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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   30160 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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Can you not open links? Yes, the summary is accurate. Whatever you think of his agenda and sources, I have never seen SecureSignals post anything he didn't believe was accurate before. Generally if you suspect someone is wrong or lying the onus is on you to debunk them.

I think part of rationality is assessing the reliability of your sources. If you don't have expert knowledge, then you need to defer to other people, and I don't blame do_something for being mistrustful of believing someone who spends most of his time on this site denying the most well documented mass killing in history.

Perhaps, but a larger part of rationality has always been equipping yourself with the tools to assess reliability on your own. But do_something didn't 'defer to other people' they straight up ignored the post and loudly asked for someone else to read it for them. It is an ad hominem argument in its purest form - no attempt at an argument is made, only an appeal to the op's status as a witch, to discredit them without having to bother with discrediting their arguments.

In my opinion, as a fan of the motte and someone who doesn't want it to turn into the rest of the internet, that post is the equivalent of squatting in the middle of the commons and taking a big greasy shit. I don't care how you justify it, I think it makes all our lives worse.

Side note - never forget that in the eyes of the perpetually offended, you are already tainted. You have been since long before SecureSignals ramped up his obsession. No amount of loudly declaring your disagreement with him will save you, nothing can save any of us now.

Oh don't worry, I'm not posturing against the resident Holocaust denier for my own sake. I just think he degrades the quality of the conversation here by bringing every other conversation back to his own pet pseudohistoric topic.

I realise that a place like this is vulnerable to witches and is to some extent a necessary compromise we have to make, but damn is it annoying.

The National Post is one of Canada's two major national newspapers (along with the Globe and Mail). This doesn't count as "expert knowledge" in my mind, and would go a long way towards determining its reliability (whatever answer you end up with).

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