anon_
22hr ago
Right, and I think when there is a real division in the community, we do have a higher obligation than when fringe elements try to pass off their ideas.
anon_
1d ago
I think I didn't communicate it clearly. People that profess pedophilia should be ridiculed and shunned. It's not a matter of accepting the idea, it's the very fact of openly brandishing that constitutes the harm to the social fabric.
The rules of The Motte are not applicable to society at large, any more than the rules of the Oxford Debate Club or the Japanese Parliament.
anon_
1d ago
my sense is that UCal has already been on a tighter leash for some of these things than many other unis
Yeah, California famously voted to make racial preferences illegal decades before SFFA v Harvard, and reiterated that in a recent vote.
It's one of those strange thing politically, that UCB might be far more progressive than (e.g. Brown) along a number of axes (Chesa failed upwards from his recall in SF to law prof) but has long had a far more meritocratic (albeit still biased) admissions process.
anon_
1d ago
I'm just flabbergasted that you posted something about Michael Jackson that doesn't have him a the peak of soft power. The man was among the first truly universal superstars. He commanded the admiration of millions.
anon_
1d ago
I think in the case of the USA the red and blue tribes share quite a lot
Indeed. I think the points of agreement are so broad and deep that they almost vanish into the background. We take them for granted and so the only things that are salient are the outliers.
anon_
1d ago
I don’t object to free expression of ideas even in contentious situations on controversial topics.
That is true. On topics where there is a live social controversy (most of the Culture War), this is probably ideal.
At the same time, I think this can be weaponized to by people that want to express ideas that are beyond the pale and who want to reap the social approval of having people accept their views because of "etiquette". One particular example that comes to mind is the voluminous academic (at least in the sense of "coming from the academy") literature rehabilitating the "Minor Attracted Person" and wanting us to take this idea seriously. It's a demand for social acceptance of something that society ought not accept.
Of course, the inverse kind of weaponization happens as well -- cancel culture as an entire phenomenon is predicated on wielding this against views for which there is no social consensus. The fact that some views are outside the window of acceptable discourse is temptation enough to realize that one can try to put one's opponents views in that bucket.
[ And of course, this is all inside the bounds of free speech. But then again agitating someone's employer to get them fire for asserting there are 2 genders is also free speech. That doesn't solve much. ]
anon_
2d ago
I hate to make everything into an object level thing but, I think it really does depend on whether there is a broad social consensus that A's opinion really is repugnant.
There is a desire in the post-enlightenment liberal universalism to insist that everything to be resolved on the meta level -- that one has to adopt a rule without any concrete referents and then to accept every substitution into them.
And, quite frankly, this is in general a wonderful invention. Hoisting these things into a second order algebra is a powerful social technology. Here, however, it seems to be taken too far.
anon_
3d ago
I find that anything between 7 and 13mm is both acceptable to the wife and doesn't get in the way.
anon_
4d ago
If you left Italy in the late 1800s, you couldn’t easily get back routinely to see family (whereas now it’s maybe a days travel). You couldn’t FaceTime them at a whim. You couldn’t text message them. The populations were truly cut off.
This probably cuts the other way. Everyone everywhere is already partially pre-assimilated to US cultural hegemony.
anon_
4d ago
No, that’s kind of my point actually. Even employers that want to verify applicants aren’t able to do so accurately.
anon_
5d ago
Well there ya go -- now we're at the point of tradeoffs with respect to the functions that are absolutely necessary.
It would be kinda silly if we both had government as a necessary evil and it was too disempowered to actually accomplish those ends.
anon_
5d ago
We should revisit this in a year or two to assess whether Trump's ICE, plus all the funding it got from the OBB, was able to accomplish this easy task.
anon_
5d ago
This may be true, but the price of accepting that (for us in the US) is that our government will never get a handle around removable aliens.
anon_
5d ago
I think the libertarian right is coming around to the fact that government is a necessary evil, and to that end it needs the powers to effect those necessary functions competently.
anon_
5d ago
That aside, I am a big fan of national ID cards. The US should have one, and so should every other country. I don't understand why the right is so opposed to it. It's the easiest way to control illegal immigration.
Moreover, in many other democracies that the US left idolizes, every contact with the government ends up being a check for immigration status, similar to how in the US all police will run you for warrants.
anon_
6d ago
Well, yes, but the AF were largely outvoted at the Constitutional Convention.
Im also real sick of “the bill of rights mandates (whatever political platform I’m on today)”. When my side wins election, it’s a principle of democratic governance. When my side loses, it’s about minimum liberal rights. Even Scott succumbs to this in latest ACX.
anon_
6d ago
If you had asked the founding fathers about the NSA, the crazy levels of nepotism and corruption and how self-centred the American elite is, they wouldn't have called shooting them terrorism.
If you had explained that these were the product of a representative government, they might feel differently. The Founders were not of the opinion that one has the right never to lose an election.
The whole bit about violence against a government was about the fundamental lack of representation. That's what the DOI is all about. It's not an anarchist document that entitles anyone to pick up a gun because they don't like the NSA or the FTC or whatever else. Indeed, the DOI spends a lot of time explaining that very point.
anon_
6d ago
Laid out in a case against commandeering local police to enforce federal gun laws, no less
anon_
13d ago
Yeah, you try to bribe them with $50K and they're gonna laugh. Their annual bonus is 5x that.
anon_
13d ago
Give it a day or two, but I predict a lot of "Why did you spend $50K of taxpayer dollars to try to entrap a high-level Republican on the basis of 'an unrelated investigation'?" takes.
The obvious answer is that they did the same for Menendez and Jefferson, despite the D in their name.
anon_
13d ago
It's a good chunk of most Americans' annual income, but it's not a lot in the tier of people we assume are running the upper end of world's most powerful government.
Your landscaper probably does a lot more work for a lot less money in the normal course of business than a corrupt public official does
Indeed. But the idea that he's doing so with capital worth more than the corrupt public official costs is the jarring part.
Well yes. You didn't pay for a QR code reader or buy a phone where someone is paid to write it as a native/bundled app. So the only incentive structure remaining is for someone to write a free one with the hopes of monetizing it later.
Or you could have just paid $50 for the game. Steam doesn't distribute malware and their website is pristine.
No, everything is an app and every app needs a business model. Sometimes the business model is clear (you pay us $90/yr, we give you app). Sometimes it's less clear but still approximately benign (you use Reddit, they sell the ability to mass-train on their content to AI company). Sometimes it's clear it's ad supported (Facebook, Chrome) with varying degrees of scrupulosity on their origins. Some are indeed funded philanthropically like Brave or Signal. Some are fundamentally scammy.
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