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FirmWeird

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FirmWeird


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Why doesn't the US or some other nuclear power Simply (tm) operate nuclear power plants at a profit on foreign soil on behalf of the local government?




Because it is impossible to operate a nuclear power plant at a profit anywhere. I can't find a single example of a nuclear power plant that's run at a profit without a galaxy of government subsidies - the EROEI is not high enough to do so (and no, France doesn't count). You'd have to clear that particular hurdle first, and so far nobody has managed it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Because their nuclear power system is failing, taking on vast amounts of debt and is on the verge of being nationalised due to financial problems, which is why it isn't an example of a successful, profitable nuclear power system.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm talking about the actual EROEI - this means including all of the energy required to build, staff and maintain the plant over its lifetime. Actually digging up the uranium and transporting it to the power plant might indeed be les than 1% of plant operating costs, but that doesn't mean you get to ignore the other 99% and leave them out from your calculations. A "couple of thousand tons of reinforced concrete" does actually require gigawatt years of power when you remember the complicated machinery that goes into nuclear reactors and the incredible importance of regular maintenance.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Maritime/naval usage is indeed the best use-case for nuclear power, and that's one of the reasons why the military uses nuclear-powered vessels.


As for the government regulations, I'm not actually too bothered by them on nuclear. I don't have a problem with laws preventing my neighbours from operating a backyard nuclear reactor or building a perfect replica of the demon core in order to test their reactions and screwdriver control. I'm sure a case can be made that those regulations are badly written and far too onerous, but I'm very happy that we do actually regulate them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #3
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
White people have also been genocided several times through history as well (European history is surprisingly brutal). They're still around, but if that's an argument against them getting an ethnostate then it also applies to the jews.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you aren't going to put in any effort, just don't bother. When I looked at this comment chain I saw you making provably false claims (i.e. none of the people involved in the planning of the Iraq war/PNAC were jewish) that don't even rise to the level of refuting the point you're trying to argue against (jewish influence played a part in the invasion of Iraq). Then, when questioned, you say that the debate isn't worth your time.


If I was an antisemitic troll trying to convince reasonable people to adopt my prejudices, I could not have crafted a better comment than yours if I was trying. Look, I can understand not wanting to get into endless interminable arguments about jews with internet losers who have nothing better to do - but you're better off just not engaging with the topic at all than trying to score cheap shots then fucking off and claiming the debate is beneath you when it turns out you didn't bring enough intellectual firepower to actually make a point. It makes your position look worse and their position look better, and I'm going to hazard a guess that you aren't actually an antisemite, nor do you want to lend their arguments additional credibility.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


All information you get from a suspect, voluntary, coerced, or via torture, is potentially a lie. Pretending that torture is different in this way is special pleading.




Flawed reasoning - the point being made is that using torture leads to a much greater rate of false positives, because when you torture people until they tell you what you want to hear they will frequently tell you what you want to hear in order to make the torture stop, even if they have to make up what you want to hear.


Are you going to really claim that a confession from someone who rats out their conspirators in order to secure a favourable plea deal is equally as reliable as the fruits of a torture chamber?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


By the way it is not dissimilar to some issues here an now: organic and ethical farms are less efficient compared to industrial agriculture and that is why we have the system that we have now.




Organic and ethical farms are actually dramatically more efficient at turning energy into food than industrial agriculture. Industrial farming lets you turn petroleum/oil into food, and despite being less efficient (and causing damage to the soil to boot) the sheer amount of energy contained within petroleum lets modern industrial agriculture outcompete organic and ethical farming.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Damn, that's unfortunate, because I actually read multiple refutations of your position on TruthSocial. Your arguments are not new and have been defeated comprehensively elsewhere - but I have no desire of typing 5000 words (sic), so you'll just have to take my word for it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Being a result of energy blackmail as opposed to war is a meaningful distinction because the energy cutoffs could occur in non-war contexts as well




What?


I legitimately do not understand your position here. If I go to a restaurant that I've been a regular at and decide to chuck a huge tantrum and break some plates and then get banned from returning or doing business with said restaurant, the fact that they could have banned me from entering at any point prior to that does not mean that being banned as a result of my actions is no longer a result of my actions. What, precisely, is the distinction you're making here? How is it relevant to a given incident, at all, that a business could choose to stop selling to me for breaking their rules beforehand? All I can see is playing games with words to disguise the fact that disruptions in energy supplies are a direct result of sponsoring the war.




You can't have it both ways: either the Europeans lack fossile fuels, or the Europeans are still using Russian fossile fuels.




The Europeans lack the ready access to fossil fuels they had previously - but they are still using Russian fossil fuels anyway by paying middlemen like India, and this is having a noticeable impact on their economies.




You continue to misunderstand the design purpose of the sanctions, and chest-thumping bravado is not a superior alternative




The purpose of the sanctions was to reduce Russia's ability to wage war by targeting their economy, and to put pressure on the population in order to achieve a political goal (leadership change/stopping the war). These efforts have failed - the war is still happening and the Russian economy has not been destroyed.




Until they do, 'de-dollarization is proceeding far more quickly than it was before' is synonymous with 'the Russians are sanctioned from the dollar, and are trying to make a virtue of a weakness they've been lobbying to have reversed.'




Incorrect - China has been aggressively pursuing de-dollarisation and so has India. They're experiencing difficulties doing so, of course, because financial systems and currencies have a lot of inertia and moving parts. The Global Times, which is essentially a mouthpiece for the Chinese government, has explicitly stated that the weaponisation of the dollar is driving other countries away from it (though they also correctly note that this process takes time and a lot of nations have complicated linkages to the USD which will take time to unwind) - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202304/1289549.shtml




The US dollar does not only serve as public good to the international community, it has also been used by the US as a strategic tool, and has become a pillar of US hegemony alongside military power. The US government has also increasingly weaponized it. De-dollarization is of course crucial and is the general trend, but the "de-weaponization of the dollar" is even more urgent.






This may be a retreat to a bailey, but it's still a bailey to the original claim of which types of resources matter between conflicts.




Ok, whatever - a distinction without a difference. I freely admit that a substantial portion of the resources spent on the Ukraine conflict could not be used in any prospective Taiwan conflict. This does not damage my point in any real way - the military equipment is one factor, and the drain on attention, time and decision-making are all relevant as well. Though that said, I will admit that I may have been unclear earlier when I said "at least among EU militaries". I did not exclusively mean EU militaries when talking about the reduction in western capability, and was including the US in that category.




But they wouldn't send significant amounts in advance, for the same reason they didn't go to Ukraine in advance




Huh? They did send significant amounts of aid to Ukraine in advance. I'd argue that "the defence minister mentions the event to the press" to meet the threshold of significant - (and no, I am not talking about the exercise that is the main thrust of the article, but the following quote) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29204505




Russia denies sending troops to aid the rebels, as alleged by Ukraine and Nato.






Over the weekend, Ukrainian Defence Minister Valery Heletey said Nato countries had begun arming his nation in the fight against the rebels.






He did not specify the type of weapons being delivered or name the countries involved.




And inserting some text here just to clearly mark the difference between a BBC quote and your post...




Setting aside that it's a poorly structured list in measurable and general claims, I don't bet in general.




The actual bet is very straightforward and specific - will the Ukraine regain control over Crimea and the breakaway republics when hostilities end? Though that said, given that you're not willing, I'm leaving the bet open for any takers, mainly because I don't think even the people arguing that the Ukraine will win this conflict take that belief seriously enough to put money on it (and I'd love to get some free, easy money from anyone who does).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The reason that he's running now is because the GOP establishment need to provide a candidate who can sabotage Trump. From the perspective of the GOP politicians currently in power, their preferred outcome is to continue to lose forever because that allows them to never actually carry out the promises they make towards their base, which would interfere with the money they receive from wealthy donors. Desantis is running now because attacking and damaging Trump is the entire raison d'etre of his political campaign - if he was actually trying to achieve conservative policy goals and govern effectively, he'd have to recognise the obvious reality on the ground (the Trump voting base, which conservatives cannot win elections without, is loyal to Trump and not the GOP brand) and work with Trump rather than against him.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Note that "what you want to hear" most is useful information.




You need to finish reading the sentence - "even if they have to make up what you want to hear". Interrogators do not have magical powers that can let them determine if information is useful or just useful-sounding. I have no doubt that a committed torturer could extract any kind of confession they wanted from me, even ones that aren't true. That's the entire problem with torture - you get an immense false positive rate that causes big problems for the reliability of information. Even your own hypothetical armchair scenario shows the flaw - if only one of your five suspects actually knows the location of the base or bomb that they've planted and the rest have to make it up, torture is worse than useless if you have any sort of time pressure or resource constraints.




because I'm not the one trying to make a sweeping claim. All it takes is one situation where torture works for your motivated reasoning to fall apart.




Go back and point out the "motivated reasoning" in my post, and make sure that this reasoning would fall apart with a single potential counterexample - because I couldn't find that argument in my post. My actual point is that torture is a technique with limited effectiveness due to a high false positive rate, and your argument that you can account for a high rate of false positives by spending time and resources investigating them does not even rise to the level of a refutation of my point. Yes, if you spend more resources you can account for the problems of torture, but the fact that these problems can be compensated for with time and money does not mean that they do not exist. When you look at it in the context of modern intelligence-gathering capabilities, torture is so far down the list of effectiveness that it is barely even worth talking about. We live in surveillance states that engage in deep and sophisticated algorithmic profiling of every single citizen and a lot of them have live video monitoring of important places. It is largely impossible to engage in commercial transactions at scale without drawing the interest and attention of those surveillance bodies, and if we're going to say "fuck Civil Liberties, maximal effectiveness now" I highly doubt any torture would actually take place due to the impossibility of keeping enough information secret from the panopticon that has been constructed around us for it to even be worthwhile.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
With regards to calling a girl a girl? Nothing, I explicitly said that the left is wrong they think that these concepts can be divorced from sex. They're right when they point out that a lot of our expectations regarding gender are created and reinforced culturally, and if you try to attack them on those grounds you are going to lose because they are right - that's not where the error is occurring. The problem arises when they expand the category of gender to include things that are really in the domain of sex, but that doesn't mean there isn't any use in being able to say that something is masculine due to an inherent property of human masculinity that transcends culture(sex) as opposed to something more local(gender).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


because when relaxed, the Palestinians use the opportunities granted to kill more Israelis.




Utterly meaningless aside that has shown up in several of your posts. If I punch you in the face and declare that I'm going to take your home from you by force of arms and then evict you with the help of a bunch of my well armed friends, do I then get to talk about how morally correct I was to do so because you keep trying to punch me in the face and take back your house? Your argument here only works because you remove those incidents from their historical context, and one can use the exact same technique to make all kinds of incorrect arguments (like my one above).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And Israel isn't going anywhere.




I wouldn't be so sure. History actually has some good examples of nations in very similar circumstances - ever read up on the history of the Kingdoms of Outremer? So far I haven't seen a single bit of data that convinces me Israel isn't on the same historical trajectory.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Can you clarify what a "reasonable inference" is here? At least in my case it's definitely false.




Making a reasonable judgement in line with pre-existing knowledge and information. If I know that you're male, I can infer that you have higher grip strength than the median woman. Of course there's a chance you lost both of your hands in a tragic boating accident and had them replaced with hooks and hence have zero grip strength at all, but absent that information the prior inference is still understandable.




Sure, what I'm saying is P(wants to be raped | has rape fantasies) is, like, < 0.0001. A very small fraction of women who have rape fantasies would actually enjoy being raped.




I think that this depends on the circumstances, in the same sense as "I like to eat food" does not mean that I would enjoy being forced to eat a giant bowl of virgin boy eggs with a side of gutter oil. There are absolutely women who would actually enjoy being raped if it matched up to their fantasies. Again, maybe the women I've encountered are non-representative outliers, but it matches up with the studies I've seen on the topic. And more than the studies...ever had a look at AO3 or what's popular on there?




I feel like this paragraph evinces a misunderstanding of what is bad about rape.




I'm not trying to claim that rape is a good thing or that it isn't bad - but people want and enjoy things that are bad and bad for them all the time. But more importantly, I don't really care about answering the question "is rape bad" - I'm fairly certain that question has been settled already. The question at hand is whether or not some women would enjoy rape, and I responded because I've had several women tell me that yes, they would. I think heroin is a terrible drug that has awful consequences, but that doesn't mean I have to pretend that nobody would ever want to do it when plenty of people make it clear that actually they would seek out and use it.


That said, if seriously challenged on this topic I'm going to retreat to the feminist definition of rape (all heterosexual sex under "patriarchy") and wave a victory flag from high atop the motte.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Actually I'd say that the Americans are even worse in some aspects. It might not show up that strongly in the statistics, but are you familiar with the aftereffects of heavy usage of depleted uranium in residential areas? The US explicitly used them in residential areas despite this violating pre-established rules regarding their usage. I don't think the Russian military is full of sensitive humanitarians, but to quote one former commander in chief - "You think our country’s so innocent?"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Even if I took all of your post as sincere and true




For the record, I am being entirely sincere - and, to the best of my knowledge, true.




I'd still be running into confusion as to why the environmental movement has caused nuclear to 10x in price, inflation adjusted. The confusion isn't, "why does this particular person dislike shale?"




I don't believe the environmental movement has caused nuclear to inflate in price to such an absurd degree, but the position I take on nuclear is simple: show me the money. If it was possible to actually generate nuclear power sustainably and profitably, why hasn't anyone done it yet? How has the western environmentalist movement managed to trick every single government on the planet, including ones who are manifestly and directly opposed to them and the horse they rode in on? Too-cheap-to-meter nuclear power has been just a few years in the future for the entirety of my life, and it would be such a geopolitical game-changer that there's no way even the US government would ignore it. Can you honestly and earnestly say that Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Ali Khamenei are all so terrified of the US environmental movement that they are turning down technology that would immediately and dramatically change the geopolitical balance of power in their favour and crush the petrodollar? The environmental movement cannot even get western governments to agree to slow down the rate of increase of fossil fuel consumption, but they have a total veto over this kind of technology across the entire world? I can't see any way to square this circle, when the answer "It just isn't economical" explains it perfectly.




It is, "why does the general movement of people who dislike shale also dislike nuclear?"




Pollution and environmental damage is the unifying concern for the "general movement" as far as I can tell. If you believe that those sources of energy are only profitable because of unaccounted-for externalities, making them more expensive via regulation et al is an extremely sensible goal, and actually optimal in the long term.




I like shale because it is an avenue that circumvents the anti-energy caucus for now. I am in favor of all cheap energy, hydro, coal, oil, shale, etc. As long as it foils the anti-energy people, and keeps us advancing towards a day where energy is actually sustainable, I am good.




This is an incredibly dangerous and short-sighted belief! How confident are you that those energy sources are not bridges to nowhere or have ultimate costs which leave us further behind? I'm extremely confident that shale in particular falls into this category - an illusion that looks worthwhile simply because the actual costs have been converted into externalities that aren't accounted for, on top of being in a financial system which distorts economic realities and conditions. I believe the rationalist community term for this concept is "deceptive local maxima" but I may have just imagined this.




So called "green" energy is already overinvested, and mostly rubbish.




Green energy is far from overinvested - hydro and geothermal in particular seem like fertile ground for future investment, but you're right that it is mostly rubbish. Renewable energy sources simply cannot provide the same amount of energy fossil fuels do, and the lifestyles they can sustainably and comfortably support are most definitely not the incredibly extravagant ones that people in first world societies currently live. But that doesn't mean they're overinvested when you view them in the proper context. To use a metaphor I've stolen from someone else, a parachute is a terrible investment. You lower the resale value the moment you get it out of the box, you're gonna have trouble using it more than once, and ultimately you're going to be losing money on the purchase. But if you're aware that you're going to be pushed out of a plane at high altitude tomorrow morning, the parachute looks like a much smarter purchase than some FAANG shares.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As someone who considers themselves a green activist, de-electrification isn't really the goal per se.


The problem is that the cut-off date for a smooth, clean and orderly transition away from using fossil fuels is the far-off future of...1974. De-electrification isn't a goal anymore than having a car stop when it runs out of gas is a goal. There's no energy source that can take the place of petroleum and fossil fuels - nothing has the massive amounts of existing infrastructure, body of knowledge, energy density and EROEI to take their place, and the costs of retrofitting our society with the technology required to maintain current living standards with the far lower energy budget that renewables provide are so massive that it would not be possible from within the constraints of the current society.


Shale in particular is a really bad idea, because it has incredibly high depletion rates, lower EROEI than regular crude and causes substantial environmental damage. Those costs might not show up on a fracking company's balance sheet, but those consequences will show up elsewhere in society, in the form of less usable farmland, medical issues, water-pollution, etc. The main reason that shale looks good at the moment is the combination of unaccounted externalities, incredibly low interest rates/money-printing and a paucity of conventional light, sweet crude. This isn't a case of the environmentalists just wanting less electricity usage because civilisation is bad, but more along the lines of pointing out that eating the seed corn is actually a bad idea rather than a brand new strategy that older people were too dumb to see the benefits of, even if you have a new accounting system which claims that there's nothing wrong with eating said seed corn.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Well, it seems to follow "we must surrender to Russia" which is good for Russia and bad for everyone else.




No, this is a more general principle. If Russia was messing around in Mexico or Canada I'd come down on the side of the US - but right now it is the US empire getting involved in a nation that is immediately adjacent to Russia.




was weird. It is quite clear that preferred outcome for Putin and other similar russians would be recreation of USSR or larger.




Again, I disagree. Russian strategy right now recognises that they cannot overcome the current hegemon by themselves, which is why they're focused on strengthening their ties with China and laying the groundwork for a multipolar world. They're not interested in recreating the USSR, but the current conflict was motivated by real and serious security concerns (if you disagree, ask yourself how the US government would react if what happened in Ukraine happened in Mexico or Canada).




Then next step would be to send totally-not-russian-army into Kherson. Or maybe meddle in Estonia.




For what purpose? Russia had a very clear and definite set of reasons to go into Ukraine, and I don't see those reasons existing for Estonia. And isn't Kherson in Ukraine anyway?




Russians would be happy. But I see no reason to expect that they would hold to it better than to Budapest Memorandum.




Why would they break an agreement which you already said would make them happy?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The money we are paying now to eliminate the Russian military's reserves and ... is arguably some of the best ROI we could possibly ask for.




I do not think that the final tally has come in yet, but I absolutely do not believe that this is the case or that this juice is worth the squeeze. That said I don't think this is an argument that can actually be resolved - the facts aren't visible beyond the fog of war yet, although if you have top secret intelligence verifying the exact capabilities of the Russian military please share it with the class.




reinforce the post WWI norm of "no you can't invade your neighbor"




There has been no reinforcing of this whatsoever, nor is it a norm. The USA has been extremely aggressive militarily and launched invasions all around the world - the fact that they haven't invaded Mexico or Canada means absolutely nothing unless you think it'd be perfectly ok for Russia to launch an invasion of the UK instead because the UK isn't, strictly speaking, their neighbour.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


at worst, a draw




I'll bet you 0.7 monero that Ukraine does not regain Crimea or the Breakaway/Separatist regions by the end of the war (which is what I would classify as a defeat for Ukraine).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
People have been using it like that for decades in academia, and there is actually a use for the term. I am not suggesting that the term should be used uncritically at all - and I think that you can ultimately make a stronger "transphobic" argument by adopting and using those concepts.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


directly implies that yes, it is OK for the Palestinians to "take back" Israel.




No, it does not. It implies that choosing an arbitrary cut-off point for your moral condemnation is bad and can be used to justify any kind of dishonest conclusion, in the same way that it is an abuse of statistics to start comparing islamic and right-wing terrorism from the date of September 12, 2001. What I am saying is that your argument is useless when it comes to gaining additional clarity on the situation, and if you want to accurately apportion blame and determine who is in the right you need to look at these events in a larger historical context. Maybe the people with the best claim to that land are the French descendants of the Knights Templar - probably not, but my point is that your argument prevents this from happening and obscures the truth of the matter while making one side look better than the other.




I did not say "genocide", I said "ethnically cleanse".




This is an absurd level of hairsplitting and even just looking at wikipedia (lol) the picture provided for the ethnic cleansing article is of an event described as a genocide. Is this really the quality of argument that you want to make?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"Divorcing individual events from their historical context allows you to make nonsensical claims about morality" is incredibly far removed from "It's ok to genocide the jews" and I'm honestly surprised that you read that out of my post. You're putting an incredibly inflammatory comment in my mouth, and I can't see any reason for it.