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SubstantialFrivolity

I'm not even supposed to be here today

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joined 2022 September 04 22:41:30 UTC
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SubstantialFrivolity


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
I'm not even supposed to be here today

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 22:41:30 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I agree. But it's not rape.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There's a whole lot of people in this thread who don't understand that being in the wrong isn't a zero-sum game. Like you said, it's hard to tell if the woman actually acted like the teens claim she did (since they have every incentive to lie and all), but still. Assuming they are telling the truth, it sounds like everyone here acted poorly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Why should anyone care, exactly? It's not like any of us are having sex with her. If her partners are fine with how she is (and they seem to be, if she's still having success getting some), then good for her I guess.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As I said, being in the wrong is not a zero sum game. They can be completely wrong in their actions, and she can be wrong in hers. I certainly am not saying that she was, because (as you, @Amadan and I all agree) they are likely to be lying just to save face. All I'm saying is that, if they are telling the truth, the nurse can be wrong without absolving them one bit.




I truly don’t understand your charity to them.




I'm not trying to defend them, and I don't understand why you act like I am. I'm simply pushing back on the idea that to say the nurse acted poorly means that the kids are absolved for their actions.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It used to be okay for something to not be for you.




It pains me that this is such a lost thing nowadays. There's nothing wrong with things that don't appeal to everybody! In fact, I would go so far as to say that's what makes life interesting - we can each be into different things that others would find unbearable, and we are better off for it because each of us is happier than with something that tried to appeal to everyone at once. But for some reason, that's now treated like it's morally abhorrent.


Also, maybe it's just my skewed perspective but it seems like the actual rule is even worse than "we must water everything down for everyone". It seems to be only the things that nerdy men enjoy which get this treatment. Board games have to be PC, video games must remove any trace of sex appeal because that scares off women, programming must be packed full of diversity statements and codes of conduct, etc. But nobody expects the local crochet club to change to appeal to men, etc. Basically, it feels like society kicked nerds out in the 80s, we went "ok whatever we're going to do our own thing", and now 40 years later the bullies are back to kick us out of the communities we built as a refuge from them in the first place. It really grates.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No it's not. Both sides mashing the defect button just makes everyone worse off.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Now, as much as I sympathize with the response, I have to admit it's rather high on copium. As we all know from our Internet Atheist days, the burden of proof is on the one making the claim...




In this case the response is correct, but that's mainly because the person they are responding to make such an absurdly strong claim. I think it's fair to say "it doesn't appear that the FBI contacted Twitter asking them to suppress the laptop story". It's another thing to say "he confirmed that the federal government, FBI, CIA, etc., did at no time, for any purpose, contact Twitter directly regarding the laptop story".


I also am really having a hard time understanding why this Baker guy was fired. He was fired for vetting the files without knowledge of new management? But new management is the one who is keen on disseminating these files. Why on earth would they fire him for advancing their goals? It makes no sense.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The whole idea of non-binary gender seems to me like it's a natural (and probably inevitable) result of the idea that gender is separate from sex. Occasional physical deformities aside, I imagine most people (though probably not all) would agree that we have only two sexes in mankind. So, if you take gender to be a euphemism for sex, then it naturally follows that there can only be two genders.


Decouple those concepts, though, and it's different. If gender is merely something to do with social norms and how you feel you fit into them, then it seems only natural that there can be more than two. There may be different combinations of social norms that one might group together in one package, and you as an individual may feel sometimes strongly drawn to one package, and sometimes to another.


Personally I think that the whole line of thought is nonsense. We have only two sexes, gender (as separate from sex) is not a thing, and so there's no "other" option for gender. But disagree though I do, I do at least think it's understandable how the non binary people are likely thinking about this topic.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think, and have always thought, that piracy is stealing. I don't say this in a sanctimonious way, as if I'm somehow above it - I used to pirate stuff quite freely in my younger days. I regret it now, but I absolutely stole that software/etc.




That changed about 4 years ago when I realized that I could not in good conscience pay money to Hollywood and leftist game developers. I am happy to pirate their software and steal their movies because the alternative is so distasteful to me.




The alternative here is to not consume it at all, not to pay for it. IMO what you're doing is no different morally than seeing a restaurant whose owner you dislike, so you dine and dash rather than paying the bill. I get why you're saying you aren't willing to countenance paying them money, but I don't see how that justifies theft. It's not like you need this stuff to live or anything.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm a fucking idiot for falling for the lie and I will pay a price for it.




I disagree. Because at the end of the day, your integrity is one of the few things you can actually control. You are proposing that you would give that up, for what? Some stupid grad school? Seriously, who the fuck cares? You aren't going to be actually worse off because of it, you aren't going to have opportunities denied because of it, it just plain and simple doesn't matter in the end.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Kind of off-topic, but what the hell is that columnist smoking!? No, a boy who goes "don't worry, I have pads just in case my friends need one" would not be drowning in prom invites. He would be relentlessly mocked and ostracized for that behavior. The only scenario in which it would perhaps go the boy's way is if he was hot, in which case he doesn't need to do that to attract girls anyway. Just an absolutely bizarre take that makes me wonder what the heck the writer is even thinking.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Why do you consistently assume that people who don't share your views of LLM capabilities just haven't seen what they can do/what humans can do? For example:




They can't code? Have you seen the average code monkey?




Yes I have (and of course, I've used LLMs as well). That's why I say LLMs suck at code. I'm not some ignorant caricature like you seem to think, who is judging things without having proper frame of reference for them. I actually know what I'm talking about. I don't gainsay you when you say that an LLM is good at medical diagnoses, because that's not my field of expertise. But programming is, and they simply are not good at programming in my opinion. Obviously reasonable people can disagree on that evaluation, but it really irks me that you are writing like anyone who disagrees with your take is too inexperienced to give a proper evaluation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Piracy might be morally wrong, but I've always felt like the attempt to compare it to "stealing" is incorrect. It's in a separate category. If I steal an apple, the merchant doesn't have the apple any more. If I pirate a movie, no merchant has been deprived of a DVD or anything like that - there's just one more copy of that movie in the world.




This is the usual argument that piracy is not stealing, yeah. I've never found it persuasive. IMO the salient thing which defines stealing isn't that it's zero-sum, it's that you're taking something which doesn't belong to you. So it doesn't matter that you are just copying bits, it's still stealing.




I feel like media companies have resisted moving to funding models that are a better fit for the world we live in, and trying to stop the creation of new copies when literally every person has the means of creating a copy in their pocket is Quixotic at best, whatever it might mean for morality.




I mean, yeah I agree that media companies are being idiotic. They have resisted new methods of doing business at every step of the way, right up until their hand is forced and it turns out they actually make more money the new way. But that doesn't mean it's OK to just steal their shit, nor that the law should turn a blind eye to it. Kind of like I was saying in my post above: if companies are retarded in their business practices you should by all means not do business with them, but it doesn't justify stealing from them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It provides a sense of pride when beating the game. The fact that some people cannot beat the game but you can, is a potential source of pride. If you enable everyone to beat the game, it is gone.




This is, to be blunt, a character flaw and not a good argument against difficulty settings. If your sense of pride in your own accomplishments depends on others not being able to do it, that reflects pretty poorly on you.


I find your other arguments flawed as well (though I don't want to go point by point because I find that kind of obnoxious). I think that the "it doesn't affect you" argument for lower difficulty settings is correct, and that your arguments don't really counter it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This is quite stupid, if you could have a kid by getting kicked in the balls you'd do it more than once.




I agree it's a poor argument, but I can assure you that this is not true. I know exactly zero men who would choose to get kicked in the balls even once to have a child, let alone more than once.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It isn't up to the current people to give it away to strangers.




It actually is. For better or for worse, having a democratic society means that the people get to make such decisions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


When I think back on Christianity, there are certain concepts that that strike me as peculiar. One of these is the concept that a one's salvation may hinge on a chance encounter with another person whose intervention changes one's life for the better. It strikes me as chaotic, random and therefore unfair.




For what it's worth (not that I am trying to get you back in the fold or anything), that is not really true as far as I know. The way I was always taught is that God deals with people with their circumstances taken into account. So if you consciously reject Jesus, you will likely be judged unrighteous after death (though in the end only God knows, at best we can just speculate). But if you just wind up never having heard of him during your life, that isn't going to factor in. Instead you would be judged based on how much you tried to do right insofar as you were taught it, and what your conscience nudged you to do.


Obviously Christianity has many different schools of though, so there are probably Christians who really do believe that if someone in an isolated Amazon tribe dies without ever having heard of Jesus, they're going straight to hell. But it definitely isn't what I was taught, at least.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Dude nobody gives a shit about how early or late it gets light. It's not a big deal. Changing clocks, on the other hand, is an inconvenience for everyone and it messes with time calculation as the Count rightly pointed out. If you're going to call people "moronic" you best bring an argument better than this weaksauce "oh no it'll be dark when I get up for work" shit.


Nobody is saying that changing clocks is the biggest inconvenience in the world. The point is that there's no corresponding benefit, so why keep it?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you truly believe that will happen, I can only say I don't think you've been paying enough attention to politics the past decade. Nobody has ever changed their behavior for the better when their opponents smash the "defect" button, it simply galvanizes them to do the same thing in return. The last 10-20 years of US politics has just been a cycle of parties playing dirty with each other every chance they can, and it has only spiraled into worse and worse offenses. There's zero reason to believe that this time it'll have a positive impact because it'll send a message about incentives.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The problem with HoD is honestly not the show itself, it's GoT. GoT had an amazing first season too! But after how abysmal the ending was, I'm not going to watch HoD until after it's over and we know if it wound up going to shit the way GoT did.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It’s like saying “maybe Pontius Pilot shouldn’t have signed that one guy’s death warrant, because letting an angry mob override the fair application of law and due process is wrong”.




That would be a pretty anodyne statement in Christian society. Pilate is not considered a positive figure precisely because he was derelict in his duty and put Jesus to death.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Perhaps instead, in reality it actually is wrong to imagine or fantasize about what other people look like while naked. The reason this is so commonly accepted as benign is because its so unenforceable to prevent.




IMO this is the correct answer. It is in fact wrong to fantasize about what someone looks like naked, or having sex with them, or what have you. It's very common, yes. But it's still wrong.


Let's say for example that you regularly fantasized about some female friend being naked. Furthermore, let's say you never told a soul but did write it in a diary which you kept safe and never let anyone see. Some might say you did nothing wrong. But even so, if your friend decided to snoop in your diary and found that out she would be profoundly creeped out, and the friendship would be seriously damaged. I think the same would happen for a male friend too, of course, this isn't a gender thing.




But if sexual mores are so arbitrary/constructed that something that would otherwise be wrong can just be arbitrarily agreed-upon as acceptable just because its unenforceable, how really wrong can any ('victimless') violation of sexual mores be said to be?




I don't think this is a good argument. First of all, we don't agree that it's acceptable. We simply realize that it's impossible to tell, so we can't do anything about it. Those aren't the same.


Second, I don't think that whether a norm is enforceable has any bearing on whether the activity is actually wrong. Even if we can't catch a murderer and bring them to justice, we don't say "well I guess it wasn't that wrong to murder that person". The immorality of an act, and our ability to punish that immorality, are unrelated to each other.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
While I applaud the attempt, I don't think you can solve anything this way. At its core, the trans debate is a values debate, not a confusion of terminology. The left-ish side (as I understand it, not trying to strawman) is that you need to do whatever you can to respect people's feelings, and that this stuff is all socially constructed anyway. So if John says he's Jane now, then you owe it to Jane to try to be courteous by respecting her decision. The right-ish side is that while respecting people's feelings is important, recognizing objective reality is more important. And if John says he's Jane now, yeah no he can't become John just by fiat. He's a man who wears dresses and got his genitals removed, not actually a woman (which is something we simply do not have the medical technology to grant at this time).


There's nuance to this, and it's basically impossible to boil everything down to a simple "this vs that" idea. I have no doubt that there are many people on both sides of the trans debate whose positions I didn't capture. In fact, I know there's a religious argument I didn't touch on and really is kind of orthogonal to the "anti" perspective I gave. But the point is, even though many different values exist in this soup, the fundamental issue is one of values. If it were a terminology issue, then it would've been resolved ages ago. So as much as I think your post is well-intentioned, I think it's also fundamentally incapable of actually resolving anything.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't really think that the theory of induced demand in traffic holds any water. As someone here (I forget who, so unfortunately I can't credit them) put it recently: in any other context, if building more capacity led to that supply being consumed as well, we wouldn't go "oh no, induced demand, let's stop here". We would say "holy cow, that's awesome - let's build even more capacity".


It's not impossible that traffic is a unique and special snowflake where normal human behavior doesn't apply, cats and dogs live together, etc. But I doubt that's the case.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


nobody holds their principles so highly that they won't discard them to safeguard their 2 year old child.




I absolutely hold my principles that highly. For example, if someone told me "you have to murder this other child or I'll kill your child", I wouldn't do that even if that meant my own child died (though I sure as hell would try to kill the attacker before that happened). Sometimes you have to uphold your principles no matter the cost to yourself or others. To do otherwise means you didn't actually have principles.


Now, if you said "most people don't actually hold the principles they claim to hold", I would absolutely agree with you. But there do exist people who live by inviolable principles, even if most people don't.