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Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 9, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Oy, did you see this:

The best proof of being at fault in war is losing it.

Pedestrian understanding of the mechanisms responsible, but even they agree.

No, their understanding is exactly correct: people cling to power, and power worship is rationalization of the status quo, to minimize losses from opposing the strong or getting crushed along with the weak. Might is right because it can redefine terms, in a perfectly postmodernist manner: words mean whatever the stronger party wishes them to mean, so the only question is, as Humpty Dumpty argued, which is to be master. And with the next master, new meanings come, so no learning from history is possible. Of course, theorizing to the effect that the Universe (devoid of God in your picture, incidentally) is so configured as to make each successive Master in some objective sense external to the struggle more deserving, and his meanings Truer, is nothing more than Just World theory. The world is not obliged to be just.

Kamil flaunts his faux-wise Asiatic cynicism of the Russian prison cell, and the fact that you prop this up as evidence is quite hilarious. Once again, even Greks knew better.

"How dare you paddle around in my stream and stir up all the mud!" he shouted fiercely. "You deserve to be punished severely for your rashness!"

"But, your highness," replied the trembling Lamb, "do not be angry! I cannot possibly muddy the water you are drinking up there. Remember, you are upstream and I am downstream."

"You do muddy it!" retorted the Wolf savagely. "And besides, I have heard that you told lies about me last year!" "How could I have done so?" pleaded the Lamb. "I wasn't born until this year."

"If it wasn't you, it was your brother!"

"I have no brothers."

"Well, then," snarled the Wolf, "It was someone in your family anyway. But no matter who it was, I do not intend to be talked out of my breakfast."

And without more words the Wolf seized the poor Lamb and carried her off to the forest.

(There's a moral lesson in italic at the bottom).

You've really corn cobbed yourself. Just admit that your whole belief system stands on air and adopt something more mature.

They’re using the veneer of the always-popular sheeple theory, but I think it boils down to the sheeple basically being right, as always.

Minimizing losses is a valid logical reason. An average joe who challenges a muscle-bound giant to a fistfight doesn’t have a pristine epistemology, he’s just stupid. The giant didn’t twist reality.

Perhaps the problem with postmodernists is that since truth is supposedly power, they don’t know what to do with observed power, it’s just meaningless, assigned a value of zero, like history. So they get their asses kicked.

Karlin approved of Putin swallowing russian-speaking territories when it carried no cost, and that was sensible, for him, for the russian people. They weren’t blinded by power, they just saw the world as it was. Now that the cost-benefit has changed, their view must change also. I don’t see where Humpty dumpty is supposed to be, manipulating them.

@Amadan is it fair to call this gibberish? I suppose he can't be thinking he makes a solid point.

You know the mods don't adjudicate how good or logical or correct someone's post is. If you are asking "Can I call this gibberish and insult the OP," no.