site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  17d ago (text post)   26895 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

If you're a U.S. citizen with voting rights, your polling place can reportedly be located here.

If you're still researching issues, Ballotpedia is usually reasonably helpful.

Any other reasonably neutral election resources you'd like me to add to this notification, I'm happy to add.

15
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A relatively small number of deaths can easily cause massive economic problems and overwhelm hospitals leading to all sorts of problems including...you guessed it, more deaths.

The problem wasn't the lockdowns. They were sensible. The problem was the way they were implemented and not having a reasonable offramp.

A relatively small number of deaths can easily cause massive economic problems and overwhelm hospitals leading to all sorts of problems including...you guessed it, more deaths.

If every hospital we have were suddenly carpet bombed tomorrow, would there be some increased follow-on deaths? Absolutely. Would it be an existential threat?! Please.

FYI, this subthread (from birb_cromble) seems to be referring to vaccine mandates rather than lockdowns.

I'm not saying it was truly an existential threat, but it was way worse than a lot of people are willing to acknowledge. What those numbers translate to practically is pretty bad. It's hard to notice if you were locked up though, which many were...so they didn't.

Well, the question is whether the President is in a position to know that wasn't an existential threat. If you're the President and ignorant people think it's an existential threat, but you know that it's not an existential threat, you help them understand that it's not an existential threat. And then we move to the next question of whether you would have "threatened the livelihood of 100,000,000 citizens unless they submitted to an unconstitutional mandate that abrogated their right to bodily autonomy? Even after massive concerns from multiple constitutional scholars?"

"Sufficiently damaging to the economy, American lives, and functioning of the government" isn't quite the same as "existential threat" and still justifies much of what happened.

I mean, we could relitigate it, again. Suffice to say, I think it very plausibly justifies some version of the lockdowns that happened in 2020 (plausibly not all; it's hard to really go back mentally, put ourselves in those shoes again, and pin things down), but almost certainly does not justify all of the vaccine mandates that happened (or attempted to happen) in 2021. Thankfully, the Supreme Court agreed that the most egregious one didn't pass muster and several others petered out. Especially because after they failed, the sky did not fall, because it was absolutely nowhere near an existential risk. I don't think you understand how gigantic the gap is between "existential risk", what actually happened, or even your characterization of what the biggest fears were.

Do you think that "Sufficiently damaging to the economy, American lives, and functioning of the government" should have at least justified pushing the FDA further out of the way, streamlining the process more, enabling human challenge trials, and just letting people buy/sell the vaccine based on their personalized needs and the price mechanism? It seems to me that such a path would have been vastly more efficient at addressing your concerns, and it could have been done pretty early in 2020, not in 2021 when the cows were completely and totally out of the barn.

I mean I'm not pro-vaccine mandate, although I did get vaccinated ASAP. I was also pro-lockdown initially but displeased with the length and way they are implemented.

The issue is that the people who are still talking about this years later did not learn any lessons (both sides) and in the case of the skeptics, miss how bad it was.

I'm really not sure why you responded to me in the first place, then. I think you actually have views pretty close to my own, and I also think that you're numerate enough to agree that it was in no way an existential threat. So yeah, uh, why respond to a comment that is just pointing out that it was absolutely not an existential threat?

Eh it's almost always tied together when it comes up, if you feel like it isn't for you, carry on.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats