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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   4127 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 5, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Anyone who votes no:

  1. Doesn't know the value of 10M USD with 7 years of compounding. Hell, I'd take a bit of molesting myself for that much money at the age of 21. Forget consexual sex.
  2. Isn't aware that losing one's virginity at ages 15-16 is not that uncommon.
  3. Shouldn't be allowed to vote.

I vote no because Epstein getting to indulge his sick desire is inherently bad. Whether or not the girl is better off or not from the exchange is immaterial.

Why is it inherently bad?

Because it is sick and perverted.

Why does that mean it's bad for it to be indulged?

It simply is. There is no point continuing to ask "but why?" This is what I mean by "inherent".

You may as well ask why is it bad to kill a person. "Because they don't want to be killed." Why does that matter? "Because that deprives them of more utility than you gain by doing the murder." Why is that bad? "It just is".

Sexual perversion is bad. Full stop. Every person knows it deep in their gut, even if they construct elaborate philosophical frameworks to obscure that truth from themselves.

Sexual perversion is bad. Full stop. Every person knows it deep in their gut, even if they construct elaborate philosophical frameworks to obscure that truth from themselves.

This is about as clean a violation of the "consensus building" rule as it gets. Please don't do that.

Would "I hold this truth to be self-evident" be an acceptable formulation?

Would "I hold this truth to be self-evident" be an acceptable formulation?

I mean, more or less; so long as you hedge it about with sufficient epistemically humble caveats about it being your own view, ideally with some bits of evidence (even anecdotal!) for why it is your view, pretty well any substantive position is permissibly expressed here. "I honestly believe that every person knows this deep in their gut, and here are some reasons why" is a much better post than "Every person knows it, that's just how it is." One reason why it is a better post is that you are in an ideal position to report your own views; you are much less ideally situated to make sweeping reports concerning what "every person knows." That's an invitation to bad (low effort) responses like "Well, I don't know that, so you're wrong," which is a much less productive discussion than "our experiences of the world do not seem to align, so perhaps we can learn something from one another."

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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