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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28077 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

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Society doesn't impose costs on morally neutral behaviour. Also you are suggesting a 'host' solution, you will only get justifications for why it can't be done in return. This would not be possible even if you hadn't brought in the concept of parasitism, now it is double plus infinity not possible.

I hate this framing. And I'm not just saying that because I'm trying to romance 2rafa. You can't just say 'just treat this loaded term as neutral' when you're talking about societal issues, because society isn't just made up of autistic wordcels like us. That said, I'm pretty much willing to talk about anything, so I can't help but notice that I don't want to talk about this in these terms. It probably means you could make bank off of championing this on social media - at least until you are debanked.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm trying to romance 2rafa.

LOL very tempted to tag her. But I won't. This time...

Society doesn't impose costs on morally neutral behaviour.

Of course it does. This is what many taxes and fees are.

Ah God damn it. You're right, I meant to say it doesn't impose costs as a deterrent on morally neutral behaviour.

If the behavior is morally neutral but has costs, a tax or fee might well be imposed upon it not to deter it but to recover said costs.

Right and that's why my argument continued for several sentences after that first one.

Just for clarification, I'm reading this as 'doesn't intend to impose costs...'

Yeah, I think that's probably true. Happens all the time, but not with that conscious intent.

You can't just say 'just treat your outgroup as mistake theorists'

As opposed to treating them as conflict theorists, but there's no insight to be gained by starting from that position.

parasitism

I don't think the tarantula hawk wasp is consumed by guilt at what it has to do to continue its cycle of existence. Not that it has the capacity to feel guilt, of course.

Thus, a particular assumption relevant to my outgroup's behavior- that [at its core] it is an evil animal with evil motivations designed solely to maximize the suffering of others for selfish gain- is therefore flawed and not worth talking about.

Of course, if that hypothetical question ever came up between host and parasite, how would you mediate a dispute between them? Not that a host could conduct that process when parasite-obsessed [for a variety of out-of-scope reasons] hosts are in oversupply, of course, which debanking is an expression of and why it's only become a thing now.

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