domain:dualn-back.com
FtSoA
4m ago
This is not how evaluating coincidences should work.
https://www.econlib.org/just-a-coincidence
What are the chances that out of 8 billion plus people in the world, it's you and me right now debating this? Astronomical really.
Someone with a massive public profile doing shady shit would have -10000% probability to put their last name as their Reddit handle where they were a power user and top mod.
It's far more plausible it's just a coincidence, unless there is strong evidence to even consider this hypothesis at all. (There isn't, which is why your merely privileging the hypothesis.)
See also: https://coagulopath.com/ghislaine-maxwell-does-not-have-a-secret-reddit-account/
Tiber727
6m ago
That's what makes this 180 so conspicuous. It makes no sense: if you know you're compromised, you wouldn't have campaigned on lifting the veil, if you know you're not, what could possibly convince you to hesitate at the last second?
Not that I take any position on Epstein or Trump's relationship to him, but as far as Trump's campaign actions go, Trump will say anything and then abandon it. Whatever happened with Obama's birth certificate? Does anyone care? Was Hillary ever locked up?
I agree that often duty based ethics is framed in terms of mutual duty. But @Clementine is still correct with the assertion that duty without reciprocity is virtue, not exploitation. You may not be required to discharge your duty towards someone who doesn't discharge theirs to you, but it's still praiseworthy to do so. For example, Judaism and Christianity both depict how God continuously acts benevolent towards humanity despite them not deserving it. This isn't framed as "God is a sucker", but rather as God being the exemplar of virtue whom we should strive to imitate. Not all religions frame things that way, of course, but when you have some 3000 years of one religious tradition which does, it seems fair to call that just as established as the reciprocal duty that you outlined.
edit: forgot to mention that your explanation of Christianity is very much not how it works, and is in fact a heresy! Salvation is explicitly not something that God owes us because we upheld his law, but rather is a freely given gift. Thus our only choice is to say "yes, I accept" (out of which comes trying to uphold God's laws, again not out of obligation but out of love for him), or to reject his gift (because we would rather do our own thing). Salvation as a gift rather than earned by our conduct is a core tenet of Christianity.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
27m ago
I talk about other subjects too like white nationalism and conservatism coding as low class.
No_one
33m ago
The memes continue to deliver.
I don't think it's going to contaminate the dataset so thoroughly, but seeing as 2-3 million relatively tech savvy Americans loathe liberals and probably 50,000 of them have a twisted sense of humor, the odds of Stancil getting visited by a Teslabot when these start selling is .. very, very high.
No_one
50m ago
Dasein has a an interesting take regarding the UAP theater
And one more thought. There has been more rigorous, well-funded scientific investigation of xenobiology than of secret societies, conspiracies and psyops. This asymmetry is interesting. We have learned an awful lot about life and why it'd be hard for life to emerge outside Earth, and nothing in favor of such life. We have seen quite credible examples of conspiracies, and nothing to suggest that better-ran ones are impossible. However, the former remains viable, while interest in the latter has positively plummeted among the educated classes in the last 100+ years. «What if intelligent life beyond Earth, like silicon-based or something, dude, and flying saucers, imagine how it could work» is a respectable enough train of thought: why not indeed, and what's the harm anyway, it's deserving of patronage of eccentric billionaires, academic grants and place in peer-reviewed journals. «What if a well-organized cabal of malicious people manipulates public opinion without legible authority» is a sinful evil idea a libel this idea killed millions shut up stop it or we will erase you from polite society. (Like many taboos (e.g not threatening to throw another party's candidate into jail), it's being violated nowadays, to an extent; the ayy guys say the government lies. The government is not the Cabal, of course; it is known that the government keeps some things secret. But I suppose this does blur the line). Most importantly, though, we do not have a serious theory of conspiracy.
(snip, see the rest at the link)
That said. If there's a single parsimonious theory of a motive for this psyop that I can seriously propose… It's not my «overcapacity» thesis but rather the opposite. I mean the discrediting of the authority of the USG and army and American intelligence apparatus, through this very Bayesian logic, as @Hoffmeister25 demonstrates. The USG is the supreme secular power of the world, – and it's being reduced to some provincial slapstick comedy, instead of carrying itself with the dignity of the sovereign. It does not command respect, mostly just grudging support, on account of the vileness of its competitors. Give this 10 more years. 10 more years of AI shit torrent, 10 more years of long Covid and demented gerontocrats, 10 more years of Trump and Biden dog-faced-pony-soldier show and lurid, Jerry Springer tier gibberish in Congress. If at some point, say, CIA manages to report something truly ludicrous for Americans, physically plausible but shocking – who knows, maybe Mossad quietly installing backdoors into Deepmind and Anthropic AGI superclusters? – it will just be met with shrugs and condescending scowls. Whoever runs this, wants the legitimate authority of the US to end up in the position of the boy who cried wolf, and then collapse without popular support.
Just an idle thought.
lagrangian
58m ago
For anyone else wondering, this is not about a new assassination attempt. This is about last year's, which was one year ago today (where his ear got clipped).
shoeonfoot
1hr ago
I'm also currently banned from both places.
With respect, this means you should understand why you're being modded in this place. I want to, gently, repeat my request that you drop the sardonicism, snark, and drive-by insults because I think this place would be worse off without someone like you. Also, I am much closer to your side than the other side, so I'd hate you see you banned.
Don't get too caught up on coffee_enjoyer; he's a unique breed. He's like a BAPist – prone to philosophical musings – but with a relatively benign dose of anti-Semitism thrown in.
erwgv3g34
1hr ago
This is why the best ranking method is a simple thumb up/down (or upvote/downvote, or like/dislike). Then you report the ratio, which runs the whole gamut from 1% to 99%. YouTube used to do this before they decided that dislikes were problematic. FIMFiction still uses it.
(Admittedly, this system does have the issue of only working in aggregate; there is no way for a single reviewer to distinguish between something that is barely worth watching and the greatest story ever told.)
Zephyr
1hr ago
Perhaps I misunderstood - what I read from your initial comment was that “nobody not made of straw” would deny that it was a baby. But that they supported abortion anyways. If I am misunderstanding, my apologies.
jake
1hr ago
Would mark as "bad."
Everything following "The probability of one person in a selection of 5500 deaths being skilled enough to be a Top 10 redditor is zero" is charity extended to my interlocutor. With sub-1% chance of death and sub-1% chance of a voluntary stop, the probability of it being Ghislaine Maxwell is already over 90%.What's the probability alone of someone incorporating a bit of personal information into their reddit username? 5%? How's it change when our options for maxwellhill are Ghislaine Maxwell and person who probably doesn't exist?
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
1hr ago
anon_
1hr ago
When every single day, month, year of your life feels like you're having to hack through uncharted wilderness, and determine your location via a hand-drawn map and dead-reckoning, then yeah you're going to keep second-guessing a lot of decisions and live in constant fear of bear attacks, vs. staying on a well-beaten, marked, and lit pathway. (I overstate the analogy just to make a point).
At the same time, the tenders of the pathway need to consider when it needs to be widened or new destinations added to it.
In fact, there's a kind of weirdly mirrored thing: those demolishing narratives of life shirked their duty to change the pathways just as much as those whose rigidity shirked their duty to do so.
JarJarJedi
1hr ago
I liked it... but I didn't enjoy it
That's Watts. I don't think his works are supposed to be enjoyed, unless you have a capacity of taking joy from existential dread and confusion about what anything ever even means. Like, I don't regret reading Watts, and probably will keep reading it if he writes more, but I am not sure I'd use the word enjoyed about it.
JarJarJedi
1hr ago
It's more like if the alien life exists, and is intelligent, and had the means to get here it would operate on technology and energy scales that is completely beyond what we can even imagine how to operate. And if such beings are around we'd either all notice them very well and far beyond the occasional case of butt-probing a rural weirdo, or wouldn't notice them at all because they wouldn't want to destroy our fragile backwards culture by inadvertently stepping on us in so many ways. In other words, if it happened, it would happen in completely different way - thus, what is happening, if anything is happening at all, is not it.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
1hr ago
Exactly! It's odd if we accept OPs framing that Epstein is a simple conman.
HMK2
1hr ago
Some species has to be the very first sapient life in the galaxy. Maybe we're just the Progenitors.
JarJarJedi
1hr ago
but I could imagine something similar for ICE.
Not the immigration branch of ICE though. It does have HSI branch that does investigations and asset forfeitures. Curiously, nobody gave a hoot about it until Trump. Trump has this peculiar quality that once he does something people start noticing how big the government is and how much abuse is possible - only to immediately forget it forever once it's not about Trump anymore. Example: https://archive.ph/QiXfH - this is from 2017. For the last 8 years, how much high profile public discussion did you hear about this? I'd assume "none at all" is not too far off the target.
you could see an argument that ICE being given too many people will lead them to go above and beyond their mandate.
If you want to go that road, you have plenty of targets beyond ICE. THe FBI itself, the ATF, the DEA, the NSA, not to speak of the leviathan in the room that is the CIA... I mean, operation Fast and Furious alone is a horrendous example, if Hollywood made a movie where a government agency forces US merchants to sell weapons to drug cartels, and then tries to prosecute them for it and use it as a basis for trying to kill the Second Amendment - people would say it's cartoonish, hammy and bordering on libel. Yet it happened, and people generally just let it slide, shrugged it off. And there are many examples on the same cartoonishly evil level. So is there a danger in a powerful government enforcement agency to go rogue? You betcha there is. Is there anything special in Trump financing immigration enforcement to increase this danger? You'd have to work a bit harder to establish any basis for it. I mean, if you have a hardcore libertarian credentials going back to 1960s on opposing any budget increase for federal law enforcement - ok, kudos for remaining consistent. If that's the first time when you're asking this question, I'd have much harder time taking it seriously.
Side question, have there ever been any people who said Epstein tried to get them to the island but they refused? Anyone whose kink turned out to be adult women? Anyone who was blackmailed but it call came out in a divorce or some other legal trouble?
faceh
2hr ago
I'm curious what you think the counterfactual world looks like, where Trump comes out instead and claims "There were malicious people at work, and it was all orchestrated by [specific actors]."
What would happen next?
And if you're going off the assumption that Trump is being truthful and fully transparent, then why'd you bring up the election issues?
Are YOU saying that his claims of the election being stolen are credible, since you're here saying that he's honest about such serious matters?
His supporters otoh, have ramped up the anti-elite conspiracy to include this assassination attempt, in order to show loyalty/outbid themselves, even here on the motte.
Neat.
Now do the people who don't think Trump was shot at all.
So long as we're addressing conspiracy theories.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
2hr ago
I mean, I knew about the first of those three, but the latter two are decent points. Thanks.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
2hr ago
· Edited 2hr ago
Similar to the push about the harm that adults having sex with kids isn't from the sex, it's from the social stigma around it which teaches the child to be ashamed and that they were harmed.
The people who push that attitude want to fuck kids without consequences.
No, I don't. One does not have to be personally benefitted by a hypothesis to believe it.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2hr ago
Most spies don't "need" to be "turned" against their country; they just need to be found.
This is only two sorts, and there are conventionally four. Those who do it for the money, those who do it for the ideology, those who are coerced into it, and those who do it for ego. You can find those who do it for ideology or ego; those who do it for money or (especially) because they are coerced have to be made.
aqouta
2hr ago
Would not be possible as that is a response to my impassioned screed.
Yes, I understand how time works. I'm asserting that if you put out an OP with a lot less heat, Maybe asking what people here who support mass deportations think will be the state of the job market for jobs currently done by illegal immigrants, then you'd have gotten coffee enjoyer to respond with his view and we could have had an actual conversation without the several meta threads on whether or not people should be allowed to come in with scorching heat.
I'm repurposing it
Please don't repurpose words to mean basically the opposite of their original meaning, it's confusing and retards communication.
Oh there are a lot more than four kinds.
MICE is super old, plus there's typically more than one motivation in the mix.
And I assure you that those who do it for the money pretty often just need to be found, or want to be found. Money is nice. People like it.
But, usually, people willing to put their life on the line as a covert operative are doing it for more than just money. Money as a primary motivator is typically not the best kind of asset.
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