Sunshine
1mo ago
Talking shit about people is not "cyberbullying".
In your opinion, what is the difference between talking shit about people and cyberbullying?
It's a bunch of people getting together and harassing an outsider as a form of entertainment and group bonding activity, and they're doing it over the internet. Sounds like cyberbullying to me.
I'm shocked by how many people on TheMotte seem to have such a visceral disgust reaction to Aella.
For my part, I'm disgusted that so many people seem to think it's okay to cyberbully celebrities. Punching is OK as long as you're punching up? That's the logic of someone who just wants an excuse to punch people. The knowledge that thousands of people who barely know anything about you have decided to hate you as a social activity is damaging to the human mind. It's cruel to do that to someone. I also think it's unhealthy to participate in an internet hate mob. It makes people petty and frivolous.
All around it's a negative for everyone involved. If I find out that someone has wrapped their identity around performatively hating someone they've never met, it lowers my opinion of them. That holds true whether the target is Elon, Aella, or Adolf Hitler. There is just no good reason to invest your emotions in someone you have never met and will never meet.
If you think human sacrifice is good, then you should say so outright and explain why you believe that. If you think that ethics classes are not "total non-sense taught by dimwit professors" as the above poster claims, then you should say so outright and explain why you believe that.
But please don't gesture vaguely in the direction of doing further research to nay-say the value judgements of those who have stronger opinions than you.
There is no amount of research that will convince me that human sacrifice is good. It's not because I'm stubborn or closed-minded, it's because I have a coherent moral worldview. Reading about it may be interesting but it will never change my mind.
If the best argument in favor of university-level ethics classes you can muster up is that I should do more research so that I can discover for myself an argument in favor of their existence, then that suggests that they are truly without any value whatsoever. It's a rare and pitiable thing to see a position so devoid of merit that even its defenders can't bear to speak in its defense. If nothing else the Aztecs were at least capable of making arguments to justify their actions.
Sunshine
10mo ago
Optimal for what purpose? In order to optimize you must first have a goal.
Sunshine
2yr ago
Well Jewish people tend to concentrate into a few cities, such as New York and Washington DC, so you would want to compare Washington DC to one of the other cities that contain large numbers of Jewish people. I expect that an AP math class in Beijing won't have very many Jews, for example. Cities that you could compare it to include Philadelphia, LA, Boston, and Chicago, all of which I'm sure have the expected demographics in their AP math classes.
I believe they should review different professional ethic systems to understand how they differ in what they emphasize.
Before we continue this discussion, I believe you should read all 7 Harry Potter books. I also believe you should read the Bible and the Torah. I believe you should read the Dead Sea Scrolls. I believe you should have an AI translate all 7 Harry Potter books into Swahili and read them again. Learn Swahili first if you have to, time is apparently no object. I believe you should read every word ever written by Thomas Aquinas. I believe you should re-read them, but this time reinterpret them as the works of Thomas Aquinas's black trans lesbian housekeeper, plagiarized without credit.
I think you're operating under a misconception. You seem to think I disagree with the concept of reading things. I do not. My point of contention with you is that you are not making any actual arguments in favor of your position. Telling people to read more books is not an argument.
It's not that I don't know enough about ethics, or that I haven't considered the possibility that other people might believe different things than me. My point is very simple: If you're here to make an argument, then make it. If you're not here to make an argument then you should at least stop trying to give people homework.
The presumption that the only reason anyone might disagree with you is that they haven't done enough research is not charming.
I'm a free speech absolutist, but I am willing to sacrifice Kanye West's free speech if it helps us win. I could tolerate a world where speech is free except for one unprincipled carve-out banning antisemitism. Twitter probably has to do that anyway to comply with German laws against Holocaust denial.
I guess the question is whether it helps. I think it does. The ban might reassure moderates. It's probably better to let this one go by and wait for a more favorable example to fight over.
Sunshine
7mo ago
Demanding more effort is not the same thing as demanding less rage. This post is neither rage-posting nor outgroup-bashing, but you're giving it a mod warning for not "providing more than a Twitter link." What's wrong with a Twitter link? Why should you require more effort from top-level posts? Have you considered the possibility that this is actually an appropriate amount of effort relative to the subject matter? Have you considered the possibility that adding more effort to this Twitter link might not actually increase the quality of the post, because more effort is not called for in this particular situation?
Sunshine
1mo ago
If Israel were to do everything they could to kill as many Gazans as possible without losing what remains of international support,
See, now we've gone from talking about facts to reading minds. How do you distinguish someone who wants to kill as many Gazans as possible but is held back by the international community from someone who acts in line with the attitude of the international community because they're part of it? You're essentially blaming them for things they aren't doing, but which you assume they want to do.
If you ever get a chance, do a self-driven review compare / contrast of ancient human-sacrifice rituals for different religions with different stakes in humans harm. Even if it's just the Aztecs cutting out hearts to prevent the universe from ending, or the Carthaginians burning babies alive in honor of Moloch, the overlaps and distinctions in what they think human sacrifice will accomplish can be enlightening.
And then, once you've read that, presumably you will somehow have changed your mind and believe human sacrifice is a good thing instead of a senseless waste of human life. You will probably even want to sacrifice your own children to Moloch, when the time comes. I know I haven't provided any reason why that should be the case, but apparently that's how this works now.
One thing is for sure, though: I have a higher opinion of the moral and ethical foundations of Aztec priests cutting the still-beating hearts out of the chests of POWs than I do of the sorts of people who teach ethics classes. At least the Aztecs had the excuse of not having access to better information, something that cannot be said of someone who works in a modern university.
Sunshine
7mo ago
As a regular Motte reader and occasional poster, I think your standards for posts are too overbearing. The Motte's biggest problem is the lack of content, and the reason for the lack of content is that the mod team is strangling it. The Motte needs more lower-quality posts, not fewer higher-quality posts.
You're not going to run out of space.
Sunshine
10mo ago
Because consumers hate it when prices increase. When inflation hits, grocery stores prefer to raise their prices in one big jump rather than many small jumps - or so I've been told. The idea is that if you increase prices by X 5 times the consumers will register 5 separate increases, but if you raise it by 5X then they'll only register one increase. Because of that, grocery stores (and stores in general) will increase their prices ahead of expected inflation to avoid having to continue to make small price increases over time.
The logic is essentially that stores are currently priced according to next year's inflation. When inflation is low that's no big deal, but when it's high it can be a pretty penny. Continuing that logic, they could be forced to match current inflation rather than preemptively raising prices for future inflation. This would shave a small but meaningful amount off prices.
Sunshine
2d ago
that the Democrats support illegal immigrant child slavery on drug farms?
Is this controversial? The Democrats support having lots of illegal immigrants working at below market rates by violating labor laws. I don't think many mainstream Democrats would deny it, although they would probably phrase it differently. That naturally includes underaged workers.
It's the logical conclusion of having a large population of undocumented people. I think pretty much every Democratic politician who has any interest in illegal immigrants is at least aware that it's happening. Presented with a choice between allowing them to operate without the protection of labor laws or getting law enforcement involved and likely getting them deported, they are choosing the former in full knowledge of the consequences of that choice because they think it's the option that causes less harm.
Have any Democrats spoken up about the dozen antifa who organized that pathetic mass murder attempt on ICE agents?
This is a poor comparison. AOC is an elected official, the perpetrators of the "pathetic mass murder attempt" are a handful of deranged crooks.
Sunshine
27d ago
Is there another nation-building strategy that has been proven more effective? I only said it was the most effective strategy that has been tried so far. I didn't say it was neighborly.
That was what jumped out at me, too. Frankly it makes me think that I really ought to try Tinder again with some better photos, if this is all it takes.
Sunshine
1mo ago
I believe the point is that if America did kill 36 million Chinese civilians, the Chinese would nuke Los Angeles and America would have only itself to blame.
The moral of the story is: Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Sunshine
2mo ago
As an aside, I think it's in bad taste to use the term MAGA as if it was some kind of entity or group. You only do it once in the top-level post, but you use the term frequently in your replies below.
First of all it's extremely vague. There is no club of MAGA card-holders. You're just using the term to vaguely gesture in the direction of Donald Trump's supporters. When you say "MAGA won" what exactly do you mean by that? What is MAGA and what did it win? If you're referring to the Republican Party's trifecta victory in the 2024 election, I think it would be more appropriate to refer to them by their proper name. If you're referring to something else, then I think you should define what this "MAGA" entity is and what exactly you believe it won.
Secondly, it's disrespectful to refer to an entity or group by a term it does not use to refer to itself. I would say the same thing to someone who went around ranting about "SJWs" or "Feminazis" or "the Deep State." If you have something important to say about the United States civil service or a particular group of activists, your point is not diminished by calling them by their proper name. If you need to refer to them by a derogatory nickname to make your point then that's a clear sign that you don't actually have one.
Sunshine
10mo ago
Will a second assassination attempt give Trump a bump in the polls? The first one didn't. I'm curious to see how this plays out.
I feel like you're trying to lead into some kind of "da joos" point, but if anything prominent Jews in the media have been unusually likely to break ranks lately. Between the increasing emphasis on race and the heating up of the Israel/Palestine conflict it's been a difficult few years to be a high-profile left-wing Jew.
Demographically I would say the people I'm talking about are disproportionately white women, but aside from that they tend to be pretty ethnically diverse.
An expectation that tenants have some remaining claim on the land they live on after it's been sold is worth exactly as much as the paper it's not written on. On every continent, the imposition of modern property rights involved the dissolution of these supposed expectations without compensation. It happened in Britain with the Enclosures, in China and Russia during their respective Communist takeovers, and in the Americas when the colonial governments got out their maps and started drawing rectangles so they could sell them to people.
In fairness to the former tenants, this dissolution often caused mass human suffering. In fairness to everyone else, there was no vote to give these arbitrary land-based privileges to that particular handful of tenant farmers. Neither the people at large nor the governments in charge agreed to perpetuate any such rights. You can't run a modern state on vague feudal expectations.
It would be arbitrary and unusual to single out this one strip of the former Ottoman Empire to operate under the rules of the feudal system when practically every square inch of the rest of the world had either been converted to private property or was in the process of being converted to private property.
The privilege of forcing other people to live according to your arbitrary and whimsical ideas about property rights is exclusively reserved for those too well-armed to evict.
Well, the foreign policy administration of the US Government disagrees with you on that. Now-President Joe Biden once made a speech in which he argued that Israel is "The best $3 billion dollar investment we make," and that “If there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one to make sure our interests were preserved.”
You could argue that he was lying for some reason, and that he actually thinks Israel is a bad investment but is trying to mislead the American people. That strikes me as a bit too conspiratorial to be true. I don't think the US Government has that many layers. It would require that Joe Biden, current president of the United States, is funnelling huge amounts of government money into a project that he secretly believes is bad for America, in order to support a foreign country, for some reason. You could also argue that he thinks that what he's doing is right, but that he's wrong. That's certainly possible, but then it becomes self-defeating; if the United States supports Israel because the President thinks that's good foreign policy, but he's actually mistaken, that would be pretty normal. World leaders sometimes make mistakes. It certainly wouldn't make the alliance somehow illegitimate or unworthy of consideration.
Supporting Israel is in-character for the USA. They support lots of countries in order to spread their influence around the globe. They've supported South Vietnam, South Korea, West Germany, Taiwan, various South American military dictatorships, and let's not forget about Ukraine. They've put bases in Canada, Japan, and Germany. They like to have leverage they can use to exercise control. None of this means that South Korea ought to give up and let Korea be reunited under the Kim family, or that West Germany should have fought a one-on-one grudge match with East Germany to decide once and for all who should get to form the united German government. The whole point of American power is that they can use their advanced training and military hardware to pick winners, ideally without putting American boots on the ground.
You're saying that "Western interests" should "compel a single-state solution," but, like, why? The Palestinians have nothing to offer the West. The result of a one-state solution would be a sudden regime change as the Islamist majority inevitably elects a new Islamist government in the new state of Palestine. Do you think refugee crises and regional instability would be less likely after a genocidal Islamist government takes over a previously Jewish-majority nuclear power? If so, why?
If there's one thing you can say about Israel, it's that they definitely won't nuke Istanbul. I could not say the same about Hamas.
The case for a right-of-conquest is seriously undermined by the fact that Israel owes its existence - its entire conquest as such - to foreign powers and continued foreign aid in its defense, and foreign intervention in destabilizing or outright destroying its adversaries.
No? The case isn't undermined by the fact that Israel has allies. Why would it be? It would be seriously undermined if Israel didn't have allies. Allies make you stronger, and right-of-conquest is about being strong. This isn't some kind of faux chivalry thing where it only counts if it's a fair fight between equals.
The whole point of my argument about right-of-conquest is that, when it comes down to the quality of life of the people who actually have to live there, it doesn't matter how you came into possession of your new territories. Right-of-conquest is just an acknowledgement that you do possess those territories and that you aren't going to give them back, so the sooner everyone accepts that the sooner everyone can get on with their lives.
At the end of the day, most of the borders that we accept as lawful were only drawn over the strenuous objections of the defeated. Having allies often helps you win, and many of the borders that exist today were drawn by coalitions of powerful nations. The Dutch are independent from their larger neighbours, France and Germany, in large part because the British kicked the French out in 1815 and the Germans out in 1945. The Dutch certainly didn't defeat either France or Germany in some kind of absurd no-allies-allowed fair fight. They made a strong ally over religious ties and shared interests and that strong ally backed them up when it counted.
Almost all modern wars are fought between coalitions of allies, and both the Israelis and Palestinians have drawn on coalitions of more powerful allies in their various conflicts - just as Israel's allies often draw on its support in their various conflicts. In fact, if anything, Israel is almost unique among modern nations in that it fought some of its wars without the support of allies, an extremely rare event in the modern era.
If your side cared to, they could write the law to strength their position without relying on prosecutors.
Is this actually true? This sounds false to me. Can you actually write a law that can be enforced without the need for a trial? If so, people are definitely sleeping on this hot new strategy.
We can try and trace the culprit, we can prosecute, but under the present political system, there are problems about the government actually guaranteeing a conviction.
-Sir Humphrey Appleby
I guess the answer is that you have ICE round people up and deport them to El Salvador without a trial. Which, amazingly, is the exact strategy the Trump administration has hit upon. And they didn't even need to pass any legislation to do it!
Just because it's never worked before, that doesn't mean it won't work this time.
That isn't a joke. It's probably true that grocery chains are overcharging a little bit right now. If the price controls are done very delicately, they might be able to reduce prices a little bit without damaging the economy.
The USA is more advanced than Venezuela. There are lots of things the USA can do that Venezuela can't. Successful price controls could be one of them.
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