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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32902 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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I am one of the Elect and fully in favor of crushing the white peasants" is not a forbidden opinion

Honestly saying "I am one of the Elect and fully in favor of crushing the white peasants" may be stupid, but it isn't a forbidden opinion.

Dishonestly saying it to deliberately provoke backlash in favor of the white peasants (or to just provoke reactions, period) violates several rules, including the one about speaking plainly.

I don't think it is, nor should be, against the rules to merely argue in favor of an opinion one does not sincerely hold. If the poster breaks the rules in other ways, that's a different story, but I think it's fine and even valuable for people to be allowed to play devil's advocate.

If he wants to play devil's advocate, he could say he's playing devil's advocate, not pretend he actually believes what he's saying.

What difference does it make? We should be evaluating the argument, not the person making it. The sincerity of the person making the argument doesn't change the validity of the argument.

First of all, this is only true if the argument includes no personal observations or other claims that might be false. Second, this is only true if you're an ideal perfect arguer who notices BS 100% of the time and can never be fooled by it. If you're an actual human, you don't want to bother with someone who's likely to make a lot of invalid arguments, because you might fail to notice some of them because you're an actual human.

this is only true if the argument includes no personal observations or other claims that might be false.

A person arguing for a claim they genuinely believe in is at least equally capable of (if not more capable of) making up false anecdotes, or exaggerating true ones. In general, personal anecdotes should get very little weight as evidence of anything.

If you're an actual human, you don't want to bother with someone who's likely to make a lot of invalid arguments

A person arguing for a position they truly believe is at least equally (if not more) likely to make invalid arguments, due to blind spots or confirmation bias or a simple desire to win the argument.

My experience is that humans don't behave that way.

Humans don't behave what way? They don't make false statements and/or invalid arguments in support of positions they sincerely hold?

They do those things, but they don't do them in the proportions that you imply. Someone insincerely arguing for a position is much more likely to be telling you BS, even if every human will probably be telling you some BS.

He is certainly not trying to provoke a reaction in favor of the white peasants. He genuinely is a Muslim chauvinist who disdains white normies. Is he trying to state things in an inflammatory manner and trigger people and provoke a reaction? Yes. He both favors hating on the white "peasants" in favor of muslims, and is willing to distort the facts of the performance of both groups to promote this idea that natives suck, migrants are superior that he obviously likes.

The idea that the ideology of "natives suck, migrants superior" can not be sincere, doesn't make sense at all. Examples of this ideology among migrants isn't rare and it exists even among a component of native elites who push above their weight due to appeasement and toleration by others.

The post is structured as a politically-flipped parody of an argument from an immigration critic, with some asserted (by the parody) racism. In that way BurdensomeCount opens the discussion by mocking those who disagree with him.

As the post goes on it begins to seem that the poster also asserts the parody's claims as true, which he may indeed believe. This gives him cover (I am expressing my sincere opinion!) and baits his interlocutors into answering the parody they'd have otherwise ignored at the moment they are angriest. As a probably unintended side effect it sucks all the oxygen out of the room, preventing a more patient and interesting subthread from arising.

A frank summary of events and his opinion may have led to an interesting, if somewhat heated, discussion. I don't think that's what BurdensomeCount was looking for.

Well said. Hope he does not get banned.

You don't think he genuinely means this?

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