Jiro
5mo ago
Is that "because of the bombs" or "because Hamas uses hospitals as human shields for military bases"?
Jiro
6mo ago
Whichever conflict, whichever atrocity, it will always pay for partisans of whichever side to go start going "actually it was the other guys who did it!
This conflict started with one side publically committing atrocities on social media, so forgive me for not treating the two sides as equally likely to commit atrocities.
Jiro
7mo ago
Strongly agree about there not being enough toplevels and post length not being an ideal filter, strongly disagree about 'ideological adherence' (they let the holocaust deniers and white nationalists keep posting.)
If you are a moderator and you want to wage the culture war while pretending not to, letting the holocaust deniers and white nationalists through is useful, because they have no chance of convincing anyone--but if you let through an ordinary conservative, they might actually convince people.
As a bonus, you get to associate normal non-leftist views with Holocaust deniers and white nationalists because those groups disproportionally are permitted to post such views.
Jiro
2mo 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
5mo ago
In the Xth best world, the media would stop signal-boosting all the evil cardiologists. Assuming that this actually happened as described, there's a difference between a non-representative person and a representative one. Rejoicing in the death of innocents is official activity of Hamas and common among Gazans. Signal-boosting the extremists on the other side to make it look like both sides do this equally is media deception.
Also note that "former X" is a variety of "not actually X".
Jiro
8mo ago
If I tell someone shooting heroin that it's killing them and they need to stop, they can decide that actually I just hate them, and if they insist on doing so I certainly can't stop them
There are certainly circumstances where someone telling people this would be mainly motivated by contempt of heroin users, and where it would be correct to infer hostility. Furthermore, society has norms of religious tolerance that it does not have around heroin tolerance, and by proclaiming that your outgroup is going to suffer, you are violating norms that you are not for heroin users.
Christians positing the existence of Hell neither breaks your leg nor picks your pocket
I'm pretty sure you're quoting Jefferson out of context here.
Also, notice that actually saying "I hate you and you should die" neither breaks your leg nor picks your pocket. By your reasoning not only is loudly talking about your outgroup's suffering not hostile, literal direct hatred isn't hostile either.
Jiro
11mo ago
About the only thing that could make the Holocaust not be real is if the entire world isn't real and I'm just a brain in a jar. Otherwise, "evidence" when the probability is 100% with the evidence and also 100% without the evidence is not really evidence in any meaningful sense.
I think you are being disingenuous here and not speaking plainly. Your argument only makes sense if there's sufficient doubt about the Holocaust that "evidence" against it could actually mean anything.
Jiro
5mo ago
This post is a Gish gallop.
Had you heard of "the holy Baruch Goldstein, who gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah, and the nation of Israel" by shooting up a crowded mosque with an assault rifle, killing 29 and wounding 125, whose grave was subsequently made into a shrine by his fellow settlers?
From your own link:
The international community and the Israeli government condemned the massacre. Israel arrested followers of Meir Kahane, criminalized the Kach movement and affiliated movements as terrorist, forbidding certain Israeli settlers to enter Palestinian towns, and demanding that those settlers turn in their army-issued rifles
But refuting every claim you posted would take too much time and effort--that's how a Gish gallop works.
Jiro
8mo ago
Except that the "approval" part is only half of it.
In the real world, proclaiming that nonbelievers go to Hell is hostile to nonbelievers. Yes, they want other believers to approve of the hostility, but describing that as wanting to garner approval leaves out the important part.
Jiro
2mo ago
but honestly in this scenario I am going to start wondering why they want the power that badly.
Probably for the same reason they'd want a job that starts with the letters Q through Z: because you need to have a job to live, and you're better off when a big chunk of the possible jobs aren't automatically barred from you in advance. Expecting someone to go to Russia to be jailed or drafted, before you'd hire them, is unreasonable.
Jiro
4mo ago
This reasoning essentially amounts to "Hitler treated Jews like enemies. So we should never treat anyone like enemies."
Whether a comparison to disease is appropriate is true or false on the object level; a blanket condemnation makes no sense. You're also glossing over the difference between comparing an ethnic group to a disease, and comparing a military/terrorist oprganization to a disease.
Jiro
6mo ago
I've often asked people not to steelman attacks.
I never expected I'd have to say it about literal physical attacks.
There is no norm that believing in hell is an attack on your outgroup.
Believing that your outgroup is going to Hell is not the same as loudly proclaiming in public that your outgroup is going to Hell, just like loudly proclaiming "your children are ugly and your toupee sucks".
If you hate me and want me to die, that has direct implications in this life, and while it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, it has a strong correlation to both happening shortly.
This is also true for other types of hostility. If you yell in public that I'm going to Hell, that has a strong correlation to doing bad things to me.
We Christians put up with all sorts of social bullshit already. Maybe you Atheists can try putting up with some bullshit as well.
"As well"? What? You're talking as if people who are not Christian have never put up with bullshit related to religious beliefs and this is the first time. This is absurd. You are not engaged in some sort of glorious table-turning where Christians "put up with bullshit" from everyone else and suddenly you get a chance to do it back.
She's metaphorically choosing to leave God, not Narnia. And people in real life don't "choose to leave" God in the same way that one might choose to leave a place. They certainly don't "choose to leave" God in any way resembling denying the existence of a place.
Narnia is something that's all around you that you can't deny without being arrogant or insane. And if you leave it, you are doing so knowingly. Believers wish that God was like this and make metaphors that imply it, but he isn't.
Jiro
6mo ago
If either side was in each others position they would be extreme ultranationalists/hardcore identitarian tribalists as they are now.
You are making this up.
Jiro
10mo ago
Why not?
Because it's inherently engaging with the series on a very superficial level.
Is it possible that they're a fan of the series anyway? Sure, but it's not the way to bet.
Jiro
9d ago
This dovetails with @naraburn's post about the Pokemon Go avatar changes being designed, apparently, to challenge conventional beauty standards- especially the sub-question in that thread regarding a conspiracy to promote ugliness. That conspiracy exists, in its declaration that there is no Noble Physiognomy, and our attractions are just manipulated by White Supremacy.
"Conspiracy to promote ugliness" in that context is mostly about women, so it doesn't apply here.
Jiro
6mo ago
I wasn't actually asking you to steelman the KKK. I was pointing out that steelmanning is a bad thing to do here because that kind of steelmanning ignores the actual facts. It just isn't possible to honestly steelman Hamas or the KKK, any more than I could honestly steelman homeopathy or creationism.
We believe that we are required by Jesus to try to warn those people away from hell, and convince them to accept salvation. Keeping quiet about it is not something we are permitted to do; keeping our Christianity secret is not an option.
You are mixing up "convincing people", "not keeping quiet", and "keeping secret". In the modern world, you aren't keeping secret; it's common knowledge that Christianity says that nonbelievers go to Hell. And "not keeping quiet" isn't the same as convincing people. Nobody outside the lizardman constant gets convinced to be a Christian by being told that they are going to Hell. Saying that people go to Hell in public doesn't "convince people to accept salvation", and can't be justified on the basis that you are required to do that.
We Christians had it hammered into our heads that we didn't own the public square and anyone could say what they liked without consequences.
No, you had it hammered into your heads that you didn't own the public square and anyone could say what they liked without going to jail for it. Maybe even that you shouldn't be fired from your job for it (I disagree with the left here.) But if by "consequences" you mean people getting offended, no, you don't get immunity from consequences, and nobody ever said that you do. The toupee example may be useful here. I won't get arrested if I walk into the public square and say that your toupee sucks. But you can still think I'm being rude and tell all your friends what a jerk I am.
I think you can put up with being offended, because I certainly do on an hourly basis.
I don't go around saying "all Christians believe lies" or anything similar outside of contexts like specifically discussing Christianity. You don't put up with offense from me that is similar to the offense you want me to put up from you.
Q: Was Susan left out of heaven because she was sexually mature, or generally a grown up?
Decoder: Does Christianity exclude adults or the sexually mature from heaven?
A: No.
Christianity doesn't have a rule whose text explicitly reads "adults and the sexually mature don't go to heaven".
But Christianity does think things are bad that are thought by nonbelievers to be harmless and which are associated with being adult (such as loss of childhood faith) or being sexually mature (such as immodest dress and behavior). Claiming that this doesn't count because Susan's only being penalized for non-Christian sexuality, instead of for sexuality, is a nitpick that makes no real difference to the criticism.
By this reasoning, no religion has ever been against adult sexuality except the Shakers.
But it's weird and dishonest to interpret a vague euphemistic line in a particular way for the sake of disagreeing with that reading.
Saying that she was penalized for a harmless thing because you don't want to be explicit about how bad a thing she actually did describes the thing euphemistically, but the punishment dysphemistically--punishing someone for a less severe thing is a more severe punishment.
So whether or not a lack of faith in Jesus is enough to keep one out of heaven, we know that Susan had both a lack of faith and a lack of moral uprightness within the context of Lewis's narrative. This isn't an interpretation, it's deductively so.
"Atheists can go to heaven, but pretty much all atheists happen to be evil people who don't go to heaven" is, in practice, "atheists don't go to heaven". Believing in a negative stereotype about X amounts, at some point, to believing bad things about X, even if you don't literally think that every single X is like that. And as I said before, Lewis isn't stupid. He knows very well that this is a common Christian stereotype of atheists. If he puts it in anyway, he knows what he's doing.
Yes, he said that Calormenes can go to heaven, but Calormenes are not atheists. They are misguided believers, but they are believers and don't fall into the stereotype. "You may think you are worshipping someone else, but you're actually worshipping Aslan" still requires worship.
Jiro
4mo ago
That's a bad summary because it doesn't account for how frequent the things are. We haven't banned anyone for murdering their opponent even though that's a worse offense than either low effort or LLMs.
(And the proper comparison isn't LLMs specifically. You ban relatively fewer people for long grammatical, low information posts than you do for standard low effort posts. This creates incentives for long, grammatical, low information posts.)
Jiro
6mo ago
we do not have a revealed preference for length for the sake of length.
...
We use length and effort as proxies for quality
A revealed preference is what shows up in your actions. If your actions are to treat long posts as a proxy for quality, then you do in fact have a revealed preference for length.
Jiro
8mo ago
The laws of physics require that to get fat, you have to eat. If you don't eat enough calories, you won't get fat. No amount of genetics can overcome physics.
Hamas themselves kidnapped the Israelis on purpose and broadcast the acts worldwide. It's Hamas's own war propaganda; it's just being shown to a less sympathetic audience.
Israel did not intentionally bury children under rubble.
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