MartianNight
No bio...
User ID: 1244
MartianNight
4d ago
Amadan, you are a fucking hypocrite and you're a disgrace of a mod. You constantly spread Zionist propaganda while pretending to be politically neutral.
You intentionally conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism and deride criticism of Zionism as “Joo-posting”, an intrinsically dismissive term, as if the people who have some concerns about the genocide-in-all-but-name that is being perpetrated by Israel in the middle east are just cuckoo-bananas.
Again in this comment, you create a false dichotomy between “Jews and Jew-haters” as if you can be either in support of Israel, or you must hate the Jews, which is far from the truth. I have no issue whatsoever with the many Jews who live in my neighbourhood, nor with those Israelis who are content to remain within the internationally recognized borders of Israel. I do hate anyone who supports the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, whether they are Jewish or not. I make no secret of this. Any attempt to conflate that opposition to Zionism to “hating Jews” is obviously disingeneous.
Even in this reply you stroke your own dick by waxing poetically about how you magnanimously tolerate the “Joo-posters” (a derisive term you invented to ridicule those who don't share your pro-Israel bias), as if banning people for disagreeing with you wouldn't violate half a dozen stated rules. Your tolerance of anti-Zionists is only commendable if this is an explicit Zionist space which is founded on the principle of promoting Israels divine right to annex Palestinian land and carpet bomb Palestinian civilians. If that's not a founding principle, you don't get brownie points for tolerating people who are calling out the state of Israel on its gross violation of international law.
I wouldn't be writing this reply if you were just another random Zionist voicing his dumb opinions. In that case, I would just flip the bozo bit on you and ignore your stupid takes from now on. But the fact that you're an actual moderator makes that impossible. I would think moderators should be extra committed to following the rules of the Motte, including being kind, charitable, not antagonistic, avoiding weakmen, not being egregiously obnoxious—all standards you fail here.
MartianNight
11mo ago
A woman, born female
How did you arrive at these facts? The IOC never tested her sex, they only checked her passport, but you don't fight with your passport. Similarly, she might have ambiguous/female-looking genitalia, but that is not enough, because boxers don't fight with their genitalia.
Given the circumstances, I think it's quite likely that Khelif is biologically male with a DSD like 5-ARD, just like Caster Semenya before her. In fact, I'd be willing to bet on it. Are you?
Carini may have been outmatched, but she easily could have fought the round out defensively, run away, survived to the bell, and thrown in the towel between rounds.
That would not have called attention to the inherent unfairness of being paired up against a male opponent.
It makes a mockery of boxing.
You know what makes an even greater mockery of female boxing? Allowing males to compete. If you want to avoid a situation like this, you should be calling for Khelif to be sex tested and (if male) banned, not for Carini to take a beating from a (likely) male.
The fact that you think the woman should just suck it up and let the man demolish her shows that you don't care about the integrity of the sport at all. You just want to watch men beat up women, and have a grudge against women who won't put up with that.
MartianNight
9mo ago
I agree with your specific point that both sides misrepresented the true cost of the loan, and I agree with you that it's annoying how often people who should know better make these kinds of poorly-informed and/or bad-faith arguments, to the point that it's barely worth reading most media due to the low quality of the arguments.
However, I disagree with your conclusion that in this case, Weidel/the AfD is more correct than Klingebiel/the normies. You summarize Weidel's claim in your conclusion:
The defining feature of the midwit meme is that the caveman is closer to the truth than the midwit. This is the case here. “Germany spends a significant amount of money on the Indian metro, while our own bridges collapse.” is a true statement and the midwittery of the state media only serves to move you away from this conclusion.
But the statement is only “true” in a trivial sense that these two things happened together: a bridge collapsed and a loan was issued to India. But the statement implies something completely different: bridges in Germany are collapsing because the German government spends money on foreign aid instead of proper infrastructure maintenance.
That's a statement like: “Kids in Africa are starving while 40% of Americans are obese!” This is a 100% true statement, and it's salient because it implies that kids in Africa are starving because selfish Americans are stealing the food from their mouths. But if you have just a tiny bit of knowledge about topics like economy, supply chains, argriculture and world politics, you know that these facts are not really causally linked, which is supported by historical data which shows that as obesity rates in America increased, the number of starving kids in Africa decreased. It would be more accurate to say: the more Americans eat, the fewer African kids starve! Paradoxical but true.
Similarly, German bridges collapsing is not obviously correlated with, let alone caused by, German foreign aid spending. If you want to make that argument (even implicitly, as Weidel does here), then you need to back it up with arguments, which she doesn't, and you don't either. I think there are a lot of reasons to assume this is not the case.
For one, it's not true that the two expenses are mutually exclusive. Money spent on foreign aid does not come directly out of the infrastructure maintenance budget, or vice versa. Of course it's true that the German government cannot spend an unlimited amount of money, so every additional euro spent must be either removed somewhere else, or raised through taxes or something, but that's a very thin connection. The German government spends billions on thousands of different things, and raises money in hundreds of ways. You might as well say: “The German government spends hundreds of million of euros on forestry, while bridges collapse!” but this isn't quite as salient, is it?
So realistically, these two expenses have to be judged on their merits individually. Is the amount of money spent on foreign aid too high? It's not obvious from the facts. Others have already pointed out the benefits of some foreign aid spending, including international goodwill and kickbacks in the form of industry orders which boost the German economy.
Is the amount of money spent on infrastructure maintenance too low, then? According to a spokesperson, the bridge did not collapse because there was no money budgeted for inspection or maintenance:
According to spokesperson of Dresden's Road and Civil Engineering Office, Simone Pruefer, the bridge was frequently inspected. "What I can say is that the bridge has been constantly inspected and examined in accordance with the guidelines as required. We were all very surprised by this incident and are now devoting a great deal of attention to investigating the cause".
The part of the bridge that collapsed was scheduled to undergo renovation next year, while other parts only reopened in March after months of construction. The entire bridge was last renovated in 1996.
It's easy to conclude, with hindsight, that of course this bridge should have been maintained better, otherwise it wouldn't have collapsed. But just like the optimal amount of insurance fraud is nonzero, the optimal amount of bridges collapsing annually is nonzero. This is exactly the kind of rational argument that in particular the AfD-caveman does not understand!
All in all, I don't find this story all that convincing as a case study on why people should distrust the normie media. That doesn't mean I like the normie media, but I think if you're a caveman, you are better off listening to the midwits, who are more likely to be directionally correct and less likely to be spectacularly wrong. Of course, we should all be listening to geniuses instead. The problem is that if you're a caveman, it's very difficult to distinguish genius from midwit from fellow caveman.
MartianNight
7mo ago
If it's like the Russian invasion of Ukraine, then it will result in mostly men dying, which affects birth rates much less.
MartianNight
9mo ago
Survey questions like this are implicitly about belief, whether you spell it out or not. Of course the answers aren't always truthful, for a variety of reasons, but I don't think you can make the answers more reliable simply by inserting “do you believe”, and conversely, they aren't less reliable when that was only implied.
Try it yourself. Answer the following questions:
- How old are you?
- How old do you believe you are?
Or:
- What did you have for breakfast?
- What do you believe you had for breakfast?
Or:
- Are you open-minded?
- Do you believe you are open-minded?
Or:
- Do you frequently argue with strangers on the internet?
- Do you believe you frequently argue with strangers on the internet?
Seriously, answer these. Was there any question pair where the second answer differed from the first? And if not for you, why would you think that inserting “do you believe” changes anyone else's answer?
MartianNight
7mo ago
Okay but that was like 10,000 civilian deaths, a rounding error for a country of 40 million.
MartianNight
7d ago
The project was pretty much under the radar until the ADL issued a statement last week. Now this might develop into a big story.
Ah yes, the organization that openly supports the establishment of a Jewish ethnostate on stolen land is deeply concerned about the theoretic possibility of “whites only enclaves” on privately purchased land in the US. I literally cannot imagine a group in America that has less of a leg to stand on to voice this concern than the Zionist hawks of the ADL.
I wrote a little more about that here. tl;dr: I think those are temporary aberrations that will not survive in the long run.
In the long run those men will have to justify themselves, but note that it will not require removing testicles. The idea that women cannot have penises and testicles and testosterone levels over 10 times the 99th percentile of cis-women is hateful bigotry spread by far-right domestic terrorists, after all. Instead, these proud transwomen must defend their gender identity in woke terms, with an oppression narrative, and of course plenty of political virtual signaling. A pre-op transsexual with a beard that would make Santa Claus envious, but who supports Kamala Harris, has more claim to the female sex than a post-op right wing chud like Blaire White.
MartianNight
7mo ago
Let's say the TFR stabilizes at 1 so that population halves every 30 years or so. Then it takes 90 years to return the world population to 1 billion, which is about what it was at the beginning of the industrial revolution. But the industrial revolution was very localized; it certainly didn't depend on millions of rice farmers in China existing. It started with 10 million people in Britain and spread to 100 million people in Europe.
So it takes like 300 years to get the world population back down to 10 million. Unlike the 10 million who lived in Britain in 1800, who were mostly illiterate farmers, people in the future will still have computers with the internet and Wikipedia, so they are much more capable of maintaining industrial society.
Of course if the population keeps shrinking the situation does become problematic at some point. But 300 years is a long time. Lots of things will change during that time. I would worry much more about the near future, for which we can make better predictions and over which we have much more control.
MartianNight
11mo ago
just think it's a bit rich that commenters here are waving the flag for this dude without even the barest pretence of having any motivation other than owning the libs
For the record, I'm not “waving the flag [..] to own the libs”. I just want the discussion about eligibility of Olympic athletes to be more principled than the current “this guy's past behavior was appalling so obviously he shouldn't be allowed to compete now!”.
You can make an argument around how serious criminals should be barred from the Olympics, but then you should flesh it out in an objective way. Part of justice is applying rules equally and fairly, and not in an ad-hoc manner as seems to happen here. Insisting on that is not the same as blanket support for pedophiles to participate in the Olympics.
By the way, I really don't think it's only liberals who are upset about Van de Velde's participation. It's just that the liberals are more vocal now that the perpetrator is a straight white male, rather than if it had been a black or trans person or a drag queen or something.
if they were to interact with this guy in person, if it was their kid at risk of being interfered with [..], their revealed preferences for how they think he should be treated would be functionally indistinguishable from those of the Guardian journalist who wrote this article.
Again, you are conflating two very different things. I wouldn't hire Van de Velde as my baby sitter, and I'm not saying anyone else should, but I might well hire him as my tax accountant, and I wouldn't mind playing volleyball with him. I don't think there is any hypocrisy there.
MartianNight
8mo ago
There is an AI track in the Meta Hacker Cup this year. I don't know exactly how it works, but it might be helpful to check which techniques the more successful participants used.
MartianNight
9mo ago
The actual report (not really a “paper”): https://philpapers.org/archive/PRITIO-26.pdf
MartianNight
11mo ago
Also “decimated” in the meaning of “largely destroyed” rather than “reduced in size somewhat” (by 10%, literally).
MartianNight
11mo ago
framing Harris as a brave survivor of vicious and predatory grooming.
After all, Harris was a poor defenseless 30-year-old minor who couldn't be expected to stand up for herself.
More seriously though, the problem with this strategy is that the “groomer” in this case is a Black man and a Democrat. I'm sure the Democrats would have no problem accusing a white Republican of grooming Harris, but are they willing to throw a Black Democrat under the bus like that? Is Barack Obama going to declare “It could have been me soliciting sexual favors from women half my age in exchange for political favors?”
MartianNight
7mo ago
They, at least figuratively and sometimes very literally, cut off the part of their body that makes them capable of being a sexual threat- they're no different than a 3 year old boy
Bizarre and patently false claim.
All evidence suggests trans-identified males have the same level of criminality as other males, i.e., much higher than females and much higher than 3 year old boys (the main source is a paper by Dhejne et al, though generally gender activists taboo this kind of research for showing undesirable results).
And besides, over 90% of trans-identified males opt to keep their penis and testicles. So unlike their female counterparts, trans males are almost always physically intact. They are very much capable of raping women and have done so on many occasions.
MartianNight
8mo ago
I wonder if he got the idea from the Demon Core.
To be fair to woke people, this attitude is at least consonant with one of their other typical opinions: that gay people are "born this way", that sexuality and gender identity are congenital and hardwired. If this is true of gay people, why wouldn't it also be true of paedophiles?
This is conflating sexual preference with criminality. It's not a crime to have a sexual preference for children. It's a crime to molest children.
Pedophile is to child molester as heterosexual male is to rapist of women. While it might not be possible to change the sexual preference, that doesn't mean we cannot rehabilitate criminals. If rapists of adult victims can be rehabilitated, then why not rapists of children?
(This conflation is very common in discussions surrounding pedophilia, by the way. My theory for why that happens is that people have such an irrational, visceral hatred of pedophiles that they just do not want to consider the possibility of a non-offending pedophile. But the distinction is important nonetheless, if you want to maintain a justice system where people are convicted based on their actions, and not just their thoughts or inclinations.
Something similar happens with other hated groups like “incels”, where being involuntarily celibate is almost a crime in and of itself, regardless of whether you've actually harassed any women.)
For all of you people wishing him well and crowing about woke hypocrisy, I have to ask - how comfortable would you feel about leaving him alone with your twelve-year-old daughter or niece?
This is an irrelevant hypothetical. You can argue that because of his past crime and the possibility of recidivism, Van de Velde should not be alone with twelve-year-olds in the future, but what does that have to do with him playing volleyball in a team full of adults?
The people who oppose Van de Velde participating in the Olympics seem to do so on the basis of some poorly-articulated principle that someone who has committed a horrible crime should never be allowed a place in the spotlight, regardless of whether they are likely to reoffend or not.
MartianNight
7mo ago
The problem with this logic is that it doesn't generalize. If you allow males into women's spaces so long as they pass well enough, who is going to be the judge of who passes well enough? What rule would you propose that allows Sarah McBride in but keeps Jessica Yaniv out?
You can have a “don't ask, don't tell” policy, which is mostly how things worked before the year 2000, but once the cat is out of the bag, you have to revert to some objective rule about who is or isn't allowed.
The whole point of the Congressional bathroom rule is to keep a passing transwoman who is not a threat to anyone out of the ladies' room in order to show Republican's disapproval of transgenderism.
I don't think that's the entire point. The point is also to keep men out of women's shelters and prisons, men out of women's sports and dressing rooms, and men out of women's spaces in general.
If Republicans cannot even keep men out of women's bathrooms in Washington DC, how can they expect to accomplish any of those other tasks? So even if the McBride issue is itself not important because McBride is likely harmless (with which I tend to agree), the case is important because it is at the fulcrum of a broader issue.
Maybe the offensiveness of what Darone did becomes more obvious if you remove the trans issue from the topic.
Imagine you have a support group for parents whose children have a terminal form of cancer. These really exist and are important to the people involved. One day a member posts a sad story about how his kid has died recently, obviously getting lots of expressions of support and sympathy from the group, because that's what support groups do. Then later it turns out that his kid is alive and well, wasn't even sick, or maybe doesn't even exist.
Could you then imagine some of the people who were in the process of actually losing their children to cancer would find the behavior of the imposter deeply offensive? Wouldn't it be more than a little “weird” if the group administrators responded to the controversy by kicking out the offended parents with actual dying children (i.e. the target demographic of the group!), to kowtow to an imposter that wants sympathy for his imaginary grief?
And I know you might say: well, maybe the imposter cannot help it! Münchhausen syndrome is a thing! Let's be empathic and inclusive! But even if I agree that Münchhausen syndrome is real and that people with this condition deserve help, it's not clear that that help must come in the form of being admitted to a support group they do not qualify for. I think it's reasonable to keep the support group for actual parents of actual dying children, and give the imposter support in the form of psychiatric treatment separately.
Similarly, I cannot understand why a group specifically for pregnant women would prioritize the needs of a male imposter over the safety and comfort of actual pregnant women in the group.
Note that none of this depends on proving that the male acts out of malice or indulging a sexual fetish. It's perfectly plausible that some transwomen are legitimately sad that they can never become pregnant, and perhaps they need support to deal with that grief, and maybe that support involves LARPing out a miscarriage, but that still doesn't imply they should be entitled to join support groups for pregnant women, on the simple basis that they are not, and never will be, pregnant women.
MartianNight
7mo ago
"Can people who have official government documents that document them as women, involve non-consenting members of the public in their use of spaces for women?" To which the obvious answer is: yes.
My answer is no.
Males do not belong in women's spaces.
Whether those males identify as transgender is irrelevant, because my view is based on sex, not gender identity.
Whether those males have government-issued certificates recognizing their gender identity is also irrelevant, because my view is based on sex, not gender identity.
The only way government records could be relevant if they accurately record a person's sex, but governments of all developed countries have decided to stop doing that.
Just like my driver's license is valid whether you think I should have one or not.
Your government-issued driver's license mostly prevents that same government from putting you in jail for driving a car on the public road. Nobody else is compelled to accept it as proof that you are a competent driver.
In practice, driver's licenses are widely accepted as evidence of baseline driving competence, but that's because the government requires you to prove it before issuing your license. If anyone could get a license simply by self-declaration, even contradicting a professional's judgement, then the value of that license to determine driving ability would plummet.
MartianNight
3mo ago
Sure, that's why I started my comment with “If I put on my conspiracy hat...” At the same time, it's naive to assume that an attack on the opposition couldn't possibly be politically motivated because there is some friendly fire.
MartianNight
8mo ago
I'm not sure that's saying much, statistically.
The premise seems to be: for some store owners the expected amount of damages exceeds the cost of boarding up windows. Going with the implied assumption that damages occur only if Trump wins, the expected damages are the product of (probability Trump wins) × (probability angry Democrats smash in my windows) × (cost if they smash in my windows). (It's a little bit more complicated because there are also probability for smashing in windows, smashing in windows + looting products, smashing in windows + looting products + setting the store on fire, etc., but that's not really important for the argument.)
My point is that (probability Trump wins) is not super variable. It's almost certainly between 40% and 60%. But that means the expected damages can increase by only 50% from the absolute minimum. The expected damages and the costs of boarding up windows have to be really close for a difference in that probability to affect the decision to board up the windows. For most stores the decision is going to be the same whether the probability is 40% or 60%.
In short, while you could argue that there would be more stores boarding up the higher Trump's chance of victory is, the mere fact that some stores board up windows does not tell you much about Trump's odds. Most of those stores would be boarding up if Trump's chance of winning were 40% or even less, too.
MartianNight
7mo ago
Why is this such an issue? Restrooms have stalls. I couldn't tell what gender was in one if I tried.
This is a fully-general argument against having women's bathrooms at all. Which is fine if you want to argue for unisex bathrooms, but it's not an argument for keeping bathrooms nominally segregated while letting males into the women's bathroom.
MartianNight
11mo ago
You don't find it strange that the IBA would stake its reputation on a claim that, if false, could be easily disproven with a simple cheek swab and PCR test? Don't you find it strange that neither the IOC nor either of the accused athletes have chosen to disclose any details on their medical condition?
And even if you believe that the IBA wanted to throw shade regardless of the truth (which is plausible), don't you agree that they'd be more likely to do that if they had actual proof? (Which is definitely not impossible; intersex athletes have been outed by sex tests many times, that's why the IOC stopped sex testing in the first place.) If so, you should agree that by Bayes theorem, that the fact that they have raised the issue increases the probability that the athletes are male.
OK. So how many members of the public must complain before she is deemed nonpassing? Is it like a percentage of a quorum? What percentage of what quorum? Is a single complaint sufficient? In that case, how is the rule different from banning transgenders entirely, just with the caveat that you won't face penalties if you don't get caught, which is essentially how all misdemeanors work?
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