distic
2yr ago
It's not that there are right wing discussions, it's that there are almost only unchallenged right wing posts in the CW thread. The CW thread used to be a place where the culture war takes place, it is now a place where you can comment about the culture war taking place somewhere else.
distic
2yr ago
Are you arguing that what he writes is false? For comparison, that is what is promised by the Culture War thread:
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time
Look at the discussions there are right now.
https://www.themotte.org/post/329/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/57553?context=8#context
Quality post, but not very culture war-y. Anyway, right now, no one really disagrees.
https://www.themotte.org/post/329/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/57543?context=8#context
A post criticizing a labour MP for his anti-incels politics (anti Labour so we might assume right wing). No one really disagrees.
Are The Global Elites Coordinating to Push LGBT Acceptance And Gender Theory? (https://www.themotte.org/post/329/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/57433?context=8#context )
Obviously right-wing, but there I have to admit there are some people arguing the other way. But the post was quite extreme by itself.
https://www.themotte.org/post/329/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/57424?context=8#context
A post about liberals using AI to push their views. Pretty right wing. Everyone agrees. More or less.
I stop there. I don't think the CW thread delivers on its promise to challenge your beliefs, especially if they are right wing or libertarians.
distic
2yr ago
Expected value is not everything. For example, if you play the following game: you can choose a value n, then you will have a probability 1/n to get n^2 dollars and 1-(1/n^2) to give the other guy n/2 dollars. Your expected gain is approximately n/2 when n is large enough. You are playing with a billionaire. Is it really more rational to choose n=10000 than say n=1000 or n=2? More generally, does it makes sense to choose n=2^256 even though the other player can afford to pay if you win?
distic
2yr ago
Rejecting the claim that a god exists is not the same as claim a god doesn't exist: it doesn't require a burden of proof because it's the default position. Agnosticism is the default position. The burden of proof is on the people making the claim.
It seems to me you did not prove that. The default position is that I do not know if the default position is theism, atheism, agnosticism or something else.
By the way, if you argue that it is not proven that god exists, it means that you also argue that it is at least possible that he does not exist. So you are actually arguing (a bit) in favor of atheism.
distic
2yr ago
Your post is very interesting, yet I don't fully understand what you mean. It is true that you can learn almost everything there is to know in theory about any religious rite, but it seems to me the most important part is that you cannot live it without taking part of the spiritual journey. You spoke about the catholic communion : you can partake the catholic communion without being a catholic, at least superficially. The catholic church won't allow it, but it's not as if they were asking for your administrative records during the communion. It is not that hard to queue after everyone else and to do as if you were one of them. However, would you really live the catholic communion experience? It seems to me the most important part of it is the faith, the fact that you believe, up to some point, that you are eating the body of God after he sacrificed himself for you. Without this faith, it is just untasteful bread eating and nothing more. It's not really the same experience.
That is the same thing about the wedding. You can make a fake wedding with a girl you met yesterday but the point of the wedding experience is that you really mean that you want to live with this person. For example it is only a catholic wedding if you swear before your friends and family that you will live with your spouse and love him/her for all of your life, and if you mean it. If you don't you didn't get the experience even if you imitated perfectly every step of the rite. It's not about the secrecy of it, but about your commitment to it.
distic
2yr ago
I still dont get to know what is important or not. I'm not sure anyway that the difference between XXth century France and Russia are were bigger than between XVIIIth century and XXIst century USA...
distic
2yr ago
When you say it achieves nothing, it is not a subjective statement. It si objective: either it changes something, or it doesn't. As a matter of fact it makes it more difficult to propagate such thesis so it achieves something. You might think it isn't worth it but that is a subjective claim. Anyway defamation is forbidden in most countries and holocaust denial is a defamation against victims and witnesses.
distic
2yr ago
The problem with those claims is that they are non falsifiable. "Surface level" does not mean anything. I can prove that there is a huge difference and you can still claim it to be on surface level only. Actually your theory is really like marxism "anything non surface level can be explained by the class strugle". I am quite sure Marx would have loved your theory.
France, and a lot of other european countries, resist the american version of capitalism in some ways, and imitate it in other ways. If I say that all modern science is french because it uses the metric system excepted on a surface level, it is a ridiculous claim yet you can hardly disprove it as I did never explain what a surface level is. The french unions, the number of companies where the gouvernement has stocks (eg car companies, the train transportation company SNCF 100% state owned...), and the relationship of the people with the government are examples of things that are very different between french capitalism and american capitalism.
And hiding insults behind loosely related theories won't prove your point.
distic
2yr ago
Its not really a premise. I'm just saying it's an unnecessary hypothesis, you can explain the behavior in another more rational way.
distic
2yr ago
I'm not convinced it's always bad. Eg there are countries were holocaust denial is a criminal offense. I'm not sure it's completely bad. Sure, it has downsides, but it avoids the propagation of those theories that are false and dangerous. I'd like to think that truth will always prevail but it seems obvious that truth does not always prevail on time.
distic
2yr ago
Bernie Sanders politics would be center right in France. There is a french guy I know that was supporting Bernie Sanders in the US and François Fillon (the mainstream right wing candidate in 2017) in France...
distic
2yr ago
There have been societies without prisons. The native americans had no prisons, up to my knowledge. I think there have been more societies without prisons than without censorship in the history of humanity. Even in the US there has often be some kind of censorship enforced by the society itself (not by the state).
distic
2yr ago
What do you mean essentially the same? Obviously we learn that 2+2=4, do you think it means that it is the same as american culture? I doubt Americans spend as much time on grammar (and especially on french grammar) in the US. The language is not the same. It's not a detail: the book we read in class are not the same, they are from french literature. Do Americans ever read l'Avare, from Molière? Almost every french person has read it. Do most Americans ever hear about Racine and Corneille, about Flaubert and his master work, Madame Bovary? We learn at least two foreign languages, so that I can understand something like 50% of an article written in german, and like 95% of anything written in english (yet foreign language learning is not that good in France when compared to other european countries). Do Americans learn foreign languages? In history lessons, there is much emphasis on the french Revolution, but we almost never speak about the American revolution. Most french people do not even know there was an American revolution. Have Americans ever heard about Danton and Robespierre? About the differences between Jacobins and Girondins? There are also lessons on Napoleon, with much emphasis on his politics. Do Americans learn Napoleon's politics? So please tell me what is "essentially the same".
distic
2yr ago
Another way to look at it. Call it "cheating" or not, it is a rule (and an enforced rule) that anyone caught with drug use is declared to have lost. It might be part of the game to be on drugs, but in this case it is also part of the game not to be caught.
distic
2yr ago
Other explanations: any country that wants to sell gas to Europe, like eg Norway. Any country that wants to sell nuclear power plants, like eg France. Any country (or company) that wants to sell submarine surveillance drones.
By the way, I do not agree with your cost analysis. It seems to me that it could be profitable for a lot of actors: Russia, to send a message (we are ready for anything); US, to hurt Russia. You say they risk to get caught, but even if they were, then what? Europe needs the US to help Ukraine. Would it be worse than when the US spied on Merkel and nothing happened? Same for other countries.
distic
2yr ago
It's one of the quirks of the criminal justice system that fraud against an individual or company is not uncommonly punished way worse than defying the fed. government.
Fraud against an individual or company is less important but it is easier to hide. I think the rational punishment is proportional to b/p where b is the benefit for the criminal and p the probability to get caught. If you have 50% chance to be caught stealing a 100$ bike, the punishment for that should be roughly 200$ so that on average you get nothing. If you put it at 100$ stealing bikes is a profitable business model.
I think it is assumed that people do not get much benefit through the contempt of Congress/court, and get caught quite easily. On tax evasion, the explanation might be different.
distic
2yr ago
Russia
I think you do not understand that Putin does not care about the economy or the people dying. Russia is not the richest country: its GDP is smaller than Italy's, and if you consider the ratio by inhabitant it's even worse. Russia is not the most populated country in the world: its population is just twice France and half the US. But Russia is the biggest country on earth. So Putin somehow thinks that the destiny of Russia is to expand its territory as much as possible, whatever the consequences. And also, to mitigate the effect of the war, he just abducts people. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian people have been deported to Russia.
Europe and energy.
It takes its root in 20th century history. During the fifties, there were people (like e.g. Günther Anders) that hated the industrialization process in general. You have to understand them: in their eyes, the industry was responsible for Verdun, for Auschwitz and for Hiroshima. For them, the nuclear bomb was the symbol of this process, and they did not want anything to do with it. Nuclear power plants looked related to nukes, it seemed like an obvious symbol of everything that was wrong with the world. Those people inspired the political ecologist of the first generation (and eg Greenpeace), they put the anti-nuclear fight at the heart of their ideology. So now you have ecologist parties that hate nuclear power all over Europe.
On top of that, you can add:
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a bit of well-understood interests: oil production firms are funding anti-nuclear associations, and some European politicians like the former Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder have been bought by Russia.
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some understable fears: remember that some years ago there was Fukushima.
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some deficit of science understanding. Somehow burning gas seems more natural than atomic energy.
China.
When the former french president F. Hollande met with XI Jinping, Xi told him that he was worried about the future of the Communist Party. Under Mao, the Party was the vector for national unity. Then, the Party was used to give prosperity to Chinese people. But now the times of huge economic growth come to an end. Year after year, the chinese economy is growing less. So the Party should have something else to offer to the chinese people, mainly the young people. The thing he came with is ideology.
Thus, now, ideology is China's priority. The ideology is more important than the economy. The ideology claims that the Party is always right, and that it protects the weakest. Ideology says that a strong power is important to protect the population, that individual freedom is dangerous. Thus, it is more important to continue the zero covid policy, as abandoning it would contradict the ideology.
distic
2yr ago
But it's both more productive for American interests and much easier given the general character of Russia to just push NATO east, keep things contentious, and let nature take its course.
I agree, but not completely. East Europe did want to join NATO because they felt threatened by Russia. And they did not just imagine this threat, Russia has been very aggressive toward its neighbors for years. Think about Georgia and Moldova. It has also supported dictatorships and corrupt regimes eg in Belarus and in Ukraine. The US did not have much to do for it to happen, east european countries were actively pursuing NATO membership. On the other side, the fact that NATO was threatening Russia by expanding east is mainly bullshit. I'm pretty sure the US were able to nuke Russia from Turkey during the cold war, they never needed Estonia for that. And worse, now that baltic countries are in NATO, the US certainly do not need Ukraine to threaten Russia. Having NATO in east Europe is only a threat to Russia if you think Russia has a right to invade its neighbors. It does not mean that US were interested in making friends with Russia anyway. They never liked that Europe was buying Russian gas and having business with them. Perhaps they should have tried harder, because in the long run it might be in their interests (so that they do not confront both China and Russia at the same time), but I'm not sure it would have worked anyway.
distic
2yr ago
But that is the same with death. If you give people the power to kill others, they will certainly abuse it. They can abuse it for censorship reasons, for example: I do not like what you said so I will find a false reason to kill you. How is that any better?
But this is the same with the justice system then : you give people power to put others in prisons, but then it will be misused. It has been. Why is that that we should have total freedom of speech but not close the prisons? Censorship, like prisons, can be controlled by laws that define precisely when it is possible to censor and when it is not. After all, there are cases where we allow censorship (saying falsely that there is a bomb in an airport, death threats,...)
distic
2yr ago
Now there is a shift, a formation of new nations. Modern France or England are already France and England only in the geographical sense. The brain is American; the body is gradually being mullattized (mixed marriages, mass immigration of Blacks and Arabs). As a result, new ethnicities are gradually emerging, with a new history, a new religion. Already this France resembles France of the 18th century only as much as the «Holy Roman Empire of the German nation» resembled the original Roman Empire.
This is bullshit. Whoever wrote this does not know France at all. Sure, we are closer to America now. Sure, we look less like 18th century France. But does America look like 18th century America? This argument is shitty. Modern France does not look like 18th century France because we have cars, planes, trains and computers. Nothing to do with America by itself.
The relationship to the economy and to the culture is not at all the same in France and in the US. It's not that French people oppose freedom to own weapons, it's that they do not even understand why anyone would not oppose it.
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Currently, there is a strike in refineries that would have created an oil shortage if the government did not react by using strategical reserves. Can you imagine that in the US?
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There is a national ban of headscarves (or actually any kind of religious or political symbols) at public schools in France. Can you imagine that in the US?
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In the last presidential election, we got an actual socialist at 22% (the guy is anti NATO and thinks Taiwan should belong to the US). Macron got 28% and Le Pen 23%. Can you imagine that in the US?
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Healthcare and retirement schemes are state-controlled. Can you imagine that in the US?
distic
2yr ago
Apart from the absence of separatism and ethnic grudges and diversity and ex-empire going around, the United Kingdom have the ever threatening cultural americanization of the local culture
They have huge problems too. Spain has Catalunya and Belgium has the partition risk of the country. Anyway, the monarchy won't go away if it is just useless, it has to become a part of the problem to be challenge. I do not know how it could create more separatism or more ethnic grudges.
distic
2yr ago
You are right, I claimed more than I intended. I would say that basic word-based reddit censorship, like censoring the word "nigger" or even the so-called (((echo))) has not really harmed the debate, even if it gives place to ridiculous cases like on /r/themotte.
There are other cases where reddit censorship is worse than that, like website-level rules against "transphobia". Those rules are very bad in my opinion, however they are nothing close to the Russian system of censorship. It is still possible to express opinion against transgender identity in most western countries, mainly because people can speak somewhere else.
You are drawing so much conclusions from a factual wikipedia article.
It is a fact that the nazis were homophobic. It is also a fact that the nazis were far right, and also a fact that homophobia is a view held by a lot of far-right people. Are you challenging any one of these facts? It does not mean that if you are homophobic you are far right or a nazi. You know, most people have two legs but birds aren't people. By the way, you should have noted the "and/or" in the list, which suggests that far right people hold several of those views, not just one.
"Doesn't matter if he never personally burned a gay or trans person at the stake, [...] he's a Nazi." When you do this comment, it seems to me you are saying that anyone who did not personally burned anyone cannot be a Nazi. In this case, there have been very few nazis. Hitler, for example, did not burn anyone "personally", as far as I know. At the end, the holocaust was organized in such a way that almost no one had to kill anyone directly. Not every nazi is a war criminal. Most nazis were just people like you and me that lived their lives peacefully. They just happened to vote for some nazi guy once, and to help the regime once in a while.
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