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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1

This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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I am quite certain that guesswho is darwin, and I think it's reasonably likely they'll either admit it eventually or a solid consensus will emerge among the rest of the posters, including yourself

My eyes quickly glaze over any trans discussion, but I think there’s less than a 1% chance of guesswho being darwin, and you can quote me on that. He’s an antagonistic progressive, he's got progressive stylistic ticks, that’s basically the extent of the similarity. Other arguments include: as you say, darwin was prolific, why would he even use an alt, and keep it secret, after he did leave that time he was banned, just to make a few random comments. It's not parsimonious.

In any case, we've looked at five threads, and it seems to me that at in at least four of those threads, we're pretty far from Darwin being a high-quality contributor who got snippy with people who were rude to him

He did get a lot of AAQC. So you'll have to concede these aren't his best arguments, at least.

Would you agree that in those threads, we've seen him initiating with low-effort and highly inflammatory posts, and that other posters expend significant effort attempting to have a civil conversation without much success?

There’s low-effort, and there’s content-free. Strictly low-effort posts are only really bad if they express a very common idea (for the sub), imo. As to ‘inflammatory’, it is just a function of a commenter’s ideological distance. We need to tolerate inflammation, as it is a key aspect of the body's immune defenses.

...In other words, he doesn't actually endorse anything he wrote in that original comment. Nothing you described above was at all the argument he claims to be making, which is unsurprising since the argument he claims to have been making cannot be straightforwardly derived from what he actually wrote.

Disagree, he does endorse the interpretation partly with:

But I also think that the extreme version of this ideology - coercing private entities to host speech and actions they disagree with, making it functionally impossible for people to build private spaces with the people and discourse they prefer, limiting societies ability to condemn and ostracize bad or dangerous ideas - is just another form of tyranny and violent coercion all it's own.

This is getting into way too many details of one argument. Our fundamental disagreement is whether his behaviour here is bad. What is the rule, applicable to all commenters, that he broke ? “The defendant made a short comment that implied a certain argument, but then later only partially endorsed it, and in further clarifications it became clear that he endorsed another argument more”

The fact that he is incorrect from our pov, that ‘the only possible response to private censorship is nationalizing the platforms. That's it.’ is weak, is not for us to punish (through force).

You are using his own, extensive clarifications to catch him in a contradiction, when they put the lie to your other accusations, that he was just sniping, that he wasn’t engaging. Wouldn’t it be worse if he had not explained what he meant?