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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   24642 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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I'm sorry, but I don't believe that you sincerely believed the OP was literally claiming that it's bad to celebrate any deaths ever and was being hypocritical because "his side" celebrated killing the Ayatollah, nor that you believed he was motte-and-baileying from "Don't celebrate the deaths of anyone ever" to "Don't celebrate political assassinations (of my side)."

I meant for (1) and (2) to be an exhaustive list of things that I could reasonably believe here: either I believe that he believes his literal claim X (which I argue is wrong), or I believe that he does not believe X and instead believes some claim Y that is not as neat but correct. The first one is (1); the second one is (2) or a close variant, and counts as Motte-and-Bailey. If you don't believe that I sincerely believed either of those things, could you please explain to me what exactly you do believe I believed?

I guess to logically partition the entire space of possibilities, I would have to also consider (3) he does not believe X and instead believes some correct claim Y that is at least as high-status as X and (4) he does not believe X and instead believes in some other wrong claim Y. If it's (3), then I don't understand what is stopping him from retracting X and saying the Y he meant instead, which would solve this whole frustrating discussion at little cost beyond that of an apology for imprecision (surely a good thing for the discussion culture). If it's (4), his case is hardly helped (and either way I would like to know Y).

You are still pretending. Claiming you don't understand is a filibuster, not an honest statement.

This is the sort of troll response, half a step away from the 4chan practice of dismissing arguments with "YWNBAW", that in a better world would land you a ban (but you and I both know that nothing is going to happen when it's a talking point you basically just copied from a mod). I may have a history of arguments with the rightoid set here where they conclude that I am stupid and evil, and I am fully aware of many cases where I have made dumb arguments and dug myself in too deep, but I don't think I have previously been accused of being dishonest. If I wanted to give up on that streak, it would not be over some poster I barely interacted with before making an overwrought claim about crass Redditors.

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