ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
No bio...
User ID: 626
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
26m ago
No, personal criticism of the person you're debating with almost never goes well. It breeds defensiveness, vitriol, and one-upsmanship.
OK, they're free to do that, but I do not think this is within the realm of "reasonable people could disagree". I'd say most people would think these types of statements cross a line. At the very least they don't add productively to the conversation, and it would be better without them.
You're entitled to your opinion, but I disagree with you. I think most people think it's fine, including you. Otherwise you wouldn't be doing the "chopping a piece out of a sentence to imply he said something quite different than what he did" bit again.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
44m ago
But apparently less effective.
Not necessarily. Going full Big Brother could trigger a rebellion, causing the effectiveness to go to zero.
I feel like a percussive maintenance approach to fixing a defect-defect is similar to a pray and spray approach to shooting
All of politics is. Contrary to it's pretense, sociology is not a science, so there's a lot of going with your gut when you're governing.
I always find it funny, ironic, and depressing how people on the right are not opposed to technocratic solutions, they just don't want to be a on the receiving end of them. Everyone wants to wear the boot.
Where's the humor / irony / gloom? Not everyone on the right is a libertarian. In fact, it's only a small minority that is. Though I object to being called a technocrat.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
57m ago
Attack the argument, not the speaker!
You can criticize the speaker as well, there's nothing wrong with that.
I think personal criticism should be avoided as much as possible as it never tends to be on the positive side of the light:heat ratio
Please, don't act like you care about the light:heat ratio. Most of your posts are deliberately inflammatory, you just pretend it's fine because your attacks are general rather than specific.
Again, I really disagree with the notion that calling someone a "bad faith borderline troll" would ever be a "good" thing for a conversation.
Yeah, that's what Amadan said, "We just don't always agree with you what constitutes an attack".
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
Name calling like this isn't fine
Right, but personal criticism is. The whole "selective editing" issue is that you portrayed his criticism as namecalling (and you know it, because otherwise you would have quoted the whole thing).
If his argument was that it was fine because he had some "justification" in the rest of his post
It's not just justification, but it's one of the necessary components.
You could justify practically anything in that case, including "lying shitbag".
Yeah, this is why you changing the content of his post does not prove the princple. Replacing [thing that can be good or bad, depending on how you do it] with [thing that's always bad no matter how you do it] completely changes the discussed scenario.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
Maybe if the rest of the world were to stop calling it "football"
I didn't care about Greenland, but them's fightin' words.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
No, it doesn't. His original objection was:
When you pull a stunt like that, literally chopping a piece out of a sentence to imply I said something quite different than what I did
You were, unambigiously, doing that. By cutting out huge swathes of his post, you presented it as a series of unbacked jabs, rather than deeper criticism of his conduct. You know that, because if his post was actually bad regardless of your edits, you would have just quoted the whole thing.
Now, in order to defend your argument, you are trying to say your edits were fine, because of a hypothetical where he's using the words of others to toss an insult at someone, while pretending he's just reporting on the opinions of others. This has no relevance to the discussed situation, because he's not hiding behind the words of others, he's directly stating it is his opinion, and he only brings up the opinion of others to say that he used to disagree with it. Changing the words does change the scenario completely, precisely because "bad faith borderline troll" is fine, actually, particularly when you can make a good argument supporting the claim, while calling someone "lying shitbag" will be bad no matter how good your argument is. Again, you know that, you basically spelled it out yourself.
Also, if selective editing wasn't bad, than people could claim you called Amadan a lying shitbag, and pretend they don't know what your problem is when you protest.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
If the goal is to control behavior why not just go full Gilead, 1984, or Brave New World?
Unless you just want women to have kids out of wedlock
Nah, if anything, I was prepared to say "out of wedlock kids don't count".
Punishing people for behavior that requires another agent to cooperate them is very totalitarian.
I don't know, sometimes you have to give everyone a good bonk on the head, to get them out of a defect-defect equilibrium.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
If you wanted to show that the selective editing you engaged in wasn't a big deal, you could have just quoted the post as it actually was (+/- the relevant name changes). By changing the content of the post in the specific way that you did, you cannot show how the selective editing of the original one was not a big deal, actually.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
No, you weren't. You can't demonstrate the principle by changing the content.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
Which is what you did originally. Now you're trying to argue against it by actually modifying the content... Like I said, it makes no sense.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
That doesn't make sense. If no one would defend "lying shitbag", but they think it's fine to call some "bad faith borderline troll", you are not making the principle behind calling someone "bad faith borderline troll" clear.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
The problem with any redistributive scheme around this topic is that you are in essence punishing people for things that are generally outside their control
In order for me to have kids I'd need to find a woman who wants them
That's not what I'd normally call "beyond my control".
Single rates are up and unless the State is going to do something dysgenic like make it legal for me to go around raping woman or forcing them to marry me
Yeah, how about just putting the same penalty on childless women?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
I don't think we have juries here
Unless Scotland has a different judicial system than England, you do. Though you might soon be right either way, because Starmer wants to get rid of them.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
Isn't it funny how you had to modify the quote yet again, beyond just changing the names involved, to make your point.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
From the comments I heard about it, it's a bit of a missed opportunity, specifically because it' not a culture war film. The boogaloo, happens because reasons. What could have caused such a rift that Americans would go to war with each other is left unexplored, so I'm not sure it's even making a point that could be missed, and so people are left memeing on it.
That said, I haven't watched it either.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
10hr ago
The problem I have with that sort or argument is that societies have a good deal of inertia, so it's easy to find yourself debating how the dude that fell off a tall building was in perfectly good health just prior to hitting the ground.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
That's very flattering, but every time I looked into privacy-preserving ways of transferring money, it turned out to be a massive hassle, possibly bordering on impossibility. Personally, for my bets I prefer agreeing to donate to a charity of each person's choice, and taking the counterparty at their word (+ maybe a screenshot, though they're so easy to fake, it's effectively the same thing).
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
That is not true. I think I made a strong argument, but I also acknowledge:
I would like to believe that this clarification settles things, but I am also not naïve. If your epistemic filter is tuned to maximum paranoia, then the absence of evidence is merely further evidence of a cover-up. For everyone else, the police statement, local skepticism, and sociological context should nudge your priors at least a little.
In other words, as a Bayesian, my opinion is that you should at the very least be slightly swayed by the argument. That is not the same as thinking that anyone who disagrees with me is unreasonable. There are actual people (living breathing humans) who are immune to any argument, probably including divine intervention. My scorn is largely reserved for them.
Well, maybe I took it all a bit too personally, but even with your explanation it kinda feels like you're saying that not moving your priors based on the things you mentioned is unreasonable. I happened to find the arguments you brought up unpersuasive, so their effect on my priors was mostly zilch (maybe witch the exception of the police originally charging the girl), and I think that's perfectly justifiable.
They're not. You can look at the evolution of someone like Noah Smith to see an example. He went from pretty woke in his Bloomberg days to heavily criticizing wokeness while still being left-leaning today
How does this prove that centrist Democrats aren't woke, and won't come back to promoting wokeness the moment they secure their power again?
Back in 2021 some Dems still didn't have antibodies to the woke mindvirus which is part of why Biden picked some of them.
They already had lots back in 2016. They just decided to purge them. Because they are woke.
That, and "staffers" are kind of their own unique breed that have been radicalized by the internet on both sides. The Right has an increasing problem with its own staffers being groypers these days.
Did you just link to an article about a group of staffers being fired for being mildly edgy, and said that explains centrist Democrats somehow weren't in power because of their staffers?
There very clearly is. The woke faction still exists certainly, but it's much less powerful than in its heyday.
There isn't. They lost power to Republicans, not some faction of anti-woke Democrats. Some of them realized they should keep quiet to not lose elections, but there's no evidence that the Democrats are any less woke than they use to be.
Personally, I'd say that if the police and prosecutors pressed charges against Dumana / Belov in the current political climate, the evidence against him must be pretty strong, and that would warrant a 70% bet in the other direction (keep in mind your original argument rested on nothing more than statements from the police, not official charges, or an actual convction).
But that's beside the point. I don't really have a problem with you falling on the other side of this and sticking to your guns, my issue was with your top level post on the topic, and how you portrayed anyone unconvinced by your arguments as unreasonable.
I was trying to find the citation for my anecdotal example I wanted to use, to, kinda sorta, back you on this, but alas it's one of these things I saw on one of the zillions of 3 hour podcasts I listen to daily, and cant locate easily anymore, so ultimately the source is: trust me, bro.
So there was this interview I was listening to with some sweet old lady recounting her life as some sort of activist. Unrelated to the main topic of the conversation, she mentioned how her husband started courting her when she was 16 or so, and he was 20-something*, exactly the sort of relationship that you seem to argue for here. My first reaction was "yikes", but through the interview she seemed to have nothing but love and respect for her husband, and she also mentioned they had something like 5 kids together, and each of them had a lot of kids in turn, so she's now surrounded by approximately 7 zillion grandchildren and great-grandchildren. At the end of it, I found it hard to say this was all somehow wrong.
*) Or he might have actually waited until she turned 18, but he was definitely orbiting her since she was in her mid-teens.
That said, for something like this to work, I think the conversation has to be a lot bigger than "age of consent", and basically you'd have to RETVRN to traditional sexual mores: no sex before marriage, no divorce, the parents have to co-sign the relationship. I think a lot of the "ick factor" comes from people assuming the 20-something is just looking for sex - which is a reasonable assumption - and the the 15 year old girl is naive, and easily taken advantage of - which is another reasonable assumption. If, on the other hand, we assume the guy is looking for love and for a way to start a family... well I'm sure lots of people would still complain, but I think it's more defensible than lowering the age of consent, and normalizing big age-gap relationships with the current sexual mores in effect.
Desantis was certainly not the only Republican to combat wokeness. Are you referring to him trying to build an entire alternative ecosystem here?
Maybe, it depends on what you mean. He's the only one that comes to mind that combats it in a comprehensive and systemic way, rather than just making a lot of noise about an issue of the day, but otherwise letting the woke run all the institutions.
Biden may have been President, but he had woke staffers running roughshod over a lot of policies both in theory and in practice.
This is because the centrist democrat wing is woke, so they pick woke staffers.
Trump's victory accelerated the process of woke burnout that was already occurring. It was not the cause, it was the death-knell.
Nope. There is no woke burnout. Like I said they kinda dialed it down for the moment, until they win another election. And only kinda, if you listen, you can hear all he insanity coming out of the usual places.
We apparently have one more update on the Braveheart Incident. Previous discussions:
- Original story
- self_made_human's update, where he and several posters chastized anyone who believed the pro-Braveheart story. "Of course, if you prefer your axes in the hands of twelve-year-olds fighting imaginary Bulgarian sex pests, I suppose nothing I write will convince you otherwise."
- my update pointing out that the girl might actually have been defending her sister from a sex pest.
The latest update is a short article from the BBC:
Prosecutors allege Ilia Belov, 22, approached and followed four girls, who were aged between 12 and 14, and made sexual remarks to them before seizing one of the girls and pushing her to the ground.
His co-accused Nadjedzha Belova, 20, is accused of repeatedly seizing and pulling another of the girls by the hair, dragging her to the ground, and punching her on the head to her injury.
This is throwing me for a loop. The good news is that unlike the local news articles I cited previously, the BBC actually names the accused, the bad news is originally the adult involved in the incident was identified as "Fatos Ali Dumana", and now I have no idea whether we're talking about the same guy, and it was just a nickname, or it was a completely different person. A quick google search only turned up some indie (somewhat tinfoily) blog post, where it is indeed claimed that "Fatos Ali Dumana" is just an alias, and that the perps real name is Ilia Belov. What speaks in it's favor is that the post is dated September 12, 2025, so way before this current BBC article (and here's an archive.org snapshot to corroborate), so it's not someone trying to use the latest info to portray the original story as true. Other than that I only found some dude on Reddit urging people to look up a Facebook reel:
It's the same guy, check FB reel number 5556886374377640 - "Fatos Ali Dumana" shares a UK driving licence in the name of Ilia Kostaoinov Belov.
I don't have Facebook, so I can't confirm.
Either way, the accusations put forward by the prosecutors seem largely consistent with "Braveheart" story - girls got sexually harassed, assaulted, and one of them went for makeshift weapons in order to defend her sister / friends.
I am sure that everyone who wagged their fingers saying how "nothing will convince us otherwise", how "they knew something was off", how it's a "noble effort, but hopeless" because us chuds are too biased and stubborn, will now wag their fingers at themselves with the same amount of enthusiasm.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3d ago
Problem is, most people don't distinguish between individual experts and instead just see the scientific community as a big undifferentiated blob.
And this was something deliberately cultivated by the scientific community itself. During Covid there were credentialed experts coming out against lockdowns or MRNA vaccines, etc., and the response was that it's the scientific consensus that counts, not individual opinions.
I don't have a particularly high opinion on economics either. It managed to distill a few laws of "never go full-retard" but not much beyond that. I'm also not sure how you reconcile economics fan-boyism with your criticism of technocracy.
I don't want to do that though. Factorio / Rimworld / Paradox are deterministic systems that autists can optimize with statistics and excel sheets. I just want to bonk people on the head.
Well, I'm also fine with admitting I'm not exactly like the median rightwinger. I think a lot of the people complaining about being "forced into compliance" are naive and/or haven't thought their position through very much. Every society forces people into compliance one way or the other, and most of the debates are actually about what should we be forcing people to comply with, and in what manner. We're also expanding a lot of effort into pretending this isn't what the debate is about, but the only people I ever met who don't want to force compliance are literal ancaps, so unless you're one of them, you have no ground for criticism here.
Technocracy is a separate issue where you assume there's some sort of domain of expertise that will grant you legitimacy and enable you to make optimal decisions. I think that's folly, and it's prone to spawning a lot of pathologies in society.
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