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Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
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User ID: 355
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
11d ago
I was seriously considering just not answering, in order to not humour what looks like a rhetorical strategy of asking tangential questions meant to discredit the other party's character to the audience rather than reacting to a counterpoint that they made to your argument. This would probably not be good for the discussion. So, sure, the answer: yes, I think that is basically true, at least with respect to the Republican party under Trump. Why does this matter? I think it is off topic, and if you insist on invoking the moral qualities of Iranian leaders in defense of your original post I think it starts entering the territory of Motte-and-Bailey argumentation as I argued in my response to @Amadan.
If you are just willing to step back from your original claim and concede that "celebrating the deaths of people they don’t like" is not a vice that is novel or unique to leftists in your political landscape, I will be perfectly satisfied. If you replace it with something more specific, like "leftists have lost me when it has become mainstream among them to cheer for assassination attempts against our own country's elected leader", I would even agree with the sentiment! I just feel the need to stand in defense of the high-decoupling principles that originally made this community work. You shouldn't be able to get away with imprecision that just so happens to make your thesis less defensible but sound better as a rallying cry.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
11d ago
No, I genuinely believed that he meant that, or at least was somewhat deliberate (perhaps not the sense of a premeditated plan, but in the sense that he wrote it out and then it sounded like good polemic that it was satisfying to send) in allowing for that interpretation. Every single time some divisive political figure dies, I see comments celebrating it from one tribe, and comments denouncing the aforementioned ones as an unprecedented breach of norms (which is taken to justify retaliatory escalation) from the other. Having restrictive and universalisable norms, such as "don't celebrate the deaths of people you don't like", is higher status than having contrived norms that are suspect of being designed to favour your ingroup, such as "don't celebrate the deaths of politicians unless they are leaders of nations that my ingroup detests and asserts to be evil", so I have a choice here:
(1) either I assume he really meant exactly what he literally said, or
(2) I assume he meant the latter thing, which would not be as profitable for his team but is more defensible, but said the first thing, which is more profitable. This is a textbook motte-and-bailey argument.
Apart from the question of whether accusing other people of motte-and-baileying on the Motte even meets our charity standards, I did actually give him the benefit of doubt and believed it was (1); and here, you are essentially telling me I should instead have helped him in creating the M&B setup and let him retreat to the bailey.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
11d ago
See my response to your parallel response.
It's already a lot of unnecessary work to respond to different people making the same objection in minimally different ways in this subthread. I'd be grateful if you could avoid making it worse by being one person making the same objection in minimally different ways multiple times!
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Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
11d ago
Since you asked for clarification: “they don’t like” clearly means “Trump” here, since it was Trump who this person was trying to kill.
I don't think that was unclear to me.
Your original post said, "leftists completely lost me once they started celebrating the deaths of people they don't like". Is it too much of a leap to read an implied "non-leftists are better, since they don't celebrate the deaths of people they don't like" into this? The alternative is that leftists were the last ones who hadn't "lost you", and now everyone has "lost you"/you are done with humanity or at least both major political blocks in the US.
To this, I objected that rightists have already clearly celebrated the deaths of people they don't like, so if "celebrating the deaths of people they don't like" is the criterion you could only reasonably be in the second class (and in that case, does it make sense to make it a partisan thing at all?). This objection is not overturned by any argument that the rightist dislike of their targets is more justified than the leftist dislike of theirs. You did not discuss whether leftist dislike of Trump might be justified, and did not even write anything like "...lost me once they started celebrating the deaths of people they don't like for flimsy reasons".
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
11d ago
If anything that's another argument for my position, no? "Democratically elected" is not the distinguishing factor that determines who would celebrate a leader's death/assassination.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
11d ago
· Edited 11d ago
Perhaps Trump should close shipping to California and NYC in retaliation, just like heroic Iran-kun.
Perhaps closing shipping of Mexicans to California and NYC counts as sufficiently similar to closing shipping of commodities to Iran, in which case it's not like he hasn't already tried.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
11d ago
As I already pointed out responding to a parallel comment in the same vein, the parent poster specifically said "celebrating the deaths of people they don’t like" with no mention of fellow countrymen (and there would have been examples for that case as well). Maybe, if you agree with his general view, you wish he made a different post, but I don't think you can blame me for responding to the post he actually made.
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Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
11d ago
Whatever happens when a young man is raised to internalize the opposite of the women-are-wonderful effect...
What do you expect to happen?
My sense is that there historically were stable societies with all sorts of different attitudes towards women. In very broad terms, around the end of the 19th century, all "white" countries were already fully committed to a proto-version of their present-day attitude to women; East Asian countries were broadly genuinely committed to something close to the opposite (China's selective abortions are just the tip of an iceberg of attitudes); and Arabic and African countries maybe were neutral. (Note I'm trying to analyse the moral attitude to women orthogonally to their sociopolitical rights and privileges: it's entirely possible (and was common) to think of women as wonderful creatures who need to be coddled and managed, like children, and conceivable to think of them as sociopathic parasites who nevertheless have a natural right to hold the reins, which in a way gets closer to the world of a whipped 1960s Japanese salaryman).
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
11d ago
However, it doesn't seem that far-fetched to think of Trump, the Iranian leadership, Obama and the PM of Denmark as more similar to each other in category than any of them is to your neighbour Fred, either.
Iran holds elections. You may dispute whether the criteria that determine who is even allowed to run, or the details of how the elections are executed, are such that they morally qualify as "democratic", but people can and do dispute the same things about the US.
Either way, the parent poster's criterion for being "lost completely" was "celebrating the deaths of people they don't like", not "celebrating the deaths of democratically elected leaders" or "celebrating the deaths of objectively good people" or even "celebrating the deaths of their countrymen" (for the last one, I think the reactions to Floyd could be cited as an example, anyway; even or especially this forum had no shortage of "the world is better off for his death and I'm tired of pretending otherwise" posting).
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
11d ago
hobonichi setup and fountain pen reviews
Funny enough, this describes my SO and probably about half of the girlfriends in my friend bubble (as in women who I know because I was friends with their male partner first). Is stationerycore the meta for Mottizen types to find well-adjusted gfs?
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
11d ago
· Edited 11d ago
The majority of everyone from the political center rightward was celebrating the repeated assassinations of Iranian leadership a month ago too, so I don't think the other camp gets to claim the moral high ground here.
(...and either way, denouncing assassination attempts against anyone whose job significantly involves dealing out death seems rather comical, in the "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!" way.)
edit: Please stop with the arguments-as-soldiers responses. I shot down a bad argument; just because you agree with the thesis (that leftists are uniquely bad for celebrating assassination attempts on Trump), this is not sufficient grounds to stake your disagreement, unless you can specifically defend the argument (that it is so because they started celebrating the deaths of "people they don't like").
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
12d ago
This seems like a relatively extraordinary claim, so you should at least present some ordinary evidence like an instance of this claim being made by a believer in some relatively authoritative critical theory venue.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
12d ago
By your logic, the sex recession among men is EVEN WORSE THAN IT SEEMS from this data.
That does not follow. For example, there could be an overreporting recession, rather than a sex recession.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
13d ago
· Edited 13d ago
Is this not just the success recipe of Christianity? The modal pastor constantly thunders against fornicators (presumably a good majority of their audience, per the strict definition) and sinners (everyone in their audience).
It turns out "you and I, we are both bad, but I am superior to you because I at least acknowledge it" is actually an appealing meme. Perhaps it allows those who have lingering feelings that they are bad recover a sense of self-worth without having to repress those feelings, or perhaps being able to tell someone else "you are bad" feels so good that it's worth acknowledging the "I am bad" for.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
14d ago
The noise I had to suffer in every single housing unit in the US (whether apartment or free-standing), due to your HVACs routinely sounding like jet engines and fridges like idling trucks, not to mention even wind and rain being loud due to your paper-thin walls and bad windows, is well in excess of anything you hear in a half-decent European apartment in a major city. In Germany it probably would be sufficient grounds to drag your landlord to court and have your rent slashed.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
14d ago
This idea that your existence is in some sense subhuman (or else what is "live in the pod and eat the bugs" supposed to imply?) if you can't leave your housing without passing by other people does seem like a uniquely American hangup. Since we left the whole hunting and gathering thing behind, most people everywhere across the globe have lived in settings where the walls of their housing unit are also the walls of someone else's. Cities existed for some 6000 centuries at least, and within the walls of a typical European city, maybe between zero and ten people would have a residence that meets your criteria. Over in Germany (admittedly relatively far in the direction of people not caring for houses among Western countries), even Chancellor Merkel lived in an apartment, which she could only enter and leave by passing by other neighbours including apparently a politician from the opposing party.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
14d ago
They also don't believe that Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be a big problem, either because they have convinced themselves that the Iranian regime are the good guys actually (TDS at its fullest) or they figure Iran would be no worse than North Korea.
I think you might be underestimating the depth of anti-Israel sentiment. Many share the sense that in the present configuration ever-greater Israeli victory (of conquest, expansion and extermination) is basically inevitable: they can always keep fomenting a bit more instability in their periphery, provoke their neighbours and subjects and then use the reaction to slice off a bit more of their land and remaining freedoms, and it's only a question of how they pace it to maximise their comfort along the way, and if all else fails they always have Daddy America's credit card and their nukes to fall back on. A nuclear-armed Iran is one of the few attainable scenarios that could significantly reshape the game tree there, and for those who don't want Israel to prevail in such a fashion this seems like an important enough goal that they would be willing to hold their nose and accept the Mullahs.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
14d ago
Correct me if I'm wrong but weren't they killing tens of thousands of their own civilians a couple months ago due to civil unrest?
I'm reluctant to keep accepting this claim at face value. Not that I would bet against it, were it put up on Polymarket with a resolver that seemed authoritative enough, but there are at least two complications:
(1) the possibility that it is an outright lie or exaggeration, because the claims are ultimately sourced to bodies who have no particular commitment to speaking the truth to the general public (US or Israeli intelligence? Iranian opposition?)
(2) the possibility that it is technically true but missing some nuance that would significantly change the interpretation. During the height of the uprising being suppressed, I saw some videos circulating (of course themselves of questionable provenance) that purported to depict opposition-aligned fire teams using automatic weapons at least somewhat competently. If the reality of the uprising earlier this year is that the US and Israel had prepared and equipped a mass armed uprising, similar perhaps to the 2014 Donbass rebellion, which was soundly defeated because the government response was more competent than anticipated, does "killed tens of thousands of their own [citizens]" still have the same ring?
We don't normally talk about Ukraine in terms of "killed thousands of their own civilians" in that context (though, naturally, the Russians do). If the US had a Chinese-sponsored uprising that involved tens of thousands of people attempting to storm government buildings and engage in shootouts with authorities, would it being suppressed with a significant number of those involved winding up dead excuse the subsequent casualties of a reckless Chinese bombing campaign?
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
15d ago
I find that the "authoritarian" axis in political alignment tests is basically meaningless. We have a contested environment where there are four, if not more, obvious potential power centers (government; "the rabble"; the financial elite (business); the social elite (academics/journalists), possibly further pillarised into tribes so you have the Alex Joneses/Charlie Kirks and the NYT journalists), each having framed bringing at least some of the others to heel as a precondition to their own ability to exercise their natural right to live freely.
In this setting, being "libertarian" just ends up meaning "wants more power for the power centers the labeller likes" and being "authoritarian" means "wants more power for the power centers the labeller dislikes". The "tankie left" wants power for the rabble, and a hypothetical government of them, over the others; "yellow lib-right" wants power for the financial elite; traditional auth right wants power for government; "liberals" want power for their social elite, and the Ivermectin circuit essentially forms a sort of shadow liberal set that is excited over Robert Kennedy and probably also vaguely pining for an era when microchurch pastors with weird idiosyncratic beliefs commanded respect in their communities. Each of these groups thinks that it is natural if their respective elites rule, and unjust oppression if they are prevented from doing so.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
19d ago
· Edited 19d ago
Well, David Deutsch (of quantum computing fame), for example, is in fact Jewish. Maybe there is something like "the lady doth protest too much" class naming?
On the main topic, my impression is that of all the present-day European cultures, Hungary perhaps has the most extensive Jewish influence, showing most obviously in aspects like cuisine and music as well as plain public visibility (Budapest has a remarkable number of random shops with Hebrew signboards), while there also does not seem to be nearly as much of a sense of gap/otherness between them and the rest of the population as elsewhere. If I recall correctly, even Horthy at most reluctantly did the bare minimum of participation in the Nazis' anti-Jew agenda, and nobody likes the guy thy briefly installed to replace him in the final year. Moreover, ever since Trianon, Hungary has a very similar "beleaguered nation-state bearer of a totally unique people's destiny" self-image. It is therefore unsurprising that they feel some kinship with Israel.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
20d ago
As a side note, it does seem that generally speaking white people more or less represent the standard of attractiveness/desirability in the world and have for some time. With respect to white women, I recall reading somewhere that during the days of African piracy, lighter skinned women carried a higher price in slave markets. I'm not sure about men. Perhaps after Europeans conquered and dominated the world, women of all races started associating white men with power and status.
I think it's even more soft than hard power, nowadays. In my observations, those who prefer East Asian media over American media also tend to value partners of the corresponding ethnicity higher, which is relevant as the bubbles in which this preference has reached fixation keep getting bigger and more mainstream. I have already seen social groups in which the (comparatively handsome, successful) white guys quietly mald as the resident loose girls openly prefer to chase mediocre Japanese and Korean guys.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
21d ago
· Edited 21d ago
Arguments are soldiers. More specifically, in this case, the mistake is assuming that, say, "datacenters use too much water/we should waste less water" is the reflection of a terminal value. "Datacenters bad" is much closer to terminal, whatever it is; the role of the water narrative is more akin to "finally I have found a good story to convince the sheeple to join the fight against datacenters".
If you take it away, this does not, in their eyes, make datacenters any better, but just makes it harder for them to get agreement and sympathy. So it is with everything else; telling any doomer that their legible indicators of doom are a lie is just telling them to shut up and endure their feeling that everything is rotten alone. (Crime statistics tend to do similar things for right-wingers.)
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
23d ago
Russia is still not doing a universal draft (of the type that would involve calling in masses of people who have finished mandatory service) or sending particularly many mandatory-service conscripts, and even then there is a big caveat that distinguishes it from Western systems: if you go straight to university from school, your being "drafted" does not actually entail even having to stay at the barracks for any amount of time, but instead you get some substitute military leadership programme as part of your university education, similar perhaps to ROTC in the US. Therefore even if they sent all the mobiks into the grinder it could still arguably be eugenic.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
23d ago
I rather believe something like the converse - most instances of what we consider "hypocrisy" are actually mostly tradeoffs between values, perhaps more specifically outwardly displayed ones and embarrassing/"naked self-interest" ones that are kept concealed. I don't think "naked self-interest" is a clearly delineated, distinct category of values anyway.
I meant for (1) and (2) to be an exhaustive list of things that I could reasonably believe here: either I believe that he believes his literal claim X (which I argue is wrong), or I believe that he does not believe X and instead believes some claim Y that is not as neat but correct. The first one is (1); the second one is (2) or a close variant, and counts as Motte-and-Bailey. If you don't believe that I sincerely believed either of those things, could you please explain to me what exactly you do believe I believed?
I guess to logically partition the entire space of possibilities, I would have to also consider (3) he does not believe X and instead believes some correct claim Y that is at least as high-status as X and (4) he does not believe X and instead believes in some other wrong claim Y. If it's (3), then I don't understand what is stopping him from retracting X and saying the Y he meant instead, which would solve this whole frustrating discussion at little cost beyond that of an apology for imprecision (surely a good thing for the discussion culture). If it's (4), his case is hardly helped (and either way I would like to know Y).
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