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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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People latch on to magic incantations because sometimes you have to be saying things "sufficiently clearly that a reasonable police officer in the circumstances would understand" dawg.

Yassine Meshkout even wrote a post about how he saved a client with just eleven words.

That was one of the saddest AAQCs I've read. I thought what the judge was doing was pretty cool and reasonably obvious...and the rest of the post was all about how thoroughly he missed the point--all a mystery! Who could predict!

The real quality comment in the reddit thread of the same title was the patient response of someone who calmly, softly talked through the principle of signalling through exceptional effort.

As for Meshkout, it was rather typical, given his established fixations for returning to certain topics every few months with the same refrain regardless of prior engagement, which is typical for people with certain communication fixations that are more internally-wired than externally connected.

As for Meshkout, it was rather typical, given his established fixations for returning to certain topics every few months with the same refrain regardless of prior engagement

Unrelated comment: I don't think it makes sense to describe a "communication fixation" as "internally wired" when, well, the topic of said communication is always 'the external world' and the mechanisms underlying all communications and ideas are, you'd think, biologically, internal. It seems to be trying to convey something like 'he has a neurosis where he says X over and over and the neurosis is internal' - but doing the correct thing where you say Y instead would ... also be an internal property, so the internal vs external dichotomy doesn't seem to help.

I have no idea what that has to do with meskhout though.

I have no idea what that has to do with meskhout though

That he keeps returning to the same topic to the same refrain, regardless of prior engagement.

It clearly is an internal thing of his.

But as I said, if he was returning to a different topic, that would ... also be internal, like, neurons, or maybe a soul or something, so the external/internal dichotomy isn't useful here? Presumably he returns to the topic [in this theoretical example because I still have no idea what the topic is, or what ymeskhout is alleged to be doing here, this is just a tangent about some psychological argument] for some specific reason. And that reason would be about external things - he's trying to inform us, the topic is interesting, etc - just like the reason would be if he was talking about something else instead! So I don't really see how it's external or internal, but just incorrect vs correct.

Also, can you just say what the "topic" is, and give an example of "prior engagement" being ignored, or something? I genuinely have no idea what you or dean meant.

I remember the topic being disproving election malfeasance updates weekly. I don't remember how much engagement but I do remember checking out of those posts because they were the same every week where two sides simply talked past each other.

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