Pigeon
coo coo
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User ID: 237
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
Even granting that Marxist rhetoric is violent in this way (which I’m hesitant to grant without significant qualifiers) surely you can see there is a difference between:
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A likely explicit order to exterminate a group of people when in paramount power, and
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A discussion of mass murder visited upon one’s political opponents, written not in any sort of office, which then was reinterpreted by various organisations decades after the death of the author, and in one case was perpetuated against a separate ethnic population, which was really not quite the point of the original texts (even if it was justified on those terms at the time).
In any case, it’s undeniable that Marx advocated for violent revolution, but I think there’s a qualitative difference between that and the sort of industrial murder machine created by the Nazis and the Japanese during WW2, as well as between advocacy and, well, actually doing the thing.
Pigeon
coo coo
9mo ago
That seems remarkable. Where do you live that this is possible?
You even mentioned one of these cities by name!
Hong Kong and Seoul and Tokyo should support such a lifestyle, work-related travel aside (depending on which area you live in and work at). I don’t have experience with mainland Chinese cities, but I’d expect most of the tier 1 cities at least to be similar. I’d also expect other large Japanese cities to be similar.
The amount you would get into your bloodstream through a nasal spray is likely much more controlled compared to, you know, IV chlorhexidine. Bloodstream availability is waaaaaay lower. Not really comparable.
I mean, there’s also dermal absorption, right? But I think most of us would be pretty doubtful of the idea that washing our hands is essentially IV soap, and nasal spray is probably significantly closer to washing hands than it is to IV.
Same/similar goes with the eyewash, really.
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
I think we can agree on that, at least in the sense of “these are people fomenting violent ideologies”.
I do think that Marxist theory probably has more historical relevance even beyond the dictatorships and mass famines, though, in that quite a lot of economic theory was written in response to and in refutation of it, and ideas like dialectical materialism had pretty substantial influence. In that practical sense it makes sense to rehabilitate Marx somewhat, if only to understand why he was wrong (e.g. on labour theory of value) in economic (or other discipline-specific) terms rather than on moral terms.
Even given all that, I do flinch a bit when people openly declare themselves to be Marxist.
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
I have to say, the line from Hitler to Holocaust is much shorter than from Marx to the Holodomor. On that alone I think it’s more reasonable for people to want to rehabilitate Marx in broader society.
I think most Westerners would look askance about rehabilitating Stalin, though, and tankies who try are generally seen as lunatics.
Pigeon
coo coo
5mo ago
The male:female skew of autism is 4:1, which is the simplest explanation why STEM careers have been filled with men at around that ratio until recently:
Is your contention that STEM careers have been filled almost entirely by autists until very recently, or do you also think that “logical intuition” is similarly biased towards men vis a vis women?
Pigeon
coo coo
8mo ago
Sure (though I think you underestimate nuclear hellscape), but we can just not listen to the batshit stuff and take the useful solutions as they are. Things like nuclear plants?
Though of course that runs into environmentalists blowing an aneurysm because they don’t understand it.
My point is that this issue in particular is worth thinking about for sensible people even if the loudest group talking about it are lunatics.
Pigeon
coo coo
9mo ago
They could give CPR while slapping them in the face with a flaccid cock and I'd still rather my kid live than not.
Does this mean the calculus changes if they were giving CPR while slapping your child in the face with an erect cock?
Pigeon
coo coo
9mo ago
I suppose I was reacting more to the idea that it's a subculture thing now, when it's...pretty mainstream, I think.
Pigeon
coo coo
11mo ago
/r/AskHistorians is probably a case where draconian moderation improves the quality of the subreddit.
Pigeon
coo coo
11mo ago
In which country are you more likely to actually be arrested (or at least have the police show up) for posting in contradiction of state mandated beliefs
——— This is definitely, definitely China. It is difficult for me to express the absolute incredulity I have for people seriously comparing Western states to the PRC.
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
Well, I don’t really see how you’re fitting 5 million people in a small village on the Alps. I always think of Yokohama or Hong Kong when I think of “convenient city to live in”.
Pigeon
coo coo
2d ago
Pigeon
coo coo
3mo ago
I thought it was 3/4? Or was it somewhere else that has 5 executioners but only 1 live round?
Pigeon
coo coo
5mo ago
This is not the "public consciousness" understanding of the DKE. That is the claim that "people who say they are real good and talk about how good they are are actually no better or even worse than the people who say they are bad".
In that case I stand corrected. That seems silly.
This is not how poor correlation is usually defined either in real life, that's normally given by r, and you can have very high r while the statement "poor performers overrate their performance and good performers underate theirs" (say r = 0.99, an out of the world level correlation for anything in the social sciences) is still true.
Well, of course "can have very high r and still have [that statement] be true" is true with r<1, especially since the data is bounded and poor performers are naturally going to be more room to overestimate and good performers underestimate. I thought the point of DKE was that r was low,
Pigeon
coo coo
8mo ago
Isn’t climate change being expensive and uncomfortable in the long run a good enough reason to think about it, though?
Pigeon
coo coo
8mo ago
In fact I’m pretty sure refined flour has a higher glycaemic index than sucrose, owing to the fructose part of sucrose being more difficult to metabolise by humans.
That said putting extra sugar in surely doesn’t help
Pigeon
coo coo
9mo ago
As one random example: the invention of the (practical, iron) stirrup and (more advanced) saddle doesn't seem too significant to us because we don't care about horses, but it ushered in an era of political dominance by feudal lords and their knights.
Quibbling here, but the saddle was invented before the stirrup in Central Asia at the latest sometime in the first millenium BC (with Assyrians known to use saddle-like things), while stirrups were invented later (2nd c. BC toe stirrup in India vs 2-4th c. AD foot stirrup in China). Both were invented in the classical period.
I guess that proves your point?
I think this needs to be qualified with…something. It’s clearly not true for many things like shopping, restaurants, and not necessarily true for work.
And cars would often be even slower in the same environment!
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