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Notes -
So are Louis XIV, Wilhelm II, Charles Manson, Harvey Weinstein, Bin Laden, Aella, Stephen Hawking, Kim Kardashian, Obama, SBF, Scott Alexander and a ton of others. Should we stop criticizing them all until we reach their level of success and fame?
"Clearly, they simply prosecuted Charles Manson because they were pissed that he had built a sex and murder cult which was much grander than any they could have built."
First off, who is impressive is rather subjective. Some people are impressed by STEM Nobel laureates, or Hollywood actors, or popes, or athletes, or great Starcraft players, or competitive eaters, or mass murderers, or demagogues, or big-chested porn stars.
Luckily, we have invented these things called arguments. Without them, criticizing someone is just booing them, and then we would indeed have to compare the subjective standing of both parties to find out if we should adjust our estimation of either.
Arguments exist independently of their author. If the worst person in the world, in between robbing an orphanage and strangling some puppies posts a comment on ACX taking issue with what Scott wrote, and her argument is solid, then it does not really matter that she is strangling puppies.
This makes arguments especially well suited to anonymous discussion boards such as this one. I do not need to know how many casinos a poster here has bankrupted or if she is dictating her posts to her secretary on her helicopter or typing them on a cracked mobile screen while lying in her sleeping spot under some bridge or from death row.
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