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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   4073 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 19, 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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I can only speak for myself, but it's some combination of:

  1. Most of their positions are fairly-well-reasoned from premises I disagree with. I think the fundamental points where I'd disagree with the anti-Semites would be "are Jews biologically inclined to be less moral than white Gentiles", "what proportion of ethnic Jews are strongly identitarian", "what degree of influence does Jewish identity have on Western policy" and perhaps "to what degree can #2 be fixed via melting-pot"; the anti-Semite answers are of course "yes"/"almost all"/"lots"/"none" whereas I tend toward "no"/"significant but minority"/"little outside of the US; significant but narrow within the US"/"near-total". #1/#2 especially are very much empirical questions that need large amounts of legible evidence to convince someone to flip; my opinions are from my illegible personal experience, not studies I can quote, and in the case of #1 I'd probably have to go out and do the study myself given how ludicrously-radioactive that question is. I've explicitly laid out my point on #3 at least once recently (although not in reply to an antisemite), and I don't recall #4 coming up explicitly very often.
  2. They kind of all blur together and are mostly from a couple of highly-active posters, and it can seem a bit pointless to keep engaging over and over again.
  3. I don't read the Israel-Gaza thread except from Quincy, which is where I presume most of such comments are. It's just not an area of world politics that interests me very much insofar as there's no obvious way for it to blow up and my preferred action is "do nothing" which doesn't require a lot of knowledge.

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