behavior I'd like to see changed is less cheering on for one side and less 'revenge makes rules irrelevant'.
... you know that's not what my posts contain, right?
Or were you ignoring his question so you could answer a more convenient one? (with the bonus of being able to implicitly micharacterise my posts, so you could later go "sigh, I never explicitly said I was talking about your posts")
stoatherd
1mo ago
I think you'd do yourself some favors re-reading my comments and waiting a few minutes before replying because you're mischaracterizing me.
Knock it off, again.
You're filling this thread with contradictory claims (e.g. it was obviously a murder + you're shocked anyone could think it wasn't a murder + you don't think it was a murder), and then complaining about being "mischaracterised"?
I think you do yourself some favours by concisely, honestly saying exactly what you believe, rather than switching back and forth depending on what's convenient.
I was going to say that you avoided answering my question
Well, I didn't. As you'd say, please re-read my comment.
To be clear, this is a follow-up question ... So I'll ask again
... Sorry, is it a "follow-up question", or are you asking it "again"?
do you truly believe that the portrayal I described ("if he were to die, that'd be great, and totally justified") is what a large chunk of lefties think?
I reject your grounds for asking that question. It smuggles in a frame and implications that completely unjustified. Suppose I asked you this question:
do you truly believe it's ok to murder puppies? I just want to understand what anti-puppy biases you may or may not have. How confident are you that it's ok to murder puppies?
If I asked that, you'd be within your rights to go "uh, dude, what the fuck? I never brought up puppies or puppy-murder; stop implying that I hold positions that you have no evidence for me holding".
I specifically described my best (obviously imperfect) guess of what Good might've been thinking. You tried to conflate that with what I think "a large chunk of lefties" think. Who cares what my opinion on "a large chunk of lefties" is? Was the car being driven by "a large chunk of lefties"? You are trying to turn my specific guesses about Good into evidence for a general bias/hatred/whatever of a political bloc.
I invite you to re-read my comments, take a few minutes to think, apply critical thinking, and whatever other passive-aggressive instructions you think are appropriate.
stoatherd
1mo ago
I'm also not, and nowhere did, claim that we have indisputable proof that she was murdered
This is a lie. You said:
This is so obviously a murder
I don't care that your defence is going to be "sigh, apply some critical thinking skills -- that's from the transcript; I didn't literally say it!"
No. You dropped a massive transcript in your OP as if it were your own words. You said it expressed things better than you could yourself. You said you "vibe" with it. You presented it as a something you fully endorsed.
You did not go "actually I disavow the part where he says it was obviously a murder". The rules say to speak plainly. If you're going to drop a transcript with maximally inflammatory claims that you don't actually agree with, and then later go "b-but I never literally said those words!", then people are going to assume you're fucking with them.
This is some god-of-the-gaps bullshit. Any part of the transcript that becomes indefensible or inconvenient -- "oh, I never actually said it". All the other parts -- well, they get to stand as part of your argument, until the exact part where you need to discard them and pretend you never held them at all.
This is deceitful.
stoatherd
1mo ago
I'm begging you to re-read before replying and apply some critical thinking skills.
Knock it off.
You're being consistently dishonest across all of your comments, and then start acting huffy when people point out that you're contradicting yourself to manipulate people who were trying to treat you charitably. Jesus Christ, indeed. You're not optimising for light or honesty. You're not doing anything because it's more "transparent or honest".
But ok! Let's apply your cherished critical thinking skills. Using your definition of "on some level", we get these quotes from you:
I myself probably would shy away from calling it outright "murder"
[to some degree], I'm shocked people don't all see it as murder
Um... are you ok? Because you say that you don't call it a murder; and you're also kinda shocked that anyone wouldn't see it as a murder. I can't imagine why you think that smugly defining the phrase "on some level" lets you wriggle out of how insane that is.
Apply some critical thinking skills.
stoatherd
1mo ago
You:
I myself probably would shy away from calling it outright "murder"
Also you:
on some level I'm shocked people don't all see it as murder.
Stop wasting everyone's time. Someone died. Do them the courtesy of saying what you fucking mean, instead of this transparent manipulative bullshit.
stoatherd
1mo ago
I should mention that Ross pulls his gun out almost immediately at the moment she comes to a stop and switches the gear to Drive and out of reverse. Immediately. I think that point is underemphasized.
Ok, let's play this game:
- If he already had his gun out, you'd say he wanted to shoot her
- If he pulled his gun out on approach, you'd say he wanted to shoot her
- If he pulled out his gun before she accelerated the 1.5-ton SUV towards him, you'd say he wanted to shoot her
- If he pulled out his gun at the time he did, you'd say (as you do) he wanted to shoot her
So, when exactly is he allowed to react to the woman driving a 1.5-ton machine towards him? Half a second later? A second later?
There's obviously no point in time that won't make you go "ah! Of course! This PROVES he's a murderer!"
This is damning for your character, not his.
stoatherd
1mo ago
It's happening to some extent on both sides (e.g. Charlie Kirk).
Yeah, no. It's happening extremely heavily on one side -- the side that your obvious example is on.
Attempting to parley that into "akshually the other side is doing it worse!" needs receipts you don't have.
stoatherd
1mo ago
Having a bunch of masked men carrying guns rushing at you and reaching into your car suddenly is fucking terrifying to even imagine happening
Ok, so:
- It was one man, not "a bunch"
- He didn't "rush" at her
- "suddenly" is a lie"
You already know these things, I assume, having watched the videos? Or you didn't, and are constructing a convenient alternate scenario that didn't happen.
Either way: do you genuinely, actually believe she found this "fucking terrifying"?
As she smirks, smiles, sneers, and looks delighted, you think she was actually secretly fucking terrified?
This is an actual question. It has a yes/no answer. She was either fucking terrified, or she wasn't. The videos all indicate, to the best of our knowledge, that she obviously wasn't terrified; but you seem to be happy to assume, in spite of all evidence, that she was. Why?
Does it change anything that she wasnt?
stoatherd
1mo ago
Her panicking is not "deceit"
You can see her on camera, extremely plainly, not panicking.
Given how ready you are to say this was "obviously murder", I think I'm allowed to infer that a person who is smirking, excited, and exhilarated is not, in fact, panicked; and that saying otherwise is lying.
she very well might not have seen or been aware of him
She locks eyes with him. But ok, I'm willing to concede she may have, in that short window of time, have glossed over his existence and not acted rationally. I look forward to you extending the same courtesy to the person whose body was about to be intersected by her SUV.
Or, as I suspect, are the rules: infinite psychological understanding for her, and none for your ideological enemies, who are obviously out to commit murder?
nor is the point that she wasn't fully "blocking" traffic
No one said "fully", and I can see you smuggling that word in. You are, of course, fully aware that she was not parked perpendicular to the road just cuz.
Do you know the easiest way to wave cars by? It's by not parking perpendicular to the road. Given that she did, in fact, do this, we both know that her intent was not to not block the road.
Why are we bothering with this nonsense? Do you think this is convincing?
Cars insofar as they are weapons, are inherently directional weapons
I don't understand this or the subsequent point. A weapon like an SUV can kill.
So, do you agree that the other 10-12 lies told by "your" side were, in fact, lies? It may seem unfair for me to list so many, but it's no less a gish-gallop than your OP. I'd genuinely like to know if you consider the other 10ish points to be true, or irrelevant, or genuinely lies on your side. Leaving them implicitly unaddressed seems dishonest.
This seems like pure, unadulterated projection of a caricature of the modal anti-ICE protestor, and is a second thing that has upset me, specifically around here. Do you truly believe that this is what a large chunk of lefties think?
Based on the reaction to Charlie Kirk, and her behaviour in the video: I believe with high probability it's what she would have thought. I may be wrong.
Where did you get "a large chunk of lefties"? I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth, seeing as you know full well I was talking about her specifically.
If you're upset by that, then calibrate yourself.
I myself probably would shy away from calling it outright "murder"
Oh. Ohh, I'm a fucking idiot, sorry. Because when you said this:
This is so obviously a murder.
... I took that as you calling it outright murder.
Now that I understand your words don't actually correlate to what you believe, and you're just fucking with me, I realise I've wasted too much time dealing with someone who doesn't actually care about what's true. Life and death and truth actually matter -- if you're not going to take this seriously, get out of the kitchen.
stoatherd
1mo ago
it's a mask off moment and puzzling how some people aren't just reasonably disagreeing, but out of their fucking minds
Ok, so normally whataboutism isn't really a legit argument, but your position (if I understand it) is basically "one side is outright lying". I agree, but disagree about the side, so I think it's relevant for me to list the various conflicting lies/deceit pushed by "your" side:
- She wasn't an activist, and just got lost, tried to turn around
- ICE told her to drive off; she was obeying
- ICE gave her conflicting orders to get out and drive off, to force her to not comply with one of them
- She got confused as to what they wanted
- She and her wife were calm, polite, and non-confrontational ("I'm not mad at you")
- ICE charged at her, screaming profanities
- She didn't see the officer in front of her SUV
- She panicked
- She didn't know they were ICE
- She wasn't blocking the road at all, actually
- The officer walked in front of a moving vehicle
- The officer stood in front of the static vehicle (deliberately, to justify deadly force)
- The officer wasn't in the path of the vehicle at all
- The car's wheels were pointing away from him when she started accelerating
- The first shot went through the side window
- They were pointing a gun at her before she started driving
- They shot her for driving away from them
- The officer's video is a deepfake
Your post is pretty long (mine too), so to narrow in: what's the most clear-cut, obvious, damnable lie from the pro-ICE side? Like, one (or a small handful) that I can just look at the video and go, "yeah, that's clearly false, and anyone watching this should know". I'm struggling because your examples seem to be more subjective stuff like "was this domestic terrorism". (I'm not trying to pick a deliberately weak one, sorry if that's not meant to be a load-bearing example)
A couple of other points:
First: You focus on how, at the moment of firing, he's no longer directly in the way. But this is less than 1 second from her accelerating at him, and him pulling out his gun -- at which point he absolutely was in the way of the 1.5-ton SUV that could've crushed him. He didn't have the benefit of dispassionately freeze-framing the videos from multiple angles in that 1 second. Nor could he see the wheels, or the future path of the car, or know how much traction it would have (it seems if there hadn't been ice under the tires, it would've surged forward sooner, directly over him). Expecting him to omnisciently evaluate evidence he doesn't have in that one second, just as he's suddenly been thrust into a potentially-fatal situation -- and then to superhumanly instantly switch between violence and nonviolence on her whim -- is absolutely ridiculous.
Second: The dominant pro-ICE position on the Motte (and elsewhere) doesn't seem to be "she was trying to murder him". No matter how many times I see it repeated, anti-ICE people still seem to ignore it. The more common position I see, and endorse, is something like:
- She was trying to flee
- She wasn't deliberately trying to murder him
- However, she was aware he was in front of the SUV she was attempting to move forward
- She probably figured she could turn out of the way without significantly injuring him -- either hoping to avoid him entirely, or (more likely) send him tumbling like a fascist buffoon. But if he were to die, that'd be great, and totally justified
... but her state of mind doesn't matter. She suddenly accelerated an SUV while he was standing in front of it. He doesn't have to read her mind to justify defending himself. Her death is a tragedy, and was entirely avoidable by not trying to move her SUV into the space another human being was standing in. The absolute refusal from anti-ICE people to recognise this does not seem reasonable.
Her death is a tragedy, but calling it "murder" is engaging in exactly the kind of deceit you claim your opponents are doing. I don't understand it.
stoatherd
1mo ago
Right, except that never happened. There's a video higher up in the comment chain where you can see that didn't happen.
It also conveniently shows her not being panicked.
stoatherd
1mo ago
"yelling obscenities" is flatly false, both literally and in spirit.
Firstly, as you're fully aware, he was speaking, not yelling. You can tell by contrasting the volume of his voice with the volume of the protesters yelling around him.
Secondly, I'm pretty sure he says:
- "Get out of the car"
- "Get out of the fucking car"
- "Get out of the car"
So, you've decided that the single calmly-spoken obscenity "fucking" is enough to turn his entire approach into "yelling obscenities".
You've also, I assume, watched the entire preceding encounter, where the wife insults and and aggro's him repeatedly. You've chosen to characterise this as "calm".
You understand that you're saying things that are straightforwardly untrue, right?
stoatherd
1mo ago
meta comment: as a long-time lurker just commenting now, I'm generally a big fan of how you mod (and comment) -- given that I'm criticising/arguing with you, I should take a moment to say thanks for maintaining this space. It's valuable and good.
Meanwhile, in the fray:
What is the truth you are so confident about?
I tried pretty hard to outline exactly what this was. There are bullet points for the features I was uncertain about, largely around their states of mind, and a single bullet point that was the single truth I'm confident of -- specifically, that she accelerated an SUV directly at another human being, and this is an act that can easily kill people.
I think I went overboard on making this clear -- idk how I could've laid it out in a way that would short-circuit this question.
That she wasn't there accidentally? That she was trying to kill the ICE officer? That there was no misconduct or poor judgment? You're sure? Really, really sure? 100% sure?
No; no; no; no; no; no.
I specifically outlined "these are the things I'm uncertain of", "these are the things I'm certain of". What part of that makes you think "this is a person who thinks maximally ICEpilled chud takes, and needs to be deprogrammed"? I don't need to be introduced to the concept of less-than-100%-certainty, after a post in which (I'm pretty sure) I made a pretty clear attempt to delineate exactly which things I was confident in.
Though it's not directly relevant, here are my answers to your questions. I believe:
- She wasn't there accidentally (99% certain)
- Medium strong probability -- she wasn't trying to kill the officer; she very probably considered any injury/death justified in making her escape; she probably wanted him dead in the abstract, if not willing to do it herself (but would be happy to learn she'd caused it, assuming she would get away with it). Still, I doubt she marshalled all of these as a coherent thought before gunning the accelerator.
- Was there misconduct? In the legal sense, idk state or federal law, sorry. In everyday terms: no, I think the protesters acted abominably, and ICE acted reasonably.
- Was there poor judgment? From the protesters, yes. From ICE: I don't think so, but if there's a specific instance of poor judgment, I'm happy to discuss it
- "You're sure?" -- I've tried to put confidence levels on each claim
- "Really, really sure?" -- no; see previous
- "100% sure?" -- again
I don't think that was a fair line of implications to throw at me. I've tried to be pretty clear in what parts I'm confident in, and what parts are more ambiguous.
And you don't even know what why my conclusions are
True! And that's fine. My conclusions don't depend on yours, or vice versa. I won't blame you for disagreeing/agreeing with me. Again, I'm just talking about what I saw in the actual physical pixels of the video, which show a person driving a 1.5-ton metal machine towards a fragile human body -- that's the point of my comment. Trying to do theory of mind on each other is overcomplicating things.
My point is that I believe the majority of people commenting ... would argue the exact opposite position ... if the tribal polarities were reversed.
Yeah, I broadly agree that this is the state of society in general. I think the Motte, while susceptible to the same dynamic, is much much better (but still flawed! And we're all still human!)
Like, for me personally: I don't live in the US. ICE and US immigration are not directly applicable to me. I don't particularly like Trump, or Biden, or the Republicans, or the Democrats, etc etc. While I'm deeply frustrated with wokeness, I am actually capable of noticing situations where the stopped clock is right twice a day. (Tho even that phrasing is uncharitable, as a stopped clock is wrong by coincidence; occasionally, woke-type arguments are actually correct on their own merits).
You're not entirely wrong, it's just a bit too blackpilled for me to go "everyone is just choosing along tribal lines". Free to disagree, obviously; I just don't think this is the situation where that's the takeaway.
Go ahead and assume you are an exception.
While recognising that you do a ton of work (and produce a ton of content) in the Motte, while I'm basically a newcomer outside of lurking -- dude, come on. I don't think anything I said calls for this kind of (mild) hostility.
I do not think I am some special butterfly. As I'm pretty sure my previous comment implies, and as the existence of the Motte might imply, I believe that there are plenty of people capable of determining their beliefs based on evidence and truth. (If not, what the heck is everyone doing here?)
As an easy example, check out quantumfreakonomic's comment (idk how to tag a user, sorry) concerning Ashley Babbit below, who seems to be the locus of discussion around a "flipped parity" shooting:
Yes. The Ashley Babbitt shooting was justified. Waco was justified. Arguably Kent State was justified. It is okay to use force against people resisting law-enforcement activity.
Based on a quick scan of quantum's other comments on this topic, that seems like an example of one person not dividing along tribal lines?
In other words, everyone who says they are looking at the available video evidence to try to come to an informed conclusion-- I don't believe them*.
Well, ok, but then you're just going to be wrong about some people. You need a finer brush. Yes, many people aren't trying to come to an informed conclusion (probably most). But everyone? No, that's just wrong. And I think there's a real problem with trying to implicitly label objections to that as a claim to higher status ("go ahead and assume you are an exception"). People genuinely do differ, some people try harder than others, we are all fallible. If no one here is trying to find the truth -- which I strongly disagree with -- then idk the point of the Motte, exactly.
stoatherd
1mo ago
I strongly disagree that this is some symmetric tribal partisan thing (while agreeing with the premise that yes, many things boil down to that in the general case)
When I watch the videos, I don't jump to a firm position on "what was in the minds of both [parties]". Some things I'm unsure about:
- Did she register the driver in front of the car? Her eyes flicked over him, but it's possible she didn't see him, or didn't notice him, though I doubt it
- If she did register him, did she deliberately try and run him over? I suspect: no, but she considered it an acceptable (and satisfying) side effect
- Was the ICE agent poorly trained? Maybe, maybe not. Seems much less important than about 10 other factors that more directly relate to what actually happened
- Did he genuinely fear for his life? I expect so, but I'm not a mind reader. Either way, 1 second is a very short time to form a coherent fear vs reacting to an immediate threat
So yeah, I haven't jumped to a strong conclusion about exactly what anyone was thinking in the moment. What I'm certain of is this:
- From rest, the driver backed up her 1.5-ton SUV and accelerated towards the ICE agent
That's instantly disqualifying. Nothing else needed; I'm not assuming anything about anyone's mindset. If you are a wearing a 1.5-ton suit of power armour with wheels, you cannot suddenly accelerate at another human being. You can't.
That's all it boils down to. It doesn't matter if you don't reach high speeds. If you hit him, there's a high chance he's going under. Given that he's close to the side of the car, he's probably going under the tires. So yeah, that's him dead. Even if he doesn't go under, you can pretty trivially die just from smashing your head on the ground. So whether or not it was a "good" shoot, was it acceptable for him to make the shot in the 1 second she gave him to decide how much he valued his life? Yes, absolutely.
So, I don't care whether she intended to run him over, or if (as I think is most likely) she wanted to get away, but considered knocking him over to be acceptably within the range of outcomes.
I'm not happy this happened. It's a tragedy. IIRC she had kids, which makes this more tragic -- unlike her, they played no part in creating this horrible outcome. But I won't lilypad from "it's a tragedy" to "anyone physically involved was in the wrong". She created this situation, and I wish she hadn't. "Do not drive forward when there's a person directly in front of you" is a simple, clear rule that would have kept everyone safe
I hope you don't think I'm a mindkilled Trump-loving lesbian-hater or whatever slamming my keyboard. This just doesn't seem like a tribal split thing; it's a case where actually, the truth of the matter has extremely strong video evidence, and one tribe chooses to ignore that. (I'll also note: each successive video smashes through a different set of anti-ICE excuses, e.g. "she was just a random bystander turning around!", "the wheels were never pointing at him", "he put himself in front of the vehicle!", "she was panicking!" etc -- there's no equivalent the other way.)
stoatherd
3yr ago
But an organisation can't do all the things its component employees can.
Toy example: Alice is a stubborn science expert; Bob is a stubborn humanities expert; as individuals, they are capable of answering questions about their respective areas of expertise, but as AliceBobCo they squabble and can't come to an agreement on any question. The company is dumber than the sum of its parts.
(The key point is that even though the company has employees that possess the skills it needs, it lacks sufficient structure to yoke "the will of the organisation" to that individual's skills.)
I agree that a Steinbeck + lackeys is more competent than just a Steinbeck! — just not in a way that merits "superintelligence". It's not a qualitative step up; you don't get Steinbeck^2, you just get Steinbeck with some minor amps. There seems to be a power cliff of generating a great writer in the first place, and our only recipe for adding that capability to an organisation is "employ a great writer".
I think you're underestimating what people mean by "people aren't perfectly coordinated". It sounds like you think they mean the intelligence of an org scales like O(ln(N)) or something (i.e. making an org 100 times bigger makes it only 10 times smarter). I think it's more like: making an org 100 times bigger probably makes the org as a whole dumber, but capable of massively more work and some related benefits (that are sorta intelligence-related but not the whole thing). I.e. it's not "orgs are superintelligences but beneath the danger threshold", it's "orgs are subintelligences connected to massively powerful but dumb machinery".
stoatherd
3yr ago
I think intelligence as a single axis really breaks down here. Well-run organisations can beat humans in specific ways — better parallelization, less likely to get bored/tired, wider and deeper expertise — but often not in the ways that are really interesting. (If von Neumann joined as an entry-level employee at some megacorp today, would the organisation become smarter than him in any reasonable sense?)
Orgs seem good at gluing together boring competencies and shoring up human shortcomings, but we haven't figured out the interesting stuff yet — we have no idea how to assemble 1000 mediocre writers into a Steinbeck or 1000 mediocre physicists into a Feynman.
So I think "superintelligence" is the wrong word for orgs. "Superhuman", yeah, in the more limited sense that a horse or a plane is superhuman in some capacities. But we're not at the point (yet) where we've cracked the alchemy of coordinating lots of human intelligences into an organisational superintelligence. So I think that's the critical difference between orgs rn and actual x-risk from superintelligences
That's fair -- I was focusing on the guy who opened the car door, but yeah, you're right. I still object to "a bunch".
They had enough time to say "get out of the (fucking) car" 3 times. When people are insisting that 1 second is an eternity for perfect deliberation when an SUV is accelerating towards you, then that 3+ second gap cannot be considered "suddenly". I wouldn't call it a lie, but it's not an accurate characterisation of events.
You're overselling the graininess and underselling how much time we can see her. I'm not "interpreting" anything. You can see her being cheery, smiling, smirky, and -- like her wife -- clearly enjoying being able to LARP as the plucky rebels against the fascist stormtroopers.
Like, come on. The idea that she panicked is based on the idea that she was just innocently turning around in the street, and ICE -- who she wasn't expecting -- spooked her. We know that's not true! She and her wife were deliberately antagonising ICE; they knew exactly who they were dealing with.
It is, in fact, completely unreasonable to watch that interaction and go "oh poor lamb, she was terrified and panicking!"
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