naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
9mo ago
This seems unnecessarily heated and low effort. Please don't post like this.
naraburns
nihil supernum
9mo ago
This is low effort, consensus-enforcing, and a bit antagonistic. Don't post like this.
naraburns
nihil supernum
12d ago
FYI, I have removed this post, it doesn't really meet the effort threshold for a top level post.
naraburns
nihil supernum
3mo ago
Welcome to the Motte!
This is a Culture War post; feel free to post it in the Culture War thread.
naraburns
nihil supernum
3mo ago
Naraburns is another case that is a little interesting as he opposes liberals on some issues but self identifies IIRC as liberal, and supports mass migration for western countries while opposing it for Israel. Is there also anyone who opposes zionism among the moderators and sympathizes more with the Palestinians than Israel?
Er... I'm "liberal" in the classical sense, most Americans would not identify me as "a liberal" but maybe sometimes as "a libertarian." Even then I am a little too comfortable with government action for the tastes of partisan Libertarians. My progressive friends tend to think I'm too conservative and my conservative friends tend to think I'm too progressive so I don't think it would be wrong to call me a centrist, even though nobody ever does. Maybe it would be better to call me a "skeptic."
Like @Amadan I don't remember making any statements regarding mass migration specifically, in Israel or anywhere else. Even the political philosopher John Rawls (who was liberal and probably also "a liberal") believed that nations possessed qualified rights of exclusion (though I don't know if he ever elaborated on the qualifications). As a classical liberal I am skeptical of the wisdom of ethnostates, but I also see examples in history where soft ethnic cleansing seemed essential for long term peace (e.g. Greece/Turkey) and also where mass migration has collapsed empires. I conclude that I should therefore be neither "for" nor "against" mass migration, but merely open to understanding its likely impact in specific cases.
naraburns
nihil supernum
4mo ago
Those who bring up the example are simply bloodthirsty warmongers.
Too antagonistic, don't post like this please.
naraburns
nihil supernum
4mo ago
When people say there were no WMDs, this is what they're saying. That it was bullshit and misleading what they did, that it was a lie. They're not really making a formal statement about whether the chemical weapons that were found are or aren't "of mass destruction".
Well, yes, but the fact that "people" do the motte-and-bailey thing constantly isn't really an excuse, to my mind. Saying things that are literally false but directionally true is something that bothers me a lot. Maybe that makes me an autist or whatever, but I am entirely comfortable that my way is better.
naraburns
nihil supernum
4mo ago
This text was linked some time ago, and it is quite silly.
Is it? You don't appear to have read it.
There is very significant difference that I have no some slave owner that may rape me, take all my stuff, sell me 200kmn away, flog me, forbid me to leave specific village or tell me that I am now obligated to do unpleasant job XYZ for 18 hours a day. Taxation is not like any of these things.
The text clearly accounts for all of this. All you seem to be saying is that you don't think #9 is slavery. What about #8, #7, etc.? The point of the text is not that taxation is slavery, it's that it is surprisingly difficult to specify, from a moral perspective, where slavery begins or ends.
naraburns
nihil supernum
4mo ago
Top posts need mod approval and the mod team only currently exists in American time zones. I've approved your post, so now it's visible to everyone.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
There is not nearly enough effort backing up your substantive point, here. Please engage with effort, charity, and an eye toward writing like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
I wonder if you've actually met a lot of progressives who believe that
I kind of frowned at your comment above, which is plausibly innocent in spite of the fact that it reads like thinly-veiled, low-effort bait. But leading your further response with a backhanded "hmm I wonder" seems like confirmation that your initial question was insincere, and you were just probing for an angle to sneer at. This is unnecessarily antagonistic (and arguably Bulverism, too). Engage honestly, or not at all, please. (In particular, speculating on the motives of your interlocutor is something that must be handled with effort and charity, and is often better never raised at all. And yes--I understand that is what I am doing here, but it is something moderation sometimes requires.)
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
it's full of horrible people like you
Let's not do this please.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Why do you expect consistency from social posturing? The college kids chanting River to the Sea are just making mouth noises that they've been told are the mouth noises non-excluded, invited-to-parties people make.
This may very well be true, but it is not really a sufficiently effortful response for this space. It is always the case that one possible response to $PERPLEXING_THING is "eh, nobody is serious anyway, this is all play-acting, there's nothing to be feared from play-actors, and nothing to be gained from engaging on substance and merits." But it's rarely a charitable response (to either the person making the argument or the people under discussion) and often just false in various ways. So if you're going to imply that someone shouldn't expect consistency, you're going to need to do it with a bit more effort.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
But you modded me, not the poster I was replying to
First, the bad behavior of others is not a cognizable excuse for your own.
Second, and less importantly, no one has yet reported the comment you linked to, and I had not personally seen it. Having looked at it now, if it got reported, would I have moderated it? Maybe, but I think I'm leaning toward no because the tone is sufficiently one of exploring-the-arguments rather than heatedly-insisting-on-a-point. But the question is kinda moot because, again, no one even reported the comment, so I never saw it.
I am not even Palestinian, Arabic or muslim, but I would not be surprised if the heavy rhetoric here in the past few weeks had turned off that audience or anybody sympathetic to them. The 'boo outgroup' factor.
I disagree. My impression is that the open anti-semites who dedicate a lot of time making a ruckus here have been rather thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to go all-out in their criticism of Israel, and the ones who do so while obeying the rules have not gotten moderated for it. My impression of anyone who feels that this forum is either "too pro-Israel" or "too pro-Palestine" is that they must just not enjoy dissenting views being aired openly, because we have numerous good posters here with a genuinely diverse array of views on the matter.
I'm not saying that we necessarily need to have a heavier hand on moderation, but simply that there seems to be a slight double-standard.
You're still missing the point. You're so focused on which side you think this comment or that is on, that you are ignoring the difference between rule-breaking comments and comments that don't break the rules. Let's look at Amadan's comment, as you quoted it:
I've become blackpilled enough to believe that most Palestinians today, deep down, want the destruction of Israel and nothing less.
Emphasis added. Notice how that is a report about Amadan's psychology? Notice how this is not a report about your psychology?
the whole government of Israel uses Israeli civilians as their excuse to genocide the Palestinian people
Now, you might think, "that's stupid, obviously I'm only saying things that I think." But these are the kinds of locution that put distance between us and the issues we are talking about, and enable people who disagree with one another to speak about matters of disagreement. The same is true of 2rafa's commentary; that user was specifically reporting on their own psychological reaction to the footage of Muslim Arab terrorists from Gaza massacring civilians. Of course, someone might think they can exploit this by just putting "IT SEEMS TO ME" in front of every rule-breaking thing they want to say, but that is in part why our reputation economy is the way it is--the more good someone contributes to the forum, the more likely the mod team is to believe that users are in fact reporting on their psychology, rather than violating the spirit of the rules.
And perhaps the rational, pragmatic, ethical-altruist way of handling Gaza is ethnic cleansing, but still, how is that not BOO OUTGROUP?
"Boo outgroup" is a phrase that describes a claim or report that has no substance beyond serving as a "boo light" against a target. But sharing footage of, say, 9/11 isn't "boo outgroup," and reporting it was done by Muslim Arab terrorists, isn't "boo outgroup." A political cartoon depicting a Muslim Arab with a bomb for a turban, well, that is arguably "boo outgroup," even though it might also be an understandable reaction to having one's family terrorized by Muslim Arabs. Criticism is not the same as "boo outgroup." But criticism that is more heat than light often is.
Your mistake--and this is a common mistake when people get modded here--is your failure to imagine that you might have actually done something objectionable, and so you are carping on about what other people got away with. But that's irrelevant. You probably "get away with" bad comments too, sometimes, because we just literally don't have the time to moderate everything precisely the way it should probably be moderated. I am doing my best to explain the rules to you so you can follow them, and you asking "but what about these other people" is not especially relevant, except where it helps you to better understand what you did wrong.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Please dial down the heat a notch. This bit is especially boo-outgroup--
Gaza is being oppwesed by Iswaew that makes me vewwy angwy ヾ( •`⌓´•)ﾉﾞ
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Is the goal to know the man better? Assuming you're shtupping his daughter, he may prefer to keep you at a healthy emotional distance. I think "the standard" is avoiding each other whenever possible, and at Thanksgiving watching football in the same room without ever making eye contact.
I recognize that our new, purportedly "emotionally healthy" age would suggest you bond, say, over shared hobbies, or perhaps by sharing your individual hobbies: fishing, shooting, drinking, or for the higher-brow castes having oblique political or religious discussions. This is plausible too, though the closer you are in age to your in-laws the more likely it is to stick. On the other end of the extreme, if you have a poor relationship with your own father, some fathers-in-law seem to enjoy a kind of paternal surrogacy, especially if they have only daughters.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Would that have been a better comment?
Yes!
I've been trying to not lean in to the mod hat here, but as that is where I have the most direct experience with this problem... let me put it this way. From a tone-and-phrasing perspective, your original comment is indistinguishable with the black-pilled "rationally the only choice left to us is violence against the outgroup" stuff that we are periodically called upon to moderate. Sure, it might be more rhetorically effective to sneer or saber-rattle in these ways. But thought-terminating cliches are the end of discourse, and discourse is the foundation, the whole reason this site exists. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; rhetoric is the enemy of light, perhaps most especially when it is highly effective. This is more than mere stylistic disagreement, this is a question of whether you are here for discussion with people who disagree with you, or here to wage culture war.
And the thing is--you really have, now, engaged in a lot of discussion with me, here! You seem to be totally capable of it, and if you really hated doing so I can't imagine you would have continued coming back to respond to me for as long as you have. So just, like... lead with that! It doesn't mean you can't express pointed evaluations--the rule is not "no antagonism" it is "be no more antagonistic than necessary for your argument." The rule is not "don't criticize your outgroup," it is "provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be." Blunt language is fine, but there is a meaningful difference between speaking plainly and unapologetically, and simply airing disdain (whether your own, or someone else's). If your post amounts to little more than a "boo" light, then it doesn't meet the standard of discourse here.
What do you think that gets you?
I'm mystified by this kind of response to my claim, which explicitly cribs the words of the article about "Israelis and Arabs and Muslims and Jews living side by side with equal rights." Suggesting countries that are neither noticeably diverse nor countries that are in any plausible way committed to equal rights does not meet the spirit of the original text. "Not counting expats, we have like, two or three different religious minorities in our country!" is, I grant, a kind of "diversity," but this is still not a cultural (much less jurisprudential) commitment to the kind of broad-spectrum liberal tolerance Westerners have in mind when they talk about diverse peoples living "side by side with equal rights."
"Lebanese Jews are afraid for their lives, but they do have Christians so technically they are a nation of diverse people living side by side" does not meet the standard of "Israelis and Arabs and Muslims and Jews living side by side with equal rights." And that's before addressing stuff like sex, sexuality, political freedom, and related concerns.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
I see. Well, thanks for pointing it out--that does give me more context.
No one has actually reported that comment, and probably we wouldn't do anything about it if they did, not least because that user would have several AAQCs every month if they hadn't opted out, and essentially never gets hit with negative reports. I'm not thrilled at reading someone self-describe as having been "radicalized" by footage of these attacks, but given that we are talking about a terror strike reasonably compared to 9/11 (worse, on a per capita basis, to say nothing of the addition of infanticide, hostage-taking, and rapes) I'd be hard pressed to explain why "radicalization" is not a reasonable response. I also note that "summary execution" means without formal trial, which is worrisome but not quite the same thing as "without evidence," and "10,000-30,000 fighting age men" is not quite the same as "every Gazan," either.
In cases of war and terror, the line between "boo outgroup" and "no really, I'm arguing that this is a relatively specific group of people who have clearly caused extreme harm and are not going to stop causing extreme harm until someone puts a forcible stop to it" is maddeningly fuzzy. All the more reason to approach such discussions with maximum charity, I guess.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Why shouldn't I just assume that you're some basket-weaver taking a shit on the streets of Calcutta, or fresh from participating in a gang rape in some rural village?
Because that would be unnecessarily antagonistic, which is against the rules.
naraburns
nihil supernum
7mo ago
Hard to say. Maybe?
The decision to drop an official warning is not made on the basis of any hard-and-fast criteria. We let, honestly, a lot slide. There's only so much time in the day, and depending on what else is in the mod queue, the applicable standards may flex. Our approach is, in other words, inescapably conditional, adaptive, and imperfect.
Ultimately, if you're trying to get away with just enough badness in a post that you won't get called on it... odds are pretty good you won't get called on it. Until, of course, you do. Like driving over the speed limit, most of the time you'll get away with it, but if you do it a lot, you raise the odds of facing consequences for that.
More effort, less heat, please.
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