Doubletree1
9mo ago
So? The police in smaller municipalities aren't.
The military is controlled by the commander in chief, the sec-def and the combatant commanders which are political appointees.
Doubletree1
9mo ago
No. The left could be filled with 100% terrorists. That doesn't affect whether extreme HBD policies are or are not popular on the center right.
Bari Weiss is running a university to attract customers. those customers may include the center right, woke-skeptic, and also find extreme HBD policies distasteful.
Doubletree1
9mo ago
There are others in this thread who are claiming that negative outcomes in children of single parents are primarily due to genetics.
In other words, genetics can tell you to leave your partner but not how much to eat.
These kinds of claims require evidence.
Doubletree1
9mo ago
they are just disputed zones fought over by countries that do have nukes.
This is why it's bad for the USA for Iran to have nukes.
Charitably, playing an M player game of thrones is easier than an M+1 player game. The USA doesn't even give nukes to it's non-nuclrar allies, and neither do the other nuclear powers.
Doubletree1
9mo ago
Where do I find the volunteer link from the main page? The previous posts says to "click the banner" but the only banner I see is an image of some spiky objects. Clicking it brings me to the main page.
I'm on a mobile browser if that makes a difference.
Doubletree1
9mo ago
I'm pretty skeptical of this.
If you believe this, then there is a laundry list of less powerful nations we might theoretically swap places with. Which would you choose?
Doubletree1
9mo ago
It's a hypothetical. you proposed reducing the USA's global power by calling for an end to the American empire.
This is directly related to my post, where I asked you to consider what life would be like for the citizens of a nation with much diminished power relative to the USA today--- of which there are many real world examples you can choose from.
Doubletree1
9mo ago
Ever play Escape Velocity? That is the only space exploration game I've really ever enjoyed.
Doubletree1
7mo ago
I don't understand this objection. Are you a textual literalist? Or even just for the new testament? Do you think all Catholics should be literalists about the new testament?
Doubletree1
7mo ago
Ive seen several of these types of posts from you but this time I feel compelled to say something. The motte seems to be one very rare place where people on the left and right can engage in intellectual cooperation with some semblance of a shared set of principles. These polemics against perceived enemies on the left, in a tone so radical and final, is just shitting on the public good here. Given what you've written here it's obviously pointless for anyone who might disagree to engage with you.
I cannot fathom why the community tolerates this kind of thing; certainly it would never tolerate any naked calls for the explicit demolition of conservative power structures from anyone left of center.
Doubletree1
7mo ago
Yes it is all about decorum, that is in fact my point. I have seen many people criticize conservatives, but none that I have seen have done so with decorum youve shown-- the finality of the tone and extreme positions advocated for, (at least originally) without explicit argument, while at the same time telegraphing your intent to defect from your enemies...
You say this could be tolerated from the left, but I really don't believe it. I would welcome some examples from you if you think otherwise.
Do you think this is just a fine example of the kind of decorum that's acceptable here? If these kinds of posts were 100x more frequent, at the same level of decorum, would that make the motte a better or worse place? Personally I think the motte would quickly become unusable.
Yes that heavily downvoted post... great example! The community obviously thought it was below some standard on some level, and I would tend to agree. We will see where FC's post will stand in 24 hours.
Given how conservatives still seethe about the moral mutant post, it seems to me an obvious net negative in its impact on the discourse. In fact, I think I recall FC, or some other, citing that post as a justification for their tone. Well obviously defection begets defection. I think the ideas in that essay could have been presented another way, and should have, but the OP chose the way of brash, arrogant condescension. And we see the fallout from that.
Doubletree1
7mo ago
On reddit, the mantra was that the downvote was not an "I disagree" button. If that's not the case at the motte I sure would like to know that.
Now this would be a violation of this community's decorum.
How so? To seethe means to get angry or become highly agitated. It seems to me factual that many conservatives did angry over the post. And I don't blame them really. It is no less factual or inflammatory than FCs follow up claim that 70% of blue tribers hate his kind and vice versa.
I am baffled by what you consider acceptable decorum. Do you believe Ozys essay meets the decorum standards of this community? Yet my use of seethe does not.
Full disclosure, I think both the substance and the tone in Ozys essay are both quite bad. If there is any kernel or value to be had in discussing it, then the discussion should proceed in a tone that inversely proportional to how inflammatory the subject is. This is a basic principle I think that allows highly charged topics to be discussed productively. I don't think Ozys or FC's posts meet that standard.
Doubletree1
7mo ago
You're the second person who has had to reach back literal years to find a relevant example from the left. Without access to those posts I cant evaluate whether they are a valid counterexample. Suffice to say im unconvinced by your assurances but I think we'll have to set that aside.
Presumably the rules by which you moderate are designed produce some outcomes and accomplish specific aims in the tenor and culture of this forum. Probably these are things like, ensure the average comment quality remains high, keep inflammatory and emotionally triggering posts to a minimum, encourage thoughtful and respectful engagement, etc.
One of the aims which I thought the rules were designed to achieve was establishing some cultural norms that encourage the consideration of cross-axis views in a charitable and good faith way. Correct me if I'm wrong.
FC's post contributes to the erosion this norm. By publicly advocating for the wholesale and categorical defection against liberal institutions, he is sending a signal that he believes cooperation with blue tribe is pointless. Therefore, why should I engage with him, a public defector? I simply won't. It would be irrational of me to do so. That is a potential cross axis engagement point that has been eliminated. And the more similar attitudes I see, the less likely I am to engage overall. And I think many people would respond the same way.
I think this forum highly benefits from this norm of cross-axis charity (luckily most have internalized it I believe). The alternative is an echo chamber, or one filled with ideologues. Even with a veneer of politeness, there is no value, for me at least, in a place like that.
Doubletree1
7mo ago
it's just to host discussion and arguing of ideas.
Any joe can host a discussion website. Hosting a site where /good/, /quality/ discussion occurs is much harder, and that I think is the aim, is it not? And that absolutely does require some level of cooperation between participants engaged in that discussion.
I think the problem is not that "righties say unacceptable things" but "lefties cannot tolerate hearing things they don't like." That's certainly not a problem this forum can solve, but if as a left-leaning person you're going to insist that you won't participate if right-wingers get to say right-wing things... well, case in point.
Is this supposed to be some kind of gotcha? So lame. Anyway. Perhaps I did not articulate my point well enough, as it does not concern "things I don't like". I read a hundred things I don't like every time I sign on to this site, yet I singled out FC's post in particular. My point concerns behavior that erodes the norms that enable quality discussion.
But if we took up your suggestion, we'd just be creating a different kind of echo chamber, where anyone whose views put off too many people gets silenced
I don't see how. I am not advocating for modding conservative viewpoints in particular. You already taboo a good number of posting styles /and/ content in order to keep the quality of discussion high. You don't allow trolls, intentional sophistry, or, I believe, outright Holocaust denial. You of course don't allow name calling. For the sake of the argument, why not? Who are you to say that someone shouldn't be able to express their sincere and honest belief that person X has literal shit for brains? And if anyone gets offended by that, well, we can't silence that person just because he puts people off; the problem is people cannot tolerate hearing things they don't like, etc. There are of course real forums where this kind of free speech absolutism is a deeply held principle, but they are almost universally terrible, for obvious reasons.
You get to call the shots at the end of the day. I've said my case about as clearly as I can, so I'll leave it here. Thank you for at least considering what I have to say here.
Doubletree1
7mo ago
You could make the symmetric point that many deaths attributed to communism are actually due to totalitarianism or some such. For example, if you believe holodomor was an intentional policy by Stalin to exercise political retribution on Ukrainians, then I wouldn't say that those deaths should be attributable to communism.
Doubletree1
7mo ago
This explanation doesn't track for me. In practice most nominally communist nations got their start on the backs of a huge stock of peasant farmers, not HR departments.
In America, the unionized working class were highly sympathetic to socialist ideals for a long while. It's only relatively recently that this has changed.
Doubletree1
5mo ago
Your argument is just status quo bias. "auto licensing should be treated as a given because -> our infrastructure is designed around autos because -> we've always treated auto licensing as a given". If auto licensing were not treated as given, then we would be incentivized to adapt our infrastructure appropriately.
An alternate explanation is that these kinds of extreme pro-ethnic-cleansing arguments are genuinely unpopular among large swaths of the center right.
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