drmanhattan16
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User ID: 640
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
most people don’t have a coherent political philosophy, and their support or lack of support for Zelenskys war isn’t based on anything except the latest headline they read.
Why do they need it? A great deal of philosophy gets ground into what Scott Alexander called crystalized heuristics. So the philosophical debates over just war and what not don't need to occupy every person's mind, you just condense that down into "It's immoral to invade a sovereign nation unless they are committing crimes against humanity like genocide and whatnot".
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
There is no such thing as popular will. Nor is there any such thing as the people, of Ukraine or anywhere else.
What do you call the 1991 independence vote in which 84% of people voted and 92% of those voters voted for independence?
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
This "Russia = USSR" logic doesn't work out the way you think it does.
Firstly, it means inheriting the legacy of the Holodomor. Attempting to claim a moral right to rule a people after you attempt to genocide them is...something.
But even ignoring that, the USSR literally agreed to dissolve into independent states in 1991. If the Soviets "owned" Ukraine, then Russia inheriting their claims means it has no claim as such over Ukraine.
Also, the Budapest Memo had Russia agree to not use military force against Ukraine.
You can talk all you want about "satellite states" and what not, Russia already agreed decades ago it wouldn't do what it has been doing since 2014.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
I am not on the left, so can't comment on why they seem to support it so strongly. My suspicion is that 4 years martingaling[1] the claims about Russian interference in our elections have built Russia and Putin into something resembling a Marvel comic villain and/or the nazis.
Most charitable themotte.org explanation ever! It can't be that people on the left genuinely don't agree with the idea of a war to annex territory or conquer another sovereign nation, it must be that they have a childish and wrong view of Russia.
I do. I would just condemn him for all the other awful things he's done, like invading Ukraine.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Surprisingly enough, I don't condemn people for exercising their full preservation instinct.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Yes but as few tanks and guns and ammo as Russia has, Ukraine has even fewer, it's why they are entirely depending on Zelensky flying around the world in his green outfit and begging/shaming other countries into funding his war.
Am I supposed to think it's a mark against him that he tries his best to get nations to support his people in a war that might very well decide the fate of Ukraine?
Zelensky is only prolonging the suffering. This is not a marvel movie where the good guys win. The guys with more artillery, more land, more calories for their troops, more money, and more ability to threaten the rest of the world win. In this case, that is Putin.
Absolutely not. Putin's Russia suffers from dire competence, corruption, and cowardice issues that plagued the Soviet Union just as much. People were making shallow analyses like this at the beginning of the war without any consideration for just how effective Russia's armed services actually are. You can't look at raw counts, you have to look at equipment quality, training quality, leadership quality, etc. Russia is lacking in a great many areas when it comes to what makes a good military.
Despite the numbers advantage, Russia's armies should not be presumed to be even "good enough" to make the invasion a success. It won't be easy, but the idea that Putin's effort is unstoppable is entirely counter to everything we've seen since the invasion started.
The only way that doesn't happen is if Zelensky succeeds in starting WW3.
Russia is on the defensive in this war at this moment against a smaller nation that it chose to invade. More Western aid is only going to help.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
But in the real world: Zelensky has no path to realistically expelling Russia from the land they want, short of dragging the rest of the world into WW3.
Making it a financial drain is all you need. Russia only has so many tanks, planes, etc. in storage that can be re-activated. While there are efforts to step up defense production, it's not easy and Russia is a thoroughly corrupt nation whose government hemorrhages money into the pockets of whoever holds it at every step.
Zelensky, meanwhile, gets the financial, material, and ideological support not only of many different powerful nations to keep the war going, but their populations as well.
As far as what is a nation: The United States is a nation too. It is not in our vital national security interests to escalate a regional conflict to the point where we are sending our children to their death.
It is 100% in the US' interests to ensure the world order isn't realigned to favor Russian tactics. Every country planning on doing something similar is going to realize that going to war against the combined power of the Western order must be done with far more care.
If you only care as that your own nation isn't invaded, so be it, but much of the prosperity America enjoys stems from America's export of security to the numerous smaller players. Take that away and you've got a poorer America. Those players each contribute to that defense in their own ways as well, even if they don't spend enough directly on their own militaries.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Again, I'm not trying to say Twitter played an active role in shutting things down. You're the only one trying to bring that implication into the discussion.
I told you, no matter how you phrase your argument, you are assigning agency to Twitter, and I reject that you've demonstrated this agency in action against right-wing boycotts as a major or primary reason why those boycotts failed.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
If I had to make any correction, it might be that both are not totally at the "other side is intrinsically evil" point. But a substantial symmetry certainly exists. Currently, I have no inherent objection to that line of argumentation as a premise for another, which is what I was doing.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
This is additional information that one had to look up about the modder...
Yes, because we were getting to the point that I had to actually bring that stuff up.
You are correct, however, that we are speaking on a separate argument, one about whether there is any coherent meaning to be found in one's modding choices.
And talking about "context" doesn't actually add anything to this, because "context" isn't the issue; the modding choices didn't tell us anything about whether the modder was racist, with or without the additional details that added context - it was those additional details that told us whether the modder was racist.
????????
What do you think context even means if not the details for why something is or is not racist?
Well, one reason is that when people are talking about "progressives," they're usually talking about a set of people who voluntarily signed up for a particular sociopolitical cause.
There are a great many people who adopt their views through osmosis. For example, streamer Hasan claims that he is a socialist, but watch his streams and you'll realize how fundamentally unserious he is about making socialism happen. According to you, I am supposed to take his words seriously instead of considering anything about revealed beliefs/preferences.
I also personally find it hard to argue against such psychoanalysis of progressives when they perfectly match the mentality that I myself lived through as a progressive...It's that when I see someone who clearly understands my own thinking so well despite never having met me, much less been within my mind, it gives me pause and makes me want to listen rather than argue.
If you think that your mentality may have just been your own, then the next step would be to ask how many progressives shared your mentality. That's the relevant question, not whether you personally experienced what is being described.
And this step, if one is intellectually honest, is to admit that we can't assign meaningfully accurate probabilities to these reasons that aren't just dominated by our own biases.
What a black-pilled take, to forgo the opportunity to ever exercise your mind and produce accurate statistics/percentages because you would be biased!
I don't believe you. I don't believe for a moment that you don't trust the percentages your mind constructs in a great deal of other instances. This is a perfect example of an isolate demand for rigor.
I think there is no more value to be gained from continuing this discussion. So we shall, as you say, agree to disagree.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Then it would be better to simply admit as such and say that we're relying on the possibility of Twitter acting against right-wing boycotts, not on confirmed evidence. I'm entirely willing to accept an argument that Twitter should be scrutinized over that.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Whether one is an ardent of Atheism+ supporter or a devout Christian from birth, there is agreement on the fact that right-wingers use a great deal of religious rhetoric and argumentation to push a narrative that LGBT and its followers are evil. The only disagreement would be on the accuracy of the statement, not whether it was accurate. I never said anything about provocation either.
No part of what you've said contradicts my description. Again, I don't understand why you want to try and win an optics battle in a place that is highly sympathetic to your viewpoint.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
So just to be clear, you don't think Twitter has contributed more AT ALL to those boycotts?
This is a different question than the one initially asked. I asked where the proof was that Twitter had quashed the boycotts before Musk. If there were no boycotts that even made an attempt, I'm not going to say that Twitter quashed the boycotts.
You keep saying it happened, show me one that didn't get off the ground and had at least a decent chance of getting off the ground.
This has nothing to do with what I'm saying. Whatever the underlying reasons and circumstances of the boycott, there is such a thing as reach, and both right- and left-wingers use Twitter to increase their reach.
When you say that Twitter provided reach, the assumption is that said reach matters in relation to other possible factors. If there are more important reasons for why the boycotts took off on Twitter, and Twitter was not the limiting factor, then it doesn't make sense to talk about Twitter instead of the other factors.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Except Christians also believe themselves to be moral and LGBT people to be immoral due to the refusal to accept socially conservative values. I don't think what I said was wrong, nor do I think it is good for you to assume I was assigning either side any blame. I don't believe there's any point in trying to litigate the wording in this case.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Seems like we now need to actually delve into mod in question. Thankfully, someone has done a total writeup here. It cites the following evidence.
- The mod creator appeared earnest in recommending other mods that whitewashed black characters.
- The comments on the mod itself by defenders were of the "woke double standards" type, which genuinely angers some anti-woke types.
There's also very little evidence to therefore suggest the mod was a troll or that it was to better fit the aesthetics of the game. These people were not artists either, they just straight up used a white person's portrait with some pallet-swapping to make the black person white.
You make it clear that you can say that context matters while also insisting that you get to determine the context based on your own personal idiosyncratic views on the matter.
We're getting to a point now where people aren't even allowed to voice a goddamn opinion without access to the Record Of Objective Reality buried in the universe's documentation.
Yes, I determined the context. I am allowed to state what that context is and why I think that is. If you find it unconvincing, so be it, but it's telling that you don't afford me enough charity to not claim I'm trying to decide everyone's opinion.
But the reality is that we aren't mind readers with very little insight into the internal and unique thinking process of other people.
So why don't I see you in every thread about progressives reminding everybody that they don't know why progressives do what they do beyond an individual level?
It may surprise you to learn this, but the entire study of ideology and beliefs works as well as it does because people aren't nearly as unique as you're painting them as. The way particular neurons fire in a person's brain is largely overkill in terms of what you need to know to understand their motivations and make fairly good predictions about them.
So when you tell me that there's no limit as to why a person may want to make a black person white in Stardew Valley, your next step, if you were intellectually honest, would be to start assigning probabilities to each of those reasons. Do that, and I suspect you're going to quickly get into very small numbers after 5.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
No, I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think it's entirely plausible that, to use the examples brought up initially, Target and Bud Light were protested against because there has been a years-long attempt by right-wingers to cast LGBT people and activism as intrinsically evil. It's much easier to get people to support a boycott when you raise the moral stakes.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
You are referring to the throttling over accounts, yes? Wherein Twitter would deboost certain accounts? That's a related claim, but not what's in contention.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
I disagree on the mechanism being proposed, that's what. It doesn't fit the narrative trying to be established.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Assuming this is true, it still wouldn't get you to Twitter suppressing right-wing boycotts. It would get you to Twitter suppressing non-verified boycotts. Those are not the same thing and they shouldn't be treated that way for the reasons I outlined above regarding verification.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
The discussion is how important Twitter was in suppressing right-wing boycotts. Whether you want to point to human moderation or tweaks to the algorithm, you're still talking about ascribing agency to Twitter. My point stands.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
No, actually, I don't know if any or all of your statements are true.
Getting the checkmark is a heavily influenced by how "notable" you are in media, along with whether there's a person with a Twitter contact working with/for you. There are people with massive YouTube followings without it and journalists who have it despite no presence to speak of. Insofar as Twitter's verified population is left-wing, it's heavily correlated with having a Twitter contact and having news articles written about you. All of this was how the pre-Musk Twitter ran.
But even if I granted all your "must admit" statements, that doesn't get you "quashed by Twitter". You need to declare that Twitter was taking political ideology into account. "Quashed by Twitter" implies active action by Twitter, and I'll even be charitable enough to say that "verified with political consideration" counts as evidence.
Propose all the mechanisms you want. They're still only theoretical until you prove them.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Someone on the right is undoubtedly reporting on it. Where are the reports of the quashed boycotts?
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Okay, but where are the failed attempts at boycotts quashed by Twitter?
A far more likely explanation is that for nearly a decade now, right-wingers have been continuously pushing a narrative that seeks to cast LGBT people as crazies, pedophiles, and/or some kind of evil. Part of this has very much been focusing on the T in that acronym over the others. Far easier to get boycotts going over that than gay people. I don't think the particularities of the social media platform all these people congregated on is particularly important.
I didn't say the left were avid geopolitics followers. I just said they didn't agree that nations could invade others without damn good reason.
My understanding of the Libyan intervention was that Gaddafi was attacking civilians, which is very much Not Okay under the morality and rules of war that have developed for a century now. If you want to claim the left was duped, that's one thing, but I think they would 100% agree that you can invade a nation if it is doing something like that.
Then, of course, there is the question of putting US personnel on the ground to handle post-intervention Libya, something people would probably be wary of given how long the US had been in the Middle East by that point.
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