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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   25901 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 4, 2025

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it’s so unfair and he doesn’t want to die, and his executioners and their priest tell him to show courage and die with dignity …. But why should he help them to commit an unjust act?

I agree that if you're about to be literally executed, then the dignified thing to do (or, one of the dignified options you have available to you, at any rate) is to fight to the last breath. Although I think there are some important dissimilarities between that sort of situation and Hlynka's situation (assuming this really was an alt account of his).

To continue to attempt to surreptitiously use TheMotte after you've been banned from TheMotte means that you simultaneously derive value from the community, while also disrespecting the rules and procedures that allow the community to be what it is and generate that value in the first place. It comes across as selfish and confused. You should either respect the site as a whole, or not. (Of course, this is the problem that Socrates considered in the Crito, where he refused to escape from prison and from his own execution because he felt that it would be unjust to violate the laws of the community that had, up until that point, provided him with life and sustenance. In that case I would disagree with Socrates, perhaps because I somehow view "society" and "the state" as being more separate than "TheMotte" and "TheMotte's moderation" are, and also perhaps because I view the right to one's own life as particularly sacrosanct, but, in any case...)

Hlynka will always remain as one of my all time favorite Mottizens, but if he is creating alt accounts without asking the mods first, then that would be quite disappointing.

We know for a fact he's done it repeatedly. I am only 95% sure this was him.

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