|
Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 19:00 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 16:43 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 15:08 baal wrote:On March 23 2026 19:03 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 23 2026 18:25 baal wrote:On March 22 2026 23:32 WombaT wrote:On March 22 2026 20:18 baal wrote:On March 22 2026 19:41 Simberto wrote:
Where do you walk from Germany or Poland and are safe? Literally the only place i can come up with is Switzerland. Everything else in Europe is full of Nazis at some point of the war. To get to safety, you need a ship, either to England or the US or some place like that. Those are not free. And funnily enough, the places you might get to to be safe actually denied you entrance. France, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark... The claim is that many people didn't know they were going to kill the jews when the Nazi party won not deep into the war you dunce. Stop talking about Germany please. You have no clue about anything, and you apparently cannot understand complex situations. And you dont seem to understand simple arguments Look at that data. The November 1932 election was the last free election, so 1933 doesn't count. Yes, the Nazis were the biggest party. But they were also unable to form a coalition with any other party, so they couldn't create a government. We don't have FPTP in Germany, and didn't back then. In a parliamentary system, having 30% of the vote doesn't matter if you cannot convince another 20% to work with you. Again, the claim is that a party who openly wants the mas killing of a race wouldn't get to power or be the most popular party in your own fucking country, unless you think one third of you German ancestors were mass murdering maniacs.------------------------------- Reading comprehension sucks in here so heres again for like the nth time, the claims were: - Nazis didn't openly call for the mass murder of jews before the war, they were concealing their intentions since expulsion is more palatable for the public. - Many jews and germans also didn't know that was their goal until it was too late. Even if that were the case, it’s still a good use case for some kind of hate speech laws or similar mechanisms no? Forgive me if I’m misremembering or misintepreting but wasn’t this tangent jumping off that discussion? No, you don't kill an idea through censorship, on the contrary you make them powerful as a taboo, "sun light" disinfects, it kills bad ideas through talking about them and proving why and how they are bad ideas. If you want to make this argument, you should substantiate your points. For example, I'd like to hear your take on how "proving that something is a bad idea" "kills the bad idea". Sure, lets get into it. It's hard to get data or precise evidence since these topics are by nature ambiguous and very difficult to test however Nazism is a good example. Only a few countries in Europe have hate-speech laws forbidding Nazism but we don't see Nazism sprouting in other countries and another holocausts, because everyone reads about it in school, watches it in TV, movies etc, pretty much world-wide we agree that Nazism is bad (real Nazism not hyperbole). Sure the idea will never completely die, there's some dark tribal impulses in all of us that can get carried away. If censorship worked we would see Nazism grow at areas where it's not censored yet we don't. I could argue that communism has lacked "sun light" and thats why it's festering, but lets focus first on the other example. I mean, technically, there is no new party called the nazi party anywhere, so in that sense, what you're saying makes sense. However, I could easily argue that many of the elements of what made up Nazi ideology (besides the gassing the Jews bit) are rather popular today. However, I think that that's a bad example as it is hard to define an experiment or methodology that unambiguously proves a political ideology wrong, because it's a thing that is hard to measure, besides the obvious "maybe don't set up a plan to gas millions of Jews to death". I was more interested in how you think the psychology of this works, so the actual mechanism. Take something that it is much easier to prove: "vaccinations save lives". There is overwhelming scientific evidence that this is true. You couldn't prove that statement any harder. Yet, the antivax movement has not stopped growing. When confronting an antivaxxer with this absolute mount of evidence, they just dig in and their antivax sentiment is reinforced. What's your take on the psychological mechanism at play here? Why does shining light on this topic, proving with absolute mounds of evidence that it is wrong, not kill the idea? Yeah there are too many variables on the Nazi example for it to be proof, but it was still a good point. On the anti-vaxxer yeah we sadly aren't as a rational species as we'd like to believe and many are immune to evidence yet, however do you know what not only didn't help but backfired hard? censorship. Facebook, Twitter and Youtube aggressively removed any comment that mentioned the "lab leak theory" also any post calling it China-virus or anything alike. Also the WHO/governments lying about mask efficiency (early on they said It didn't work to keep people from hoarding), calling Invermectine "horse dewormer", flip flopping on vaccine efficacy, and a long list of lying and obfuscation, not open and honest debate. You know what I think works much better? There's a video of Dr Mike (some youtuber dr) debating in those panels where people rush to the chair against antivaxxers and it is a total embarassing destruction, the difference in knowledge is palpable, these are very effective for people on the fence. This is why I wanted to get your take. Your thesis, as presented, rests on convincing evidence being used successfully to debunk a bad idea. I.e. prove the idea wrong and kill it, in your own words. You presumably agree that that doesn't really work. So does that make you rethink your approach here? How would you kill a harmful idea? Having someone debate the bad idea with someone on the opposite side as it were has been tried. It turns out that platforming bad ideas and setting them on the same level as good ideas legitimises the bad idea and makes it spread. How do you tackle this, in your view? You need only weigh censorship’s contribution to greater belief in official claims, some which turned out to be dead wrong, versus a fair hearing of the other side, which includes the nutty as well as the arguable. They both have downsides.
|
I'm pretty sure that Matt Walsh, a self proclaimed theocratic Fascist would have to have a problem with gambling based on his faith, but I guess he was able to suppress this dislike for gambling until he noticed which way the wind is blowing and made a video against it, because he is a dishonest piece of shit who does things for attention and money and not much else. The fact that he had to throw in Marijuana with gambling really says a lot about this video, I'm pretty sure one is still federally illegal and no advertising is allowed and the other is all over every media that will have it.
I'm kind of a one sport guy and once MMA became the semi-official sport of Trump supporters and started pushing guys who hang out with Chechen war criminals as their new stars I noped out and migrated over to NBA as my main league and basketball in general as my main sport.
For me, watching it is not a problem because I don't gamble, I'm never tempted to gamble and I can tune out advertisements, but what gambling is doing to the product is palpable in other ways, multiple players were caught and banished, players are getting threats from freaks who put parlays on their points and every sports podcast has adds, of course, but they also keep on talking about fucking odds and parlays and over unders, there are a few exceptions but its so disgusting, especially when the adds have the "fast talking call this support line parts to remind you how fucked all of this is".
The worse part, tho, which came as a combination of 2 things that are a plague on society, gambling and crypto are the "prediction markets". Betting on elections, wars and other things that can be influenced by people looking to make money off of it is completely insane, it seems very appropriate for the times but I wasn't ready for how insane it is, and just like with gambling, once the genie is out of the bottle the chances of this shit going away are exceedingly low, especially in USA.
|
On March 24 2026 15:56 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2026 22:58 KwarK wrote:On March 23 2026 16:17 baal wrote:On March 22 2026 22:57 KwarK wrote:On March 22 2026 19:11 baal wrote:
You are using AI wrong, in your attempt to beat me the argument has flown over your head at least 3 times now, argue the point instead of going: "ackshually Hitler wasn't elected, the Nazi party, which he lead, was elected and named him prime minster, your argument is invalid you don't know history" Getting baal to read a goddamn history book challenge, difficulty impossible. Neither Hitler, nor the party he led, came to power through free elections. He came to power through appointment by Hindenburg. Literally anyone who has read any book about the rise to power of the Nazis knows this. Getting KwarK to argue the point challenge, difficulty impossible. The point: -The Nazi party was the biggest and most popular party in Germany at the time, if they were openly advocating for the mass murder of every jew they wouldn't be, unless you believe that 1/3 of German citizens were monsters and actually wanted to kill every jew. This is the heart of baal's issue. He's coming here and going "Do you really think that a party could be that openly genocidal against nonwhites in early 20th century Europe? Who would vote for such a party? Those voters would have to implicitly be willing to tolerate all sorts of atrocities in the name of national greatness. Nobody would do that. It doesn't make sense." Man, when he first reads a book on European/American history he's going to be shocked. Like it turns out that Americans actually knew about slavery the whole time. And the eradication of the Native Americans. And the British knew about India etc. Or there's Trump on the campaign trail in 2016 going "You know I've been thinking about all these people who are resisting our occupation of their countries in the Middle East and I really think the best way forwards is if we start killing their families". Or Hesgeth in the declaration of the intervention in Iran proudly shouting out a policy of no quarter as if it was the coolest thing he'd ever heard of. + Show Spoiler +Yeah that pretty much is my point, but it's important to clarify that its not "nobody would" but "not nearly half of the population would, also this majority were pretty keen on actually kicking them on, seizing etc, just not putting them in gas chambers.
Perhaps why we keep butting heads on this is because we see the world in a different light, it feels to me that you look the world and history as a clash of moral and immoral people, I believe theres a little SS soldier and a little Schindler in all of us.
Too philosophical for the thread mood, we are going nowhere lets drop it shall we?
That'd be nice. I'm not going to hold my breath though.
|
On March 24 2026 22:47 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 19:00 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 16:43 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 15:08 baal wrote:On March 23 2026 19:03 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 23 2026 18:25 baal wrote:On March 22 2026 23:32 WombaT wrote:On March 22 2026 20:18 baal wrote:On March 22 2026 19:41 Simberto wrote:
Where do you walk from Germany or Poland and are safe? Literally the only place i can come up with is Switzerland. Everything else in Europe is full of Nazis at some point of the war. To get to safety, you need a ship, either to England or the US or some place like that. Those are not free. And funnily enough, the places you might get to to be safe actually denied you entrance. France, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark... The claim is that many people didn't know they were going to kill the jews when the Nazi party won not deep into the war you dunce. Stop talking about Germany please. You have no clue about anything, and you apparently cannot understand complex situations. And you dont seem to understand simple arguments Look at that data. The November 1932 election was the last free election, so 1933 doesn't count. Yes, the Nazis were the biggest party. But they were also unable to form a coalition with any other party, so they couldn't create a government. We don't have FPTP in Germany, and didn't back then. In a parliamentary system, having 30% of the vote doesn't matter if you cannot convince another 20% to work with you. Again, the claim is that a party who openly wants the mas killing of a race wouldn't get to power or be the most popular party in your own fucking country, unless you think one third of you German ancestors were mass murdering maniacs.------------------------------- Reading comprehension sucks in here so heres again for like the nth time, the claims were: - Nazis didn't openly call for the mass murder of jews before the war, they were concealing their intentions since expulsion is more palatable for the public. - Many jews and germans also didn't know that was their goal until it was too late. Even if that were the case, it’s still a good use case for some kind of hate speech laws or similar mechanisms no? Forgive me if I’m misremembering or misintepreting but wasn’t this tangent jumping off that discussion? No, you don't kill an idea through censorship, on the contrary you make them powerful as a taboo, "sun light" disinfects, it kills bad ideas through talking about them and proving why and how they are bad ideas. If you want to make this argument, you should substantiate your points. For example, I'd like to hear your take on how "proving that something is a bad idea" "kills the bad idea". Sure, lets get into it. It's hard to get data or precise evidence since these topics are by nature ambiguous and very difficult to test however Nazism is a good example. Only a few countries in Europe have hate-speech laws forbidding Nazism but we don't see Nazism sprouting in other countries and another holocausts, because everyone reads about it in school, watches it in TV, movies etc, pretty much world-wide we agree that Nazism is bad (real Nazism not hyperbole). Sure the idea will never completely die, there's some dark tribal impulses in all of us that can get carried away. If censorship worked we would see Nazism grow at areas where it's not censored yet we don't. I could argue that communism has lacked "sun light" and thats why it's festering, but lets focus first on the other example. I mean, technically, there is no new party called the nazi party anywhere, so in that sense, what you're saying makes sense. However, I could easily argue that many of the elements of what made up Nazi ideology (besides the gassing the Jews bit) are rather popular today. However, I think that that's a bad example as it is hard to define an experiment or methodology that unambiguously proves a political ideology wrong, because it's a thing that is hard to measure, besides the obvious "maybe don't set up a plan to gas millions of Jews to death". I was more interested in how you think the psychology of this works, so the actual mechanism. Take something that it is much easier to prove: "vaccinations save lives". There is overwhelming scientific evidence that this is true. You couldn't prove that statement any harder. Yet, the antivax movement has not stopped growing. When confronting an antivaxxer with this absolute mount of evidence, they just dig in and their antivax sentiment is reinforced. What's your take on the psychological mechanism at play here? Why does shining light on this topic, proving with absolute mounds of evidence that it is wrong, not kill the idea? Yeah there are too many variables on the Nazi example for it to be proof, but it was still a good point. On the anti-vaxxer yeah we sadly aren't as a rational species as we'd like to believe and many are immune to evidence yet, however do you know what not only didn't help but backfired hard? censorship. Facebook, Twitter and Youtube aggressively removed any comment that mentioned the "lab leak theory" also any post calling it China-virus or anything alike. Also the WHO/governments lying about mask efficiency (early on they said It didn't work to keep people from hoarding), calling Invermectine "horse dewormer", flip flopping on vaccine efficacy, and a long list of lying and obfuscation, not open and honest debate. You know what I think works much better? There's a video of Dr Mike (some youtuber dr) debating in those panels where people rush to the chair against antivaxxers and it is a total embarassing destruction, the difference in knowledge is palpable, these are very effective for people on the fence. This is why I wanted to get your take. Your thesis, as presented, rests on convincing evidence being used successfully to debunk a bad idea. I.e. prove the idea wrong and kill it, in your own words. You presumably agree that that doesn't really work. So does that make you rethink your approach here? How would you kill a harmful idea? Having someone debate the bad idea with someone on the opposite side as it were has been tried. It turns out that platforming bad ideas and setting them on the same level as good ideas legitimises the bad idea and makes it spread. How do you tackle this, in your view? You need only weigh censorship’s contribution to greater belief in official claims, some which turned out to be dead wrong, versus a fair hearing of the other side, which includes the nutty as well as the arguable. They both have downsides.
So what's your approach to stop harmful ideas from spreading? You didn't refute or argue for either option.
|
On March 24 2026 12:14 KwarK wrote:
There is no “walk away” option for the US. Abandoning the Persian Gulf entirely would be an absolute surrender. There are a dozen reasons for Iran to keep the strait closed for a long time.
Iran has, so far this war, taken orders of magnitude more damage than the US. The US has lost a handful of planes and crew and a lot of interceptors. Iran has lost its navy, air force, hardened bunkers, warehouses, stockpiles, bases etc., in addition to the new Supreme Leader having had his father, wife, and teenage son killed.
As I keep repeating, the US and Israel peak immediately, they do the most damage on day 1 where they destroy all the highest value targets. On day 2 they destroy the second highest value targets because they can't destroy the highest value targets a second time. On day 3 the third. The longer the war goes the less damage bombing can do. They already killed his wife, they can't do it again.
Iran's retaliation grows steadily over time but doesn't even start to kick in until day 150 or so. There is significant latency between crude oil leaving the Gulf and the diesel in a gas station. Consumers haven't actually seen any impact in supply yet. The prices increases are speculative, suppliers don't want to sell today if they think that the price will be higher tomorrow and they won't have oil tomorrow to sell. And even once the supply does drop the strategic reserves have enough to cover months of the missing output from the Gulf. As the strategic reserves run low the prices will increase. As prices increase additional more expensive sources of oil will be brought online which will be priced accordingly. The longer it goes the higher the price gets.
That is Iran's retaliation. It hasn't started yet and it won't have any deterrence impact if they sign an early ceasefire. Even if Israel and the US stop bombing entirely they still need to interdict it, or charge such high transit fees that prices are higher. They need people to remember that 2026 was the year where there was a global recession caused by high oil prices so that the next time someone wants to bomb Iran they think twice. If Iran opens the strait early then they have no deterrent. They'd be saying "feel free to bomb the shit out of us for a week, we'll announce a disruption but as long as you stocked up the reserve ahead of time you can weather it". They'll get bombed by Israel once a year.
The idea that the US and Israel can beat the shit out of Iran, kill the leader's wife, kill his son, and then call a timeout before he hits back is absurd to me. It would undermine every single part of their publicly stated strategy of using the strait as a last resort deterrent bargaining chip. They constructed this strategy over decades, they know this. It would be national suicide.
The idea that Iran, one of the largest oil exporters in the world, has nothing to gain from spiking oil prices is nuts. The regime and country have been absolutely savaged. I've been hating on American strategy a lot here because the American strategy is nonsensical but that doesn't mean that the USAF can't demolish buildings. They were in terrible shape before and much worse shape now than they were then. If the regime is to survive they need hard foreign currency. They need their oil on the market and as few of their competitors as possible as a matter of national survival. The rebuilding project will not be cheap and there are a lot of regime loyalists who will need to be paid.
Additionally it simply wouldn't make sense not to continue the position that they control the strait. Free navigation of the seas is a postwar American invention enforced by the US Navy. Lots of countries would like to declare that actually they own this bit of water or that bit of water and that everyone has to pay them transit fees or whatever but they haven't been able to because the US Navy will disprove that notion. These waterways aren't just open by default, they're national territory by default, open is an artificial state of affairs that has been constructed and maintained by the US Navy. If the US declares that they're no longer interested in keeping the strait open then it won't suddenly revert to free neutrality under a ceasefire. It'll be owned by the strongest.
This is existential for Iran. Either they establish a convincing deterrent by confronting the US Navy over the strait and winning (which includes the US Navy forfeiting) or they die. There's no deal to be made here where the strait is reopened any time soon, it'll stay closed until such a time as a country with sufficient force projection to open it opens it.
Can/should the world make the US a pariah state for an illegal war of choice leading to global recession? How about the European countries facilitating it?
Or is the US integrated into the global economy (and their European accomplices dependent) in such a way that they can't be held accountable for their crimes?
What would any of that look like?
Those are general questions not specific to Kwark btw.
|
Northern Ireland26450 Posts
On March 24 2026 22:01 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 21:45 WombaT wrote:On March 24 2026 15:39 baal wrote:On March 23 2026 22:13 WombaT wrote:On March 23 2026 18:25 baal wrote:On March 22 2026 23:32 WombaT wrote:On March 22 2026 20:18 baal wrote:On March 22 2026 19:41 Simberto wrote:
Where do you walk from Germany or Poland and are safe? Literally the only place i can come up with is Switzerland. Everything else in Europe is full of Nazis at some point of the war. To get to safety, you need a ship, either to England or the US or some place like that. Those are not free. And funnily enough, the places you might get to to be safe actually denied you entrance. France, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark... The claim is that many people didn't know they were going to kill the jews when the Nazi party won not deep into the war you dunce. Stop talking about Germany please. You have no clue about anything, and you apparently cannot understand complex situations. And you dont seem to understand simple arguments Look at that data. The November 1932 election was the last free election, so 1933 doesn't count. Yes, the Nazis were the biggest party. But they were also unable to form a coalition with any other party, so they couldn't create a government. We don't have FPTP in Germany, and didn't back then. In a parliamentary system, having 30% of the vote doesn't matter if you cannot convince another 20% to work with you. Again, the claim is that a party who openly wants the mas killing of a race wouldn't get to power or be the most popular party in your own fucking country, unless you think one third of you German ancestors were mass murdering maniacs.------------------------------- Reading comprehension sucks in here so heres again for like the nth time, the claims were: - Nazis didn't openly call for the mass murder of jews before the war, they were concealing their intentions since expulsion is more palatable for the public. - Many jews and germans also didn't know that was their goal until it was too late. Even if that were the case, it’s still a good use case for some kind of hate speech laws or similar mechanisms no? Forgive me if I’m misremembering or misintepreting but wasn’t this tangent jumping off that discussion? No, you don't kill an idea through censorship, on the contrary you make them powerful as a taboo, "sun light" disinfects, it kills bad ideas through talking about them and proving why and how they are bad ideas. Have you been hibernating for the last 10-15 years? Sure it can work in many instances, in others we’ve collectively seen that absolutely not be the case I'm not sure what you are referencing to?, the deplataforming of the alt-right? What others have expanded upon, namely that that rough timeframe shows innumerable issues and a general trend where the idea that good ideas, or at least true ones will win out in a free marketplace of ideas has been shown to not hold, or certainly not near universally. by what standard have you determined it is a good idea? i used to think all-the-time, instant access to unlimited sports betting options was the ethical stance that governments at all levels should adopt. I thought the Supreme Court decision Murphy v. NCAA was a good one. Turns out... with 8 years to look back on. I'm wrong. It was a bad decision.For people with the freedom-oriented, libertarian perspective on gambling this explanation is worthy of your attention. It is quite persuasive in favour of strict regulation of gambling ... or no gambling at all. This is a fascinating evolution in thinking many Americans are going through right now. Bitching about gambling ads has replaced baseball as the national past time. It is hard to say what ideas are good and what ideas are bad. On a purely practical level I can't watch the NBA, NFL, or MLB any longer. Gambling ads are in every corner of the screen. Can I just watch a game please?
Indeed, you make a good point, hence why I said ‘or at least true ones’ as well, as what a ‘good idea’ is is going to be rather ambiguous.
Your gambling example is quite instructive, I personally think individuals should be free to gamble, have at it. But you open that door and gambling companies can be incredibly predatory.
As with many things, what may be totally fine at an individual or small-scale kinda level, can become rather bad on a macro level when money is to be made.
|
EU countries are now "accomplices" and "facilitating" the war, the same countries who weren't notified and said they won't participate.
What an absolutely brain rotten take. I mean, it's par for the course for a Tankie like you, but it's still pretty shocking to read something this stupid being written down.
|
Norway28779 Posts
On March 24 2026 23:16 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 22:47 dyhb wrote:On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 19:00 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 16:43 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 15:08 baal wrote:On March 23 2026 19:03 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 23 2026 18:25 baal wrote:On March 22 2026 23:32 WombaT wrote:On March 22 2026 20:18 baal wrote:
[quote]
France, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark...
The claim is that many people didn't know they were going to kill the jews when the Nazi party won not deep into the war you dunce.
[quote]
And you dont seem to understand simple arguments
[quote]
Again, the claim is that a party who openly wants the mas killing of a race wouldn't get to power or be the most popular party in your own fucking country, unless you think one third of you German ancestors were mass murdering maniacs.
-------------------------------
Reading comprehension sucks in here so heres again for like the nth time, the claims were:
- Nazis didn't openly call for the mass murder of jews before the war, they were concealing their intentions since expulsion is more palatable for the public.
- Many jews and germans also didn't know that was their goal until it was too late.
Even if that were the case, it’s still a good use case for some kind of hate speech laws or similar mechanisms no? Forgive me if I’m misremembering or misintepreting but wasn’t this tangent jumping off that discussion? No, you don't kill an idea through censorship, on the contrary you make them powerful as a taboo, "sun light" disinfects, it kills bad ideas through talking about them and proving why and how they are bad ideas. If you want to make this argument, you should substantiate your points. For example, I'd like to hear your take on how "proving that something is a bad idea" "kills the bad idea". Sure, lets get into it. It's hard to get data or precise evidence since these topics are by nature ambiguous and very difficult to test however Nazism is a good example. Only a few countries in Europe have hate-speech laws forbidding Nazism but we don't see Nazism sprouting in other countries and another holocausts, because everyone reads about it in school, watches it in TV, movies etc, pretty much world-wide we agree that Nazism is bad (real Nazism not hyperbole). Sure the idea will never completely die, there's some dark tribal impulses in all of us that can get carried away. If censorship worked we would see Nazism grow at areas where it's not censored yet we don't. I could argue that communism has lacked "sun light" and thats why it's festering, but lets focus first on the other example. I mean, technically, there is no new party called the nazi party anywhere, so in that sense, what you're saying makes sense. However, I could easily argue that many of the elements of what made up Nazi ideology (besides the gassing the Jews bit) are rather popular today. However, I think that that's a bad example as it is hard to define an experiment or methodology that unambiguously proves a political ideology wrong, because it's a thing that is hard to measure, besides the obvious "maybe don't set up a plan to gas millions of Jews to death". I was more interested in how you think the psychology of this works, so the actual mechanism. Take something that it is much easier to prove: "vaccinations save lives". There is overwhelming scientific evidence that this is true. You couldn't prove that statement any harder. Yet, the antivax movement has not stopped growing. When confronting an antivaxxer with this absolute mount of evidence, they just dig in and their antivax sentiment is reinforced. What's your take on the psychological mechanism at play here? Why does shining light on this topic, proving with absolute mounds of evidence that it is wrong, not kill the idea? Yeah there are too many variables on the Nazi example for it to be proof, but it was still a good point. On the anti-vaxxer yeah we sadly aren't as a rational species as we'd like to believe and many are immune to evidence yet, however do you know what not only didn't help but backfired hard? censorship. Facebook, Twitter and Youtube aggressively removed any comment that mentioned the "lab leak theory" also any post calling it China-virus or anything alike. Also the WHO/governments lying about mask efficiency (early on they said It didn't work to keep people from hoarding), calling Invermectine "horse dewormer", flip flopping on vaccine efficacy, and a long list of lying and obfuscation, not open and honest debate. You know what I think works much better? There's a video of Dr Mike (some youtuber dr) debating in those panels where people rush to the chair against antivaxxers and it is a total embarassing destruction, the difference in knowledge is palpable, these are very effective for people on the fence. This is why I wanted to get your take. Your thesis, as presented, rests on convincing evidence being used successfully to debunk a bad idea. I.e. prove the idea wrong and kill it, in your own words. You presumably agree that that doesn't really work. So does that make you rethink your approach here? How would you kill a harmful idea? Having someone debate the bad idea with someone on the opposite side as it were has been tried. It turns out that platforming bad ideas and setting them on the same level as good ideas legitimises the bad idea and makes it spread. How do you tackle this, in your view? You need only weigh censorship’s contribution to greater belief in official claims, some which turned out to be dead wrong, versus a fair hearing of the other side, which includes the nutty as well as the arguable. They both have downsides. So what's your approach to stop harmful ideas from spreading? You didn't refute or argue for either option.
Some acceptance of the fact that we're never going to fully stop harmful ideas from spreading. I guess with how people mentioned anti-vaxx as one of those harmful ideas, we can sort of try that as an allegory - harmful ideas are basically contagious diseases. If people are exposed to them, there's a chance that they'll get infected, and while certain diseases are deadly, others are merely inconveniencing, and people have different natural immunities etc.
We can use public health programs to vaccinate against certain very dangerous viruses, and we can teach people to wash their hands and avoid eating certain types of undercooked meat. I guess we can liken this to giving them a civics education. While there are always your nutjobs out there, most people will agree that teaching people some basic facts about society and history and critical thinking will build some resilience against some of the more far out harmful ideas. For me, as a history and civics teacher, you'd probably have to go all ludovico technique to convince me that the holocaust was made up, an astronaut is most certainly entirely vaccinated against flat earth theory, but truth be told, most of us are more or less susceptible to believing some ideas that are more or less dangerous (I most certainly believe many things that are factually incorrect, even if I don't believe that I believe any of the wrongly held opinions I have are particularly dangerous) - and most of us are, even if we get all the recommended vaccines and follow all hygiene advice, going to be infected with some infectuous disease at some point.
Now, we could practice strict social distancing, like we did during covid. The common cold virtually disappeared in Norway during that period. But truthfully, the common cold isn't so inconveniencing that a measure like strict social distancing feels like it's worth it; I'd rather deal with the disease.
Similarly, you can argue that yeah, censorship will probably yield some results in terms of combating harmful ideas from spreading. And platforming (measles parties) mostly has a shitty record, although perhaps in certain instances or with certain platforms (chickenpox, rubella, mumps - pre vaccine) it actually wasn't all that stupid. However, censorship runs the issue of opening society to the concept of censorship, and suddenly, if power is attained by a bad person rather than a good person who only censors the ideas that I consider dangerous, they might censor ideas that they consider harmful because it might enable them to maintain power for a longer period of time.
Note that I'm not necessarily saying that censorship is always wrong. I don't particularly object to promoting actual nazism being illegal. But I think in some cases, censorship can make an idea more resilient (overuse of antibiotics to combat mild bacterial infections?) because the censorship itself is proof of the idea - especially if the censorship, which might have been undertaken with the best of intentions - is uncovered. I'm about to leave now and I have to press post because I actually think this was a fun post to write but I'm sure you can think of examples of just that happening, too.
Now, what I do believe, is basically that we need a holistic approach - children need education, social media needs regulation, people need to be integrated into society because we know that people on the fringes - ones that are lonely and miserable, are the ones most susceptible towards harboring the most dangerous ideas. Maybe in certain extreme cases, like in the aftermath of a world war that is fought because of the spread of a dangerous ideology, or in the event of an unknown pandemic spreading, censorship or social distancing can be warranted, but overall, I think it's fair to argue against it being part of the regular toolbox, and that certain forms of platforming at the very least achieves the goal of getting people to talk to people they have no relationship with which is a societal good of its own.
|
Censorship is not the only way to prevent harmful speech. How about holding purveyors of anti-vax, raw milk, etc. disinformation criminally and/or civilly liable for children who die under the guardianship of someone who got their information from that source?
And before you point out the ways that could be exploited for bad faith purposes, I'm aware, and I'm not saying the law allowing for this should be two sentences long. There could be all sorts of built-in protections, like being immune from liability if the information was directly cited from the WHO.
|
On March 24 2026 23:16 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 22:47 dyhb wrote:On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 19:00 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 16:43 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 15:08 baal wrote:On March 23 2026 19:03 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 23 2026 18:25 baal wrote:On March 22 2026 23:32 WombaT wrote:On March 22 2026 20:18 baal wrote:
[quote]
France, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark...
The claim is that many people didn't know they were going to kill the jews when the Nazi party won not deep into the war you dunce.
[quote]
And you dont seem to understand simple arguments
[quote]
Again, the claim is that a party who openly wants the mas killing of a race wouldn't get to power or be the most popular party in your own fucking country, unless you think one third of you German ancestors were mass murdering maniacs.
-------------------------------
Reading comprehension sucks in here so heres again for like the nth time, the claims were:
- Nazis didn't openly call for the mass murder of jews before the war, they were concealing their intentions since expulsion is more palatable for the public.
- Many jews and germans also didn't know that was their goal until it was too late.
Even if that were the case, it’s still a good use case for some kind of hate speech laws or similar mechanisms no? Forgive me if I’m misremembering or misintepreting but wasn’t this tangent jumping off that discussion? No, you don't kill an idea through censorship, on the contrary you make them powerful as a taboo, "sun light" disinfects, it kills bad ideas through talking about them and proving why and how they are bad ideas. If you want to make this argument, you should substantiate your points. For example, I'd like to hear your take on how "proving that something is a bad idea" "kills the bad idea". Sure, lets get into it. It's hard to get data or precise evidence since these topics are by nature ambiguous and very difficult to test however Nazism is a good example. Only a few countries in Europe have hate-speech laws forbidding Nazism but we don't see Nazism sprouting in other countries and another holocausts, because everyone reads about it in school, watches it in TV, movies etc, pretty much world-wide we agree that Nazism is bad (real Nazism not hyperbole). Sure the idea will never completely die, there's some dark tribal impulses in all of us that can get carried away. If censorship worked we would see Nazism grow at areas where it's not censored yet we don't. I could argue that communism has lacked "sun light" and thats why it's festering, but lets focus first on the other example. I mean, technically, there is no new party called the nazi party anywhere, so in that sense, what you're saying makes sense. However, I could easily argue that many of the elements of what made up Nazi ideology (besides the gassing the Jews bit) are rather popular today. However, I think that that's a bad example as it is hard to define an experiment or methodology that unambiguously proves a political ideology wrong, because it's a thing that is hard to measure, besides the obvious "maybe don't set up a plan to gas millions of Jews to death". I was more interested in how you think the psychology of this works, so the actual mechanism. Take something that it is much easier to prove: "vaccinations save lives". There is overwhelming scientific evidence that this is true. You couldn't prove that statement any harder. Yet, the antivax movement has not stopped growing. When confronting an antivaxxer with this absolute mount of evidence, they just dig in and their antivax sentiment is reinforced. What's your take on the psychological mechanism at play here? Why does shining light on this topic, proving with absolute mounds of evidence that it is wrong, not kill the idea? Yeah there are too many variables on the Nazi example for it to be proof, but it was still a good point. On the anti-vaxxer yeah we sadly aren't as a rational species as we'd like to believe and many are immune to evidence yet, however do you know what not only didn't help but backfired hard? censorship. Facebook, Twitter and Youtube aggressively removed any comment that mentioned the "lab leak theory" also any post calling it China-virus or anything alike. Also the WHO/governments lying about mask efficiency (early on they said It didn't work to keep people from hoarding), calling Invermectine "horse dewormer", flip flopping on vaccine efficacy, and a long list of lying and obfuscation, not open and honest debate. You know what I think works much better? There's a video of Dr Mike (some youtuber dr) debating in those panels where people rush to the chair against antivaxxers and it is a total embarassing destruction, the difference in knowledge is palpable, these are very effective for people on the fence. This is why I wanted to get your take. Your thesis, as presented, rests on convincing evidence being used successfully to debunk a bad idea. I.e. prove the idea wrong and kill it, in your own words. You presumably agree that that doesn't really work. So does that make you rethink your approach here? How would you kill a harmful idea? Having someone debate the bad idea with someone on the opposite side as it were has been tried. It turns out that platforming bad ideas and setting them on the same level as good ideas legitimises the bad idea and makes it spread. How do you tackle this, in your view? You need only weigh censorship’s contribution to greater belief in official claims, some which turned out to be dead wrong, versus a fair hearing of the other side, which includes the nutty as well as the arguable. They both have downsides. So what's your approach to stop harmful ideas from spreading? You didn't refute or argue for either option. Admit that even the most totalitarian of fascist state is incapable of stopping ideas from spreading no matter how dangerous or harmful the government considers it. Then lower your expectations towards stuff that Democracies can achieve, like spreading better ideas with it and establishing trust that dissent is welcomed but challenged. Ask yourself which examples that Baal brought up that you would consider a harmful idea, or if you’d like your most hated political party to decide which ideas are harmful.
In terms of lowering the reach or persuasive power of the absolutely looney conspiracies, I advocate almost no censorship. They thrive on telling you the “truth that the government doesn’t want you to hear.” For platforms, just pin the note on HIV or COVID sourcing to WHO or CDC or AMA. That’s an example of more speech, not less.
edit: I see Drone posted while I was composing this, so I’d like to agree with him that education on questioning the source and skepticism of claims more broadly is very important.
|
I think if people are making money off it, including indirectly from getting clicks, then they should hold accountability for what they are saying. We as consumers should also have the right to know the actual person and where they are actually from that is giving the information.
Less so to just people talking.
|
On March 24 2026 23:43 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 23:23 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 24 2026 12:14 KwarK wrote:
There is no “walk away” option for the US. Abandoning the Persian Gulf entirely would be an absolute surrender. There are a dozen reasons for Iran to keep the strait closed for a long time.
Iran has, so far this war, taken orders of magnitude more damage than the US. The US has lost a handful of planes and crew and a lot of interceptors. Iran has lost its navy, air force, hardened bunkers, warehouses, stockpiles, bases etc., in addition to the new Supreme Leader having had his father, wife, and teenage son killed.
As I keep repeating, the US and Israel peak immediately, they do the most damage on day 1 where they destroy all the highest value targets. On day 2 they destroy the second highest value targets because they can't destroy the highest value targets a second time. On day 3 the third. The longer the war goes the less damage bombing can do. They already killed his wife, they can't do it again.
Iran's retaliation grows steadily over time but doesn't even start to kick in until day 150 or so. There is significant latency between crude oil leaving the Gulf and the diesel in a gas station. Consumers haven't actually seen any impact in supply yet. The prices increases are speculative, suppliers don't want to sell today if they think that the price will be higher tomorrow and they won't have oil tomorrow to sell. And even once the supply does drop the strategic reserves have enough to cover months of the missing output from the Gulf. As the strategic reserves run low the prices will increase. As prices increase additional more expensive sources of oil will be brought online which will be priced accordingly. The longer it goes the higher the price gets.
That is Iran's retaliation. It hasn't started yet and it won't have any deterrence impact if they sign an early ceasefire. Even if Israel and the US stop bombing entirely they still need to interdict it, or charge such high transit fees that prices are higher. They need people to remember that 2026 was the year where there was a global recession caused by high oil prices so that the next time someone wants to bomb Iran they think twice. If Iran opens the strait early then they have no deterrent. They'd be saying "feel free to bomb the shit out of us for a week, we'll announce a disruption but as long as you stocked up the reserve ahead of time you can weather it". They'll get bombed by Israel once a year.
The idea that the US and Israel can beat the shit out of Iran, kill the leader's wife, kill his son, and then call a timeout before he hits back is absurd to me. It would undermine every single part of their publicly stated strategy of using the strait as a last resort deterrent bargaining chip. They constructed this strategy over decades, they know this. It would be national suicide.
The idea that Iran, one of the largest oil exporters in the world, has nothing to gain from spiking oil prices is nuts. The regime and country have been absolutely savaged. I've been hating on American strategy a lot here because the American strategy is nonsensical but that doesn't mean that the USAF can't demolish buildings. They were in terrible shape before and much worse shape now than they were then. If the regime is to survive they need hard foreign currency. They need their oil on the market and as few of their competitors as possible as a matter of national survival. The rebuilding project will not be cheap and there are a lot of regime loyalists who will need to be paid.
Additionally it simply wouldn't make sense not to continue the position that they control the strait. Free navigation of the seas is a postwar American invention enforced by the US Navy. Lots of countries would like to declare that actually they own this bit of water or that bit of water and that everyone has to pay them transit fees or whatever but they haven't been able to because the US Navy will disprove that notion. These waterways aren't just open by default, they're national territory by default, open is an artificial state of affairs that has been constructed and maintained by the US Navy. If the US declares that they're no longer interested in keeping the strait open then it won't suddenly revert to free neutrality under a ceasefire. It'll be owned by the strongest.
This is existential for Iran. Either they establish a convincing deterrent by confronting the US Navy over the strait and winning (which includes the US Navy forfeiting) or they die. There's no deal to be made here where the strait is reopened any time soon, it'll stay closed until such a time as a country with sufficient force projection to open it opens it. Can/should the world make the US a pariah state for an illegal war of choice leading to global recession? How about the European countries facilitating it? Or is the US integrated into the global economy (and their European accomplices dependent) in such a way that they can't be held accountable for their crimes? What would any of that look like? Those are general questions not specific to Kwark btw. EU countries are now "accomplices" and "facilitating" the war, the same countries who weren't notified and said they won't participate. What an absolutely brain rotten take. I mean, it's par for the course for a Tankie like you, but it's still pretty shocking to read something this stupid being written down.
The ones literally facilitating US attacks, yeah!?
While many European leaders have publicly decried the U.S. attacks on Iran, behind the scenes their military bases are facilitating one of the most logistically complex operations the U.S. military has been involved in for decades.
In recent weeks, U.S. bombers, drones and ships have been fueled, armed and launched via bases in the U.K., Germany, Portugal, Italy, France and Greece, officials say.
Attack drones are being directed from a sprawling U.S. base at Ramstein in Germany, the nerve center of America’s operations against Iran, according to German and U.S. officials. Heavy B-1 bombers have been photographed loading munitions and fuel at RAF Fairford in the U.K. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, is currently docked at a naval base in Crete to undergo repairs after suffering damage from a fire.
U.S. Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s top military commander, said in recent Senate testimony that most European allies “have been extremely supportive.”
Spain is a noted exception:
So far, political dissent at the top hasn’t translated into operational constraint on the ground. The exception is Spain, which has denied the U.S. permission to use jointly operated military bases on its territory to attack Iran. Some U.S. aircraft stationed there have been relocated to bases in Germany and France instead.
www.wsj.com
I can forgive your emotional outburst lashing out at me personally, but I am curious if you genuinely didn't know this or are just in denial?
|
On March 25 2026 00:07 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 23:16 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 22:47 dyhb wrote:On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 19:00 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 16:43 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 15:08 baal wrote:On March 23 2026 19:03 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 23 2026 18:25 baal wrote:On March 22 2026 23:32 WombaT wrote:
[quote]
Even if that were the case, it’s still a good use case for some kind of hate speech laws or similar mechanisms no?
Forgive me if I’m misremembering or misintepreting but wasn’t this tangent jumping off that discussion? No, you don't kill an idea through censorship, on the contrary you make them powerful as a taboo, "sun light" disinfects, it kills bad ideas through talking about them and proving why and how they are bad ideas. If you want to make this argument, you should substantiate your points. For example, I'd like to hear your take on how "proving that something is a bad idea" "kills the bad idea". Sure, lets get into it. It's hard to get data or precise evidence since these topics are by nature ambiguous and very difficult to test however Nazism is a good example. Only a few countries in Europe have hate-speech laws forbidding Nazism but we don't see Nazism sprouting in other countries and another holocausts, because everyone reads about it in school, watches it in TV, movies etc, pretty much world-wide we agree that Nazism is bad (real Nazism not hyperbole). Sure the idea will never completely die, there's some dark tribal impulses in all of us that can get carried away. If censorship worked we would see Nazism grow at areas where it's not censored yet we don't. I could argue that communism has lacked "sun light" and thats why it's festering, but lets focus first on the other example. I mean, technically, there is no new party called the nazi party anywhere, so in that sense, what you're saying makes sense. However, I could easily argue that many of the elements of what made up Nazi ideology (besides the gassing the Jews bit) are rather popular today. However, I think that that's a bad example as it is hard to define an experiment or methodology that unambiguously proves a political ideology wrong, because it's a thing that is hard to measure, besides the obvious "maybe don't set up a plan to gas millions of Jews to death". I was more interested in how you think the psychology of this works, so the actual mechanism. Take something that it is much easier to prove: "vaccinations save lives". There is overwhelming scientific evidence that this is true. You couldn't prove that statement any harder. Yet, the antivax movement has not stopped growing. When confronting an antivaxxer with this absolute mount of evidence, they just dig in and their antivax sentiment is reinforced. What's your take on the psychological mechanism at play here? Why does shining light on this topic, proving with absolute mounds of evidence that it is wrong, not kill the idea? Yeah there are too many variables on the Nazi example for it to be proof, but it was still a good point. On the anti-vaxxer yeah we sadly aren't as a rational species as we'd like to believe and many are immune to evidence yet, however do you know what not only didn't help but backfired hard? censorship. Facebook, Twitter and Youtube aggressively removed any comment that mentioned the "lab leak theory" also any post calling it China-virus or anything alike. Also the WHO/governments lying about mask efficiency (early on they said It didn't work to keep people from hoarding), calling Invermectine "horse dewormer", flip flopping on vaccine efficacy, and a long list of lying and obfuscation, not open and honest debate. You know what I think works much better? There's a video of Dr Mike (some youtuber dr) debating in those panels where people rush to the chair against antivaxxers and it is a total embarassing destruction, the difference in knowledge is palpable, these are very effective for people on the fence. This is why I wanted to get your take. Your thesis, as presented, rests on convincing evidence being used successfully to debunk a bad idea. I.e. prove the idea wrong and kill it, in your own words. You presumably agree that that doesn't really work. So does that make you rethink your approach here? How would you kill a harmful idea? Having someone debate the bad idea with someone on the opposite side as it were has been tried. It turns out that platforming bad ideas and setting them on the same level as good ideas legitimises the bad idea and makes it spread. How do you tackle this, in your view? You need only weigh censorship’s contribution to greater belief in official claims, some which turned out to be dead wrong, versus a fair hearing of the other side, which includes the nutty as well as the arguable. They both have downsides. So what's your approach to stop harmful ideas from spreading? You didn't refute or argue for either option. Admit that even the most totalitarian of fascist state is incapable of stopping ideas from spreading no matter how dangerous or harmful the government considers it. Then lower your expectations towards stuff that Democracies can achieve, like spreading better ideas with it and establishing trust that dissent is welcomed but challenged. Ask yourself which examples that Baal brought up that you would consider a harmful idea, or if you’d like your most hated political party to decide which ideas are harmful. In terms of lowering the reach or persuasive power of the absolutely looney conspiracies, I advocate almost no censorship. They thrive on telling you the “truth that the government doesn’t want you to hear.” For platforms, just pin the note on HIV or COVID sourcing to WHO or CDC or AMA. That’s an example of more speech, not less. edit: I see Drone posted while I was composing this, so I’d like to agree with him that education on questioning the source and skepticism of claims more broadly is very important. Your answer is basically to keep doing the thing we are doing that we know isn't working.
Because letting people spread misinformation with a little note attached is what we have now
Unless you think the world isn't currently drowning in an ever deeping ocean of misinformation, lies and outright propaganda that feeds polarization and violence, keeping the current course seems like a bad idea.
|
On March 24 2026 19:02 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 17:14 Slydie wrote:Why does shining light on this topic, proving with absolute mounds of evidence that it is wrong, not kill the idea?
I find this very interesting too, and I spent a long time investigating the flat earth movement for this reason. There is a whole YouTube category debunking FE, and it reached a climax when 2 flatearthers were flown to Antarctica to watch the 24h sun with there their own eyes. Anyway, the key is tribalism, and the same happens with every religion as well. When your brain is hard-wired and the group you identify with is under attack, hard evidence does not matter. yeah and the only way is to talk about it with these people, forbidding to even mention flat earth would only make them grow.
That isn't true. Flat Earthers were a tiny fringe group (akin to moonlanding deniers) until they could form a decentralized "community" on the internet. With forums where they could echo around their ideas and reinforce each other, organize conferences and such. When everyone around you tells you you're wrong, you tend to just believe you're probably wrong and the idea dies. But worldwide there'll almost always be enough fringe lunatics to keep any crazy idea alive and reinforce that. And given enough momentum, they can convince others of their completely inane concepts.
The problem is that that is just how ALL ideas get traction, not just the wrong ones. Someone claiming plate tectonics was the way continents were formed would've been laughed out of the room as recently as the 1950s. Maybe Wegener's idea would've gotten more traction earlier if there had been internet communities a hundred years ago. The main difference between flatearthers/antivaxers and nazis is that the former are dangerous ideas, but just outright wrong. Whereas Nazism is a dangerous idea and maybe based on lies, but a political movement cannot be scientifically wrong. That makes about as much sense as stating that someone liking pineapple on pizza is scientifically wrong. It isn't. It's a travesty (not quite on the same level as Nazism but some Italians would argue it's close), but there's no way of disproving someone's taste, nor is there any way of disproving someone's political preferences. You can try convincing them, but you cannot falsify them. Flatearthers have a falsifiable belief and it has been shown to be false about a million times. It'd make about as much sense as an adamant fixist would make nowadays (something most flatearthers from necessity also are, because plate tectonics needs a whole bunch of geological apparatus that doesn't fit in a plane).
Anyway, got sidetracked. What these ideas all have in common is that they need the feedback loops from communities. If the community doesn't exist and you stamp it out any time it rears its head, you stop the idea too. The problem is determining what ideas need stamping out and who does the stamping... If it's popular opinion among fixists deciding to stamp out Wegener's plate tectonics then we set progress back considerably. But that Nazism needs stamping out, not engaging with seems blindingly obvious from where I'm standing.
E: had my editor open for quite a while, so drone said most of what I'm saying here too.
|
On March 25 2026 00:29 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 00:07 dyhb wrote:On March 24 2026 23:16 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 22:47 dyhb wrote:On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 19:00 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 16:43 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 15:08 baal wrote:On March 23 2026 19:03 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 23 2026 18:25 baal wrote:
[quote]
No, you don't kill an idea through censorship, on the contrary you make them powerful as a taboo, "sun light" disinfects, it kills bad ideas through talking about them and proving why and how they are bad ideas. If you want to make this argument, you should substantiate your points. For example, I'd like to hear your take on how "proving that something is a bad idea" "kills the bad idea". Sure, lets get into it. It's hard to get data or precise evidence since these topics are by nature ambiguous and very difficult to test however Nazism is a good example. Only a few countries in Europe have hate-speech laws forbidding Nazism but we don't see Nazism sprouting in other countries and another holocausts, because everyone reads about it in school, watches it in TV, movies etc, pretty much world-wide we agree that Nazism is bad (real Nazism not hyperbole). Sure the idea will never completely die, there's some dark tribal impulses in all of us that can get carried away. If censorship worked we would see Nazism grow at areas where it's not censored yet we don't. I could argue that communism has lacked "sun light" and thats why it's festering, but lets focus first on the other example. I mean, technically, there is no new party called the nazi party anywhere, so in that sense, what you're saying makes sense. However, I could easily argue that many of the elements of what made up Nazi ideology (besides the gassing the Jews bit) are rather popular today. However, I think that that's a bad example as it is hard to define an experiment or methodology that unambiguously proves a political ideology wrong, because it's a thing that is hard to measure, besides the obvious "maybe don't set up a plan to gas millions of Jews to death". I was more interested in how you think the psychology of this works, so the actual mechanism. Take something that it is much easier to prove: "vaccinations save lives". There is overwhelming scientific evidence that this is true. You couldn't prove that statement any harder. Yet, the antivax movement has not stopped growing. When confronting an antivaxxer with this absolute mount of evidence, they just dig in and their antivax sentiment is reinforced. What's your take on the psychological mechanism at play here? Why does shining light on this topic, proving with absolute mounds of evidence that it is wrong, not kill the idea? Yeah there are too many variables on the Nazi example for it to be proof, but it was still a good point. On the anti-vaxxer yeah we sadly aren't as a rational species as we'd like to believe and many are immune to evidence yet, however do you know what not only didn't help but backfired hard? censorship. Facebook, Twitter and Youtube aggressively removed any comment that mentioned the "lab leak theory" also any post calling it China-virus or anything alike. Also the WHO/governments lying about mask efficiency (early on they said It didn't work to keep people from hoarding), calling Invermectine "horse dewormer", flip flopping on vaccine efficacy, and a long list of lying and obfuscation, not open and honest debate. You know what I think works much better? There's a video of Dr Mike (some youtuber dr) debating in those panels where people rush to the chair against antivaxxers and it is a total embarassing destruction, the difference in knowledge is palpable, these are very effective for people on the fence. This is why I wanted to get your take. Your thesis, as presented, rests on convincing evidence being used successfully to debunk a bad idea. I.e. prove the idea wrong and kill it, in your own words. You presumably agree that that doesn't really work. So does that make you rethink your approach here? How would you kill a harmful idea? Having someone debate the bad idea with someone on the opposite side as it were has been tried. It turns out that platforming bad ideas and setting them on the same level as good ideas legitimises the bad idea and makes it spread. How do you tackle this, in your view? You need only weigh censorship’s contribution to greater belief in official claims, some which turned out to be dead wrong, versus a fair hearing of the other side, which includes the nutty as well as the arguable. They both have downsides. So what's your approach to stop harmful ideas from spreading? You didn't refute or argue for either option. Admit that even the most totalitarian of fascist state is incapable of stopping ideas from spreading no matter how dangerous or harmful the government considers it. Then lower your expectations towards stuff that Democracies can achieve, like spreading better ideas with it and establishing trust that dissent is welcomed but challenged. Ask yourself which examples that Baal brought up that you would consider a harmful idea, or if you’d like your most hated political party to decide which ideas are harmful. In terms of lowering the reach or persuasive power of the absolutely looney conspiracies, I advocate almost no censorship. They thrive on telling you the “truth that the government doesn’t want you to hear.” For platforms, just pin the note on HIV or COVID sourcing to WHO or CDC or AMA. That’s an example of more speech, not less. edit: I see Drone posted while I was composing this, so I’d like to agree with him that education on questioning the source and skepticism of claims more broadly is very important. Your answer is basically to keep doing the thing we are doing that we know isn't working. Because letting people spread misinformation with a little note attached is what we have now Unless you think the world isn't currently drowning in an ever deeping ocean of misinformation, lies and outright propaganda that feeds polarization and violence, keeping the current course seems like a bad idea. We’re living with the entirely foreseen consequences of not doing what I suggested. Go read Baal’s post and tell me where your disagreement is.
|
On March 25 2026 00:26 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 23:43 Jankisa wrote:On March 24 2026 23:23 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 24 2026 12:14 KwarK wrote:
There is no “walk away” option for the US. Abandoning the Persian Gulf entirely would be an absolute surrender. There are a dozen reasons for Iran to keep the strait closed for a long time.
Iran has, so far this war, taken orders of magnitude more damage than the US. The US has lost a handful of planes and crew and a lot of interceptors. Iran has lost its navy, air force, hardened bunkers, warehouses, stockpiles, bases etc., in addition to the new Supreme Leader having had his father, wife, and teenage son killed.
As I keep repeating, the US and Israel peak immediately, they do the most damage on day 1 where they destroy all the highest value targets. On day 2 they destroy the second highest value targets because they can't destroy the highest value targets a second time. On day 3 the third. The longer the war goes the less damage bombing can do. They already killed his wife, they can't do it again.
Iran's retaliation grows steadily over time but doesn't even start to kick in until day 150 or so. There is significant latency between crude oil leaving the Gulf and the diesel in a gas station. Consumers haven't actually seen any impact in supply yet. The prices increases are speculative, suppliers don't want to sell today if they think that the price will be higher tomorrow and they won't have oil tomorrow to sell. And even once the supply does drop the strategic reserves have enough to cover months of the missing output from the Gulf. As the strategic reserves run low the prices will increase. As prices increase additional more expensive sources of oil will be brought online which will be priced accordingly. The longer it goes the higher the price gets.
That is Iran's retaliation. It hasn't started yet and it won't have any deterrence impact if they sign an early ceasefire. Even if Israel and the US stop bombing entirely they still need to interdict it, or charge such high transit fees that prices are higher. They need people to remember that 2026 was the year where there was a global recession caused by high oil prices so that the next time someone wants to bomb Iran they think twice. If Iran opens the strait early then they have no deterrent. They'd be saying "feel free to bomb the shit out of us for a week, we'll announce a disruption but as long as you stocked up the reserve ahead of time you can weather it". They'll get bombed by Israel once a year.
The idea that the US and Israel can beat the shit out of Iran, kill the leader's wife, kill his son, and then call a timeout before he hits back is absurd to me. It would undermine every single part of their publicly stated strategy of using the strait as a last resort deterrent bargaining chip. They constructed this strategy over decades, they know this. It would be national suicide.
The idea that Iran, one of the largest oil exporters in the world, has nothing to gain from spiking oil prices is nuts. The regime and country have been absolutely savaged. I've been hating on American strategy a lot here because the American strategy is nonsensical but that doesn't mean that the USAF can't demolish buildings. They were in terrible shape before and much worse shape now than they were then. If the regime is to survive they need hard foreign currency. They need their oil on the market and as few of their competitors as possible as a matter of national survival. The rebuilding project will not be cheap and there are a lot of regime loyalists who will need to be paid.
Additionally it simply wouldn't make sense not to continue the position that they control the strait. Free navigation of the seas is a postwar American invention enforced by the US Navy. Lots of countries would like to declare that actually they own this bit of water or that bit of water and that everyone has to pay them transit fees or whatever but they haven't been able to because the US Navy will disprove that notion. These waterways aren't just open by default, they're national territory by default, open is an artificial state of affairs that has been constructed and maintained by the US Navy. If the US declares that they're no longer interested in keeping the strait open then it won't suddenly revert to free neutrality under a ceasefire. It'll be owned by the strongest.
This is existential for Iran. Either they establish a convincing deterrent by confronting the US Navy over the strait and winning (which includes the US Navy forfeiting) or they die. There's no deal to be made here where the strait is reopened any time soon, it'll stay closed until such a time as a country with sufficient force projection to open it opens it. Can/should the world make the US a pariah state for an illegal war of choice leading to global recession? How about the European countries facilitating it? Or is the US integrated into the global economy (and their European accomplices dependent) in such a way that they can't be held accountable for their crimes? What would any of that look like? Those are general questions not specific to Kwark btw. EU countries are now "accomplices" and "facilitating" the war, the same countries who weren't notified and said they won't participate. What an absolutely brain rotten take. I mean, it's par for the course for a Tankie like you, but it's still pretty shocking to read something this stupid being written down. The ones literally facilitating US attacks, yeah!? Show nested quote +While many European leaders have publicly decried the U.S. attacks on Iran, behind the scenes their military bases are facilitating one of the most logistically complex operations the U.S. military has been involved in for decades.
In recent weeks, U.S. bombers, drones and ships have been fueled, armed and launched via bases in the U.K., Germany, Portugal, Italy, France and Greece, officials say.
Attack drones are being directed from a sprawling U.S. base at Ramstein in Germany, the nerve center of America’s operations against Iran, according to German and U.S. officials. Heavy B-1 bombers have been photographed loading munitions and fuel at RAF Fairford in the U.K. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, is currently docked at a naval base in Crete to undergo repairs after suffering damage from a fire.
U.S. Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s top military commander, said in recent Senate testimony that most European allies “have been extremely supportive.” Spain is a noted exception: Show nested quote +So far, political dissent at the top hasn’t translated into operational constraint on the ground. The exception is Spain, which has denied the U.S. permission to use jointly operated military bases on its territory to attack Iran. Some U.S. aircraft stationed there have been relocated to bases in Germany and France instead. www.wsj.comI can forgive your emotional outburst lashing out at me personally, but I am curious if you genuinely didn't know this or are just in denial?
You are using deliberately deceptive language as if this is a coalition of the willing because you, above all, hate the idea of "the West".
As always, you can go ahead and feign victimhood, as you always do, after doing your useful idiot shtick.
NATO is a thing, USA has bases which are basically their territory, short of kicking USA out of these bases ahead of time there is not much these countries can do in order to prevent USA from doing it's operations at these bases.
I am personally, and always have been critical of feckless fools like Mertz and Meloni because they kowtow to Trump and are big supporters of Israel, you on the other hand are saying things like "European accomplices" because you have an extremely myopic view of the world and geopolitical understanding of a 17 year old Tankie.
It's not a coincidence that you spend most of your time attacking the same people who are being lambasted by Trump and his cohort.
So, yeah, another in a long chain of dumb, counter productive posts from you, congratulations!
|
I'm not in disagreement either. Social media needs regulation, there is obviously some stuff that is just plain harmful (antivax, Nazi symbols, terrorist recruitment videos) which I think should be outright banned. I'd consider a law where you could prosecute people for knowingly spreading misinformation, although that would be hard to implement.
|
On March 25 2026 00:57 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 00:29 Gorsameth wrote:On March 25 2026 00:07 dyhb wrote:On March 24 2026 23:16 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 22:47 dyhb wrote:On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 19:00 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 16:43 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 15:08 baal wrote:On March 23 2026 19:03 EnDeR_ wrote:
[quote]
If you want to make this argument, you should substantiate your points. For example, I'd like to hear your take on how "proving that something is a bad idea" "kills the bad idea". Sure, lets get into it. It's hard to get data or precise evidence since these topics are by nature ambiguous and very difficult to test however Nazism is a good example. Only a few countries in Europe have hate-speech laws forbidding Nazism but we don't see Nazism sprouting in other countries and another holocausts, because everyone reads about it in school, watches it in TV, movies etc, pretty much world-wide we agree that Nazism is bad (real Nazism not hyperbole). Sure the idea will never completely die, there's some dark tribal impulses in all of us that can get carried away. If censorship worked we would see Nazism grow at areas where it's not censored yet we don't. I could argue that communism has lacked "sun light" and thats why it's festering, but lets focus first on the other example. I mean, technically, there is no new party called the nazi party anywhere, so in that sense, what you're saying makes sense. However, I could easily argue that many of the elements of what made up Nazi ideology (besides the gassing the Jews bit) are rather popular today. However, I think that that's a bad example as it is hard to define an experiment or methodology that unambiguously proves a political ideology wrong, because it's a thing that is hard to measure, besides the obvious "maybe don't set up a plan to gas millions of Jews to death". I was more interested in how you think the psychology of this works, so the actual mechanism. Take something that it is much easier to prove: "vaccinations save lives". There is overwhelming scientific evidence that this is true. You couldn't prove that statement any harder. Yet, the antivax movement has not stopped growing. When confronting an antivaxxer with this absolute mount of evidence, they just dig in and their antivax sentiment is reinforced. What's your take on the psychological mechanism at play here? Why does shining light on this topic, proving with absolute mounds of evidence that it is wrong, not kill the idea? Yeah there are too many variables on the Nazi example for it to be proof, but it was still a good point. On the anti-vaxxer yeah we sadly aren't as a rational species as we'd like to believe and many are immune to evidence yet, however do you know what not only didn't help but backfired hard? censorship. Facebook, Twitter and Youtube aggressively removed any comment that mentioned the "lab leak theory" also any post calling it China-virus or anything alike. Also the WHO/governments lying about mask efficiency (early on they said It didn't work to keep people from hoarding), calling Invermectine "horse dewormer", flip flopping on vaccine efficacy, and a long list of lying and obfuscation, not open and honest debate. You know what I think works much better? There's a video of Dr Mike (some youtuber dr) debating in those panels where people rush to the chair against antivaxxers and it is a total embarassing destruction, the difference in knowledge is palpable, these are very effective for people on the fence. This is why I wanted to get your take. Your thesis, as presented, rests on convincing evidence being used successfully to debunk a bad idea. I.e. prove the idea wrong and kill it, in your own words. You presumably agree that that doesn't really work. So does that make you rethink your approach here? How would you kill a harmful idea? Having someone debate the bad idea with someone on the opposite side as it were has been tried. It turns out that platforming bad ideas and setting them on the same level as good ideas legitimises the bad idea and makes it spread. How do you tackle this, in your view? You need only weigh censorship’s contribution to greater belief in official claims, some which turned out to be dead wrong, versus a fair hearing of the other side, which includes the nutty as well as the arguable. They both have downsides. So what's your approach to stop harmful ideas from spreading? You didn't refute or argue for either option. Admit that even the most totalitarian of fascist state is incapable of stopping ideas from spreading no matter how dangerous or harmful the government considers it. Then lower your expectations towards stuff that Democracies can achieve, like spreading better ideas with it and establishing trust that dissent is welcomed but challenged. Ask yourself which examples that Baal brought up that you would consider a harmful idea, or if you’d like your most hated political party to decide which ideas are harmful. In terms of lowering the reach or persuasive power of the absolutely looney conspiracies, I advocate almost no censorship. They thrive on telling you the “truth that the government doesn’t want you to hear.” For platforms, just pin the note on HIV or COVID sourcing to WHO or CDC or AMA. That’s an example of more speech, not less. edit: I see Drone posted while I was composing this, so I’d like to agree with him that education on questioning the source and skepticism of claims more broadly is very important. Your answer is basically to keep doing the thing we are doing that we know isn't working. Because letting people spread misinformation with a little note attached is what we have now Unless you think the world isn't currently drowning in an ever deeping ocean of misinformation, lies and outright propaganda that feeds polarization and violence, keeping the current course seems like a bad idea. We’re living with the entirely foreseen consequences of not doing what I suggested. Go read Baal’s post and tell me where your disagreement is.
The disagreement is that undeniable proof can kill a bad idea, which is the central hypothesis Baal put forward.
|
On March 25 2026 01:07 EnDeR_ wrote:
I'm not in disagreement either. Social media needs regulation, there is obviously some stuff that is just plain harmful (antivax, Nazi symbols, terrorist recruitment videos) which I think should be outright banned. I'd consider a law where you could prosecute people for knowingly spreading misinformation, although that would be hard to implement.
I don't think it's feasible to just ban misinformation in general, since a lot (if not most) of people spread it unwittingly, and there's actually just way too much of it.
I do think it is entirely practical to ban specific, targeted kinds of misinformation like Holocaust denial; the Federal Republic of Germany has already given us a successful roadmap for doing so.
|
On March 25 2026 01:09 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 00:57 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 00:29 Gorsameth wrote:On March 25 2026 00:07 dyhb wrote:On March 24 2026 23:16 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 22:47 dyhb wrote:On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 19:00 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 16:43 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 24 2026 15:08 baal wrote:
[quote]
Sure, lets get into it.
It's hard to get data or precise evidence since these topics are by nature ambiguous and very difficult to test however Nazism is a good example.
Only a few countries in Europe have hate-speech laws forbidding Nazism but we don't see Nazism sprouting in other countries and another holocausts, because everyone reads about it in school, watches it in TV, movies etc, pretty much world-wide we agree that Nazism is bad (real Nazism not hyperbole). Sure the idea will never completely die, there's some dark tribal impulses in all of us that can get carried away.
If censorship worked we would see Nazism grow at areas where it's not censored yet we don't.
I could argue that communism has lacked "sun light" and thats why it's festering, but lets focus first on the other example. I mean, technically, there is no new party called the nazi party anywhere, so in that sense, what you're saying makes sense. However, I could easily argue that many of the elements of what made up Nazi ideology (besides the gassing the Jews bit) are rather popular today. However, I think that that's a bad example as it is hard to define an experiment or methodology that unambiguously proves a political ideology wrong, because it's a thing that is hard to measure, besides the obvious "maybe don't set up a plan to gas millions of Jews to death". I was more interested in how you think the psychology of this works, so the actual mechanism. Take something that it is much easier to prove: "vaccinations save lives". There is overwhelming scientific evidence that this is true. You couldn't prove that statement any harder. Yet, the antivax movement has not stopped growing. When confronting an antivaxxer with this absolute mount of evidence, they just dig in and their antivax sentiment is reinforced. What's your take on the psychological mechanism at play here? Why does shining light on this topic, proving with absolute mounds of evidence that it is wrong, not kill the idea? Yeah there are too many variables on the Nazi example for it to be proof, but it was still a good point. On the anti-vaxxer yeah we sadly aren't as a rational species as we'd like to believe and many are immune to evidence yet, however do you know what not only didn't help but backfired hard? censorship. Facebook, Twitter and Youtube aggressively removed any comment that mentioned the "lab leak theory" also any post calling it China-virus or anything alike. Also the WHO/governments lying about mask efficiency (early on they said It didn't work to keep people from hoarding), calling Invermectine "horse dewormer", flip flopping on vaccine efficacy, and a long list of lying and obfuscation, not open and honest debate. You know what I think works much better? There's a video of Dr Mike (some youtuber dr) debating in those panels where people rush to the chair against antivaxxers and it is a total embarassing destruction, the difference in knowledge is palpable, these are very effective for people on the fence. This is why I wanted to get your take. Your thesis, as presented, rests on convincing evidence being used successfully to debunk a bad idea. I.e. prove the idea wrong and kill it, in your own words. You presumably agree that that doesn't really work. So does that make you rethink your approach here? How would you kill a harmful idea? Having someone debate the bad idea with someone on the opposite side as it were has been tried. It turns out that platforming bad ideas and setting them on the same level as good ideas legitimises the bad idea and makes it spread. How do you tackle this, in your view? You need only weigh censorship’s contribution to greater belief in official claims, some which turned out to be dead wrong, versus a fair hearing of the other side, which includes the nutty as well as the arguable. They both have downsides. So what's your approach to stop harmful ideas from spreading? You didn't refute or argue for either option. Admit that even the most totalitarian of fascist state is incapable of stopping ideas from spreading no matter how dangerous or harmful the government considers it. Then lower your expectations towards stuff that Democracies can achieve, like spreading better ideas with it and establishing trust that dissent is welcomed but challenged. Ask yourself which examples that Baal brought up that you would consider a harmful idea, or if you’d like your most hated political party to decide which ideas are harmful. In terms of lowering the reach or persuasive power of the absolutely looney conspiracies, I advocate almost no censorship. They thrive on telling you the “truth that the government doesn’t want you to hear.” For platforms, just pin the note on HIV or COVID sourcing to WHO or CDC or AMA. That’s an example of more speech, not less. edit: I see Drone posted while I was composing this, so I’d like to agree with him that education on questioning the source and skepticism of claims more broadly is very important. Your answer is basically to keep doing the thing we are doing that we know isn't working. Because letting people spread misinformation with a little note attached is what we have now Unless you think the world isn't currently drowning in an ever deeping ocean of misinformation, lies and outright propaganda that feeds polarization and violence, keeping the current course seems like a bad idea. We’re living with the entirely foreseen consequences of not doing what I suggested. Go read Baal’s post and tell me where your disagreement is. The disagreement is that undeniable proof can kill a bad idea, which is the central hypothesis Baal put forward. Are you sure he didn’t quote examples illustrating the downsides of censorship? The argument is that you’re doing more harm than good with the described censorship. Re-read his post, or maybe Drone’s response to the response to discover it. You aren’t getting away with straw-manning a post we can all still read.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
