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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34513 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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guys, it's fake. it's a fake story.

Does it matter for most of what we discuss here? I have seen similar stories play out in real life quite a bit.

I'm going to be honest, I'm not a fan of "who care's if it's real, it started a conversation, which is the important part", no matter what it's applied to.

I think that the "who cares if it's real" attitude is bad if it's an extreme scenario that never really happens. Like if this was a similar example, but OP claimed that the girl got him kicked him out of university, would not be something that really ever happens. But pretty similar scenarios to OP's story do happen. I could have seen myself making a similar mistake in my first year of college if I was a bit more forward and a bit dumber and a bit more confident a girl liked me. And then it'd only be after the fact I'd seek out a specific sub to help me decide what to do next, after realizing I don't know what to do on my own.

You might want to explain a bit more than your dislike of the matter.

Discussions don't always need to be specific events, they can be about the class of events or a proxy of an event.

Does it matter for most of what we discuss here?

Yes? It's bad to generalize from fictional evidence.

I have seen similar stories play out in real life quite a bit.

I don't doubt this, but the tiny details matter a lot in these matters.

Mostly the discussion here is about people's reactions to the story, which are real even if the story is fake.

It still fucks up the analysis. In good Bayesian rationality you need to be reasoning about the process which generated the evidence.

To add onto sarker's response, I think the reactions still have merit and truth value, in that "who you are in the dark"/"The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" kind of way. Consider also the two trans-related Motte-adjacent-adjacent smoke jobs (TraceWoodgrains vs. LOTT and Jesse Singal and that whistleblower).

It doesn't fuck up the analysis. What matters is people's opinions which this story exposes, even if the story didn't happen.

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