drmanhattan16
No bio...
User ID: 640
drmanhattan16
12hr ago
Yeah, but can birds shoot fireballs at each other?
drmanhattan16
5d ago
They wont get "unfair" utility by spreading their opinion more than before, and the argument would be one where both sides arent particularly enjoying prolonging.
The problem is that we'd have to discuss the facts on the ground, and any anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers would inherently get to promote their view that they don't think Jews are by default as trustworthy as others. For some, their goal is just to spread doubt and get the talking points out, not to actually reconsider their views on the Jews or anything related.
drmanhattan16
6d ago
but their narrative isn’t popular except in small corners and it comes with no social benefit
Humans are largely interested in the status games they partake of, not the ones they don't. It doesn't matter if it's only popular in their small corners if they don't care about status outside it. Except to the extent they have to be a part of that broader society, of course.
Your typical anti-white twitter poster isn’t going through old books and articles and tomes to revise how some moment in white history was fabricated.
The people on the fringe of society have to do more work to make their points palatable to the public, that doesn't mean they can't be motivated primarily or solely by hatred.
drmanhattan16
6d ago
But it's not going to go anywhere. No one is going to back down on the credibility of their sources, especially if the inferential distance is too large.
drmanhattan16
7d ago
I think that's the defensible stance, in the sense that it doesn't indicate anti-Semitic beliefs. But "Jews have assigned the Holocaust a unique position in Western history" is a far weaker stance to take, imo, that most revisionists don't seem to hold. If they just hated how the history was distorted, I think there would be fewer revisionists overall - there's simply less of an axe to grind.
I think SS and the revisionists do genuinely hate the Jews. Not in the childish sense of "look at this bitch breathing", but in the sense that they think it's acceptable to declare a heuristic like "Jew? Morally suspect, opinion discarded".
I do seem to notice a correlation between Holocaust denial and a strong interest in Jews?
You would expect this in all places which allow the topic, not just here, because a natural question as part of digging into the "Holocaust conspiracy" is why it exists. For that, the answer (Edit: given by revisionists) is Jews as well. At the very least, I know SS has talked about Elie Wiesel in the past, who is a Holocaust survivor. Wiesel is also an activist who has been tireless in promoting the Holocaust as an act unique in its depth of immorality. From Wikipedia:
In 1982, at the request of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Wiesel agreed to resign from his position as chairman of a planned international conference on the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide. Wiesel then worked with the Foreign Ministry in its attempts to get the conference either canceled or to remove all discussion of the Armenian genocide from it, and to those ends he provided the Foreign Ministry with internal documents on the conference's planning and lobbied fellow academics to not attend the conference.
Or, we can talk about the supposed 11 million killed in the Holocaust - that number is actually a fabrication by a Jewish Nazi hunter named Simon Wiesenthal. From the Jewish Virtual Library:
Five million is frequently cited as the number of non-Jews killed by the Nazis. The figure is inaccurate and was apparently an invention of famed Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. According to historian Deborah Lipstadt, he began to refer to “eleven million victims” of the Holocaust, six million Jews and five million non-Jews in the 1970s. Wiesenthal later admitted making up the figure to promote interest in the Holocaust among non-Jews. Lipstadt, says “he chose five million because it was almost, but not quite, as large as six million.”
None of this would matter if Jews didn't disproportionately occupy positions of wealth, status, and power. None of this would matter if the Holocaust wasn't seared into our moral memory. But since both have happened, it should not surprise anyone that anyone interested in Holocaust denial is basically guaranteed to also talk about how Jews control non-Jews at the detriment of the latter.
Edit: To be clear, I don't agree with the revisionist position, I am only explaining why you would naturally see people go from revisionism to focused on the Jews.
drmanhattan16
7d ago
As you point out, even the most righteous among the nations involved in WW2, the US, saw it fit to intern ethnic minority civilians. Minorities were everywhere looked at with suspicion.
This was after Japan had declared war on the US. Germany, by contrast, was not going to fight Israel, given that the latter didn't exist at the time. What threat did the various targeted minorities pose to the German people that the Germans did not invite unto themselves by invading the nations where those people lived?
drmanhattan16
8d ago
I know that it’s popular wisdom that holocaust deniers are really, strongly motivated by hating Jews, but I think that is imputing on them a baseless and primitive psychology.
If I said that there were people who just hate white people, I think you would agree that such a motivation is entirely plausible, even if they say that they're just interested in questioning the mainstream narrative which casts white people in a fairly well-off light. Why can't the same hold for Holocaust deniers?
drmanhattan16
8d ago
I doubt any holocaust denier would be willing to accept any judging by reasonable people, so thats as far as that topic would ever go, as it should.
Wouldn't a denier just say the "reasonable people" have too large an inferential distance from the denier as to make them more or less incapable of agreeing with the denier even if the latter were correct?
I am not opposed to the notion of having skin in the debate, but for topics like this, I think you would just get bogged down into meta discussion on the credibility of sources on either side.
drmanhattan16
29d ago
group of open-minded free-thinkers
Don't self-aggrandize, you might actually believe your own hype.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
https://youtube.com/watch?v=1X_KdkoGxSs
New video by Lex Fridman, Destiny + Benny Morris vs. Mouin Rabbani and Norman Finkelstein on the I/P issue.
I'm posting this here because Finkelstein made this into a greater farce than one could ever have imagined. Weird blend of Rabbani/Morris debating specific historical points and Finkelstein/Destiny basically fighting each other.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
If Israel's outright policy is to commit a war crime, then they're playing a much more dangerous game which could result in the US applying much heavier pressure. It's unlikely they're going to go that route, doubly so when it would give their enemies a PR bonanza.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
Which states are we comparing to? I don't know what that list you're talking about looks like.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
What's the source on that?
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
accept all who surrender, Hamas and civilian, starve/shoot/bomb/propagandize those who don't.
That's a war crime, you don't get to kill non-combatants who refuse to surrender to you. Their non-combatant status is not suppressed unless the military advantage of killing them is high enough.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
If that's the case, why do you insist on using the term election denier? After all, any of these other terms would mean the same thing anyway eventually, so why not use those terms and avoid my complaints? Frankly, this is nonsense. You use the term because you want to smuggle in your opinion as the default while signaling disdain to others.
Because your objection isn't the phrase, it's the meaning you perceive behind it. The demand to use another phrase for the same thing is part of another euphemistic treadmill.
Whether or not "fraud" (whatever that means) is done, if elections are done illegally in contravention to law, you cannot then claim "well, actually there was an agreed upon method which was done so you are bound to the outcome" because it's explicitly not an "agreed-upon method."
Whose law? The federal governments or any particular state's? As I said, you don't have a claim to the latter - your concern is whether or not there was fraud, not whether that election was done illegally.
First, this obligation is goofy. "Do I care about this only because I lost?" Every person is going to think and say "no."
See, that's the funny thing - Hlynka doesn't even care about this standard, nor do some people on this site, apparently. It says something that the most trivial of intellectual hurdles is apparently beyond what he requires of others. More to the point, just because someone says "I'm not doing this because I lost" doesn't mean we have to believe them. There are ways of evaluating whether someone is being rational that can find clearly irrational people even when we allow for ambiguity.
This is why this just looks like an attempted beachhead in order to expand these obligations toward your default position. What you really want is to get election losers to have to meet some growing obligation and standard to analyze "facts," which you will morph and grow into proving something to others who are hostile, like you, for what I'm sure are purely truth-seeking, rational motives. This is why I claimed it looked like you're trying to smuggle in your default position because otherwise these meek obligations you're trying to get others to agree on don't matter.
In your view, am I or am I not trying to establish a "beachhead"?
Hlynka's opinions and election "deniers" claims are disprovable; the issue is you have no facts which are good enough to convince them and no explanations good enough to poster-board over their concerns and suspicions, and frankly any person who doesn't start from your default position, about the legitimacy of the election and its outcome. If this justifies obligations, I can think of a myriad number of obligations which conflict with and undermine your default position assumption.
How can they be disproven when in the same breath, I'm told that fraud is undetectable, but we also know it must have occurred? If the former is true, then you can't deny the possibility of no fraud. If the latter is true, then it's disprovable, but you have to provide evidence of it. Yet, I see multiple people using the former as their justification for the latter. You have to pick one and stick with it, no jumping between stances when it suits you. (I mean "you" in the general sense, not just you specifically).
Moreover, if someone wants to come to the conclusion that we fundamentally cannot know, based on facts, whether the election was stolen or not, then it's very curious how this never comes accompanied with a suggestion for which outcome is more likely: stolen election or not. I understand why this happens, but it's very telling that Hlynka and those who agree with him on this issue don't seem to care about evaluating what their real objection to the election actually is.
This is why Hlynka harps on this not being the correct default position because it won't convince losers whenever anything slightly suspicious happens.
And it doubly won't convince them if their real objection is the outcome of the election, not its integrity.
But Hlynka isn't interested in asking himself or others if that's actually the case. What a shame.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
Describing election disputers, election fortifier, election revisionist, election skeptic, etc., etc., doesn't need to be absent all presumption, but when you write a phrase like "election denier," you are at the extreme end of presumptive and it is another example of smuggling in your default position (not to mention your distain).
It would only take a short amount of time before any of the phrases you used would be seen by the people they are being used to describe as just as hostile and presumptive as "election denier".
I'm not playing the "source?! source? You have a source?!" game in a dialogue about another user's statements around disputing the default position to judge a disputed election.
If you're going to claim the election laws were changed and found illegal, that's a claim you are making. It's entirely reasonable to ask you to explain what you're referring to with a source. I assumed you were referring to PA and WI, but I wanted to be sure. Regardless, the legality of the election methods themselves is of very little importance if you're not from that state - if a state had legalized letting non-citizens vote, that would hardly be a consolation to those who think the election was stolen.
This matters greatly because simply saying those rules were illegal isn't the same as saying the vote counts were inaccurate due to fraud, to say nothing of whether the outcome in WI or PA was actually changed as a result. For example, the WI court ruling on the drop boxes being illegal also said there was no indication of voter fraud in the election, though their citations might leave someone questioning the election frustrated.
It depends on the challenge and the court holding. If a court declares your challenge isn't going to be heard because you cannot show you, specifically, will be harmed by this illegal rule, this has nothing whatsoever to do with whether some rule or procedure or application is legal let alone to the point where one can buttress a claim of an "agreed-upon" set of rules.
Sure, not every failed court challenges was due to the facts/proof, some were dismissed over jurisdiction and standing. But ultimately, court challenges aren't, in my view, some lynchpin against Trump's claims.
Trump famously and repeatedly claimed he would not "concede" to the winner if he thinks the election is unfair, but somehow he accepted "the basis of an agreement to a contract" because he ran anyway? Or he voters/supporters did because they voted anyway?
I have no problem with a candidate declaring the election is unfair and then wanting investigations. But there is an obligation, I think, to accept that this claim is falsifiable. If the evidence coming back is that there's no clear evidence of fraud, then Trump ought to rethink his conviction on the matter.
A common argument against this line of reasoning is that fraud is undetectable, so not having clear proof is an unfair standard. But I rarely see people advance this to the conclusion that we therefore don't know who necessarily won the 2020 election, I only see it being used to argue that Trump did have the election stolen from him. That's a stronger argument that does need to have proof shown.
why should election losers be obligated to do this? and if they are, then therefore what? if they fail to meet that obligation, then therefore what?
You should be obligated to do this because this because it divides the country further if matters of truth are subordinated to one's partisan/ideological goals. You cannot claim to be a rational or reasonable truth-seeking person if you cannot accept a truth which might hurt your in-group.
Speaking practically, denying the outcome of the 2020 election matters more to the people who lost than the people who won. If you cannot convince people that you are not reasonable or rational, that you cannot be persuaded that you might be wrong, then people will rightfully dismiss anything you have to say. You can sit back and revel in the supposed ignorance of your opposition, but they're in power right now and it seems like they're going to be there for a while.
But if losing while truth is apparently on your side is what you want, then I suppose you can ignore this obligation.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
Because you're trying to shift the burden onto the people who are "election deniers," using terminology itself which is smuggling in your default position the election should be assumed to be legitimate unless there is a strong showing of facts to meet some high standard. It "seems reasonable" to do what? You think it's reasonable to have your default position and burden obligation and evidence standard. And that's fine by itself, but this language is all part of how you're attempting to simply assume the default position by fiat to shape the field against anyone who would question the results of the election.
What's the non-presumptive phrase to describe people who deny the 2020 election was legitimate, and why would it not be subject to the euphemistic treadmill?
much of the way the election was conducted was declared illegal after the election when the outcome could no longer be changed; much of the way the election was conducted in explicit contravention to state law, i.e., the "agreed-upon method"
What's the source for this?
Why would random people or even Trump be required to agree to the election is assumed legitimate standard because "his side" lost a bunch of court challenges about illegal election law changes?
"Required" is a strong word. But the case gets weaker with each failed court challenge. At some point, there's no vitality to it left.
the 2020 election wasn't decided by 7 million "votes," it was decided by 50,000 "votes" in 5 states
That's not the point. The point is that millions of voters, who I suspect didn't think they could ignore the results of another state simply because the laws in that state changed, still went out and voted for Trump.
This isn't, in other words, a case where a disinterested party is being approached to accept the validity of the 2020 election, this is a case with a very much interested party.
Ultimately, this still leaves me no more persuaded on the "and then?" part of Hlynka's position. Even assuming that the truth of the 2020 election is unknowable, why is there no obligation for those think Biden didn't win fairly to consider how much of their motivation is simply losing the election?
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
How far am I supposed to take this analogy? Because if I take Hlynka's position and apply it here, then we are left with the idea that outsiders have no obligation to actually consider the probability of fraud occurring, and that they should be free to accept payment to accept the idea that no fraud occurred.
That doesn't strike me as particularly rational and virtuous, respectively.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
There were 74 million people who voted for Trump according to Wikipedia. Even if we think that number is too low, or that Biden had some part of his supposed 81 million votes forged from nowhere, it seems like reasonable to say that Trump supporters were not sitting out election day hoping that only others would vote him. They probably went and voted for him as well. If you accept this premise, then we seem to have the basis of an agreement to a contract - using established election rules, both sides would vote and the winner would be who got the most votes (nominally speaking). Trump supporters added their bit of strength to the validity of using the election as it ran to decide if Trump would continue to be the president.
Given this, I don't see why it's attempting to smuggle in my position as the default to say that the party who alleges the agreed-upon method was invalid due to fraud has to demonstrate why that is the case.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
His post isn't a disagreement over "policy," it's a disagreement over the default position.
No, Hlynka is clear that elections are negotiations and that the winners have to convince the losers to cede power. He says as much here. I can't show him wrong under his standard because it's not about facts - if the convincing fails because the losers don't like losing, Hlynka wouldn't tell them to accept it.
Moreover, Hlynka was never clear if he was a principled election fraud investigator (in the sense that he only cares about ensuring valid elections) or if he's only being that way because he doesn't like that the Republicans/conservatives don't have their man in the White House.
Is your belief, one which is likely higher than this legal standard, one of "policy" or "facts"?
Facts, obviously, because my contention is that there isn't evidence of the election ultimately being stolen from Trump. I ultimately wouldn't have had a problem accepting a possible Trump victory in 2020 if that was the verdict at the time.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
Hlynka and all the people supporting his QC confuse me.
It's confusing because it seems like there's a great deal of people who think the fact of the matter is that the 2020 election was unfairly stolen by Trump. They argue the facts and think their side is correct in a verifiable manner. I understand this perspective, even if I disagree on the facts.
Hlynka's post and subsequent comments aren't about this. It's about how election deniers have to be persuaded by the non-deniers that there was no ultimate theft. He interweaves this with references to attempts to suppress investigations into election fraud, but his subsequent comments in that thread make it clear that he assigns the election deniers no obligation to evaluate their own motivations.
If I talked with a person who disagrees on the facts, I know they would be willing to publicly state that the facts are the only thing that should determine the conclusion. Whether there was fraud or not, a stolen election or not, the facts are the sole method of determining this. But Hlynka isn't arguing the facts because his revealed preference is debates over policy. And no, elections are not the same thing as debates over policy.
I will ask anyone here who supports his view the same question I asked him - do you actually care about the facts of the 2020 election, or are you just interested in negotiating over policy? Because if it's the latter, just be honest and we can avoid debating a topic which doesn't actually touch upon your real concern.
drmanhattan16
1mo ago
Yes, yes, there are these two tribes, but WHY do these tribes hate each so much? It seems obvious to me that the red tribe is currently on the defensive, and so fights on out of a spirit of plucky individualism/puerile defiance (you choose). They could just stop, but that would amount to a capitulation.
You are missing why they are fighting in the first place. This is not a case of "I know I'm wrong, I'm just arguing to piss you off", the red tribe holds fundamental moral values. The most basic of oughts is that one ought to promote what one deems moral. Why wouldn't they fight against someone promoting something they don't think is moral?
But the blue tribe's motivation is harder for me to explain to myself. Why do they hate the red tribe so much? One could point back to Trump and say "Look at all the damage the red tribe did!" but Trump himself seems to have been the red tribe lashing out at blue tribe condescension/scorn.
This is again missing the point. You don't need an explanation for why this particular culture played out the way it did to understand 90% of it. The Blue Tribe holds different values and will fight for its morality, simple as that.
Humans set their standards by their environment, which is why nerds and jocks will self-segregate despite the countless things that make them similar. You cannot point to the far group(s) and ask why a tribe doesn't organize with the other tribe against the remote tribe, it's very rarely relevant. Failure to understand this is bizarre given that you've read SSC's Outgroup piece.
It appears that the Blue Tribe today does not accuse the red tribe of anything specific at all
This is so blind to anything the Blue Tribe says that I have to seriously consider if you are just casually speculating with no research on what either side alleges. The Blue Tribe accuses the Red Tribe of a whole host of things, which can largely be grouped into two categories: bigotry (racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.) and irrationality (in particular, deriving views based on "common sense" and religious beliefs).
drmanhattan16
2mo ago
That's not what the lawsuit alleged. It said that hosts were allowed to make claims that executives believed were false, and that guests were brought on and made claims that the hosts believed were false.
Okay, yeah, this is the case I was thinking of. I recall going through the evidence brought against them and I found it fairly convincing that Fox had no reason to believe what they were peddling and also didn't believe it themselves.
The actual proof can be found in the pdf at the bottom of this article. It's 192 pages, but it's either screenshots that can quickly be read or large font question-answer segments. I think it clearly indicates that the people at Fox didn't believe what they were saying, because their own research team was telling them there wasn't any evidence, and it notes that Fox believed executives had an obligation to correct people from stating falsehoods on their own network.
Ultimately, what did Fox in wasn't the view that the election was stolen. It was not believing their own public statements.
Nuh uh, they're real
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