FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
No bio...
User ID: 675
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
If people actually want Christians to start policing non-Christians again, they should present a general case for when and why this is desirable, and also for why the desirability of such policing was not evident in the past. Absent such a case, it is difficult to take their arguments seriously. "Family Values" as a going concern died with the introduction of ubiquitous internet porn; people appealing to it now as though it were a live political entity are either deeply confused or lying.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
Things don't become obsolete in the military because they can get blown up (or blown up easier), they become obsolete when something does their job better than they do.
The proper term is Senile. A senile weapons system can still do the job, but a steadily-increasing cost that can grow by orders of magnitude.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
Then what are prayers for?
They are for building a relationship with God. The relationship is built on gratitude and trust; gratitude for the many good things he provides for us, and trust that he will care for and preserve us, to a limited but significant extent in this life, and to the maximal extent in the next.
Is my accusation of “God as Therapist” more or less accurate here?
Only to the extent that Therapy is, in its essence, a relationship, but perhaps that's close enough from your perspective.
Yes, but I think that one of the “axioms” on which you’re operating — the one people call “faith” — is that none of the potential arguments which could potentially prove fatal to your continued adherence to Christianity can possibly be true. Such arguments are necessarily false, because your religion is necessarily true. Therefore everything else is an argument backwards from that — a series of post-hoc epicycles designed to lessen the impact of various arguments which seem to reveal contradictions within the doctrines and claims of your religion.
That's one way to frame it, sure. It's also an isolated demand for rigor.
It is routinely argued here that humans are deterministic machines. All forms of this argument that resulted in falsifiable predictions resulted in those predictions being consistently falsified over more than a century of dedicated testing across the globe, and the current popular form of the argument is very clearly unfalsifiable. Likewise for bedrock Materialist claims about the Material being all that exists: by their own standards, it is very clear that things definitely exist that we cannot observe or interact with even in principle; to the extent that we can in principle observe the chain of cause and effect, we arrive at an effect with no observable cause. And yet even those materialists who recognize this fact are not disturbed by it, because their Materialism is axiomatic, the origin of their reasoning rather than its destination. And that is perfectly appropriate, because this is the only way anyone can reason in any way at all.
Axioms that make bad predictions are selected against. Axioms that fit as much of the available evidence as possible are selected for. It should not be surprising that a set of axioms that have lasted thousands of years fit the available evidence pretty well, and both Christianity and Atheism have existed for thousands of years.
Our disagreement, it seems to me, is not over the facts, but over their interpretation, and specifically over the moral significance of pain and death. You seem to argue as though death were avoidable, but it evidently is not, and everyone does in fact die. You seem to argue as though suffering is much more real and more significant than I understand it to be. I observe that death and pain do not necessitate some uniform amount of suffering, that suffering expands and contracts by orders of magnitude based on a variety of factors, the state of one's own mind being predominant among them.
From a previous discussion:
If God's design hinges on some outcome, you have no idea what that outcome is or why it is necessary, and certainly no reason to believe that it coincides neatly with your worldly preferences for ease or glory or the defeat of your enemies. Maybe it serves his purpose for you and all you know and love to die in pain and horror and darkness. It was so for the Japanese Christians, and for many others, and he has promised to wipe the tears from every eye.
...And indeed, a cursory examination of Christianity or the Bible will reveal the belief that some suffering, pain and death, even extreme forms of these, are a positive good, admirable, desirable even, with no shortage of examples of Christians acting on this belief and other Christians admiring them for it.
We observe the same pain and death, and draw different conclusions, because our axioms are different, and because axioms drive interpretation of evidence much more than evidence drives adoption of axioms. Reason is fundamentally an act of the Will; neither of us is being "forced" by evidence anywhere we do not want to go. But it is not clear to me why I should consider your axioms better than mine; your moral anguish over evident pain and death does not actually serve to reduce the pain and death more than my moral accommodation of it, and arguably has resulted in worse pain and death in the long-term as attempts at Utopia collapse into harsh reality. My accommodation of pain and death prevents neither buckling seat-belts nor attempting cancer cures; I am all for preventing pain and death, and even paying significant costs to do so. It's not even obvious to me that our metric for what costs are unacceptably high is too terribly different.
What's your assessment of voluntary human extinction? That's one way to solve pain for good, right?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
@FCfromSSC claimed below that Christians do not expect God to make any changes to anyone’s appointed hour of death...
I claimed that prayer doesn't make one's hour of death predictable, and I think the difference between the two formulations is substantive.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
I’m very confident that Christians pray that, for example, their children with leukemia are delivered from it, or that their child survives an impending major/risky surgery.
They do.
This seems flatly incompatible with the claim that Christians don’t expect prayer to change the hour when death will arrive.
I disagree. Most of the responses I'm getting seem to be modeling (petitionary) Christian prayer as a way to gain leverage over the material world. Is that correct? If they pray for their child to survive and the child dies, should they interpret this as evidence against the validity of their faith? Under this model, presumably Christians are simply leaning on cognitive biases to fail to notice that prayer doesn't actually work?
My kids are healthy. I routinely pray that they will stay healthy. If they don't stay healthy, and in fact if they were to die of a sudden illness, I would not expect this to damage my faith, because I do not "expect" my prayer to ensure their health. I do not view my prayers as a way to gain leverage over the material world, and I don't think doing so is the correct way to practice Christian prayer. Observably, in some times and places, communities of Christians have seen everyone they know and love die in eruptions of horror and agony. I do not think this happened because they did not pray hard enough.
In short, it seems to me that Christians, generally speaking, have all the same data you do. Speaking generally, we draw different conclusions because we are operating off different axioms, not because we are ignorant of the facts in evidence. No doubt there are individual exceptions, even numerous ones. I don't think that changes the analysis of the central case: The more seriously a person takes their Christianity, the less your argument is going to persuade them, because it will not be new information to them. Even if you think Christians are fundamentally deluded, it probably should still matter to you if your model of them results in less-accurate predictions.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
All humans die. None know the day or the hour when death will arrive for them. Christian prayer does not change this, and Christians do not expect it to.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
The US News rankings would cease to be relevant if Harvard wasn't on them.
Are they "too big to fail"?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
The most important thing is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
System aiming to solve a problem actually concentrates power and money for its advocates, while making its key issue significantly worse.
Many such cases.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
The thing about civility is that it might seem superfluous while you are in power, but you might not stay in power forever.
This sort of argument has been very common for the last decade. It's notable that the people making it seem incapable of understanding that if the argument is ignored, the thing they're warning about might actually happen, right now in the real world, and not remain forever a future hypothetical.
One is comforted by the assurance that if the dreadful things you warn of come to pass, people such as yourself will be right there, protesting them exactly as vociferously as you are now.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
For more context, there's a particular troll who makes a new account, makes posts consisting of a link to an article usually having something to do with white supremacy, adds a bit of commentary, often including a critique of the white supremacist point sufficiently weak to trigger people's instinct to correct obvious errors, and then deletes their post once the thread gets rolling. Then they get banned, and start the whole process over a week or two later. They've been doing this off and on for years now.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
From the pen of Scott: Come On, Obviously The Purpose Of A System Is Not What It Does
Scott offers several examples of why TPOASINWID results in absurd analysis. His examples are selected for maximal absurdity, so it's amusing that three out of four directly undermine his case, and the fourth is still a pretty good argument against his position.
The purpose of a cancer hospital is to cure two-thirds of cancer patients.
This is a significantly more accurate statement than "the purpose of a cancer hospital is to cure cancer", because numerous considerations mitigate against curing cancer, things like economic considerations, bureaucratic constraints, and the work/life balance of the staff. And even when all these align such that curing this specific cancer is the system's goal, "curing cancer" might not mean what you think. I was especially amused by this exchange in the comments:
The purpose of a system that has egregious side-effects is very likely not aligned with my values. It might not be malicious, but it does not care about what I care about, and it is worth at least looking under the hood to see if what it cares about and what I care about are zero-sum.”
Like chemo?
...written in the comment section of the author of Who By Very Slow Decay. Yes, very much like Chemo. This example, by itself, is probably the one I'd like Scott to address specifically.
The purpose of the Ukrainian military is to get stuck in a years-long stalemate with Russia.
It seems to me that this is a significantly more accurate statement than "the purpose of the Ukrainian military is to defend Ukraine from hostile military action." America and NATO are very specifically and very openly throttling aide to keep Ukraine from being defeated outright, but also from being able to hit back too hard. Stalemate appears to be the deliberate objective, and certainly has been the openly-stated objective of many Ukraine supporters in this very forum.
One could make a similar statement about the Russian military as well. Any description of the Russian military that doesn't account for the realities of coup-proofing and endemic corruption is not going to make accurate predictions about the real world.
The purpose of the British government is to propose a controversial new sentencing policy, stand firm in the face of protests for a while, then cave in after slightly larger protests and agree not to pass the policy after all.
His intention here is to achieve absurdity by narrowing the scope to one specific result, rather than the sum of results, and in fairness, he provides examples of X randos arguing in this fashion. "The purpose of the British Government is to keep a lid on the British People while pursuing goals orthogonal to their interests" seems a more parsimonious description, but even Scott's version seems more accurate than something like "the purpose of the British Government is to execute the will of the British people as expressed through democratic elections".
The purpose of the New York bus system is to emit four billion pounds of carbon dioxide.
Again with the absurdity through inappropriate narrowing of scope. But even with a framing as uncharitable as this, it's worth noting that all systems have costs, and that description of a system that ignores the costs and how those costs are managed is a worse description than one that centers those costs. This is true even for descriptions that only consists of one significant cost, because the benefits of systems are generally far more obvious than the costs and thus the missing information is easier to find.
This is a bad article, and Scott should feel bad.
For fun, if you think the purpose of a system is what it does, write what you think that means
Systems are a product of human will and action. No system continues if it is not fed and maintained by active human effort. "Systems" do not ever do things on their own; the people who control and operate them are responsible for all outcomes.
If you observe a novel system and wish to understand it, look at the outputs it produces. Those outputs are what the people feeding and maintaining the system consider sufficiently acceptable to continue feeding and maintaining it. Thus, they are a reasonable approximation of the purpose of the system, and certainly offer a far better understanding of that system than theoretical claims that diverge significantly from observed outputs. If people have been feeding and maintaining a system with Output Z, all the while claiming the purpose of the system is output A, their claims probably do not contain useful information and should be discounted. It doesn't really matter if they're lying or simply incompetent; they probably do not have useful information to offer.
The longer the system has been fed and maintained, the better this heuristic works.
I'm reading the article. I'm not impressed so far, but perhaps it gets better.
[EDIT] - That was an uncharacteristically-short post, and it did not get better.
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FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
Currently listening to the audiobook. It sounds like they're pulling a David Drake and writing from the perspective of the details of ideology being largely irrelevant. It's a perspective I personally endorse, so I'm happy to have more of it. I'm still in the first couple chapters, but so far it seems excellent.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
Mangione would have a lot fewer supporters if he'd disemboweled the CEO's entire family as opposed to 'just' killing the specific guy.
Support for the Palestinians does not seem to have been diminished by the Gazans murdering indiscriminately. Trump's attempted assassin killing and wounding random bystanders didn't seem to make a dent in the calculus. Danielson was a rando, and his murder was openly celebrated, and his killer received significant support. Rittenhouse and Gardner were randos; that did not help them.
Those who count on ideological consistency to keep a lid on lawless violence are setting themselves up for disappointment. Humans like harming the outgroup, and are very good at rationalization.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
I generally post substantive replies in one spot, ping the other people the comment would also be directed at, and add a "see here" with a link to the big comment in other places.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
What does the phrase "Manipulation of procedural outcomes" mean to you?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
Repeatedly spamming the same comment at multiple points in a thread is obnoxious; please do not do this. Consider this a warning.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
What would be the point of legislation? To make unauthorized economic migration double-secret illegal?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
Israel is a racial supremacist national socialist theocratic state, but they are still better than the palestinians.
Perhaps so, but not enough better to be worth my support. There are no good guys in this particular conflict.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
Zone of Interest came out in 2023, and our media reported on October 7th crimes well enough, yet these clearly didn’t move the needle on public favorability. There doesn’t appear to be any youth figure who can shift perceptions.
The problem with publicizing vicious terrorist murders in an attempt to lower popularity of one side of a conflict, is that the target demographic doesn't like the other side, and is openly in favor of vicious terrorist murder against people they don't like.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3mo ago
With a motorbike, you are moving at car speeds in places designed for cars with a vehicle that provides absolutely none of the protection afforded by a car. No seat belts, no crumple zones, no mass to offset collisions, no frame to protect you from impacts. Your vehicle has worse visibility to other drivers and much worse stability. It is much worse at handling adverse conditions like rain, snow, bad roads or debris.
A lot of the additional danger is pretty clearly due to the mode of transport, and the additional danger is considerable.
Everything you have written here may well be true, but what is certainly true is that this comment is not how one initiates a productive conversation. This forum exists to facilitate productive conversations. You are not required to participate in any particular discussion, but when you engage, the rules require you to engage as though you are actually attempting to have a dialogue. This comment is a pretty good example of the opposite of that.
[EDIT] - The mod log shows previous warnings, and no AAQCs. I am banning you for a day. Please re-read our rules and make some attempt to internalize their spirit. If you continue to post in this fashion, bans will rapidly escalate.
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