guajalote
11mo ago
It's free speech even if he's not joking. The whole point of free speech is to protect reprehensible speech. Inoffensive speech needs no protections.
guajalote
11mo ago
The sketch was in reference to Bush, and what made the joke funny was the fact that everyone could tell Moore was not actually joking.
guajalote
11mo ago
Personally I think fresh, high-quality raw fish always tastes better (and has better texture) than cooked fish. Why, in your opinion, would it have been better cooked?
guajalote
11mo ago
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Say what you said about how you've been quickly promoted within your first couple of years out of college.
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Explain what you accomplished without revealing how you did it; "I came up with a new testing process that reduced our testing costs by 5%" or whatever.
guajalote
11mo ago
I don't think it is, nor should be, against the rules to merely argue in favor of an opinion one does not sincerely hold. If the poster breaks the rules in other ways, that's a different story, but I think it's fine and even valuable for people to be allowed to play devil's advocate.
guajalote
10mo ago
What difference does it make? We should be evaluating the argument, not the person making it. The sincerity of the person making the argument doesn't change the validity of the argument.
guajalote
10mo ago
this is only true if the argument includes no personal observations or other claims that might be false.
A person arguing for a claim they genuinely believe in is at least equally capable of (if not more capable of) making up false anecdotes, or exaggerating true ones. In general, personal anecdotes should get very little weight as evidence of anything.
If you're an actual human, you don't want to bother with someone who's likely to make a lot of invalid arguments
A person arguing for a position they truly believe is at least equally (if not more) likely to make invalid arguments, due to blind spots or confirmation bias or a simple desire to win the argument.
guajalote
10mo ago
Humans don't behave what way? They don't make false statements and/or invalid arguments in support of positions they sincerely hold?
guajalote
10mo ago
The Jesus and Mohammed pics look like posters for a Marvel movie, like a live action version of South Park's "Super Best Friends." I wish Hollywood had the balls to make something like that.
guajalote
10mo ago
The incentive will arrive as soon as people start saying "I'll believe it when I see the negatives."
guajalote
10mo ago
Isn't this a fully general argument that applies to everything? "People are too stupid to make good decisions, so the government should make those decisions for them!" And yet despite the fact that many people are very stupid, the government almost always seems to do a worse job at making decisions than those "stupid" people did. It's the same intuition that leads people to think communism is a great and flawless idea that "just hasn't been implemented properly." It's important to judge policies by how well they work, not how good they sound.
guajalote
9mo ago
The smart attack is to outflank him from the populist side by out-promising him in a vague way. Whatever Trump says he'll do (on the economy, immigration, whatever) she'll do even more and better. "I'll do even more and give you more free stuff."
This approach doesn't appeal to me personally at all, and probably doesn't appeal to the type of person who is coaching Kamala for the debate, but it appeals to the average voter and Trump would have a hard time rebutting it.
guajalote
9mo ago
Write more, edit yourself more, and find someone who is a strong writer to help you edit your writing. Be merciless and aggressive with the editing. "Kill your babies." Also, read the works of people who are strong writers in the style you want to achieve and emulate them.
guajalote
9mo ago
Let's assume for the sake of argument that alcohol prohibition reliably reduces the murder rate in the long run. This is worth taking into account, but it's hardly conclusive of whether we should have alcohol prohibition. Reducing the speed limit on all roads to 25mph will reliably reduce traffic deaths; outlawing TVs and bookshelves over a certain size will reliably save the lives of several hundred young children each year who are killed when furniture falls on them; not to mention all the lives that would be saved by banning candles and fireplaces; etc. Personal liberty has a great deal of value and I think we should be skeptical of prohibitions even if the data suggests they are "good" for people.
Thanks, I guess I was slightly off, it's more like dozens per year. Still far more deaths than the total number of US school shooting deaths over the same time period (131 killed and 197 wounded in active shooter incidents at elementary and secondary schools from 2000 to 2020).
guajalote
9mo ago
Yes, there is a line where prohibition makes sense, but I don't think any human society comes close to crossing that line when it comes to alcohol. This is especially true given that alcohol has proven its ability to coexist alongside the development of advanced human societies over the course of several millennia.
guajalote
8mo ago
The fact that "there are situations where your choices are limited exactly on these grounds" is not a justification. The government limits my liberty in many unjustified ways.
guajalote
8mo ago
Guns have valid uses, recreational drugs have less of a claim
What valid use does this website have? It's largely recreational and a drain on user's productivity, a bit like weed. Should the government ban the Motte?
guajalote
8mo ago
Of course they are different but the logic that it's ok to ban things as long as they lack "valid uses" (according to whom?) is seemingly applicable to both.
guajalote
8mo ago
Because it's a joke that's been done many times with different islands as the punchline. I've heard the same joke with Australia or the UK as the punchline.
guajalote
8mo ago
It's one of the biggest libertarian "viral moments" I can remember. Not only is it terribly authoritarian, it's a ridiculous inversion of priorities and waste of resources. We can start talking about euthanizing squirrels over "rabies" concerns after the government has successfully euthanized every rat in NYC. And treating a squirrel as some kind of dangerous exotic pet makes zero sense. There's a long American tradition of owning pet squirrels; Warren Harding had one named Pete living with him in the Whitehouse. This whole thing is just quintessentially un-American.
guajalote
8mo ago
The government regularly ignores well-documented violations of the law, particularly where those violations are non-violent (e.g. speeding, immigration, drugs). Given that the government doesn't have the ability to enforce all the laws all the time, it makes sense to deliberately ignore inconsequential violations and focus on consequential ones.
I would pick Fooled By Randomness over the Black Swan, but either way Taleb deserves a spot for sure.
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