enormous danger of misinformation and disinformation.
I regret to inform you that you share a planet with people who believe in penis-stealing witches, and many of them don't even have Internet access.
The whole "misinformation" thing has always seemed strange to me. The original default was that everyone was always wrong about everything, 100% of the time. Recently, in large part thanks to the Internet, some people are occasionally less than 100% wrong. You might even say that the Internet made people less wrong (bah-dum tiss).
People being wrong is not a new problem and the Internet didn't make it worse.
During the life of Marie Antoinette, there was a scandal involving a diamond necklace that severely damaged her reputation. Except she had literally nothing to do with it, and she could prove that she had nothing to do with it. The French press vilified her anyway.
And who could forget about Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish military officer who was accused of selling secrets to the Germans? You know, the guy who was proven innocent and then dragged through the mud by the French press because the army was too embarrassed to admit they made it all up? The guy who was vilified because of a bunch of lying journalists and government officials? That guy?
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Hey, I'm starting to notice a pattern here. It seems like journalists and government officials have been spreading disinformation since before the invention of the telegraph. Maybe instead of giving journalists and government officials unlimited power to censor anyone who disagrees with them, we should consider that maybe the call is coming from inside the house.
Sunshine
3d ago
OK, fair enough, I guess a lot of people die before losing their teeth. Although I would argue that death means losing your whole body, including your teeth.
Sunshine
3d ago
Being exempt from taxes is small beans compared to having the right to divert tax revenue to yourself, which is the real prize.
Sunshine
4d ago
If you observe a person's number of teeth over time, you will find that they start with 0, rise to a certain peak, wobble a bit as baby teeth are lost and replaced, and then stay mostly stable at a certain number for a long time (possibly losing a few to accidents). Then, at the end of their life, they gradually lose teeth their one at a time until they have none.
If you were to look at a snapshot of a community, you would find that some children are gaining teeth quite quickly, the adults have a stable number of teeth, and the elders are gradually losing teeth. In a community that is 50% children (not rare historically) you might take an average and find that the number of teeth in the community is rising rapidly. However, if you were to extrapolate that to assume that the community's children are mutating into shark-like creatures who constantly grow more teeth, you would be making a mistake. In the long run, everyone ends up with exactly 0 teeth.
The mature civilizations of this planet are becoming less religious. It would be a mistake to assume the immature civilizations will continue their current trend lines exactly. It is better to assume they will follow the same course of evolution the more-developed civilizations took. The more-developed civilizations are becoming less religious over time, and unlike with children there are no new undeveloped civilizations rising up. It is reasonable to assume that, if things continue on as they have for another 100 years, secularism will continue to rise.
Sunshine
4d ago
Even if the overall population of Christians is going up due to population growth, there's a clear trend towards secularism in the countries at the end of their development cycles (high education, wealthy, etc). If current trends continue then all the currently-developing countries will eventually become developed countries and go through the same secularization process. If current trends don't continue then all bets are off anyway.
Also, it's pretty clear that political power has largely gone out of religion in the world's great powers. The Church of England used to spend its time trying to stamp out Catholicism in Ireland, now it's a nearly-atheistic social club. The medieval Vatican waged wars against kings and emperors, now the Pope is just a celebrity ruling over a country the size of a park. If you're at all familiar with the power religion used to have, it should be self-evident that it doesn't have that anymore.
Calling your belief system a religion makes you vulnerable to certain laws and regulations that apply only to religions. For example, you can't teach it in schools. Indoctrinating other people's children is one of the main reasons to have a religion in the first place, so it's no surprise that the religions with this disadvantage are dying.
Nowadays, if you have a metaphysical theory about the intangible nature of human essence with strong dictates about how humans should behave, you call it a new field of science and loudly insist that your priests are scientists. Since your "field of science" does not interact with any previously-existing field of science and all scientists within that field will be your priests, no one can prove your "science" wrong.
See: gender science.
I expect to see religions gradually replaced by a variety of woo-woo superstitions and mystery cults that loudly insist that they aren't religious in nature.
Sunshine
7d ago
I'm equally baffled by Trump's 180, and for the same reason. The best answer I can come up with is that Trump isn't on the list, but someone who is on the list has something on him.
Sunshine
7d 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
9d ago
I'll speak for the Irish famine: It was an act of nature. There is ample documentary evidence of the British government taking measures to alleviate the problem, such as repealing the Corn Laws to make food imports cheaper and arranging for large quantities of cheap cornmeal to be shipped from America and sold in Ireland at below market rates. These measures were taken at great political cost. Sir Robert Peel had to resign as PM after repealing the Corn Laws (they called him Sir Robert Repeal, no I'm not joking).
The potato blight was a Europe-wide phenomenon and Irish agriculture was notoriously backwards and over-reliant on the potato harvest. The fact that there was a famine is not surprising and I see no reason to blame the British. Contrary to popular belief, Ireland was a net food importer throughout the famine. This is in stark contrast to Ukraine during the Holodomor.
Sunshine
10d ago
Fair enough. I was knowingly putting a toe over the line to make a point, and I know I don't like it when other people break the rules just because they think they can get away with it. I have amended my call-out to attack arguments rather than people.
Sunshine
10d ago
Coco is about a living human exploring the world of the dead. I would argue that it fits the pattern. You just have to remove the requirement that the fish-out-of-water character be nonhuman.
Apply the same low bar consistently. Let people have an actual conversation with actual disagreement.
I am not aware of any banned person who was trying to have an actual conversation with actual disagreement. People mainly get banned for being obvious bad faith trolls who are just here to deliver drive-by insults and then vanish without making any arguments for their position.
Sure, there are some people who do that and don't get banned, but that's not quite the same thing, is it? I don't think it's so terrible to err on the side of giving people the benefit of the doubt. There are few enough posts here that tolerating a few more won't take away attention from anyone more deserving.
And for the record, I would be willing to bet that >75% of this forum is non-antisemetic (is there a word for that?) and a commanding majority support Israel over its various Muslim rivals. There are a few antisemites lurking about darkly Implying Things, but much like the leftists they tend to scurry away when you shine a spotlight on them rather than actually stand and fight.
It is not a consensus opinion that smothers dissent, it's the opposite. It's an embattled minority opinion that no one is willing to stand up and openly defend. You don't have to tiptoe around anything.
Here, watch: I think antisemetism is stupid. Much like a primitive savage who thinks thunder is caused by an angry god, many people anthropomorphize the impersonal forces of politics and economics. When confronted with a phenomenon one doesn't understand, one might assume it must be caused by a cabal of scheming humans. But cabals of scheming humans are rare, and the idea that an entire ethnic group is carrying out a conspiracy is preposterous. Keeping a secret on that scale is not possible, and the suggestion that such a conspiracy exists is reflective of a lack of understanding of the limits of large organizations more than anything.
I've called you out, antisemites of the Motte! I've dismissed your beliefs as mere superstition! Show me how fearsome and numerous you are! Dogpile me into oblivion!
I don't think the extra context actually does change the meaning at all. I'll apply some simplification to distill the meaning of the full paragraph:
This worldview would seem to conflict with HBD theories.
Summary: The "narrative" (as you put it) conflicts with HBD because...
Indeed, one would have to conclude that whites are an inferior race. Guatemalans in their "third-world s***hole" don't just sit around despairing, they cross multiple borders and look for work in a country where they can't even speak the language, while white men who got laid off in their rust-belt factory towns twiddle their thumbs and inject fentanyl, unable to compete with said Guatemalans.
Summary: HBD would require you to see whites as an inferior race...
They see whites like people have long seen the American Indians, a "noble" race who ought to "own" the country but who are ill-equipped to deal with the evils of modernity that more advanced peoples have introduced like liquor or fentanyl.[1]
Summary: They (here now referring to believers in your "narrative" rather than believers in HBD) see whites as a weaker and nobler race, much like the Noble Savage myth portrays American Indians...
But where this worldview makes some sense in the case of the Indians, it is utterly nonsensical to apply it to whites
Summary: But American whites aren't American Indians so the comparison is weak (then why did you make it?)
It seems clear to me that this is actually two statements without much connection between them.
Statement 1: If you take HBD seriously then you should see whites as an inferior race.
Statement 2: "Narrative" believers see American whites like Noble Savage-fans see American Indians.
To be clear, I never thought you were claiming that white people are racially inferior to Guatemalans. You say so in the very first sentence of the quoted section - this is what you believe to be the logical conclusion of HBD, not what you believe yourself. The context is there.
Everyone has understood this from the beginning, including the person you responded to. We know what you meant, and what you meant is precisely what we're objecting to.
Sunshine
10d ago
What you actually said:
This worldview would seem to conflict with HBD theories. Indeed, one would have to conclude that whites are an inferior race. Guatemalans in their "third-world s***hole" don't just sit around despairing, they cross multiple borders and look for work in a country where they can't even speak the language, while white men who got laid off in their rust-belt factory towns twiddle their thumbs and inject fentanyl, unable to compete with said Guatemalans.
Sunshine
10d ago
It "spoke plainly" and provided evidence.
I did not find your original post to be plainly spoken. Actually, I'd like to get into it.
You talk about your evidence, and you did provide some, but it was all in support of the things that didn't need supporting. I would be willing to take your word for it that blacks are more likely to die of opioids than whites, or that most men have jobs. These aren't exactly extreme claims in need of reams of supporting evidence. I would be willing to accept them for the sake of parsing the rest of your argument even if they weren't true.
Here's an example of a part of your post I would have liked to see some supporting evidence for:
The new narrative on the Online Right is that there's a huge mass of white men without jobs who have no choice but to inject fentanyl because of "the border" and free trade sending the factories to China.
The new narrative according to whom? Since when? This is a rather extreme claim, made right at the start, and the structure of the post is essentially arguing that this narrative is hypocritical. And yet you advanced this argument yourself. You aren't arguing against someone else making a coherent argument, you're assuming someone believes this thing and arguing against what you think they must think. So, the part of your post I would most need to see evidence for is that this "narrative" is actually a widespread belief, and you provide none.
Nearly every grand-theory-of-everything of why the world looks like it does today gets laughed out of any room with people who capable of deep critical thought in adjacent topics
Cool, I'm glad you found a way to dismiss a whole belief system based on how you imagine the relative status of people who believe in it compared to those who don't. I'm sure there's no need to engage with the object matter on this, your preconceived ideas are probably 100% right about everything.
Sunshine
26d ago
I'm no expert on Middle Eastern politics, but to me it looks like they agreed to a ceasefire because neither government has anything to gain from continued hostilities. Israel has already achieved its strategic objectives and Iran is struggling to effectively retaliate. Getting into a protracted war would be costly and destabilizing for both of them.
I'm putting my money on Nothing Ever Happens. If there was bombshell proof that Trump is a pedophile it would have been leaked years ago. In the absence of that, this will just be yet another lawsuit Trump gets embroiled in for years. People will forget about this in a week.
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