Maximum_Publius
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User ID: 780
Maximum_Publius
10mo ago
I'm not exactly sure what you mean about this "bullshit" only happening in the USA. Do you mean claims about the government being in possession of non-human tech, or just UFO incidents/etc. in general? Because there are plenty of the latter in other countries, including ones reported by foreign military officials.
Maximum_Publius
10mo ago
Yeah, I agree with this for the most part. Hoping the fact that the article claims he has been reporting to Congress means that they will get their hands on some documents/hard evidence soon.
Maximum_Publius
11mo ago
While agreeing with ymeskhout’s response, I also think part of the issue here is that there’s a whole set of truth statements which depend for their accuracy on the beliefs of a given group. “Defund the Police is a harmful movement because they want to totally remove police officers” is either true or false (assuming a given set of morals), and that in turn depends on what the DTP movement actually believes.
Maximum_Publius
10mo ago
Yeah, I certainly agree about the confusion. I'd add that it doesn't seem totally unbelievable to me that the US military would want to keep potentially powerful military tech secret given that a good chunk of those 80 years occurred during the Cold War.
Maximum_Publius
10mo ago
Indeed, assertions by a former high level member of the US intelligence services. You must admit that's not no evidence, especially when considered in light of things like the videos that have been released by the military.
Maximum_Publius
1yr ago
I'd agree with this as a heuristic for where it is absolutely OK to cancel someone. But certainly there's a middle ground? It can't only be either "I can only use reasoned debate to stop this person" or "I can shoot or cancel someone". Surely there's a place at which it would be acceptable to cancel but not murder someone?
Maximum_Publius
1yr ago
I agree that this doesn't solve the problem of people voting "politically," as it were, but I think it might mitigate it slightly.
As to your other point , I strongly disagree. Rationality can only work once certain premises have been accepted. There is no rational way to choose what premises you start an argument with. In the abortion context, for example, if someone starts from the premise that it is always wrong to take an innocent human life, no matter how much suffering it might experience or cause, they'll reach a certain set of conclusions, and if someone starts from a utilitarian set of premises, they'll reach another. Yes, you can argue about the rational basis for premises to some extent, but at a certain point you just hit intuition. Thus, two equally rational people could reach wildly different conclusions simply because they have different intuitions about the premises of the argument.
Maximum_Publius
1yr ago
This seems right on one dimension. I agree that it does feel like older-style forums, without voting, seemed to have better discussions. But when I read sites like SSC that purposely hide comment scores, I find it annoying not to be able to sort by "best" and find myself missing upvotes, without really feeling the conversation is all that better without them. Maybe this is just a function of the internet getting worse in general...
Maximum_Publius
1yr ago
Why do you say it hasn't worked for LessWrong?
Well in my ideal world you'd be able to sort by top - quality and top - agreement, but if they wanted to keep it simple they could just use the quality metric. I think that's what LessWrong does.
Completely agree about the complexity angle.
Maximum_Publius
1yr ago
Your claim was that you "find it hard to imagine that to anyone who arrives at their positions by rational thinking . . . could really find an opposing argument well done."
All I'm saying is that a rational person could easily find an opposing argument "well done" if their only problem with the argument was that it began from premises derived from intuitions they don't share.
Maximum_Publius
1yr ago
Why wouldn't it work as well here? People would downvote political enemies to suppress their ideas?
Yes, this seems like a useful distinction. Also highlights how unspecific terms like "homophobia" and "transphobia" are. People tend to use them to cover both social and metaphysical phobias, which confuses these issues. I guess most activists would argue, 1., most people who hold "metaphysical" transphobia tend to have "socally" transphobic ideas as well (probably true), and then also, 2., even if someone only holds metaphysically transphobic ideas, the expression of those ideas will lead to more hate crimes and more "social" transphobia.
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