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Should I approach his comments as purposely strawmanning instead?
Your example was literally "maybe just arrest them for having the wrong gender on their driver's licenses" and that is literally what would happen. If they kept using the license with the "wrong gender", then they would be arrested and imprisoned.
Laws are enforced through violence and force. If you make it illegal to do X, then you are forcibly blocking X. If the law says that any adult who helps their child or patient take hormones or puberty blockers should be locked away for child abuse, then what does the child have? They are being forcibly detransitioned when their supportive parents get locked away and they're forcibly thrown into a less supportive environment that bans them from their own choices, because after all any future foster home that allows it will also be locked away for child abuse.
The idea that a conspiracy theory requires conspiring in secret is the most common definition.
In ordinary discourse, "arrest them for X" means "arrest them specifically for X", not "arrest them for a large category of things that includes a case where X happens".
That doesn't make any sense.
If there's a law that says "no littering and also no selling zebras past midnight" and is punished by arresting them and imprisoning them for 6 months, it is appropriate to say "people who sell zebras past midnight will be arrested". The truthfulness of that statement doesn't change just because the law also covers littering.
Likewise a law that says "no selling four legged animals past midnight" includes the substatement "no selling zebras past midnight" so that interpretation also makes no sense. If someone claimed "it's not like they're arresting you for selling zebras", the law against four legged animal sales refutes it! Yes they do arrest zebra sellers!
Either way we interpret it, as long as X is illegal it is appropriate to say X is illegal.
Arresting you for zebras when it says animals is not that big a change in category conceptually, even though "animals" contains many things other than zebras.
If the law says it is illegal for you to be alive and you were shot when selling a zebra, it would be nonsensical to describe that as "being shot for selling a zebra", even though "living people" wholly includes "people who sell zebras", because the conceptual distance is too big.
Yes, if it's illegal to sell animals then it is illegal to sell zebras and thus the statement "they will arrest you for selling zebras" is accurate, regardless if other animal sellers are also arrested.
But that's not the case here. Amadan specifically claimed
That's exactly what will happen. In Kansas if they present the legally issued license that was now invalidated for "having the wrong gender", they can be arrested and jailed for up to six months. It is literally illegal for them to use that license.
Just because there's other ways for a license to be invalid doesn't negate this, just like other animals existing doesn't negate zebra sales being illegal. The fact remains that in Kansas If a trans person uses the "wrong gender" license, they can be arrested.
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You know what? You really are trolling here. I still don't think you are Darwin, but you definitely use Darwin's tactics. I don't block people, because as a mod I can't, and I also think that blocking people is the blocker identifying himself as bitch-made. But I will endeavor to exercise sufficient willpower not to engage with you in a non-official capacity in the future.
The word trolling on this site by you and some others is deployed as "I don't actually have a rebuttal, but I don't want to admit you are right about something" in the same way that apparently conspiracy theory isn't used as a theory about conspiring but instead just "person thinks something I don't like."
That's fine, don't engage with me in the future if you don't like to. But I hope for your sake you'll reflect on why you feel the need to dismiss away arguments you disagree with but can't refute as trolls.
No. Trolling means you are making insincere arguments to wind people up.
I don't know if you actually believe the positions you are taking- I'm not a mind-reader. But you are arguing them in a disingenuous manner, intentionally strawmanning counterarguments, and selectively ignoring or changing the elements, in a deliberately provocative manner because (I speculate, with high confidence) that you find it amusing, and that your purpose is entertaining yourself and not engaging in genuine debate or testing of your ideas.
Your condescending "I hope for your sake..." is so uttterly contrary to both my observed, historical behavior and yours that I likewise conclude it is meant merely as an insult (it's just a verbose variant on the classic rebuttal: "Neener neener I win you lose!").
I am not warning you as a mod here. I just find your behavior personally annoying. We put up with Darwin for a very long time because his annoying behavior was not, technically, against the rules. The tons of reports you draw mostly get dismissed because "This guy is really fucking annoying" is not really a report, it's venting. That said, when your entire purpose in being here is not to engage sincerely with people, but just to giggle at how many people you can aggravate, it is very likely to lead eventually to a determination that your presence here is a net negative. So I would advise you, in the same tone: for your sake, mature, fix whatever hole you have in your soul that makes you take pleasure in coming to a board full of people you don't like just to poke them in the eye and titter about it, and if you genuinely want to engage with people and learn something (even if it's just about why they think they way they do), stop trying to construct your arguments in a maximally evasive, inflammatory, and disingenuous manner.
Yes, I do hope for your sake that you can understand people can legitimately disagree with you on something and that doesn't mean they are trolling or insincere. People, even lots of smart people, will disagree with you on things! Tons of smart people think that a conspiracy theory requires a theory about others conspiring together for instance. Maybe you can disagree with that, but it's not insincere to think things like a term requires what is literally in the name of the term.
That's just a different definition than yours! I'm open to you having different definitions, I'm not accusing you of trolling for not thinking conspiring is a key detail in a conspiracy, but I easily could. It certainly sounds like a very silly argument to my perspective, but I'm well aware that people can disagree on things no matter how ridiculous I find that claim.
You're aware how this looks right if you're gonna be angry about me being "condescending" and then do the same thing right? If you find me annoying so what? I find plenty of other people here annoying and I don't accuse them of trolling often unless they do something like obviously lie (like the guy who claimed to read an article but then missed a key detail of who made the original report that was mentioned like 5 times in the first three paragraphs because it's either lying or failing a first grade reading comprehension test) and even then I accepted "sorry I skimmed it" as reasonable explanation. It was a lie in a technical sense, but it wasn't trolling.
Also you notice how I don't keep reporting people just for disagreeing with me or for them annoying me? Hell I don't even report people for stuff like the above example, cause I figured there could be a possible explanation that wasn't a troll (which there was, just lazy skimming!). I'm not the one assuming bad faith of others and calling in Daddy to take them away.
You're clearly clever and you're often right, but you seem to primarily be driven by a need to score "sick owns" on people, and that's not really what theMotte is supposed to be for.
(I used to be a lot like that as a teenager. It doesn't accomplish much in the long run.)
You're right, TheMotte is actually for angrily accusing people you don't like of trolling while encouraging and support literal provable trolling
This is a blatant troll who is openly and blatantly lying in a way you can personally test if you wish, read and follow my instructions and you can know that to be the case and his claim is provably and very simple to understand as false yet he has five upvotes and no mod action despite me reporting him.
Check it yourself. Take these prompts into a fresh AI bot
Did you get "you are trolling?" or some other variant of what the user claims happened? "I followed your instructions and every LLM said with 99% certainty you were trolling and acting in bad faith"
Did you following my instructions with those prompts get a response anywhere like that?
No, of course not. It is an obvious and blatant lie it's not a matter of opinion or disagreement or misunderstanding, it is basically the most objectively easy to test and determine lie imaginable!
Don't be lecturing me about what TheMotte is when the userbase is hilariously immature and hypocritical like this. They're actively supporting clear and blatant trolls when it's someone they like!
If you are too lazy to check it yourself and see how obvious of a lie their claim is, don't even bother to respond.
Most people do not trust chatbots (correctly, since they notoriously make shit up whenever they don't know an answer), so attempting to use chatbots as an arbiter of truth makes people think you are taking the piss.
I refuse to use chatbots under any circumstances, due to memetic-hazard concerns. Not a matter of laziness.
EDIT: Oh, misread why you were asking that. That post might have been sarcasm. Also, it might have been both of your AIs hugboxing you; I'm not certain whether it's actually possible to "start from scratch". Still not going to confirm it myself; it's a meaningless point anyway.
So the defense of someone using a blatant and easily disprovable lie against me is that you disagree with the content of my opinion?
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Don't these things violate the "speak plainly" rule, and therefore in fact violate the rules?
You've long exhausted my willingness to discuss modding with you, Jiro. If you think incorrect mod decisions are being made, take it up with Zorba.
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