Misembrance
1yr ago
This feels somehow wrong, because despite occasionally producing SBF or Theranos, Palo Alto is still a nice civilized place and the same can’t be said for the black murder rate in places suffering from that. SBF had zero tangible effect on me, black crime has made entire neighborhoods and cities no-go zones.
One for one, a single SBF may produce more total harm than a single murderer, but for every one SBF there are probably thousands of murders, and innumerable assaults and lesser crimes.
Misembrance
1yr ago
but given that these situations are very rare, I don't think it really matters that much
Well, given that these perfectly equivalent candidates are so vanishingly rare that any effects of such decisions are trivial, how about we just not do any affirmative action? It’s so rare it doesn’t really matter after all, right?
Misembrance
1yr ago
when two or more candidates appear to be equally qualified, and one belongs to a historically marginalized group, that candidate should be chosen
Just like how euthanasia is only ever used for 95 year-olds with terminal brain cancer and Alzheimer’s, right? The reality is that black students get the equivalent of over 300 bonus points on the SAT last I checked.
Misembrance
1yr ago
I’m not saying Republicans would be any better if they had similarly ironclad control of every university in the country. But they don’t, and even if Republicans won every election for the next 20 years they still wouldn’t. But if these HN contrarians are not actually willing to defect, then how is the pendulum shifting at all? They can say all day “Gee these woke universities sure are crazy!” but as long as they continue to donate to them, attend them, vote Democrat and dutifully rename master branches to main, what good is it?
Misembrance
1yr ago
Even if “the pendulum is swinging” (which I have been hearing every year), all the media has to do is gin up another George Floyd. Will these “reasonable” hackernews progressives have the fortitude to keep their cool in the face of the next outrage du jour, having learned from these excesses? Will they actually vote Republican? Doubtful imo
Misembrance
1yr ago
Yea, reading this ymeskhout’s reaction seems bizarre. Like he is coming from some alternate universe where baseless woke smear campaigns are actually punished as opposed to rewarded. Like, what does he imagine the consequences will be? Does he foresee Chanda Prescod-Weinstein being fired? Does he think her next campaign will just be roundly ignored and dismissed with derision?
Misembrance
1yr ago
but the part that continues to be absolutely bewildering to me is that dogged stubbornness only makes you look worse
Genuine question because of the paywall: are the people dishonestly pushing the debunked homophobia claim suffering any sort of consequences?
Misembrance
1yr ago
People I disagree with are ugly
Misembrance
1yr ago
You get plenty of reactions like this in the reddit comments:
But the problem originates from being way too hard on people. The US got more prisoners that any other country in the developed world. Why?
There is already a memetic response for this kind of thing. We let him out early and he committed more murders? Well we should have let him out even sooner and it would have surely fixed everything
Misembrance
1yr ago
Ooops, better not share that pic you took out in public for 24 hours. It might reveal someone's live location.
It is clearly not going to be used to ban people posting recent photos, unless you happen to be a stalker. Stop it with these goofy histrionics.
Basic elements of reality also include your internet search history, your penis length, your medical history, your number of sexual partners and recordings of you sleeping. If I can’t see all of that The Internet Is Officially Over.
Misembrance
1yr ago
I know this theory will sound retarded, but I don’t think Bonobos are a real species. Is there any biological basis to their classification? Apparently they can freely interbreed with Chimps, and I believe their status as a separate famously pacifist, feminist, homosexual species is propaganda
Misembrance
1yr ago
Watched the doc, thanks for the recommendation. There were some mildly cringe parts (wanting to give Ilse Koch a hug lol), but whatever still interesting. Seems fairly clear the skin and heads were planted by the Allies, and this certainly does make me significantly revise my estimate of the likelihood of things. If the allies were provably engaged in conspiracies to fabricate evidence relating to the Holocaust in some cases, it has to make it more likely that other pieces of alleged evidence are merely fabrications as well
Misembrance
1yr ago
Wikipedia is incredibly ambiguous regarding the consensus on the authenticity of the shrunken heads and lampshades.
A human skin lampshade was reported to have been displayed by Buchenwald concentration camp commandant Karl-Otto Koch and his wife Ilse Koch, along with multiple other human skin artifacts.[2] Despite myths to the contrary, there were no systematic efforts by the Nazis to make human skin lampshades.[3]
This seems to leave their authenticity an open question (systematic doesn’t mean it never happened). Google’s top results also seem very evasive and weasely. Do you have anything more solid or unambiguous regarding current mainstream consensus?
Misembrance
1yr ago
This exchange is a lot like this classic meme. You are being extremely condescending and scornful, sneering that anyone that “ever opened a history book” would know better (but refusing to elaborate or engage), while FarNearEverywhere is saying he would break the nose of anyone questioning genocide.
On the other hand, @SecureSignals is providing numerous sources, links and actual arguments regarding the historiography of the Holocaust.
I understand there is the whole issue from Epistemic Learned Helplessness, that a crank with a hobby horse can be much more prepared than a mainstream normie. But you should understand, SecureSignals is coming across better here. In this exchange, the mainstream looks smug and dismissive, but simultaneously evasive and heavily reliant on emotional manipulation.
Misembrance
1yr ago
Learning the earth was really 6000 years old would actually go a pretty long way towards convincing me Christianity is true. Maybe it doesn’t necessarily follow in a strict logical sense, but it would adjust my trust in the involved parties in such a radical way I would have to consider Christians the most trustworthy generally
Misembrance
1yr ago
Reddit would love this but fail to see obvious parallels to transgenderism
Misembrance
1yr ago
Are you seriously saying you would break someone’s nose because of comments about an event in 1850? Why are you so sensitive about it?
Misembrance
1yr ago
The photos only prove that many starved and many died. Look at photos of Andersonville prisoners from the American Civil War, they look the same. That doesn’t mean necessarily that there were gas chambers or a deliberate extermination program.
Misembrance
1yr ago
I may well get banned for asking this, but whatever. Are there any books or sites that present the case for Holocaust denial in a sane and somewhat reasonable way? I read some book skeptical of the Anne Frank diary that someone on here mentioned a while back, but I wasn’t impressed with it.
Now I understand the witches problem, and the fact that it is so taboo/ghettoized it’s going to select for nuts, but if there’s anything to it surely someone has put together a relatively coherent argument that actually engages with the strongest arguments of the non-denial side.
I have seen enough BS like Kamloops to be willing to give denialists a hearing, if any of them have written a summary worth reading
Misembrance
1yr ago
You could say murdering all the drag performers would be “just an extreme form of no-platforming”. I think it would be wrong to be so needlessly reductive, it just collapses actual meaningful differences in harm and violence in order to “both sides” or “what about” the situation
Misembrance
1yr ago
We already knew that Twitter censored the story and suspended The Post’s account. So before any of this info we had it narrowed down to three most likely possibilities: 1. Twitter censored it on their own initiative, 2. They censored it at the direct request of the Biden campaign, 3. They censored it at the behest of the federal gov’t (FBI, whatever)
Option 1, Twitter doing it on their own initiative seems by far the least explosive of those options. So these leaks just confirm it as the least interesting of the possibilities we had. I don’t see how any illusion of choice is relevant here, choice between what?
Misembrance
1yr ago
If we have to hold the line at firing the gay engineer to prevent getting to this point, well then I’d be fine with that. The slippery slope seems to have been very real, and so it’s just a question of where the slope became too steep to stop our slide.
Misembrance
1yr ago
Your comments repeatedly imply that he is just a normal privacy-minded person like you or me, but the dastardly media went snooping around his private life to out him. Like here, you are telling him to justify the government digging up his private sex life as if he isn’t shouting it from the rooftops and making it absolutely front and center of his presentation and public image. Nobody has to do any snooping here. This is like that huge breasted Canadian trans teacher.
If I publicly made age-play and daddy-daughter roleplay central to my public image, and tweeted on my public, professional twitter about my sex-with-daughter roleplay I wouldn’t be surprised if HR paid me a visit.
Misembrance
1yr ago
Oh don’t be cute, you know exactly what makes him a freak. Any reasonable definition of freak would include this guy. He is undeniably an extreme, bleeding edge outlier on the spectrum of gender/sex weirdness. You may love that, but it doesn’t change his outlierness. Just be honest please
Your question is worded as if nobody on The Motte is pro-Ukraine and we have only perhaps talked to such people. Also you seem to fail to consider genuine belief that Russia is in the wrong here. Just a bizarre lack of comprehension of a very normal, widespread opinion
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