ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
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User ID: 626
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
15d ago
Sure, they shouldn't be completely discounted.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
29d ago
Correct, that definitely does not count as “my life sucks” in anywhere near the same way as Oliver Anthony style “I’m personally oppressed and downtrodden, and it’s my outgroup’s fault” populism.
I wish I knew who the hell that was. Anyway, since we agree it's not about Trump, looks like w agree OP's thesis can be dismissed.
I don’t think so. I think there’s an important qualitative difference between populist “rage and vengeance” grievance on the one hand — which is what the OP is attributing to Anglophone conservatism — and the technocratic/futurist “we’ve identified the problems, and it’s time to let smart and successful elites determine how to fix those problems” institutionalism of the factions I identified.
How can I determine that this is, in fact, the case, rather than it being a Russell's conjugation?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
just now
I should have been more specific; I am referring to the Iranian government.
That's how I understood it, and I still don't know what's supposed to be so uncivilized about the Iranian government.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
12d ago
Alright looks like I made a breakthrough in unretarding the sql queries. Perhaps it's a bad sign that I had to work so much against the framework I'm working with, but I can't think of a better way. Have to chip away at a few more things, and then on to unretarding the content import / sync.
How are you doing @Southkraut?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
13d ago
Hot damn, that is indeed too spicy even for my tastes.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
14d ago
I'm also pretty sure you can admit that Iran specifically is already in its second, leaning into third, generation of participants.
I'll be happy to admit that. What I have trouble admitting is that the US was just minding it's business all this time, and became target of all this hatred while being completely innocent of any wrongdoing, or that they made much of an effort to normalize relations (there was Obama, but his deal got cancelled).
The senior leaders select for, and remove on a basis of a lack of, commitment to the Cause. Even the nominally elected representatives are pre-screened at the candidate selection level, and the non-elected power centers are even more deliberately managed.
That does not strike me as much different from how things are done in the west. Every public service throughout the western world, including intelligence and the military, as well as the entire education sector that hands out the credentials to serve there, is awash in Critical Theory. They send workers to mandatory courses where they get up to speed with the latest doctrines, and boot out anyone that objects. Trump may have tried to clean up the house, but there's only so much you can do in less than half a year, and even if he did it's beside the point. While I'm somewhat skeptical that people who go through periodic 2-minute-hate sessions about racist-sexist-homophobic-patriarchies are going to have a particularly rational approach to the world in general, the bigger issue is the water we swim in - the wisdom and legitmacy of western liberalism - no one who disbelieves it is getting hired for these jobs.
This selection structure is in turn enforced by an institution that would lose its perks and privileges if the hostilities were to end.
That is an argument I can accept, indeed sometimes an external threat helps to keep the population in line, and gives the regime it's purpose and legitimacy. Is it really as bad as you say? Sadly, I don't know and am not aware of a source of information that would let me confirm or deny this.
They were, but your question was not that question.
It was asked it the context of the other question. I understood "the Iranian regime keeps saying 'death to America'" as a supporting argument for why they do indeed have a blood feud, so I questioned the premise of the argument.
You quoted the section about believing someone who declares themselves an enemy, as opposed to Nybbler's characterization of a blood feud.
For brevity!
Your response questioned why to believe a self-declaration of enemyship by comparing it to any other political slogan, as opposed to any other kind of conflict. Your basis of argument specifically ignorred the sort of validating actions (that would give slogans credibility) that is the understood background context of the US-Iranian feud.
Correct, because Nybbler's argument was about their words, not their actions (as for the actions, I don't think they justify calling the conflict a "blood feud", rather than any other run-of-the mill conflict, but this is more a response to you then to him).
I wouldn't.
Partly because even irreconciliable feuds can be reconciled, because 'irreconciliable' is a judgement of the involved people's character, not an objective fact of nature. People's characters change with time and context, such that things that were impossible for them at one point are imminently possible at another.
That's kinda true, but only in the way that feel-good statements like "nothing is impossible" are true. There are actual blood feuds, in history, and perhaps even now. Tribal hatreds so strong that even if you force the two sides to the negotiating table, they'll be right back at each other's throats the moment you turn your back to them.
Reconciliation is usually by the descendants (future generations) rather than the initiators (the current Iranian leadership generation), and the more degrees of separation the better.
Again, no. History is full of conflicts that were ended by the very same people who initiated them. Sometimes it's a stalemate and the sides get tired of fighting, sometimes one side decides to cut losses, and the other the juice ain't worth the squeeze, and these conflicts don't necessarily result in lasting grudges.
Given that Nybbler's argument uses blood feud in the way Phailoor was using it- namely as Phailoor's short-hand for a conflict that is (as he put it) mostly a response to the US and which would end if the US stopped acting- and that Nybbler's point was far more about 'believe what they say' than 'there is a blood feud specifically because they say there is'- I also wouldn't read into blood feud as any sort of specific concept by either of them.
I never got a response from Nybbler in what he understood by the term. If the contention here is that Iran would remain irrationally hostile no matter how conciliatory the US was, or that they would be rationally hostile in order to maintain the legitimacy among their population, that's something that can be discussed, but needs a different argument than "believe what they say".
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
15d ago
and that distinction is largely irrelevant when you working within a single leadership generation
I'm pretty sure we can find many historical examples beginning / ending hostilities within the same generation.
and no part of this position on the nature of animosity, which makes it a distinction without a difference. Whether the Iranians elites have a 'burning, irreconcilable hatred' or not doesn't challenge the premise.
I thought the question they were discussing was whether or not Iran has a blood feud with the US? Maybe I misunderstood something, but how would you describe the concept if not a 'burning, irreconcilable hatred'?
If someone with 'standard-issue hostility,' where 'standard' includes decades of terrorism in foreign countries against US institutions and directly supporting attacks on US forces when the US and Iran are not at war, is telling you in no uncertain terms that they are your enemy, it (still) makes sense to believe them.
I mean, yes, all those things are quite typical of states currently engaged in hostilities, and yes "hostilities" implies they are currently your enemies. "Blood feud", on the other hand, would imply that the hostilities cannot be ended by means of rational persuasion, and will continue to re-flare no matter how conciliatory one of the sides is.
I'm not even necessarily denying the idea that such a blood feud exists, I just don't know if the statements from the Iranian government, no matter how deranged, are a good argument for it's existence.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
15d ago
They encourage chants of "Death to America". They refer to the US as the Great Satan. When someone tells you in no uncertain terms that they are your enemy, it makes sense to believe them.
Why? It makes about as much sense to me as believing any other political slogan.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
21d ago
The idea that any random male can beat every single female in every single sport in every single situation is a bizarre manosphere political cope.
Is that the idea that was being put forward? I thought we were talking averages and percentiles.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
22d ago
Propaganda is what you say, just on a much larger timescale. With the addition of blocking certain ideas and types of thinking. You don't need to spread your message all the time. Just make sure it's the only message available.
I remained timescale agnostic in my definition, so that doesn't contradict any part of my reasoning. As for blocking ideas, there are a few ways you can do that with propaganda, but they're limited. You can spam your ideas to drown others, or you can debunk / or prebunk the ones you don't like and/or mark them as low-status, but if by "blocking" you're referring to literally preventing other ideas from reaching their audience, than I'd argue you're the one conflating concepts and "approaching this from an angle where propaganda is something I don't think it is".
They won't need to change themselves to block the next Joe Rogan
How is this a response to my point? I specifically said they won't need to change to block him.
People still play video games, people still fret about missing graphics options and bad games being sold for 60 dollars, but there's no central outlet for that like he provided
Exactly what my argument would predict.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
25d ago
Keep hoping I'll get to tinker a day or two past Tuesday, but at some point I have to cut the losses. A state that might persist well into July, let's see.
How have you been doing @Southkraut?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
28d ago
Unless you're coding a way to whitelist him, I don't feel like this is an appropriate thread for this post.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
29d ago
So? That was from Keith Woods' post, who isn't here to converse with (to my knowledge), while TheDag also cited Trump, a far more well-known figure. Is there a particular reason why I must now educate myself on some dude I never heard of, instead of responding to the broader points using the person I have actually heard about as a reference?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
10hr ago
I only had a skim, but couldn't find the part about arm-twisting.
Not a really high standard, although if you wanted to up the ante I'd think that something like "good whiskey that you might find in a store" would be much, much harder to make at home than marijuana of reasonable potency.
Why whiskey and not wine? Homemade tends to be superior to the stuff you get in a store. Why aim for potency? If you just want to get shitfaced you go for moonshine.
You're not banning it unless you're planning to commit a genocide.
The Israelis are delusional and wrong about regime change. It’s strange that critics of Israel seem to be so heavily invested in Mossad’s infallibility
Well, between those pager bombings, and the precision of the recent strikes that they're bragging about, few people are putting Mossad's competence in doubt. It's their good faith that people are doubting, and this is the case here as well. I don't think they're delusional, I think they know full well regime change without ground troops is impossible, but they're trying to lure the US to put said boots on said ground via the Sunk Cost Fallacy.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Told you you should have went with Redot ;)
Framing this as a win for principled anti-intervention rightists is ridiculous.
Who said anything about a "win for principled anti-intervention"? They wanted to do much more than this, but didn't.
Ground invasion of Iran is impossible and externally-forced regime change is impossible without ground invasion.
I'm sure all these calls for regime change were just kayfabe, as were Israeli attempts to break the cease fire.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
5d ago
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6d ago
The queries fetching the content are finally officially unretarded, which had a few fortunate downstream effects for things like fetching tweets with tweets along with their responses. Managed to move on to unretarding the import queries as well as fixing some minor bugs.
How are you doing @Southkraut?
The point is, 'mind control theory' in its strong form, is contradicted by dissenters buying a piece of media to fight back against the mind control.
I don't see that as a contradiction. For one, the purchase was kind of a fluke to begin with, the way I remember it, the TDS brigade was convinced they were owning Elon buy forcing him, via the court system, to buy it. Other than that, while competing interests may balance themselves out, the "balance" is far from guaranteed, I for one don't think we have a neat equal distribution of ownership of mass-media between various ideologies.
Are we just haggling about the price? I could just as easily say "Sure, you can fool some people some time, but you can't fool all the people all the time....".
We very well may be. I don't hold a maximalist position. Look, here's me arguing for limits to the power of propaganda while expressing sympathy to the position that "propaganda works".
Though to point out it's something more than haggling over the price: if mind control works only on a "some of the people some of the time" basis, why would you say so much money is being spent on marketing regularly and continuously?
but I think there are certain rights that enlightened humans converge upon as being worthy of protection.
Can you name a few? Are you sure you're not going to make the word "enlightened" carry all the weight, and make it conveniently align with your moral principles?
Unless I'm missing something big, your argument for why human rights are different from borders feels like actually arguing for why they're the same, particularly the mechanism for "convergence".
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11d ago
I don't disagree with the first statement, but it feels like moving the goalposts. About the second one: I don't know if you can call a society consisting of two groups that hate each other a "cohesive" one, even if there's high cohesion within the subgroups.
I never seen somoeone get under your skin quite so much.
I understand the frustration, but you don't need the explicit hostility to make your point. Even if your every word was coated in pure sugar, it would be hard not to reach the same conclusion as you did.
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