naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
I can't tell whether this is linkspam or not... well, you're welcome to post it in the CW thread I suppose, though a more thorough and careful review would probably contribute better to discussion.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
If it's your intention to discourage people from giving viewpoints you disagree with that's fine, just say so.
This is not my intent, and by suggesting that it is my intent, you are actually breaking the same rule I just warned you against breaking. This is the absolutely predictable refrain of people who do not want to accept that they have broken the rules: "Oh, the mod is just biased against my views." Don't do this; it's not just uncharitable, it's almost comically boring.
it seems that the low-effort comment which I "should've ignored" was expressing a genuine sentiment that lots of people see reflected as true and impactful
Then take it up with them. I don't know how to be clearer about this. You explicitly tagged the fact that you were making assumptions about what anti_dan meant by "the meme" and you also tagged your own assumptions as tracking "very outlandish." The way you responded tells me that you were being uncharitable, and further suggest that at some level you even knew that you were being uncharitable.
And the thing is--for all I know, anti_dan believes exactly what you said. The problem here is not about substance. It's about approach. Generally speaking, just don't put words in people's mouths. No, not even if you think it's necessary; better to shut your own mouth than put words into someone else's. But in those cases where it really does just seem unavoidable, well, then--you need to do a better job attributing beliefs to people in ways that do not strike you as outlandish. You need to steelman their position. If you're not going to do that, then you just don't get to put words in people's mouths.
As for any other people who might actually be taking outlandish positions explicitly, like--okay! They've painted the target on their own backs. So take it up with them.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
Let's take a 30 day break from your trolling this time. Come back better, please, or just don't come back.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
Should I assume that I would be in worse shape if not for the vaccine
If you're over 40, then yeah, probably. If you're under 40, it's a coin toss at best.
And once I recover, should I get a fourth shot?
I was happy to get the original Moderna shots. I initially planned on getting a booster when they updated it for Omicron. By the time the Omicron-specific booster was out, there no longer seemed to be any point. It seems like some people are saying once you get a bivalent booster you're done, others are saying you should get boosted every year, or six months. Does an infection count as a dose? Who even knows? If so, I'm already quadruple-dosed.
So I haven't even gotten my third shot, much less a fourth.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
I know we aren't always very good at enforcing this rule, but CW posts are still in fact quarantined to the CW thread(s). Please feel free to post there.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
Trad macho posturing bullshit like this is always so laughable being posted on a community that is an even less productive use of time than some Minecraft open source project.
This antagonism gets you banned for a week. Please think of it as my personal contribution to the productive use of your time.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
The original plan of the UK government, which is to encourage individual measures such as handwashing and voluntary distancing, is thrown out for the lockdownist policy that originated in China and was copied by countless other nations. Cummings is of the impression that, if we had done this earlier, we could have reduced the number of deaths.
Huh. For some reason I thought Cummings was the architect of the original approach, and that the draconian lockdowns marked the beginning of the end for Cummings. But maybe that was based on my impression of his comments to media when he broke lockdown to be near relatives when his wife got sick.
I'm not "remembering" anything, much less misremembering--I literally just went and checked, because your claim seemed plausible to me, but proved on examination to be wrong. You said:
Had it been CWR that opened first after the Culture War got booted off of SSC, it'd be the big dog.
My first thought was to check the subreddit creation dates. But as you suggest, it occurred to me that a subreddit may be created but not "opened." So I went looking for the original roundup dates, and CWR "opened" and was running CW threads basically immediately when SSC started having conversations about the split. It opened first, several months before TheMotte. When the roundup was "booted," CWR was already open and running, for the express purpose of being the new location. Everyone could have gone there.
Everyone didn't. The vast majority followed Zorba's team.
And it doesn't really matter very much to me who was first, or why people ultimately moved, beyond the claims I've already made and against which you have presented no counterevidence (only speculation). But it does seriously damage your credibility, in my view, to maintain your position here, in the face of strictly factual evidence against your claim. It's okay to be wrong, everyone's wrong sometimes. But not everyone is rational enough to update their beliefs in the light of contradictory evidence.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
Here:
On September 7, 2020, this post was made on /r/themotte and got +20 upvotes:
As the poem goes, sooner or later the Saxon begins to hate. And I have more than just begun.
[...]
The truth is that I fucking hate them. [...] I don't want a compromise anymore. I don't want to go our separate ways in peace. I want to hurt them and I want to win.
[...]
I would rather die and fail and men say 'at least he tried' than to throw my own flesh and blood to the wolves that swim in Cthulhu's wake.
[...]
I doubt we are in for a short victorious war but I think the right will come out well in any civil conflict.
I reported this to the mods, who did nothing. After waiting some time, I reported it to the reddit admins, and the AEO promptly deleted it. To my knowledge, this was the first AEO action against /r/themotte. The mods discussed it via modmail but issued no warnings or ban to the user in question.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
Not very helpful, I know.
It's more than I was able to glean on my own! Thanks for the insight.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
Christians too dream of utopia, but of course since we know that the Kingdom of God is fiction, the Christian position is tantamount to the claim that utopia is impossible and not worth striving for in actuality.
This technically violates the rule against consensus-building--"we know" is too strong. More subtly, I know "Christians" (in the sense that they identify with Christianity while doubting the metaphysics of it) who see the Kingdom of God as unattainable but worth striving for as an ideal, so you need to be careful about making assertions regarding what "we" know, as well as what the "Christian position" is.
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.
Yeah, and OP made it a bit clearer in another comment that the point of the post is strictly to solicit career-trajectory advice, rather than to examine plans pertaining to spouse and children, so this is all rendered somewhat tangential anyway. Ah, well.
Some states do have private school vouchers of various kinds, there are also tax rebates and of course many private schools offer scholarships. It's difficult to commensurate costs and benefits in the realm of child-raising for many reasons (not that this stops anyone, including me, from trying), but one that I think COVID-driven remote work expansions really highlighted was the possibility of spending more on a house in a good school district, to spend less on private schooling. If you've only got an average number of children, this likely represents only a small savings, but if you have 4+ children (OP seems to have some children and specifies wanting "more") the savings can stack up quickly--even at only $10k/year.
This also kind of overlooks the fact that the "private school advantage" is much more legible in the UK than in the US. There are some good private K-12 schools in the US for sure, but usually when I see stark opportunity or income gaps being discussed in the literature, it's UK schools under examination. In the US, private and public charter academies vary in quality as much as, and arguably even more than, neighborhood and public magnet schools. I admit that--while there are no doubt many good counterexamples!--I personally view suburban $10k private schools as kind of weird; they don't generally appear to outperform suburban neighborhood schools (the way urban private schools are almost always superior to nearby public alternatives), so it's hard for me to see suburban private schools in the US as anything but opportunities for the middle and upper-middle classes to participate in a cargo cult of pretend-wealth.
More options
Context Copy link