ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
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User ID: 626
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11hr ago
This is symmetrical to what Darwin is claiming with JK Rowling.
Still not quite. What's missing is the reasoning for this claims being justified by some passage from Biden's autobiography, the other poster arguing that said passages say no such thing, it turning out that the original poster hasn't even read the autobiography and is blindly repeating completely made up claims, and when that's pointed out he then says "it doesn't matter".
It's not false at all that at least some factions of the Republican party want to eliminate trans people, although this need not necessarily mean "death camps". For some it probably does mean death camps though.
There are some factions that want to ban the whole Gender Affirming Care thing, and abolish all the special accommodations given to trans people. Sure, this is often interpreted by the pro-trans side as eliminationist, though such usage of the word is unconventional, and any honest person participating in a conversation would qualify it properly.
If you actually truly believe that the second sentence is a reasonable thing to say about any non-negligable amount of Republicans, and if you really truly believe there's nothing at all egregious about this conversation, then please step me through some of the other examples of bad posts you've given. Why is it ok to say "JK Rowling
I don't mind Darwin's opinions, just his debating tactics, but you seem to be objecting to the content of people's beliefs, which is a weird approach for me in itself, but combined with saying the content of Darwin's post is fine, actually, it's incomprehensible to me.
Is it that he didn't explicitly admit he was wrong about the point on JK Rowling? Nobody every does this in debates
Absolutely false. Plenty of people do. I'm sure you do so quite often yourself. Just off the top of my head, you didn't react to the link where GuessWho admits he's Darwin by saying "pff, that doesn't matter".
What is more rare, and should not be expected of others, is changing your mind about your broader worldview during the course of the debate, but conceding basic factual statements is a prerequisite for having a reasonable conversation. If you don't have that, you're not even in a conversation, you're in Monty Pythons Argument Clinic
Is it that his original post had an offhanded bailey in it that he abandoned to focus on defending the motte instead? See my prior post: yeah, it's a bit annoying, but it's very common.
Is it that he didn't bother to defend the bailey even though that's a prime area where Amadan wanted to press him on? You mentioned him saying "it doesn't matter" was a problem, but obviously people shouldn't be forced to defend dumb positions if they'd rather give up and just implicitly accept an L on a given topic.
An implicit L would be just dropping the topic of JK Rowling altogether, not trying to claim he didn't actually mean her specifically when he said "people like JK Rowling", then claiming he has good reasons to believe she actually has more extreme views than she lets on, based on her portrayal of trans people in her books, and then claiming none of it matters when it turns out he was wrong about her books. An explicit L should definitely be expected from a reasonable person, when they make a mistake of this magnitude.
Also, the moment you call it a motte and bailey, you concede the entire issue, in my opinion. Motte and Bailey is a dishonest, bad faith, and manipulative debating tactic, that's just an objective fact. As to whether he should be forced to defend the bailey, no - there should be no bailey! The whole spirit of this place is that any position that comes out of your mouth is one that you should be willing to defend. It's in the website's sidebar:
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
It's in the freakin' domain name!.
If you're still thinking "what's the big deal?", it's that his wasting people's time. I don't mind drive-by trolls like AlexanderTurok or BurdensomeCount, because they're signaling clearly that 90% of their content is just bants. I roll my eyes and move on, or I join in on the banter, either way I know what I'm getting into. OTOH, If I'm joining what appears to be a reasonable conversation I want to take it seriously. I don't particularly care for how outlandish an idea is, how absurd and obviously wrong it seems, if it is held sincerely, I want to see what makes the person tick, or to see if I'm missed some critical facts about the world if my worldview is so distant from their's. When it turns out I'm not in a conversation, but a 5D word-judo fight where it can easily turn out that "people like JK Rowling" doesn't mean "a group of people that JK Rowling is a central example of", but "a tiny subgroup that is in the same cluster as JK Rowling, because said cluster is defined to span half of the entire society, if not more", then I'm going to feel like an idiot for jumping into it to begin with.
You claim this sort of behavior is very common, but this is clearly disproven by the fact that people we able to recognize Darwin under his new alt, specifically by his particular brand of dishonesty, bad faith, and manipulation.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
And my argument is that they're not functionally the same. Any right-winger acting like him would be instabanned, he was actually given a lot of leeway.
You're trying to claim that all the instances of different people occasionally being assholes somehow add up, if they come from the same ideological background.
But then Darwin clarifies what he really meant, and it just came down to butting heads over whether that was reasonable or not
If I start saying things about "people like Ben Garrison", you call it a personal attack, and I'll clarify I didn't mean you, I just meant people like you, will you accept the logic of that statement?
It wasn't a clairifiaction, it was an obvious attempt to avoid accountability for what he said. This is obvious because even as he backed away from the "eradicate trans people" thing, he doubled down on the claims of generic transphobia, which were directly shown to be just as dishonest. Even that wouldn't be so bad, at the end of it all he managed to get something like "shit, I fucked up, you were right" out his throat, but it's something he never does.
If you think otherwise, I urge you to consider that you're irrationally biased in favor of anyone going against the grain of this forum.
Like, yeah, I think Darwin is wrong too, but I certainly wouldn't want to interact with a person who responded like that.
Are you assuming Darwin is an otherwise good faith poster, and deserves to be treated as such despite his long history of posting here. I think it's your turn to give some links proving your point.
I already gave you one, and again, if you don't know the Smollet thing, you don't know anything about the guy.
And if you didn't interact with him much, then how are you making the claim about "the only reason people hated him"?!
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
The fact it keeps happening over and over across many different posters should be sufficient evidence that it's a systemic issue,
I get why it feels like that from the perspective of someone who disagrees with the majority of the forum. People start blurring into a single indescript swarm, and it's all the same to you if it's one guy being and asshole one day, and another guy on another day. But this is madness, and I do not believe that you would ever accept the framework off aggregating assholes by ideology, and deploying moderatory actions adjusted for that, if it was your ideology, or you personally in the line of fire
Right-leaning mods are naturally going to feel that left-leaning posts are far more hostile and delusional than the average right-leaning post, which is probably why a post like Turok's gets banned while something like this gets AAQC'd.
If you're trying to tell me gatsuru is somehow as bad as AlexanderTurok, you're going to have your work cut out for you. For starters, don't you think keeping up with all these court cases required several orders of magnitude more effort than anything Turok has ever done here?
The basic idea is that you need intelligent high-agency people to win / get anything done, and so movements should try to appeal to such people rather than alienate them.
I don't even think the basic idea is wrong per-se, but the people putting it forward tend to insist, in a childish Joffrey Baratheoneque way, that they are the Elite Human Capital that needs to be appealed to, and so you must do their bidding, They also seem unaware that even if they were accepted as such, it would come with it's share of duties and responsibilities to their followers. I'd also quibble about the appeal / alienate thing, because the EHCs are very anxious about their status, and can be arm-twisted to do your movement's bidding.
Yes. If you think people only hated Darwin because he was unabashedly left-wing, you should consider if you're not doing the inverse. Maybe you only liked him because he was going against the grain (and maybe that's the only reason you like Turok).
If you told me "come one, he's not that bad, you just have an axe to grind against him" about almost anyone else, I could hear you out, but the fact that you think this is a plausible claim about Darwin in particular makes it extremely likely that you're the one that's irrationally biased.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
This is the second time I'm telling you, I already gave you the link to his totally good faith, absolutely not obnoxious, JK Rowling debate. FCFromSSC has links of his own can at least stop acting like people aren't giving you links?
First off I think there ought to be much more stringent thresholds for people who are part of the conversation vs people who aren't
Great, because if his argument is valid, then it wouldn't be talking about anyone who's part of the conversation, just people like them. So none of what you said applies.
Second off I agree that it's generally bad to put words in peoples' mouths or to think much stronger statements are implied by things people actually did say. There has to be some limitations to this or else any sort of debate is effectively impossible, but Darwin definitely exceeded what could be reasonably claimed by JK Rowling's words.
The issue isn't him putting words in JK Rowling's mouth, people do that all the time as part of completely normal acceptable conversations. If it went like:
- JK Rowling wants to eradicate trans people
- No she doesn't
- Oh... Looks like I was wrong, sorry.
it would have been completely fine. He'd still be putting words in her mouth, but he'd be open to admitting he was wrong, and correcting. Instead we had him making a false claim, denying that he had made it, redirecting to another claim that he thought was more defensible, but was just as false as the first one, and then claiming that any false claims he made don't actually matter because he wanted to talk about something else, even though he's the one that brought each of these claims into the conversation.
It's textbook trolling - luring people into what appears a reasonable conversation, making insane claims to get people riled up, and ducking out after the damage is done.
Third, I cut a little bit of slack for how common a political idea is among a group, even if it's wrong.
Again, him believing Rowling is a transphobe is irrelevant to the conversation, I'm completely fine with people holding that belief.
If someone then claimed that I was taking it far too literally and that it was more about Democrats as a whole, I'd think they're being kind of cheeky but I wouldn't act like Amadan did and start lobbing personal attacks all over the place, nor would I describe it as "dishonest", or "bad faith" or "manipulative".
If you don't think Darwin's behavior objectively crosses the line into dishonest, bad faith, and manipulative, I think it's pretty clear you are just biased in favor of people who go against the grain of this forum. It's fine, I get it, you catch a tonne of shit for disagreeing with the average poster here, so it feels nice to have company, but it's still bias.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Yes, I was there too. There's nothing obvious about it. There are plenty of capable debater progressive posters around here that don't get banned. Even Darwin didn't stop posting here due to the ban, he was posting here until fairly recently, and only tapped out after he made dishonest claim, briefly tried pretending he didn't actually make it, and saw people are buying it even less than his excuses for the Jussie Smollet fiasco.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
We get stuff posted here of a similar level of snarling, but pointed at the left, and it regularly doesn't catch these types of bans.
If I ask you for examples, are you going to point desperate ones by different posters that happened to get away with it, or ones coming from the same posters in a consistent fashion?
On one hand I'll repeat my broken-record line of "don't damn peoples down seven generations", and even though I think genetic group differences are a thing, I'm much more skeptical of sweeping statements about specific groups being incapable organizing in of specific political systems. On the other hand, this is a liberal just-so story that glosses over anything inconvenient, and invents several convenient "facts" to salvage it's own argument.
they all have some past legacy of applied democratic norms, rule of law, parliamentary systems
Ah yes, the long rich democratic tradition of the 20 years between the World Wars, that were imposed by Woodrow Wilson's deranged fantasies, and managed to revert to authoritarianism even within that short timespan. The attachment to democracy was so short that we were seriously debating if it's not better to take the Asian Tiger route, and only implement democracy after authoritarian reforms.
And the question of whether the area of the former GDR was ‘properly’ democratized or not is seemingly an ever thornier one on the minds of West German normies.
Which only shows how democracy is a luxury system. It can work if the stars align just right, but has the tendency of taking it's necessary conditions (like everybody having roughly the same values) for granted. The moment these conditions are not met the democracy enjoyers themselves will start begging for it's end, arresting opposition candidates, and seriously considering the banning of political parties, for the high crime of people voting the wrong way.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2d ago
but the basic point is valid: the Online Right, insofar as I casually track its movements on Twitter, emphasizes HBD less than it used to.
Liberals used to explicitly believe that their belief system is justified by science, and anything that contradicts it must be not only morally, but factually wrong. This was the background for the rise of the HBD conversation, trying to own those stupid racists by showing how scientifically illiterate they are. After they crashed into that particular wall, head first, several times, and noticed it ain't budging, they decided to avoid the conversation altogether, which is why it also lost a lot of it's utility for the right. It's not even limited to this particular topic, there's a broader trend that Dave Green calls "the death of discourse".
There's a kind of coarser, more vitriolic type of racism and anti-semitism emerging to take its place.
This isn't even specific to the right.
Did he actually say that GuessWho is his account, or are people just assuming that?
Yes, he did. On what grounds are you telling people "the only reason they hate him" if you're not familiar with his posting history here at all?
Then we have Gattsuru who did this.
I'll grant you that Gattsuru's antipathy for you is somewhat strange, and for the good of both of you, he should just ignore or block you if he can't. If you think the lack of immediate moderatory action is evidence of some bias, you're wrong. It's standard procedure to be a bit more lenient for quality contributors, this is exactly how Darwin was allowed to post here for years with almost no mod actions against him.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Sure, here's the JK Rowling debate (starts second post from the top). Surely you're familiar with the Smollet thing? If not then I don't know if you followed the conversation this guy spawned much at all.
I understand. My point is, every generation has always had this complaint about the one following it.
And my point is that it's not true. It's a thought terminating cliche deployed every time someone points out things are going in a direction that implies that capital "P" Progress is bad. Off the top of my head, one member my family was a big fan of steam trains, and while he did lament the knowledge of how to maintain them is going extinct, it was more about liking to look at the things go "choo choo", he was perfectly aware that diesel and electric trains are taking over, and offer something better. There's also a long line of electrician (and -adjecent) professionals in my family, and while the progress from vacuum tubes to integrated circuits, to transistors, to microprocessors, caused some "I don't know if I can keep up with this" angst, it again did not result in any claims about following generations losing essential skills of maintaining vacuum tubes.
When it comes to ChatGPT, it's important to bear in mind that this technology is very new. We may soon find that having it at our disposal affords us the ability to perform intellectual tasks we couldn't do otherwise, or frees up our time which would otherwise be wasted on time-consuming and labour-intensive tasks.
I'll grant that I can imagine a way to use the technology in a way that's compatible with the growth of humanity. What I'm saying though is that looking at every thing we've done recently developed technologies, this is not the direction we're moving in. We are moving, in a way that is hard for me not to see as deliberate, in a direction of dumbing down, centralization of control, and mass manipulation of society. The point of all these complaints is to stop and think about what the hell we're doing, and averting this.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
If you and I were talking about US presidents, and I called Trump and Biden pieces of shit, that wouldn't be great but it'd be much less bad than if I called you specifically a piece of shit
That's exactly how I understood your argument, but my point is it doesn't work if you accept the logic of Darwin's argument, because in that case it wouldn't be calling you specifically, a piece of shit. You don't even enter the conversation. It's just about people like you, which is not at all connected to you specifically.
-"Biden wants to take all our guns!" -"No he doesn't" -"OK but he's the Democratic president, and there are Democratic factions that want to do that"
Kinda missing the part about backing away to a claim about Biden specifically that they think is more defensible, it turning out to also be also be false, and then saying "it doesn't matter" even though they started the conversation.
Stuff like this happens all the time. People rarely get all that fussed over it.
I don't think it does, and I don't think anyone would say "you only hate him because he's right wing" if you got fed up talking to a guy like that after many conversations over the course of several years.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2d ago
So why are you asking if people remember something that they're reminding you of?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
While a very nice scifi story, there's very little reason to think that reality will pan out that way.
I wouldn't call the history of every invention to be "very little reason".
The answer is obvious: the person being uploaded. You and me. People who don't want to die. This completely flips the market dynamic. We are not the product; we are the clients. The service being sold goes from "cognitive labor" to "secure digital immortality." In this market, companies would compete not on how efficiently they can exploit Ems, but on how robustly they can protect them.
How do these emulations get the resources to pay the companies for the service of protection? Presumably they work, no? How does a company make money? By getting more clients? If yes, why compete for the limited amount of clients, when you can just copy-paste them? We're already seeing a similar dynamic with meatsack humans and immigration, it strikes me as extremely naive to think it would happen less if we make it easier and cheaper.
There is no profit motive behind enslaving and torturing them.
Slavery ensures profit, torture ensures compliance.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Do you have a clear example of this?
"When I said 'people like JK Rowling' I didn't mean JK Rowling"? The Jussie Smollet thing?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Extremely not true. I've had many discussions with MAGA folks here that degenerate to them doing little more than making a series of personal attacks, I report it, and then nothing happens. Making personal attacks against other people here is far worse than vaguely shaking one's fist at broad political movements,
I actually agree with you about personal attacks being worse, even as a singular instance, so I'm willing to agree the mods could've dropped the ball there. It doesn't make what I say untrue, though, let alone "extremely". You'd have to find an example of a specific person being able to do that over over for this argument to work.
Again, I ask as to what exactly was the banworthy part of his post? What specific sentences were the issue that if uttered by right-leaning people ought to similarly catch a warning or a ban in the moderators' eyes?
What are you talking about? Moderation never worked on a "specific sentences get you banned" basis, it was always about whether the post as whole, or even the posting history as a whole, is breaking the rules.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2d ago
Almost nothing is specific to any one group, especially when we're dealing with groups as broad as "right" and "left", but I do think it's ugly and getting uglier on the right.
I'm saying it's bizarre to single the right out when there was a general raise of "antisemitic" sentiment, and a big part of the current vibe shift was Jewish people responding to the left's reaction to 10/7 .
And it's broader than racism. For instance, I'm closer to Trace's side than I am to Auron's in this exchange, and so I don't want our politics to go down the path Trace is arguing against.
I assure you Trace is no stranger to deploying shame against people he disapproves of. In fact, I don't think you can have a functioning society without shame.
If he (or you) wants to argue that everyone needs to act like trans aspect of trans people should be completely ignored in all contexts not related to sex, he can knock himself out, but I don't see any vitriol in rejecting the concept of transgenderism, and guarding against your movement being eternally trapped in the progressive frame.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2d ago
The facts it got objectively wrong aren't accepted as objectively wrong by anyone except online far-right autists. My impression is that it got depracated because it was meant to be compatible with 90's liberalism, which itself got depracated.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Apes and chimpanzees might scoff at us feeble humans: how we have to cook our food before eating it instead of consuming it raw
Great. Now imagine what happens when we not only become dependant on cooking, but we also lose our ability to cook. That's the issue being raised here. Do you think that's not happening? That it's impossible?
All your complaints just lost 90% of their credibility with this one sentence.
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