Tollund_Man4
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User ID: 501
Tollund_Man4
8mo ago
Even in very walkable cities, walking just takes forever.
Walkable usually goes hand in hand with cyclable no? At least in Europe this is the case. 15 minutes on a bike covers quite a lot of useful area if you're living near the city centre, even when I lived in what was considered an isolated outer suburb in an Irish city it took 20 minutes on a bike to make it into the city centre.
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
and saying rich men won’t enter heaven
I'm not that well read on the Bible but isn't the point of that verse to say that even the rich (seen as the most blessed) can't get into heaven without the grace of God? If the point is to say that material well-being wins you no points with God, placing so much weight on a materialist philosophy like Marxism seems to be making the same mistake in reverse.
Tollund_Man4
9mo ago
If you're only doing that because you want people to find you more attractive and not because the progress justifies itself I think there would be a problem. Would this stuff be worthwhile even if it didn't get you attention from women? It should be, and you're not going to surpass any heavy lifters if you're relying on a steady increase in female attention for motivation i.e. onlymenaremiring.png.
Tollund_Man4
8mo ago
The purpose of getting someone to admit their hero/myth is flawed is because you're trying to signal to others WARNING: HERETIC and poison the well. If it didn't affect the idea, a person wouldn't lead off a discussion with "this guy is a racist, though, right?"
I'll grant that this is often a reason. I do think we have other genuine reasons of it not being an attempt to poison the well, I've brought it up before but philosophy professors will often start their attempt to impress the value of a thinker upon their students by admitting all the terrible and crazy things about them history has revealed.
When it comes to an adversarial discussion, you might be poisoning the well by referring to a thinker's past crimes, you might also just be seeing if your interlocutor holds any insane beliefs resulting from hero worship or ideological blindness. Ideally they come out of it having established their credibility as someone who will admit fault when he sees it but still give praise when he thinks it's due.
Depending where the debate is on the scale of rap battle to Oxford debate you might be able to trust the audience to make distinctions here.
A man being a great man is the best foundation to follow him or be a follower. I sincerely do not understand what would be a better reason. Without men, ideas are irrelevant.
A better reason would be that you follow his ideas because they work no? There are lots of great men of history that would be hard to follow in any political sense because their ideas are either inapplicable in the modern day or obviously terrible. Jefferson is remembered because the constitution he helped design worked well enough that we still consider his political thoughts relevant (in more than a purely historical sense).
Tollund_Man4
8mo ago
Okay, so it's theoretically possible for this to not poison the well or destroy the myth/hero which forms part of the identity the person you're talking to, now what?
I don't need to argue that it's theoretically possible to avoid destroying the myth, just that destroying the myth behind a person doesn't discredit whatever lessons you might draw from their writings or actions.
if the point was to discuss their "still" worthwhile ideas, why didn't the discussion start there? because the destruction and poisoning the well is the point of this sort of comment
The mythology itself can be an obstacle to discussing someone's ideas. "I'm a follower of Jefferson because he was a great man" is no foundation, "I believe in the principles espoused in the Declaration of Independence" is more substantial even if you admit the moral failings of the author.
Tollund_Man4
8mo ago
Right, maybe that discomfort is also the feedback by which people are motivated to stay in shape. If I go for a cycle and feel terrible, the cycling itself won't have done much for me but it will be a wake up call for me to cut down on smoking/drinking/gaining weight (or if I'm feeling lazy, a wake up call to quite cycling).
Tollund_Man4
8mo ago
Here's a hard bullet to bite: perhaps things don't usually get better.
I haven't actually said they will get better. Dropping out of adult life has a cost, someone might have squandered most of their opportunity by the time they decide to change. My point was just that the addictions we associate with 'checking out' come first (whether or not they're causative).
If you wind up reaching an adult height of only 5'1" and realize that you don't have what it takes to become a billionaire, you're going to be making some frankly rather nasty compromises if you want a partner.
There are guys who are 5'1" and there are guys who are so ugly they are hard to look at, but even amongst guys who don't have romantic success or were bullied in highschool, these people are the minority. Even amongst the cohort of sexless young men they are the exceptions.
Tollund_Man4
8mo ago
You can get rhyming translations that try to maintain the spirit of the poem while making it amenable to English ears.
Tollund_Man4
10mo ago
So from the perspective of you, as an individual, do you inherit both the benefits of an advanced civilization AND the penalties of a history of oppression? How does that balance out in terms of what you're 'owed' in the present?
Thinking more on this it's clear that evaluating how things 'balance out' has a utilitarian presumption behind it, whereas I think the most plausible case for treating historical grievances with importance takes a more traditional view of specific 'crimes' commited which demand redress (greivances based on systemic inequalities where there's no obvious unjust act are a more recent innovation). So, as would be the case with any crime, you demand redress for the specific wrongs done and ignore the question of whether you'd be better or worse off in the counterfactual. Breaking into someone's house is still breaking into someone's house even if you leave a bag of money in their living room.
The most straightforward cases of this in history are the demanding of an official apology, the return of titles, legal rights, or land. The discourse of monetary reparations already veers too far into the murky waters of utilitarian calculations to be workable in my opinion.
I don't know why Europe industrialised while China didn't, the latter are in the same boat as other more warlike peoples for failing to do so.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
I think in that case it's more a matter of moral motivation than moral clarity. Disputing what is good vs knowing the good but failing to act on it.
Christians don't kid themselves here and readily admit that they are flawed relative to what God demands of them, the rest of us might at least take the lesson that the path to the good life may not ever intersect the path of least resistance.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
I don't think that personal aesthetics become morals just through multiplication. Whether it's one person or many, you need more than a head count to substantiate a moral claim.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Why do we eat meat? Because we like meat. That we like it is justification enough, because humanity alone is the arbiter of right and wrong.
Why use 'we' here? Humanity is divided on this issue or else there would not be a debate. If you want to say 'meat eaters alone are the arbiters of right and wrong' that would be more precise and would sound pretty cool, but I'm not sure it settles anything.
Tollund_Man4
1mo ago
Rinne me rud isteach sa leithreas, an bhfuil tú ag iarradh é a ceannaigh?
Best I can do without looking it up.
There aren't any other non-white TDs (members of parliament) to make the attempt in the first place (and Varadkar is already half-Irish). At the moment it looks like Simon Harris is going to be the next Taoiseach, he's shifty-eyed even for a politician.
Tollund_Man4
1mo ago
If the secessionist group has a good chance of turning into some kind of functional government, and the current situation is one where unity with the larger doesn't offer anything to the smaller (or actively hinders them), and you aren't dooming your people to a hopeless and bloody end, then I think you can try your hand at seceding in good conscience. The last qualifier is up for debate as martyred heroes can inspire future generations, but as an uninvolved outsider it's probably a moral line you want to draw.
Tollund_Man4
3mo ago
Jeffrey the Librarian does a lot of interesting stuff on the early United States/Thirteen Colonies.
I also really liked Epic History TV’s hour long episodes on Napoleon’s campaigns.
Tollund_Man4
4mo ago
Hume's Enquiries concerning Human Understanding to brush up on a book I've had a lot of second-hand exposure to but never actually read, and Costin Alamariu's Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy.
Tollund_Man4
4mo ago
I haven’t played Victoria 3 but my experience with other Paradox games is that you have to read a few guides and ask questions on the related subreddits to actually understand how to play. You could be 100 hours in and still not be certain about the workings of certain mechanics.
Tollund_Man4
4mo ago
It's an interesting question, I have to get off my computer soon so these will be scattered points but I might write a long post on the situation in a few days and see if the other Irish posters here agree. The short answer is I don't see it happening anytime soon.
Woods and the rest of the Irish far-right have been making a hell of an effort to link their brand of nationalism to Irish republicanism - the only cause with a real populist spark - but it's an uphill battle and they've got the much more organised, motivated (and as they hate me pointing out, better armed) republicans up north to contend with. To be fair the attempt has gotten its own debunking article from the national broadcaster so it's definitely gotten people's attention. Woods has his own unique downsides too, as much as the Israeli government may dispute this actual anti-semitism is not a good look, there are very few Jews in Ireland in the first place and getting angry about them makes you sound like you'd be more at home in some other country that cares about this stuff. His and the Irish far-right's internet savviness is very helpful when it comes to embarrassing the government, but because the internet is global you risk associating yourself with based British nationalists. Tommy Robinson has shown up to a few protests in Dublin and this fact has been jumped on immediately to discredit the movement whenever it has happened, I've seen a few Irish Twitter right-wingers fiercely condemning each other over this otherwise natural alliance.
The National Party is making the effort to knock on doors and win some votes the traditional way but it has had basically zero success. I won't write them off completely though as the few members I know are extremely motivated and I expect that will hold for their next batch of recruits.
The peaceful protests against and arson attacks on migrant housing seem to be organic, the far-right do show up to these town hall meetings and do share inciting material online, and leftists take this as evidence that this is all the result of conspiracies, but they haven't been able to actually get themselves into a leadership position. There was a bit of a controversy over one of these guys showing up to a small town called Oughterard a few years back while the locals were objecting to migrant accomodation. Oughterard is no more far-right than it was a few years ago, the energy evaporated once the matter was settled.
All of this being said: (i) I have been repeatedly surprised by the willingness of random townspeople to protest, and (ii) Irish people are struggling economically and the country is changing rapidly so old expectations may not hold.
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
I don't think we disagree in that case. I don't know much about Irish-Americans outside of their influence back in Ireland (they were always more bitter towards the British), so I'll take your word for it.
Tollund_Man4
7mo ago
I never considered it from this angle before. I'm usually in favour of letting kids work for the character benefits but you do raise a good point.
Tollund_Man4
7mo ago
Thanks.
Tollund_Man4
7mo ago
The 3P standard?
I would say that the first two lead to the second.
How one can be stupid but still have a high IQ is an interesting question. You can be intelligent but lazy, intelligent but incurious, but how about an intelligent ignoramus? Laziness and incuriousity can lead someone into becoming an offensively ignorant person, would we call that person offensively ignorant yet intelligent? It seems there are more paths to stupidity than low IQ.
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