Jiro
11mo ago
But LOTT didn't really suffer any harm from it.
It's very difficult to measure how much someone is harmed by things of this sort. It was clearly used by TracingWoodgrains to discredit LoTT. I think I should not need to do some kind of media reputation analysis to calculate how much LoTT was discredited so I can say that LoTT was "harmed".
Was Scott harmed by Cade Metz? If yes, could you prove it?
Jiro
3mo ago
- If someone regrew a limb after prayer, which a minute of Googling shows has in fact allegedly happened! people would be like "wow, there must be a good scientific explanation for this!" or "oh, clearly an elaborate fraud!
Saying that X counts as a miracle doesn't mean that if you claim X, it automatically counts. It means that you managed to get over one hurdle--you managed to claim something that, if it happened, would be a miracle. Getting past the "if it happened" part is a separate hurdle.
One obvious problem is that scientists (and doctors) are so incompetent that any attempt to prove a miracle medically or scientifically can easily be dismissed as incompetence or fraud.
The reason such things are dismissed as incompetence or fraud is that they are incompetence or fraud.
There are plenty of cases where science has noticed a lot of incompetence and fraud in something, and yet determined that some of it is real. (High temnperature superconductors come to mind.) Miracles aren't dismissed because scientists dismiss everything, miracles are dismissed because they have particularly bad claims and evidence, just like psychic powers, space aliens, and non-Christian miracles.
Well, actually, things impossible according to the known laws of physics do happen. And when they are proven to be true beyond a reasonable doubt, scientists literally invent magic an invisible practically unfalsifiable mystery substance to explain them.
No they don't. Actually, I have no idea what you're talking about, except maybe ether, which you'll notice modern scientists don't believe in.
Jiro
1yr ago
By that reasoning it's fine to bar him from taking part in any job whose name starts with the letters Q through Z. After all, even with that restriction there are many jobs he could take.
But it's totally arbitrary. Why do we have an interest in preventing someone from taking some jobs just because they refuse to put themselves in physical danger by going to Russia?
Jiro
1yr ago
"Living well is the best revenge", "don't let them live rent-free in your head", "you're just letting them hurt you even more", etc.
If your enemies tell you that you should do something for your own good that straightforwardly helps them and harms you, that's probably motivated reasoning or concern trolling. Some of the biggest proponents of getting rid of grudges are the people who are targets of grudges, who should be ignored for this reason. Someone who you have a grudge against probably isn't very interested in your mental health overall; why should you listen to them on the one subject where they have something to gain?
And combine this with sour grapes--when you can't have something (in this case, defeating the group you have a grudge against), you tell yourself that the thing you can't have really isn't all that great. Sour grapes is a form of bias, and it may be a coping mechanism, but it isn't rationality.
Jiro
2yr ago
Future victories are vastly easier now than they were in Dec 2021.
Seriously? Do you think that next time the Canadian government tries this, it will be ruled unconstitutional and lead to no serious penalties for the protestors?
Jiro
4mo ago
My rules > your rules, fairly > your rules, unfairly
Your rules, unfairly: Public health covers non-health things like gun control and environmental justice but cannot be used to push back against the woke.
Your rules, fairly: Public health covers non-health things, but at least both sides can use it.
My rules: Public health has to do with health.
Jiro
4mo ago
Our "lifeboat" is an entire freaking continent.
The country has limited space. It cannot absorb everyone who wants to come. That's why the lifeboat metaphor works in the first palace.
Jiro
1yr ago
Presumably those schools have fewer people trying to push the limits of the policy.
You can't assume that teachers are going to follow these policies in good faith, which is why we can't have nice things.
Jiro
1yr ago
The proper conclusion is "Jefferson was a racist, but not all racism is as bad as you think it is". But "racism isn't as bad as you think it is" is a taboo position, regardless of its truth. Robinson knows this, which is why he built the questioning around racism in the first place, and which makes it fundamentally dishonest.
Jiro
1yr ago
The obvious reply to that is "why do Asians do well?" Shouldn't it take hundreds of years for them to catch up too? (Of course, Asians weren't quite as disadvantaged, but I wouldn't say they had a hundred year head start either.)
Jiro
1yr ago
Incidentally, I still repeatedly see the bug where trying to post something at a level that would produce a more comments prompt results in the post actually being accepted, but seeming to hang and never refreshing the screen.
Also, we don't seem to have a thread for forum bugs.
Jiro
2yr ago
I'm not sure this counts. Fried chicken and watermelon was a known stereotype long before woke existed.
Should I be more upset that performative outrage is carving holiday-based dietary restrictions into the public consciousness?
If the school celebrated the day by staging a mock robbery to celebrate Black History Month, on the grounds that crime is black culture, and someone complained, would you call that a "holiday-based theater restriction"?
Jiro
2yr ago
IP itself is a government creation. So the question is not "does WOTC have a right", the question is "are we happy with the government giving them this right". I'm not happy with it.
Jiro
2yr ago
the west's classical paradigm of an excellent human life: to be a wise, cultured, orthodox Christian gentleman.
If the classical paradigm of an excellent human life requires that you not be a Jew, I want no part of it.
I'd expect the typical reasoning of 'Only do it to the smallest of outgroups', but given how demonstrable it is now that such reasoning does not hold when we are trying to uphold broad principles for big populations...
I'm surprised that you think "only do it to the smallest of outgroups" would be a useful description even when that's sort of what Google did.
Search is at least partly supposed to be a popularity contest. If the group that says something is small, what they say should be underemphasized. If the group that thinks it's true is small, that's another reason to underemphasize it because if there's 99% agreement that it isn't true, Google should be treating it as false and people don't want to search and find false information.
There are plenty of conservatives out there, and the truth of conservative beliefs is an active dispute, not something 99% of people take the same side on. But Holocaust denial? There are few Holocaust deniers, and no truth to Holocaust denial. Not returning results because Holocaust deniers are the "smallest of outgroups" is the proper thing to do here.
Jiro
1yr ago
It's not a thing you can change by just modifying a few conditions. The only meaningful way to get rid of the advantage of being a trained lawyer is to find an opponent who's also a trained lawyer or equivalent.
This incessant insistence on "if you REALLY were serious, you'd do it at a time and place and under circumstances of my choosing" is as annoying as rationalists insisting "if you REALLY were serious, you'd bet money".
Jiro
2yr ago
Applicants are advised that essays about niche topics unfamiliar to admissions officers are strongly preferred.
How could this ever be possible?
Jiro
2yr ago
How does "mocking" an idea somehow become more "anti-Catholic" than criticizing it? And, tell me, what exactly does "anti-Catholic" mean? Surely, if it is objectionable, then it must mean something more than mocking ideas; it must mean saying something negative about people.
By your reasoning here, an outright racial slur is not anti-(a race).
Jiro
2yr ago
What we're seeing with NARA is not the deep state continuing its politics by other means. It's the visceral panic of a bureaucracy realizing it has a blind spot.
What we're seeing is the deep state continuing its politics by other means, but then finding that it can't put the genie back in the bottle and make sure that only the desired target got punished. Some bureaucrats didn't get the memo that an everyone-is-guilty rule was supposed to be used for selective prosecution. Instead they applied the rule fairly, which made everyone guilty.
The fact that they went after Biden doesn't mean it's not the deep state, it means that the deep state screwed up.
Jiro
2yr ago
"People of color" still includes Asians, who the left often wants to exclude.
Jiro
6mo ago
if you get a degree with the company contributing money, you have to stay at least one year after completion, or you owe all that money back. Seems very reasonable.
That doesn't seem very reasonable because the company gets to harm you in arbitrary ways for the next year as long as the harm caused to you is not greater than the value of the education.
Would you demand that someone not rent to gay people, or otherwise profit off of gays, if they can't bear to watch gay sex? If they can't bear to watch an operation, do we forbid them from being operated on?
Squeamishness is not a source of morality.
Jiro
1yr ago
Only a certain kind of literalist on the Internet thinks being wrong "about everything" means literally every single thing, rather than being wrong about major implications in typical cases.
"They are literally right that Jefferson is racist, but they are wrong in what this implies about how we should treat Jefferson" is, by normie standards, being wrong about Jefferson.
I find that "groomer" here is usually used to refer to adult authority figures and sexual situations, which is a lot narrower than you say.
"Taboo your words" is not supposed to be used to deny people the vocabulary to discuss something. If you don't like "groomer", what word should be used instead?
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