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PaperclipPerfector  17d ago (text post)   26555 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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But I go through your laundry lists of accusations and feel like sincerity requires me to try to answer them point by point, and I get bogged down in a mixture of "That's completely not what I meant," "That is not what I said and I think you're straw manning me," and "What does he even mean?"

You don't have to respond to every single point. You don't have to respond to a majority of my points.

But if you genuinely believe that I've gish galloped you or straw-manned you, you should be able to pick two or three meaningfully false claims or clear misquotes or obviously unfair rephrasings, using actual quotes of words I've actually used, and then provide grounds for disagreement based on facts that exist in the world that can be discussed. And then, if I'm able to support my claims in response, either engage with my counterexamples, or justify how your position survives those counterexamples.

I'm not demanding that you admit you're wrong. I'd like you to be right! But it's hard to come away from conversations like this thinking we're debating what the actual state of reality is, rather than trying to discuss what we're even talking about.

((I'm sorry that I'm being both circumspect and prone to digressions, but from my perspective it feels like I can't have a conversation with you unless I nail down every possible aside. Best case, we end up spending ten posts relitigating the bare existence of a topic that we already discussed at length; worst case, I get lumped in with Soros conspiracy theorists and KulakCatgirl fanboys.))

I'm not demanding that you admit you're wrong. I'd like you to be right! But it's hard to come away from conversations like this thinking we're debating what the actual state of reality is, rather than trying to discuss what we're even talking about.

Well, yeah, that's the problem. I mean, I already told you I literally have trouble figuring out exactly what you are accusing me of, and here you are returning almost two weeks later to go at it again! (I'm not saying you have a time limit on responding, but come on, I thought we'd both walked away from this one, and now I have to reread the whole thread to remember where we even were.)

I get lumped in with Soros conspiracy theorists and KulakCatgirl fanboys.))

I think I already apologized for accusing you of being a Kulak fan, and I honestly don't remember calling you a Soros conspiracy theorist. I suppose you have a link where I implied it or something. You're not a Soros conspiracy theorist. Are you happy?

Look, as I once said to you in private: what do you want? Is it really that specific post you have been hounding me about for years, that argument I had with @FCfromSSC? I have said repeatedly that I regret that exchange and have reconsidered how I expressed myself, even if don't repudiate the core thesis. So if "Admit you're wrong" is not what you're after, what are you after? You really just want to replay that particular argument again? After five goddamn years? Really?

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