drmanhattan16
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User ID: 640
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Can someone clarify what a block does on this site? I can see that someone has blocked me (the red person symbol appears next to their name). Am I just banned from replying to their comments?
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Seems to reverse causality. We're not becoming robots or acting like them, we developed polite speech first and then insisted the robots follow it. As they say, it never costs you anything to be kind, and a robot fundamentally doesn't care in the same way we do. You can hurl abuse all you want at it and there is no satisfaction in the possibility that it might go home and cry that day.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
I’m enjoying the series. Just wish it could come out a little faster
Me too, I wish the author would write faster :(
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
They got lucky, that's why. They cut numerous corners that no good commander would ever do. In no way could they have banked on learning with reasonable assurance if the Americans were there or not.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Hey, thanks for reading! Comments like yours motivate me to continue!
While I'm not sure what article you read, the authors do maintain an website which gives all manner of interesting details and comparisons between the Japanese and Americans during this time period. You can check out Grim Economic Realities to see them lay out the case for how stark the differences were.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Afro-Saudis constitute 10% of the population. How many of those are descendants of slaves isn't clear, but I would not doubt they exist, because Islam bans castration, and that made the price of a eunuch much higher (they were castrated elsewhere and then brought over, it seems). It's possible, I suppose, that literally no slave in Saudi Arabia was allowed to exist unless castrated, but I don't think they would have cared as much if the job didn't put the slave in charge of protecting the elites or their harems.
Secondly, if we agree that there exist slavery-descended Afro-Saudis who can and do experience discrimination, then we've already warped the original argument to "there aren't enough people left over to complain". But that has hardly stopped anyone else - even if they're alone, people certainly don't have problems demanding what they think they are owed.
I maintain that the reason Saudi Arabia doesn't have a reparations question is that their culture and government would never tolerate such a thing. Trying to use it as an example of the success of a mass removal/extermination campaign like the original comment was making is folly.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
The problem is that it's just not true that there are no descendants of Arab slavery in Saudi Arabia.
From Wiki:
Afro-Saudis are Saudi citizens of Black African heritage. Afro-Saudis are the largest Afro-Arab group.[1] They are spread all around the country but are mostly found in the major cities of Saudi Arabia.[2] Afro-Saudis speak Arabic and adhere to Islam.[3] Their origins date back centuries ago to African Muslim migrants settling in Saudi Arabia, and to the Arab slave trade.[4]
There is also this article from refworks. CDHR refers to the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia:
Sources indicate that many black African Saudi nationals are the descendents of slaves (CDHR 9 Jan. 2014; Professor 13 Jan. 2014). Sources note that slavery was not abolished in Saudi Arabia until 1964 (CDHR 9 Jan. 2014; IGA 10 Jan. 2014) [or 1962 (Professor 13 Jan. 2014; The New York Times 10 Apr. 2009)]. The UVM Professor expressed the opinion that racial discrimination generally stems from the history of slavery (13 Jan. 2013). Several sources indicate that the term abeed, meaning "slaves" [or abda "slave" (The Guardian 28 Sept. 2012)], is still being used to describe black Saudi citizens (IGA 10 Jan. 2014; CDHR 9 Jan. 2014a; The Guardian 28 Sept. 2012).
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Thanks to that innovation, their centuries of brutality is treated as a curious anecdote, not a crime that echoes down through the centuries and demands restitution.
Between the following 2 options, which one do you think is more likely to have affected this demand's non-existence?
- Arabs castrating their slaves.
- Arabs not having a culture that would tolerate people making such a demand, let alone a myriad of others that are related to this line of morality.
Call it premature, but I'm going to take the position that 2 probably matters more than 1.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Can you clarify your stance on two questions for me?
- There is a categorical imperative to believe and spread, when relevant, things one believes are true.
- There is a categorical imperative to not believe and not spread, when relevant, things one does not believe are true.
The reason I ask is because you talk about caring for your ingroup regardless of other things. Which is not necessarily a problem. If I were told that something boosted my local economy, this would not be the sole factor in my view of that thing. But you seem to be going down the route of always supporting the ingroup.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Offer low-SES women free access to semen from high-IQ men, explaining to them that this will give their children a much better chance at succeeding in life and greatly reduce the odds that they'll end up in prison.
There are several environmental factors that can and will probably derail those children from leading a successful life.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
"Jefferson is a racist" is not an important piece of academic work that was only brought forward by CRT, according to CRT.
See, this would be a better approach to that debate and Rufo could easily have gone down this route. Talk about whether or not Robinson's recounting of CRT's contributions is accurate.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Nobody claims that some political theory is literally wrong about everything, even if they use the words "wrong about everything" or synonyms.
Only in the culture war context would you say something like this. You are so focused on rejecting a particular view of the Founding Fathers and its linked ideas that you aren't willing to accept that one of the people who agrees with you did something bad or stupid.
If an anatomist said "the human body has 400 bones", that would be a gross overstatement and clear evidence they didn't know even the most basic of facts about their own subject of study. It is damning if such a person cannot get this right. Moreso if they double down on their view even when you show them they are wrong. It makes no difference that they correctly told you about the various evolutionary reasons the body developed the way it did.
What's even sillier about with all the disagreement over this point is that Rufo didn't even need to say what he did. There were many other ways in which he could have criticized CRT on his own terms in his book. But no, he insists on not giving an inch because he realized he wasn't careful enough and now he had handed his enemy a weapon.
There is no point to carrying on this conversation. Respond if you wish, I know the last word matters to some. But I'm thoroughly bored of this.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
That's what the original CA article claimed. Robinson's entire argument about that was that Rufo was wrong about CRT being totally wrong, and that "Jefferson is a racist" is an important piece of intellectual and academic work that was only brought forward by CRT.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Yeah, but that's not Rufo's initial stance. Rufo is the one alleging that CRT is wrong about everything, here's Robinson giving an example about CRT being correct and having an impact on how the mainstream history is treated. Rufo is obligated to back down on a false claim. If he doesn't want to do it with an interview from the "enemy", then he should have been more careful in the first place.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Central examples of racism are ones that we're supposed to treat as ultimate evil.
If I quoted a person from the 17th century who said "white people are literal devils, evil in mind and body", you would 100% tell me that this person was racist. Why is Jefferson a non-central example when his belief is only slightly out of step with modern anti-black racists?
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Your previous comment makes it sound like you agree with me that it is a central claim. Your rebuttal here makes no sense in light of that.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Okay, but Rufo is the one who decided to take that stance. If Rufo had narrowed or moderated his stance against CRT, he wouldn't be subject to the weakness of his current stance. A bad argument in favor of a good thing (as many here would see it) is still a bad argument.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
If LGBT stuff were objectively a moral obligation, then yes. It would still depend on “conditions” though, right? Namely that someone from a very traditional social background is going to naturally be more stubborn to change than someone raised by a gay couple in NYC.
I don't see why a person is only obligated to consider that which is morally good. This kind of thing is always in contention, and we can never be entirely certain going into a brand new topic of where we will end up after rigorous consideration.
I'll rephrase the hypothetical and make it abstract as well. Suppose there exists moral question X, for which there are two sides. In 2023, it is generally easy for someone who was raised in a sheltered community to get access to unedited arguments in favor of the side they are not on for this issue. Is a person morally obligated to pursue these questions, even if there would be a cost personally should they be convinced of the opposing side's correctness?
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
But if we’re talking about, let’s say, the bombing of Hiroshima, the moral paradigm is informed by “what would the Japanese do to us?” and “what are the costs of invasion”.
I'm not entirely certain that it does. Why would Japanese barbarity change pre-war moral paradigms about how to treat noncombatants and captured/surrendered soldiers? I have no desire to go to an eye-for-an-eye morality. I would not want the Japanese subjected to the atom bomb simply because they killed many more in their occupied territories.
But I'm not interested in moral questions of the past as I am the present. The clear example is LGBT rights in the last decade or two, which is a sign of moral progress (for the most part) in my eyes. Now, there are widespread and very clear arguments in favor of the variety of LGBT rights (marriage, the right to physically transition, etc.). However, there are also places where one would known of these ideas, but never encounter the arguments sans someone's anti-LGBT rhetoric or commentary over them.
Let us suppose there exists a person in a community which is largely anti-LGBT. This person is reasonably well-off, but would still stand to lose some social status if they disagreed with the majority. They know of the issue, but have not previously pursued the moral questions with any rigor. Let us also suppose that this person would, if they heard them, be convinced by pro-LGBT arguments.
Does this person have a moral obligation to dive into the question and change their stance by being an early adopter?
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Thank you! I constantly worry over whether I may lose readers with how I write, so if the style engages you, then I'm doing a good job.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
"The Founding Fathers were racist" is not a trivial statement in this case. It is very much an important idea that both sides grapple with in their critiques and rebuttals of said critiques. I don't know how you can say that this is a case of "Internet literalism" when it's a crucial point in the CRT edifice. Hell, this is literally one of the basis facts of the 1619 project. Rufo would 100% deliberately trash this because it constitutes a major attack on his stance.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Now applying this to historical figures, did the founding fathers laugh off the idea of black people being equal in the face of insurmountable evidence? Well, no. Such evidence wasn’t widespread or unanimous.
Is there any analogy, in your view, between moral ideas and scientific ones? Let's suppose a new paradigm, a better one, is created to address gravity or some other scientific topic. Are scientists obligated to pursue its truth value even if they might be early adopters?
If yes, then I would ask you whether people have a similar obligation to morality. Especially, say, those who have the time or means to pursue a moral question to a rigorous end.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Someone who has a genetic propensity for alcoholism, as an example, should be held to a lower standard re: falling into addiction compared to someone whose genes make them sick from drinking.
Just out of curiosity, lower standards typically come with lower respect for autonomy. I don't mean this in an insulting way, but in the way we treat children. I don't really complain if a toddler pulls and breaks something, but likewise, I do not afford that toddler the right to make decisions for itself. Do you think someone with that kind of propensity should be socially given less leeway to make their own decisions when it comes to that vice?
The way I see it, we we can only improve our moral behavior b by some x percent over some period of time y.
Sure. Let's suppose that we're talking about a decade. How much should we expect a person's morality to be "improved" in that time period, assuming the arguments are made in the first year?
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Rufo himself declared CRT to be wrong on everything. Robinson was challenging him precisely on the question of what they had gotten wrong when they described the Founding Fathers as racist. How is Robinson supposed to engage with Rufo on the validity of his claims about CRT if not by challenging something as basic as this?
I said in the very first post, but maybe I wasn't explicit enough. This series is a essentially an abridged version of the book Shattered Sword by historians Johnathan Parshall and Anthony Tully. I'm writing a narrative that focuses more on analyzing the battle without all the small details that they include. They devote, for example, several pages to talking about the performance parameters of Japanese carrier planes that I don't think are relevant if you're just trying to understand Midway broadly.
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