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non_radical_centrist


				

				

				
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joined 2022 September 23 15:54:21 UTC

				

User ID: 1327

non_radical_centrist


				
				
				

				
0 followers   follows 1 user   joined 2022 September 23 15:54:21 UTC

					

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User ID: 1327

I think the difference is that the elites aren't going to be banning large homes and meat, they're just trying to price in externalities as appropriate. The conspiracies are embarrassing because the have the vibe of "The elites hate us and we should angrily riot to resist them". The better response would be try to come up with other more acceptable solutions that price in externalities.

Someone needs to put their foot down.

Are you defending people's right to discuss which governor you'd most want to have sex with in the workplace? I don't think that's ever been an acceptable topic. You could probably get away with it in small workplaces where you're joking with friends and it'd never leak, but I think it'd pretty much always cause controversy if it was leaked.

The Holocaust killing millions is very well documented. I'm more of a mistake theorist than a conflict theorist, so I wouldn't call people who say the Holocaust killed 5% of what it actually did are necessarily evil, but I would say they're likely mentally ill(like Kanye) and/or have made some very poor decisions in which sources they want to trust.

The question of when information should be censored is not an easy one in my opinion. Especially because we can never really be sure when information is true or not; even in mathematics "proofs" that are widely accepted can be much later shown to be false. So all information, from the planet being round to evolution to covid policy to the holocaust would be kept open to debate in an ideal society. But in an ideal society then also on the easily answerable questions like the planet being round everyone would quickly come to the right answer, and for even trickier questions like covid policy everyone would quickly dismiss the stupid information like that vaccines are being used to implant microchips.

But we do not live in an ideal society, and if you let debate spread unhindered, you'll get a lot of people believing flat out wrong stuff. And that flat out wrong stuff can have harmful effects. For example, in the 14th century, the belief that Jews were related to the spread of the bubonic plague led to massacres of Jewish communities. I think with the benefit of hindsight, most modern people would agree that if they had the magic power to censor the belief that Jews spread the black plague(and there wouldn't be any butterfly effects through the timeline), they would, since that information was very harmful.

I'm reminded of that case of the guy restraining the addict on the subway who was making everyone uncomfortable.

He killed the homeless guy. I'm sympathetic to the issue of nuisances on subways, but the right solution isn't literally killing them. From the Wikipedia page, it seems like he didn't choke the guy for less than 5 minutes. Depriving the brain of oxygen will start causing permanent damage after 1 minute, and will just about always be lethal by 5 minutes.

https://old.reddit.com/r/PoliticalCompassMemes/comments/sjeplg/which_way_lib_right/

This meme contains more wisdom about politics in it than most books about politics do. It displays 5 starving children about to be run over by a trolley, a metaphor for how every day many, many people die from circumstances that are both preventable but out of those people's control. There is a rich man capable of saving them, but for whatever reason he doesn't want to. He didn't cause their doom, but he has the ability to stop it. Maybe he has a reason behind not wanting to save them, like he's really busy and a second of his time is worth thousands of dollars, or maybe he's a sadist who enjoys watching people die, but regardless he's not the one who put them on the tracks. Then there's you, with a gun, which gives you greater power than even the richest man if he doesn't have a gun. This is a metaphor for state power and how its individuals like us that ultimately control the state with its monopoly on power. You can force the rich person to save the children. Using force on an innocent person is normally very wrong, but is it justifiable to save even more innocents?

And this isn't just a hypothetical with no true real world comparison. There are many, many rich people out there whose wealth the US could tax or otherwise seize, and spend that money on saving real lives. Most of the affordable lives to save are outside America, but there are even American lives that could be saved if a portion of Bezos' wealth was seized.

Now today I personally believe that generally US taxes are high enough that any social benefit from even higher taxes is offset by the negative effects on the economy. But I do very much think that the optimal taxes are much higher than 0, and that going full libertarian would result in a lot of people suffering who could be helped if billionaires had a bit of their yacht money taken away.

They might not, but He does. They just decided to highlight the foot washing because they personally thought it was most valuable to highlight. Even if you think it didn't deserve to be highlighted, doesn't mean it was theologically incorrect.

Donald Trump is guilty of winning the 2016 election, and for this crime he will be hounded by Democrats until the end of his days. The crime of winning in 2016 was the rationale for the Russia collusion hoax, it prompted the Mueller investigation (which produced nothing actionable), it was the reason for his first impeachment (not the appropriate anti-corruption measures he was taking against his likely 2020 opposition), and it is the reason he was indicted last week.

Donald Trump very clearly and purposefully often said outrageous things to get in the news cycle. He intuitively understood the toxoplasma of rage and harnessed it. Other politicians occasionally say the wrong thing and the sound bite follows them around(Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables", Gary Johnson's "What's Aleppo?"), and they're always constantly watching what they say to try to avoid that. Donald Trump put something new out there every week on purpose. A couple of his policies were a bit more extreme than other Republicans(border wall, Muslim ban), but not that much I think, especially when you look at how they were actually implemented. But what makes him different is that he purposefully said things and framed his words in a way to make himself sound outrageous. I think you can only get so upset when you try your best to make half the population outraged, and then they stay angry at you. Personally I think the left should be the bigger person and not prosecute Trump over tiny, irrelevant stuff. But I think it's dumb to pretend it's because Trump just doesn't fit the coastal elite stereotype. It's because he says things in the most inflammatory way possible, and he doesn't stop. Pre-Trump, politicians would insult and mock their opponent a couple times an election cycle. Trump would tweet out some new mean(and funny) nickname every day.

I don't think there are any easy solutions here. What do you think should be done if the mother doesn't want to abort but the father wants to just ditch both the mother and child? What should be done for mothers who put their own career to the side to focus on taking care of the home and children, but they find out their husband has been cheating on them? I don't think there are easy answers for those. Maybe family courts as they are are too biased towards women, but I think there is no good alternative.

Personally I've only ever skimmed bits about the Twitter Files, I don't use Twitter directly very much, and nothing of the bits I've seen about it shocked my worldview. It mostly seemed like "The US government politely asked Twitter to moderate certain content, the Twitter staff thought about it and agreed it'd be a good idea". If there was some sort of under-the-table-deal going on where Twitter received billions or other compensation for secretly pushing US propaganda, that'd be a lot worse. I don't think it reflects well on Twitter, but I don't think it's fundamentally any different than the censorship every website does.

Where as Santos is a pretty big deal because of how blatant it was. US Congressman is an important position, Santos is probably easily within the top 0.1% of most powerful people in the world. But he only got there through several dozen blatant, outright lies, not even just massaging the truth. Plus there's a decent chance he's connected to some sort of criminal enterprise given how much money he's gotten without explanation, which makes things even worse.

Do you have absolutely no empathy for someone in west Africa dying of malaria? If it cost you a mere penny to save their life, would you do it? EA is trying to save lives in the most cost effective way possible, and last I checked the most effective way to save lives was buying bed nets to prevent malaria.

If there was already an abundance of bed nets and it'd cost millions to save a single more life even in the most efficient way possible, where as they could open a local art museum that served thousands for just $10k, they'd probably start donating to local art. But right now art is already pretty well funded, and people dying of malaria are relatively underfunded. Although EA has certainly done a lot to change that and I think they have more money than they know how to spend. You could probably post an essay to their website about why donating to local art is the most moral thing to do if you can write out a clear argument for it.

I’m going to do a write up of how I think education curriculum should be reformed. For context: I went through highschool in Ontario, Canada. The way it worked was from kindergarten to grade 8, we’d have a set curriculum every kid in the grade followed, with lots of english and math classes, some science classes, history, geography, French, and gym, and one each of art, music, and health classes a week. Then starting in grade 9, which is highschool, we are given two elective choices, where we choose a minimum of one between art, drama, and music, and the second may also be a general technology course or a general business course. Each year of high school there are more electives choices offered and fewer mandatory courses, with the priorities of what the school system requires us take being the same as elementary school. There were also choices between more difficult and easier options for some classes like math, english, and science as well. Universities and colleges would also require higher level math and sciences for STEM programs too, and there is a standardised literacy test needed to graduate.

I think a lot of people when talking about school want to just add more requirements without thinking about what to cut. It’s very easy to say “all kids should learn to program” or “all kids should have PE every day”, but if you’re adding you either have to keep kids there longer, or cut something. First, I think the elementary school program is basically good, I wouldn’t change anything there. Maybe take a little of time out of science and add it to more PE.

For highschool, I would start more drastically reworking it. First, I would basically replace English with history in the mandatory curriculum for everyone who is literate. Learning about Shakespeare and studying themes in classic novels, while not completely useless, is less useful than learning about real historical events. You gain the same “critical thinking” skills analysing what motivated the people in WWI to conflict as you do analysing what motivated the people in Hamlet to conflict, plus it actually happened, giving it substantially more value. The same english classes will be kept as optional electives, like how history is optional in higher grades now. Science will only be mandatory in grade 9, and computer science will be mandatory in grade 10.

Gym class will be mandatory every year. There is a crisis in how unfit people are today. I recently joined the military. They have drastically reduced requirements, shortening basic training from 13 weeks to 8 weeks, and the weighted march from 13km to 5km. Because people weren’t fit enough to pass. A great many jobs, even today, still require physical fitness, and gym class offers more professional preparement than just about any other possible class other basic literacy. On top of that, being healthy is just healthy, and that’s good for every single person.

There will be extra emphasis on making sure every single person who graduates is literate and numerate. I wouldn’t really require anything else to hand out a highschool diploma, but if they can’t do basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, they don’t get the diploma. They’re stuck in adult night classes until they can or they give up. Ontario high schools also require 40 hours of volunteer community service which I like and anywhere else that doesn’t have that should implement it.

It might be a good idea to have a class on how to get the most out of AI too because it’s looking like that’s becoming an ever more important skill, but it’s changing so fast I don’t know.

I think some people here can have perfectly good conversation and analysis about sexuality and dating. Others are clearly incredibly biased against women and have a massive chip on their shoulder.

I wanted to write about my state banning non-"cage free" eggs

The blatant lying aside, where do you stand on animal rights? Chicken cages do look fairly torturous.

Why do people buy name brand over generic groceries? They're often identical. Are people just stupid? But it's such a blatant case about which product is better. They'll be identical products, next to each other on the shelf, except one costs about 25% less. The only difference is that the other product has commercials advertising it. I have friends insist that name brand tastes better, but the contents are literally identical.

You are typing a lot of words and I really don't understand what point you're trying to make. Can you, in one paragraph, describe what bad stuff happens as a result of our current racial and cultural appropriation policies? Then in one paragraph describe what you want the world to look like? Then in one paragraph describe why your model would be better and not have problems?

I just really need something succint and clear.

How mainstream is her view? My impression is that a lot of Israelis/Israel supporters implicitly think that ultimately there’s no long-term solution other than the killing/displacing all the Palestinians, but aren’t willing to bite the bullet and explicitly advocate for genocide (or know they should be more circumspect about it.)

I'm pro-Israeli and think Israel over all is one of the more moral countries in the world and has just been put in a very difficult situation. But I think the settlements do not have good justification at all, and because of that complete lack of justification are a blight on Israel's record.

The Netanyahu government seems like it’s on her side at least through benign neglect. Why does her cause have so much political power?

I'm given to understand in modern politics, a very dedicated interest group can wield a ton of power even if they aren't very large.

Does a settler/activist like her count as an enemy combatant? On one hand she operates under the colors of being a civilian. On the other hand it seems a little unfair for someone who is actively working to conquer your land to declare rules like “no sorry you’re only allowed to shoot at the guys who have rifles and body armor otherwise you’re a terrorist.”

I don't know what the international law is, but personally I think if someone illegal crosses into another states territory during a period of heightened tensions like the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, that state is allowed to kill them.

For moderate pro-Israel people, is “kick all the settlers out of the West Bank” something you’d be willing to accept as part of a broader peace deal?

I'd prefer it over a deal where they were allowed to stay even if Israel got nothing else for it. The settlements aren't a deal breaker for my support for Israel, but that's just because I think Palestine is even worse. The settlements are still a bad thing.

What do you do when trans people pass so well they fool the caveman brain?

e.g https://old.reddit.com/r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns/comments/lnf0lw/conservatives_dont_really_understand_biology_smh/

Exactly. I think trying to come up with strategies about how to behave intelligently even when being provoked, or trying to tell people that the provocations weren't so bad that we should break democratic norms over them, is fine. But acting all confused like "why could liberals possibly hate Trump more than other Republicans?" is just silly.

This is a genuine question. What is the federal government doing for me that my state couldn’t do? I’ll give you the military, but what else?

People vary on whether this is actually a good thing, but enforce certain rights, e.g minimum wage, abortion legality, no slavery, etc.

There are benefits to having a national system in certain areas like healthcare, postal services, highway construction, etc. where it'd be very awkward for each state to need to find a way to individually interface with each other, although the US federal government is dysfunctional enough it doesn't always see benefits.

I’d say your basically a slowly boiled frog on this twitter stuff.

Maybe. I'm just not convinced this is the most pressing issue. At least because I have never once seen a particularly good solution to the problem of big tech soft censorship, so it doesn't particularly matter how bad a problem is if there isn't anything we can do about it.

Because they know enough to follow creationist or climate change skeptical arguments, but not enough to directly compare them with their opposites, and, well, creation scientists and climate change skeptics are a lot less likely to serve some agenda that's obvious, blatant lies to their in group. Creation scientists and climate change skeptical scientists simply tell fewer blatant lies than the scientific establishment tends to

I'd say creation scientists and climate skeptics are pretty obviously wrong in a way that pretty obviously serves their interests, even if I'd believe they aren't consciously lying. And yeah the scientific establishment would probably be better served if they held to the pure truth even more strictly than they have, but over all I think they've done pretty well on those issues, as shown by how evolution/climate change are both pretty well regarded as "True." these days by most people. Now all that's debated about climate change is its exact severity/the best policies to mitigate it, as it should be.

It wasn't supposed to be a slight at him. Khan Academy is a great learning resource, and I'm pretty sure he's never learnt any economics beyond articles and blogs(If he has and just chose to reject it, then I should stop wasting my time here). I think he'd learn from just going through the lessons there than any amount of arguing with me or reading more articles and blogs, because there are actual graphs and formulas involved that Khan Academy is better set up to teach.

and geopolitically, a local boot to put on Arabs in the region is very useful.

And to have a competent ally in the area against Iran, who's probably the US' most dangerous enemy these days after China, Russia, and maybe North Korea.

So I take it you're a socialist or communist of some sort?

What do you think it is that stops McDonald's from charging $10 for a bottle of water?

I wish more people were introspective and aware of their internal motivations. It's annoying to have a girl say "I'm just not feeling it" after a few dates with no further feedback.