magic9mushroom
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User ID: 1103
magic9mushroom
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1hr ago
Was he treated poorly? No, he had a chance and blew it by being out-of-shape and awkward.
She grabbed the friend she was with, a guy named Albert. “Oh, my God, that’s him,” she whispered. “The guy from the movie theatre!” By then, Albert had heard a version of the story, though not quite the true one; nearly all her friends had. Albert stepped in front of her, shielding her from Robert’s view, as they rushed back to the table where their friends were. When Margot announced that Robert was there, everyone erupted in astonishment, and then they surrounded her and hustled her out of the bar as if she were the President and they were the Secret Service. It was all so over-the-top that she wondered if she was acting like a mean girl, but, at the same time, she truly did feel sick and scared.
If we draw the obvious inference from their behaviour as to the nature of the lies she told them, yes, Robert was treated poorly.
magic9mushroom
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1hr ago
Are memoirs ever ok? How many details does one need to change before one can write a novel? Is bitching about your wife on TheMotte ok because it's all under pseudonyms? What if she reads what a mottizen said about her and kills herself out of shame? What about twitter under a pseudonym? What about a blog under a real name? If Kulak writes a little tweetstorm about some "feminist bitch" he had to deal with, and she reads it and recognizes that it was her, is he in the wrong? What about the "blankfaces" that scott aaronson decried? Or is it the ideological agenda that makes the crime? What details is one obligated to change to conceal identity, and which are immoral to change because one is no longer telling the real story?
Telling real stories truthfully is definitely fine.
Telling fiction is definitely fine.
Telling falsehoods about people that hurt their reputation is considered the tort of defamation.
The problem here is that we've got a story that's based closely enough on real events to identify the villain as a real person, but the real person isn't that villainous (and hence the reputational hit he takes is undeserved). If the story claimed to be real, then yeah, this'd be #3, no question. Completely coincidental similarities still clearly fall under #2; there's no mens rea, even a negligent one, if you didn't know a real person existed who uncannily resembled your Darth Vader (nobody knows the exact traits of everybody in the world). Here, though, we're stuck in the middle; the story is claimed to be fiction, so it's not an outright lie, but there's potential real undeserved damage to reputation that's the result of real choices on the author's part.
The obvious case here is A Few Good Men, which was closely based on a real Guantanamo Bay incident (the fenceline shooting, the requested transfer, the rag stuffed down the throat, and the hazers calling the ambulance were all lifted from the real case, which Sorkin's sister defended and told him about) but changes two major details in ways that make Dawson and Downie look worse than the people they're based on (the real hazee didn't die and the real hazers who went to trial weren't dishonorably discharged). Sorkin and the movie's production company got sued by the real hazers for defamation; WP doesn't state how it went so there was probably a settlement of some sort. Which side was in the right? You can argue either way, but I don't think it's obvious.
All the examples you give except the novel are not in this limbo; truthful memoirs/bitching/tweetstorms are #1 and are definitely fine, while false ones (because they're outright lies, having been stated to be real) are #3 and are very much not fine.
magic9mushroom
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5hr ago
So clicking the "confirm" or whatever it was button wouldn't actually have shadowbanned anyone?
magic9mushroom
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5hr ago
The thing is that if men collectively, or even in majority minority refuse to participate anymore, the illusion dissolves within days. We saw it recently after Afghanistan withdrawal, when Taliban warriors just leisurely waltzed in and subjugated women without any fuss, literally laughing at the notion of women's political rights.
The key point there is the revolution. While law exists, social power controls physical power due to the police force. It does not especially matter if the ruling class has no physical power; they have social power, codified in laws, with which they can direct those with physical power to oppress on pain of that oppression turning upon them. This does, in fact, allow classes with social power to dominate classes with physical power nigh-indefinitely. Revolutions are the exception because revolution voids all laws - the pre-existing police force is literally defeated and can no longer enforce anything.
"Men are in charge, because the police force is essentially male" is an equivalent argument to "the proletariat was in charge in the 18th century, because the police force were essentially proles".
magic9mushroom
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1d ago
· Edited 1d ago
I mean, apparently what the king actually said was "What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?", which is quite ambiguous. Even the version with "turbulent priest" started out as "who shall deliver me from this turbulent Priest?", and that could be satisfied a lot of ways other than Becket's death.
magic9mushroom
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2d ago
My project to get in touch with the Motherland's food has achieved some success. For lunch today I had a mostly-full traditional English breakfast. I say "mostly" because I hate mushrooms and cooked tomatoes, so I didn't include those, but I had bacon, chipolatas, eggs, fried bread (I think I need to read up on how to do that; it came out okay but I don't think it was as intended)... and black pudding.
It... wasn't as unusual as I was expecting. Yeah, it's got a distinctive smell, and when cooked it looks almost exactly like "unidentifiable food that's been left on the stove and converted into carbon", but it has the taste and texture of a rich meat loaf (which... it basically is). I can see why people might shy away if offered it (from the looks; the smell's odd but not bad), but yeah, actually pretty normal. You don't forget what you're eating, though; the smell bursts out in your mouth when you chew it.
magic9mushroom
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2d ago
· Edited 2d ago
It's much easier to send a missile than to catch a boat. The missile all move faster than boats, for one.
Civ2 notwithstanding, I think a Super Stallion might be able to pick up one of those boats.
magic9mushroom
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2d ago
I mean, yes (I expect to survive, at least unless I'm drafted, but it's a bit trickier in the USA than Australia for several reasons), but the topic did come up because of the "power in the future = power now, because threats" factor. Still, since it's really more about perceived power in the future than real power, as long as people aren't pricing in Interesting Times it is largely irrelevant to the present (still funny, though).
magic9mushroom
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3d ago
I don't think it makes any sense to discuss that.
Why, though?
magic9mushroom
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3d ago
@ZorbaTHut it appears to be fixed.
magic9mushroom
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3d ago
Did you actually read the sentence after the one you quoted?
If the Democrats go too far with supporting rioting/insurrection/terrorism, they might get rolled up in a big way by the FBI. If nuclear war happens, the deaths will slew massively toward Democratic voters (because the countervalue targets - big cities - are as you note Democratic strongholds, and one of the strategic targets is of course Washington DC itself).
magic9mushroom
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4d ago
Ah. Yeah, I thought "the message" meant your contention of "how extreme the Dems are", not the Dems' contention of "Trump's orders are illegal".
The funny thing is, it's far from certain that the current incarnation of the Democratic Party will ever get another President. There are a number of ways they could wind up out of the game and unable to carry out this threat, ranging from sticking their necks out too far with this silly brinkmanship and being beheaded, to voter base existence failure if WWIII happens.
magic9mushroom
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4d ago
If you want to avoid a singleton, the best advice I can give you is to go full Butlerian Jihad. Singletons are a strong attractor state for competition between AI in a way they're not between humans.
magic9mushroom
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4d ago
I actually had this decent-sized essay I was writing comparing neural-net AI to demon-summoning. Couldn't figure out how to start it, though, and when Yudkowsky published his Time article I felt like it wasn't necessary anymore (most of the motivation for doing it in the first place was that I perceived the main Rat leadership to not have the balls).
magic9mushroom
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4d ago
Just in case somebody is dense and doesn't get the message
Some of us are not actually American, you know. I'm not dense, I just don't watch American news.
magic9mushroom
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4d ago
If the number of people pardoned gets to be so high that they can't remember them, then that's a sign that something is super broken with the way people are being convicted.
Well, not necessarily. Could also be something broken with the White House/President.
magic9mushroom
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4d ago
He said he did it without knowing who the guy is. He didn't say he never did it. So, not quite "this exact thing" (at least, not in this instance).
magic9mushroom
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4d ago
baseful, adj. (antonym: baseless): (of claims) with sound evidentiary backings
Amusingly, "based" has recently started being used to mean something similar.
faultful, adj. (antonym: faultless): containing many imperfections
"Faulty" is used.
inotic, adj. (antonym: exotic): indigenous, native
My research into the etymology suggests you're misreading the prefix and the correct inversion would be "endotic".
interminate, v (antonym: exterminate): to commit mass suicide à la Jonestown
My research into the etymology suggests "ex" is not referring to "others".
spotful, adj. (antonym: spotless): dirty, disheveled
"Spotted" can be used that way, IIRC, though it rarely is.
underdraft, n. (antonym: overdraft): a positive bank balance
"Overdraft" IIRC refers to the act of drawing too much, not the state of a negative balance. An "underdraft" would hence be the act of drawing too little.
undersee, v. (antonym: oversee): to supervise ineffectually; to ignore or forget about
That's actually an old, obsolete meaning of "oversee", not an antonym. "Over" in "oversee" is more literal - it's someone on high looking over his minions.
magic9mushroom
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5d ago
My point is that you do need either the ability to repeal those amendments, or a SCOTUS which will ignore them in dereliction of its duty (and packing the SCOTUS needs the legislature as well as the executive).
magic9mushroom
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5d ago
I think you need more than the presidency to do some of those things. The 15th Amendment forbids disenfranchising people on account of race (and the 19th on account of sex), and the President doesn't have the power to abolish elections or control the legislature/judiciary.
magic9mushroom
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5d ago
· Edited 5d ago
When I go to a userpage, a screen briefly pops up asking if I'm sure I want to shadowban this user.
@ZorbaTHut I don't want to accidentally shadowban myself.
magic9mushroom
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7d ago
But I have read enough Tucholsky to reject the premise that murder dressed in uniform ceases to be murder.
Murder (in the normal sense) has to be illegal* or you don't get to have a society. State killing, in limited forms, doesn't. This is a very notable practical difference.
*Well, you can legalise killing slaves, if slaves are a thing. Much of Ancient Greece did and didn't implode. But legalising the murder of citizens basically always degenerates into bellum omnium contra omnes.
magic9mushroom
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7d ago
And if everyone else feels that way, I think moderation guidelines will be a less than pressing concern during a civil war.
Yeah, I'll admit that a good chunk of why I'm not protesting too loudly is because the potential circumstances where I'd be willing to infohazard-dump are basically a strict subset of the potential circumstances wherein theMotte would be imminently doomed (along with, in many cases, the entire Internet) - and hence, wherein permabanning me would be nearly meaningless.
magic9mushroom
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8d ago
Motte:
fedposting is bad, actually
Bailey:
it seems bad for the sites [...] vaunted neutrality to enable and encourage [fedposting].
The bailey is something I feel morally obligated to oppose wherever I see it, i.e. the redefinition of terms to legitimate a preferred policy without acknowledging real tradeoffs. This is catastrophically dangerous because it leads to important principles getting hollowed out and losing their actual meaning - see "free speech doesn't include hate speech".
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
So, defend your claim. Or retract it. Don't try to pull a fast one by retreating to a motte.
(The reason I said "arguably utility" is because it can be useful for people like me to talk people out of starting a Boogaloo, and that can't happen if the other side is deterred from speaking.)
I mean, there are two big ones throughout most of history - "being marooned" and "being in a situation where suicide is considered the honourable course". Not 100% of people in those situations commit suicide, but my understanding is that it is in fact over 50%.
We're pretty low on those two in the modern West, although certain places are starting to re-invent the second one (Canada and MAID most notably).
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