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Even themotte isn't safe from such behaviour. Our well-read Russian friend (currently in exile in Turkey) accidently used the Russian notation for quotation («I am a Berliner.»). After an accusation of anti-semitism (ironically, not by a leftist) due the second poster mistaking guillemet for the triple parenthesis, a third poster explained the difference. Someone reported the third poster to the admins and his post was [removed]. This was the straw which broke the camels back and led JabbaTGreek to lead his flock to independent pastures.
Orwell's thoughts on this topic are well-known, inability to express dissent leads to an inability to even think dissentient thoughts. But on the second hand, lingusts today think that while the Strong Sapir-Whorf (language determines thought) is false, the Weak (language influences and shapes thought). Mathematicians also agree that in their field at least, their version of WSW (notation influences mathematics) is also true. Correct notation makes it easier make generalizations which are true, and correctly obscures feneralizations which are false.
Having charity and kindness being rules here was a mistake. Our great enemy has no concept of truth as we'd understand it. I'd accuse them of being habitual liars, but the dichotomy of truth and lies simply is not in their world view. In this environment where you are required to take their truth-void statements "charitably", it's impossible to grapple with them. Think of Darwin.
Furthermore, they have hacked our empathy to such an extend that our truth is offensive to them and cannot be spoken under rules dictated by "kindness". We are constantly forced into using their terminology. It's not mutilating and sterilizing children, it's "Trans health care".
If this place in an experiment, it's failed.
Not sure what you mean by this. Charity and kindness in debate have been norms that have been useful for far longer than wokeism, even if wokeism is taking those rules to the extreme. Baby and the bathwater, and all that.
I think charity is fine, but it must be in service to telling the truth. That’s where the liberals have weaponized kindness and charity. In the hierarchy of speech values, truth must weigh much higher than charity. You can insist that people not be antagonistic about the way they tell truth as they understand it, but the truth is often unkind and makes people uncomfortable. It’s not kind perhaps, to suggest that jumping off the roof won’t result in flight, but it’s absolutely true that gravity will pull the roof jumper back to earth. There can even be a sort of backhanded cruelty in withholding truths in the name of kindness. Telling a middling student with a C- average who doesn’t read on grade level to go to university and major in whatever they want is absolutely not kind, because the truth is that such a student is unlikely to be gainfully employed in white collar work. You don’t have to call them stupid, but if telling them that maybe they won’t make it as a lit major is unkind, well, letting them face the consequences without a warning is cruel.
But you aren't describing the kind of "kindness" we enforce here. This is why periodic complaints like @WhiningCoil's annoy me. They complain that they aren't allowed to "tell the truth." The fuck? We have Holocaust deniers here. We have white nationalists here. We have hard HBDers here. People openly talk about dumb people not being fit for university educations, trans women being men, and all kinds of other unkind "truths" here. None of that gets people modded. Going annoyingly on and on and on about the same thing over and over (like our resident Joo-poster), yes. Snarling insults, yes. Strawmanning your enemies as zombies, yes. But you are mischaracterizing what "charity" means the same way Whining does.
My comment was more based on the general concept of the kind of kindness that pervades much of the rest of the internet. It’s always felt a bit patronizing to me to kindly pat people on the head and tell them exactly what they want to hear and that they’re wonderful even if they’re terribly flawed and refusing to work on those flaws. Such things are not only lies, but unkind in more ways than one. It’s patronizing to assume that a person is so weak that they’ll crumble at the first hint of challenge to things they believe in. It’s flawed because allowing untruths to continue often hurts the very people that it’s intended to help. And I think just society-wise, it prevents us from dealing with problems straight on.
I don’t believe for a minute that happens here. I’m sure you like every other human have biases. But I think an honest person would see that we’re at least trying to get it right. Other places aren’t like that. Even if you’re being nice, saying something other people don’t like is going to get modded.
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