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On March 24 2026 19:20 Billyboy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 15:24 baal wrote:On March 23 2026 20:53 Biff The Understudy 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. I’ve actually read Mein Kampf, it’s preeeetty unambiguous. I haven't read it but I know he fantasizes about gassing jews and mentions spilling blood, so yeah It's way less ambiguous than his speeches, but it's a very reasonable assumption that most people didn't read his book at the time. I mean there's a reason why Hitler toned down his speeches. Is this similar to the Trump party and project 2025? You have the non Trump voters who are like, this is terrifying and what he wants. Then you have his voters who are like, naaa listen to his speeches he doesn't say that, and the bad stuff is just jokes to trigger the libs. Then a couple years later were living through them enacting project 2025.
Yes. if you believe half of 1920s germans were just ontologically evil then you are likely to believe the same thing about modern day republicans and I think it's a grave misreading of human nature.
I'm not saying Trump is a Nazi, I find that paranoid crowd retarded, what I"m saying is that it's important to understand the lesson and it's not that anything resembling nazism is bad, but about how normal people can do awful things, how our instincts like tribalism can be hijacked understanding these things are important for personal growth, not form political movements.
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On March 25 2026 07:38 WombaT wrote:I’m still unsure what the point of this tangent is overall. + Show Spoiler +
That the Dems are bad for going ‘hm, we hope x is our opponent in the election because we think they’re a great matchup for us’ and getting that wrong? Something basically every political party does, if not publicly then certainly in private?
I think it would be a different kettle of fish if the Dem machine was sneakily funding Trump’s rise or something like that, then yeah they’re not guilty merely of misjudging things, but actively culpable.
But as far as I’m aware that isn’t the case
Basically just Jankisa and Light spinning up a strawman in response to this: On March 25 2026 02:51 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 02:38 WombaT wrote:On March 25 2026 02:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 01:58 KwarK 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. + Show Spoiler +The question doesn't really make sense.
Let's imagine a town filled with people. And not civic minded Nordic people who pick up litter when they go for a walk in the woods, let's imagine it's filled with people who would steal Amazon packages from each others' porches. Fortunately there's a chief of police and a police force and they mostly get everyone to behave and as such everyone in the town can benefit from the predictable order of law, they can order things from Amazon, they can leave the house to go to work and still have their stuff when they come home etc. If you start breaking the rules then you're excluded from the society, people won't let you in their shops, they won't sell you gasoline, you get disconnected from utilities, it's a bad time.
Now let's imagine the chief of police fires the police force and burns down the courthouse.
What you're asking is what he should be convicted of and how long he should spend in jail.
It doesn't work.
That is absolutely not the same thing as him getting away with the crime of burning down the courthouse, it's just no longer functional to think of burning down the courthouse as a crime. Getting away with a crime would be continuing to benefit from the society built on a system of rules without being held accountable for breaking them (Israel gets away with having nukes for example). What he has done is remove the rules entirely and return the town to the natural state of anarchy. + Show Spoiler +That is not to say that there won't be consequences, it's just the concept of being prosecuted has gone. The consequences will show up with the power goes off because someone decided to steal the copper in the substation for scrap metal. They'll be more or less self imposed.
In the scenario in which the US engages in an illegal war and sends the world into a global recession while destroying its own alliance system there are no more pariah states and there is no more accountability. This is what Carney was explaining so beautifully at Davos . https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/ I think we're largely in agreement, though I believe Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians and the US's aiding and abetting of it was enough already. We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. Basically there's always been "winners and losers" in this scheme (my personal perspective is a bit different), and people like Carney are basically saying that if they're slipping into the "losers" side then it's a good time to abandon ship. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination. From my particular British/European perspective, in both a general sense but also something I argued specifically in the Israel/Palestine instance, was that keeping Trump out of assuming office was so important precisely because other nations and institutions either lacked the capacity or will to rein in a US that abandons all pretence of a lawful world order. Illusory though it might be I know the point you're trying to raise and we don't disagree that keeping Trump out of office was an inflection point. We disagree on how that could/should have been done. The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted (including elevating Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place) and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office.
They fixated on misunderstanding the parenthetical at the expense of the point.
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Northern Ireland26450 Posts
On March 25 2026 07:31 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 02:07 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:55 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 01:49 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:28 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 01:21 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:09 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 00:57 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 00:29 Gorsameth wrote:On March 25 2026 00:07 dyhb wrote:
[quote]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. I do not think saying a thing is so, makes it so. If you want to make an argument that letting harmful content just go out unfiltered, you have to actually argue why that would be better, not just state that that would be better. His argument specifically was that it's better to let stuff just rip through the population because the bad ideas will just get killed when they're proven wrong. I believe that argument to be flawed. He argued on how an alternate idea is worse and gave examples that you’re either unwilling or unable to take up. Thats simply a critique of a proposition. It isn’t proposing that his own preference doesn’t have downsides, any more than saying that the free election of leaders by the population at large proposes that no bad leaders will ever be elected. Are you going to make an argument at any point? Censorship has huge downsides. The examples in Baal’s post are ones I’d select too. We’re seeing the bad results of past censorship actions today. The best path is to add notices and pick more speech instead of less speech. I don't think people distrust (the) government because censorship. I also think people should have a fair and healthy amount of distrust of the government. I also know people have and will exploit this mistrust for profit (infowars, ivermectin). My problem isn't the risks of censorship (as I've said before I think we have to draw a line somewhere) it's that people abuse freedom of speech to actively harm others for profit. I see 'soft censorship' in the form of corrective notes like we saw rise during covid as just as problematic as hard censorship. People in the conspiracy circles already lean into martyrdom a la "I'll get banned for saying this" or "Youtube doesnt want you to hear this but..." and having a 'corrective note' is just going to leverage natral distrust further, in the same way (and arguably worse than) full censorship would. Not that I advocate full censorship often. Just saying that if censorship is actively harmful then soft censorship would be actively harmful for the same reasons, meaning 'more speech' in this way is not a solution.
Agreed on the martyrdom point. Additionally there seems to me just intuitively (and also based on what little academic research I’ve read) some common traits folks drawn to ‘alternative facts’ have. Traits that don’t just make them resistant to things that challenge their worldviews, but actively hostile to them to the degree it strengthens whatever x belief is
Of course, most don’t tend to start out that way, it’s a more gradual process. In theory it’s just a matter of cutting the pipeline so you’re back to something similar to what I’ll call ‘baseline crank’ levels. It ceases to be much of an actual problem if we’re back to conspiracy theories being a fringe, sometimes charming hobby of a minuscule fraction of the population. Aliens, moon landing craic, JFK was killed by time travelling androids etc. That kinda stuff was never really detrimental to wider societal function.
Now I’m not a lunatic, I don’t think we can quite get back to those days, but perhaps a move in that direction is possible.
You correctly observe the problem of people retrenching into existing beliefs, and COVID was a rather illustrative period for that.
I think one of the problems you have is social media companies etc are never remotely proactive in addressing some pretty predictable issues that may arise, indeed, sometimes they’ll know what a problem is and exploit that for their particular bottom line.
By the time they (generally under duress) ever do act in these regards, such as fact-checking notes or whatever, it’s usually far too late and that parallel ecosystem of ‘alternative facts’ has already drawn plenty in who aren’t from the ‘perpetual crank’ demographic.
It becomes difficult to assess the efficacy or otherwise of such efforts if they’re deployed to treat the symptoms rather than preventatively. One wouldn’t judge the efficacy of a vaccine if it were only used on those who’d already developed the condition.
But yeah of course you’re also giving powers of soft censorship to well, someone. That’s potentially a minefield of potential problems too
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On March 25 2026 08:13 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 19:20 Billyboy wrote:On March 24 2026 15:24 baal wrote:On March 23 2026 20:53 Biff The Understudy 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. I’ve actually read Mein Kampf, it’s preeeetty unambiguous. I haven't read it but I know he fantasizes about gassing jews and mentions spilling blood, so yeah It's way less ambiguous than his speeches, but it's a very reasonable assumption that most people didn't read his book at the time. I mean there's a reason why Hitler toned down his speeches. Is this similar to the Trump party and project 2025? You have the non Trump voters who are like, this is terrifying and what he wants. Then you have his voters who are like, naaa listen to his speeches he doesn't say that, and the bad stuff is just jokes to trigger the libs. Then a couple years later were living through them enacting project 2025. Yes. if you believe half of 1920s germans were just ontologically evil then you are likely to believe the same thing about modern day republicans and I think it's a grave misreading of human nature. I'm not saying Trump is a Nazi, I find that paranoid crowd retarded, what I"m saying is that it's important to understand the lesson and it's not that anything resembling nazism is bad, but about how normal people can do awful things, how our instincts like tribalism can be hijacked understanding these things are important for personal growth, not form political movements.
Just a minor correction because you keep going to this 50% number when the Nazi's didn't win that much. I'd have to read back but it was closer to 30. I think that there is a real chance, given the time period that there were 30% that were pretty damn racist. Were all of them pro final solution, likely not, some were just very uninformed and chose to laugh off those idiot libs who were warning them about it.
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Northern Ireland26450 Posts
On March 25 2026 08:13 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 19:20 Billyboy wrote:On March 24 2026 15:24 baal wrote:On March 23 2026 20:53 Biff The Understudy 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. I’ve actually read Mein Kampf, it’s preeeetty unambiguous. I haven't read it but I know he fantasizes about gassing jews and mentions spilling blood, so yeah It's way less ambiguous than his speeches, but it's a very reasonable assumption that most people didn't read his book at the time. I mean there's a reason why Hitler toned down his speeches. Is this similar to the Trump party and project 2025? You have the non Trump voters who are like, this is terrifying and what he wants. Then you have his voters who are like, naaa listen to his speeches he doesn't say that, and the bad stuff is just jokes to trigger the libs. Then a couple years later were living through them enacting project 2025. Yes. if you believe half of 1920s germans were just ontologically evil then you are likely to believe the same thing about modern day republicans and I think it's a grave misreading of human nature. I'm not saying Trump is a Nazi, I find that paranoid crowd retarded, what I"m saying is that it's important to understand the lesson and it's not that anything resembling nazism is bad, but about how normal people can do awful things, how our instincts like tribalism can be hijacked understanding these things are important for personal growth, not form political movements.
It’s pretty much the opposite, well I’m speaking personally but I’m going to assume many in the thread hold a similar view.
Most people aren’t ontologically evil or good, although there’s obviously a spectrum there. Many, probably most people generally go with the societal flow, even if they have personal misgivings about x or whatever. Which can lead to rather bad places.
Hence if wider society is turning in a more hateful direction, well that’s something to be concerned about because people don’t have to be evil to do horrific things.
I think it’s a problem with how Nazism is taught, or understood, or presented in modern culture now. In some places anyway. Many perceive the Nazis as some almost cartoonishly evil regime, and their takeaway is a certain blindness to commonalities, provided one isn’t 100% mirroring the Nazis I mean, nothing to worry about right?
I mean Trump being one such example. He’s not a Nazi, but he’s absolutely a Fascist or Fascist-adjacent. And this is absolutely fine for millions of Americans.
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On March 25 2026 08:13 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 19:20 Billyboy wrote:On March 24 2026 15:24 baal wrote:On March 23 2026 20:53 Biff The Understudy 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. I’ve actually read Mein Kampf, it’s preeeetty unambiguous. I haven't read it but I know he fantasizes about gassing jews and mentions spilling blood, so yeah It's way less ambiguous than his speeches, but it's a very reasonable assumption that most people didn't read his book at the time. I mean there's a reason why Hitler toned down his speeches. Is this similar to the Trump party and project 2025? You have the non Trump voters who are like, this is terrifying and what he wants. Then you have his voters who are like, naaa listen to his speeches he doesn't say that, and the bad stuff is just jokes to trigger the libs. Then a couple years later were living through them enacting project 2025. Yes. if you believe half of 1920s germans were just ontologically evil then you are likely to believe the same thing about modern day republicans and I think it's a grave misreading of human nature. I'm not saying Trump is a Nazi, I find that paranoid crowd retarded, what I"m saying is that it's important to understand the lesson and it's not that anything resembling nazism is bad, but about how normal people can do awful things, how our instincts like tribalism can be hijacked understanding these things are important for personal growth, not form political movements.
I don't know why you keep using the phrase "ontological evil". I haven't seen anyone here actually say that about Nazi voters in the 1930s. They were conditioned by far-right media into blaming Jews and communists for all their problems, it's the same thing modern far-right movements are saying about immigrants and Muslims. You're attacking windmills like Don Quixote. The criticism you've been getting has been about just saying wrong shit constantly (like "Count Dankula is a communist" and "was thrown in jail"), not your characterization of Nazis being ordinary people conditioned into doing awful things, which is not in dispute.
You haven't attempted to reply to anything I've said the last three or four times I've pointed out factual errors in your posts, but that's fine by me.
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Northern Ireland26450 Posts
On March 25 2026 08:35 Billyboy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 08:13 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 19:20 Billyboy wrote:On March 24 2026 15:24 baal wrote:On March 23 2026 20:53 Biff The Understudy 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. I’ve actually read Mein Kampf, it’s preeeetty unambiguous. I haven't read it but I know he fantasizes about gassing jews and mentions spilling blood, so yeah It's way less ambiguous than his speeches, but it's a very reasonable assumption that most people didn't read his book at the time. I mean there's a reason why Hitler toned down his speeches. Is this similar to the Trump party and project 2025? You have the non Trump voters who are like, this is terrifying and what he wants. Then you have his voters who are like, naaa listen to his speeches he doesn't say that, and the bad stuff is just jokes to trigger the libs. Then a couple years later were living through them enacting project 2025. Yes. if you believe half of 1920s germans were just ontologically evil then you are likely to believe the same thing about modern day republicans and I think it's a grave misreading of human nature. I'm not saying Trump is a Nazi, I find that paranoid crowd retarded, what I"m saying is that it's important to understand the lesson and it's not that anything resembling nazism is bad, but about how normal people can do awful things, how our instincts like tribalism can be hijacked understanding these things are important for personal growth, not form political movements. Just a minor correction because you keep going to this 50% number when the Nazi's didn't win that much. I'd have to read back but it was closer to 30. I think that there is a real chance, given the time period that there were 30% that were pretty damn racist. Were all of them pro final solution, likely not, some were just very uninformed and chose to laugh off those idiot libs who were warning them about it.
Indeed. As per my previous point the Nazis being the chief bad guys of the period tends to overshadow a lot of things in the (general) public consciousness. Including that anti-Semitism was a rather ingrained problem already, all over Europe.
Europe sure as fuck wasn’t going to bat for the Jews (and other groups) Hitler was persecuting, and probably never would have if Hitler hadn’t gone around invading territories.
There’s this kind of post hoc invention that there was this liberation element and it was a matter of good guys versus bad guys, certainly in the UK, just standard national mythos stuff.
But for those who’ve kind of absorbed that kind of narrative it sidesteps a lot of rather uncomfortable truths.
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Northern Ireland26450 Posts
On March 25 2026 08:53 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 08:13 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 19:20 Billyboy wrote:On March 24 2026 15:24 baal wrote:On March 23 2026 20:53 Biff The Understudy 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. I’ve actually read Mein Kampf, it’s preeeetty unambiguous. I haven't read it but I know he fantasizes about gassing jews and mentions spilling blood, so yeah It's way less ambiguous than his speeches, but it's a very reasonable assumption that most people didn't read his book at the time. I mean there's a reason why Hitler toned down his speeches. Is this similar to the Trump party and project 2025? You have the non Trump voters who are like, this is terrifying and what he wants. Then you have his voters who are like, naaa listen to his speeches he doesn't say that, and the bad stuff is just jokes to trigger the libs. Then a couple years later were living through them enacting project 2025. Yes. if you believe half of 1920s germans were just ontologically evil then you are likely to believe the same thing about modern day republicans and I think it's a grave misreading of human nature. I'm not saying Trump is a Nazi, I find that paranoid crowd retarded, what I"m saying is that it's important to understand the lesson and it's not that anything resembling nazism is bad, but about how normal people can do awful things, how our instincts like tribalism can be hijacked understanding these things are important for personal growth, not form political movements. I don't know why you keep using the phrase "ontological evil". I haven't seen anyone here actually say that about Nazi voters in the 1930s. They were conditioned by far-right media into blaming Jews and communists for all their problems, it's the same thing modern far-right movements are saying about immigrants and Muslims. You're attacking windmills like Don Quixote. The criticism you've been getting has been about just saying wrong shit constantly (like "Count Dankula is a communist" and "was thrown in jail"), not your characterization of Nazis being ordinary people conditioned into doing awful things, which is not in dispute. You haven't attempted to reply to anything I've said the last three or four times I've pointed out factual errors in your posts, but that's fine by me.
It’s like the new TikTok challenge, ‘make an argument with a reasonable conclusion but every illustrative point underpinning it has to be wrong’
Not even meant to be mocking, I think Baal’s made some salient points at times but the scaffolding is wonky beyond any kind of ideal
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On March 25 2026 08:13 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 19:20 Billyboy wrote:On March 24 2026 15:24 baal wrote:On March 23 2026 20:53 Biff The Understudy 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. I’ve actually read Mein Kampf, it’s preeeetty unambiguous. I haven't read it but I know he fantasizes about gassing jews and mentions spilling blood, so yeah It's way less ambiguous than his speeches, but it's a very reasonable assumption that most people didn't read his book at the time. I mean there's a reason why Hitler toned down his speeches. Is this similar to the Trump party and project 2025? You have the non Trump voters who are like, this is terrifying and what he wants. Then you have his voters who are like, naaa listen to his speeches he doesn't say that, and the bad stuff is just jokes to trigger the libs. Then a couple years later were living through them enacting project 2025. Yes. if you believe half of 1920s germans were just ontologically evil then you are likely to believe the same thing about modern day republicans and I think it's a grave misreading of human nature. I'm not saying Trump is a Nazi, I find that paranoid crowd retarded, what I"m saying is that it's important to understand the lesson and it's not that anything resembling nazism is bad, but about how normal people can do awful things, how our instincts like tribalism can be hijacked understanding these things are important for personal growth, not form political movements.
Setting aside the Nazi/non-Nazi labels, I think you're letting Trump off easy if you say that he's merely a "normal" person who has done awful things. He's a legitimately terrible human being, and is way, way, way worse than the norm. He's literally in the 99th percentile when it comes to the sheer number of crimes and unethical deeds he's committed. He's done more harm than 99% of all Americans (and 99% of all people worldwide, too).
Or are you also referring to the MAGA cult (and not just Trump) as a group of "normal people who have done awful things", since you also mention tribalism? Who are you referring to, and how would you define "normal"?
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Northern Ireland26450 Posts
On March 25 2026 08:13 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 07:38 WombaT wrote:I’m still unsure what the point of this tangent is overall. + Show Spoiler +
That the Dems are bad for going ‘hm, we hope x is our opponent in the election because we think they’re a great matchup for us’ and getting that wrong? Something basically every political party does, if not publicly then certainly in private?
I think it would be a different kettle of fish if the Dem machine was sneakily funding Trump’s rise or something like that, then yeah they’re not guilty merely of misjudging things, but actively culpable.
But as far as I’m aware that isn’t the case
Basically just Jankisa and Light spinning up a strawman in response to this: Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 02:51 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 02:38 WombaT wrote:On March 25 2026 02:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 01:58 KwarK 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. + Show Spoiler +The question doesn't really make sense.
Let's imagine a town filled with people. And not civic minded Nordic people who pick up litter when they go for a walk in the woods, let's imagine it's filled with people who would steal Amazon packages from each others' porches. Fortunately there's a chief of police and a police force and they mostly get everyone to behave and as such everyone in the town can benefit from the predictable order of law, they can order things from Amazon, they can leave the house to go to work and still have their stuff when they come home etc. If you start breaking the rules then you're excluded from the society, people won't let you in their shops, they won't sell you gasoline, you get disconnected from utilities, it's a bad time.
Now let's imagine the chief of police fires the police force and burns down the courthouse.
What you're asking is what he should be convicted of and how long he should spend in jail.
It doesn't work.
That is absolutely not the same thing as him getting away with the crime of burning down the courthouse, it's just no longer functional to think of burning down the courthouse as a crime. Getting away with a crime would be continuing to benefit from the society built on a system of rules without being held accountable for breaking them (Israel gets away with having nukes for example). What he has done is remove the rules entirely and return the town to the natural state of anarchy. + Show Spoiler +That is not to say that there won't be consequences, it's just the concept of being prosecuted has gone. The consequences will show up with the power goes off because someone decided to steal the copper in the substation for scrap metal. They'll be more or less self imposed.
In the scenario in which the US engages in an illegal war and sends the world into a global recession while destroying its own alliance system there are no more pariah states and there is no more accountability. This is what Carney was explaining so beautifully at Davos . https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/ I think we're largely in agreement, though I believe Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians and the US's aiding and abetting of it was enough already. We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. Basically there's always been "winners and losers" in this scheme (my personal perspective is a bit different), and people like Carney are basically saying that if they're slipping into the "losers" side then it's a good time to abandon ship. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination. From my particular British/European perspective, in both a general sense but also something I argued specifically in the Israel/Palestine instance, was that keeping Trump out of assuming office was so important precisely because other nations and institutions either lacked the capacity or will to rein in a US that abandons all pretence of a lawful world order. Illusory though it might be I know the point you're trying to raise and we don't disagree that keeping Trump out of office was an inflection point. We disagree on how that could/should have been done. The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted (including elevating Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place) and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office. They fixated on misunderstanding the parenthetical at the expense of the point.
If they misunderstood the parenthetical what did you actually mean by it?
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Democrats just flipped Trump's Mar-a-Lago Florida district, which he had won by 11 points during the last presidential election:
"Democrat Emily Gregory won a special election Tuesday for the Florida state House district that includes President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, flipping the seat from Republican control, The Associated Press projects. Gregory beat Republican Jon Maples, whom Trump endorsed ...
Gregory had 51% of the vote to 49% for Maples with all precincts reporting. Democrats have performed well in special elections during Trump’s second term, with the party pointing to those results as a sign of strength ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Florida’s 87th District is the 10th GOP-held state legislative seat Democrats have flipped around the country since Trump took office again last year. Republicans have not flipped any Democratic state legislative seats during that time. Trump carried this Florida legislative district by about 11 percentage points in 2024"
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/democrat-flips-republican-florida-house-seat-includes-trump-mar-lago-rcna264660
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On March 24 2026 19:56 LightSpectra wrote:
Okay, well that strategy evidently didn't work in Nazi Germany. In fact, it's evidently not working for basically any bad idea. You mentioned flat earthers, they're rising. Anti-vaxxers, rising. Raw milk truthers, rising. Holocaust deniers, rising. Soviet atrocity deniers, rising.
LOL thats a child-like statement, "if free speech is so good then how bad things happen".
Flat earthers are mocked by society, nobody takes the seriously, the TV shows exist for us to mock how insane they are, and that is exactly what free speech does, it exposes bad idea for mockery and ridicule.
I already addressed the causes of the anti-vax movement rising in another post.
Holocaust denial is actually illegal in many places, so its not a good example, however it doesnt seem to grow less where its illegal, and you seem to believe censorship works.
Soviet and communist atrocities is something I'd really like to get way more "sun light", in school everybody knows about the jews in the camps, not many have heard about the Ukranians and the gulags, there's 100 movies about the Nazis but not many about Zedong
The "just do nothing about it and eventually truth will win in the marketplace of ideas" strategy is not working by any metric, maybe it's time to try something new?
It's working fine, we should debate these ideas even more, but you think making illegal to talk about flat earth, vaccination and other things would be better
Jesus, there are so many wrong things in here. Social media networks only stepped in to stop misinformation after the "do nothing" strategy had already failed and thousands of people were needlessly dying.
Misinformation like the one the OMS deliberately propagated about masks not working early 2019 in an attempt to keep people from buying all the stock?
So censoring the lab leak theory saved lives how?
Yes it doesn't do anything to treat COVID however, invermectin is an FDA approved anti parasitic for humans, it is also effective to use in animals, like most of our fucking medicines.
It was a deliberately misleading framing, and the fact that you don't think there's anything wrong with it makes me believe you are also an intellectually dishonest person.
Changing your position as new scientific studies come out isn't "flip flopping," that's literally how science works and is the ideal we should strive for. You're in conspiracy theory territory yourself here.
Wrong, the CDC said that the vaccine prevented infection, Fauci said vaccinated people were dead ends for the virus they did this with no evidence at all, the vaccines trial's didn't test for transmission.
Then late 2021 when it became obvious it didn't prevent transmission they walked it back.
https://www.factcheck.org/2022/10/scicheck-its-not-news-nor-scandalous-that-pfizer-trial-didnt-test-transmission/
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On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:
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 are like the 3rd person who is essentially asking "if free speech works why aren't things perfect", come on dont make me answer these silly questions again.
We are a deeply flawed being in a complex world, speech an open discussion is better to navigate through ideas than central censorship, that doesn't mean free speech means a perfect pink unicorn world lol.
Ideas are organically discussed at the level they deserve, for example Richard Dawkins decided to stop debating young earth creationists because frankly it was beneath him, but he debated with many other people in a higher level of discussion, however there were still many atheist who discussed with young earth creationists on smaller platforms, this serves well to watchers on different levels of the discussion.
Debate doesn't legitimize bad ideas, have you ever seen Dawkins debate a crazy fundamentalist and think "damn this Imam has a good point on killing apostates"? No, it shows the world that Islamists are violent and crazy.
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On March 25 2026 02:53 Broetchenholer wrote:
A party that gets in power can then censor things that are dear to you? Yeah, but if a party willing to censor stuf we consider to be free speech, the issue is not precedent. Like does anybody believe Trump would have destroyed the fabric of democratic soeciety in the US by now if only he were allowed to censor diversity in federal....oh wait, he just did.
False equivalency.
The German government made it a crime for citizens to deny the holocaust, it is not a crime for American citizens to talk about DEI.
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On March 25 2026 08:11 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 05:59 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 02:07 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:55 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 01:49 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:28 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 01:21 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:09 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 00:57 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 00:29 Gorsameth wrote:
[quote]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. I do not think saying a thing is so, makes it so. If you want to make an argument that letting harmful content just go out unfiltered, you have to actually argue why that would be better, not just state that that would be better. His argument specifically was that it's better to let stuff just rip through the population because the bad ideas will just get killed when they're proven wrong. I believe that argument to be flawed. He argued on how an alternate idea is worse and gave examples that you’re either unwilling or unable to take up. Thats simply a critique of a proposition. It isn’t proposing that his own preference doesn’t have downsides, any more than saying that the free election of leaders by the population at large proposes that no bad leaders will ever be elected. Are you going to make an argument at any point? Censorship has huge downsides. The examples in Baal’s post are ones I’d select too. We’re seeing the bad results of past censorship actions today. The best path is to add notices and pick more speech instead of less speech. Is your thesis that the current crop of nutty antivaxxers and flat earthers are a result of past censorship? What is your actual argument? Lay the logic out for me please. Some of the recent growth of the antivax movement is, certainly. Which you should already know from the post I have been referring to. Just examine and respond to actual claims instead of doing this "Omg, are you saying that?" twisting act. I doubt repeating them will help you any more than the first saying did. I also said that the goal was a reduction of reach and persuasion, not complete elimination. Some people will just get fooled every time, no matter what you do. Now I tried a couple times to obtain a pertinent comment on the original examples of censorship backfiring, and if you don't have an argument perhaps you can just give an opinion, but here's a third time to try to get some focus. It's the first link of the post. What do you think about the examples of past attempts that backfire, and does that at all shape or change your opinion on censorship regimes? You don't have to think it's a cure-all, you don't have to malign people that think it's a worse approach, but you should give your own opinion or argument or evidence to why it's not true. Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 07:31 Fleetfeet wrote:On March 25 2026 02:07 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:55 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 01:49 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:28 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 01:21 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:09 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 00:57 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 00:29 Gorsameth wrote:
[quote]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. I do not think saying a thing is so, makes it so. If you want to make an argument that letting harmful content just go out unfiltered, you have to actually argue why that would be better, not just state that that would be better. His argument specifically was that it's better to let stuff just rip through the population because the bad ideas will just get killed when they're proven wrong. I believe that argument to be flawed. He argued on how an alternate idea is worse and gave examples that you’re either unwilling or unable to take up. Thats simply a critique of a proposition. It isn’t proposing that his own preference doesn’t have downsides, any more than saying that the free election of leaders by the population at large proposes that no bad leaders will ever be elected. Are you going to make an argument at any point? Censorship has huge downsides. The examples in Baal’s post are ones I’d select too. We’re seeing the bad results of past censorship actions today. The best path is to add notices and pick more speech instead of less speech. I don't think people distrust (the) government because censorship. I also think people should have a fair and healthy amount of distrust of the government. I also know people have and will exploit this mistrust for profit (infowars, ivermectin). My problem isn't the risks of censorship (as I've said before I think we have to draw a line somewhere) it's that people abuse freedom of speech to actively harm others for profit. I see 'soft censorship' in the form of corrective notes like we saw rise during covid as just as problematic as hard censorship. People in the conspiracy circles already lean into martyrdom a la "I'll get banned for saying this" or "Youtube doesnt want you to hear this but..." and having a 'corrective note' is just going to leverage natral distrust further, in the same way (and arguably worse than) full censorship would. Not that I advocate full censorship often. Just saying that if censorship is actively harmful then soft censorship would be actively harmful for the same reasons, meaning 'more speech' in this way is not a solution. I think the distrust grew during the COVID times by committing these avoidable errors. I acknowledge that the people who are into martyrdom will say ""I'll get banned for saying this" even in a risk-free environment. So don't make their comments literally true! That's going to let the loons tell their more normal friends that their buddy aint full of shit---he actually got banned or censored. I'm ok with a few narrow avenues addressing "harm others for profit," such as real lawsuits for defamation or class action (ie false advertising or bad medical advice). Detail the harm and get a civil trial with a jury and monetary damages on the line.
Do you understand that I can make the same case "we are living through the consequences of having unfiltered content"? You are not making an argument for or against filtering future content out because you are not laying out the logic of how that would affect future social media users.
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On March 25 2026 11:04 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:
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 are like the 3rd person who is essentially asking "if free speech works why aren't things perfect", come on dont make me answer these silly questions again. We are a deeply flawed being in a complex world, speech an open discussion is better to navigate through ideas than central censorship, that doesn't mean free speech means a perfect pink unicorn world lol. Ideas are organically discussed at the level they deserve, for example Richard Dawkins decided to stop debating young earth creationists because frankly it was beneath him, but he debated with many other people in a higher level of discussion, however there were still many atheist who discussed with young earth creationists on smaller platforms, this serves well to watchers on different levels of the discussion. Debate doesn't legitimize bad ideas, have you ever seen Dawkins debate a crazy fundamentalist and think "damn this Imam has a good point on killing apostates"? No, it shows the world that Islamists are violent and crazy.
Doesn't that criticism work both ways? You're pointing at things like the lab leak theory and showing how it got traction despite traditional media censorship.
1) It wasn't actually censored. People could discuss it freely on social media. If censorship doesn't include more than half of the sources people get their ideas from it clearly isn't censored.
2) Even if we consider it censored, I can just say "We are a deeply flawed being in a complex world, central censorship is better to navigate through ideas than speech an[d] open discussion, that doesn't mean censorship means a perfect pink unicorn world lol."
E: and to be clear, my actual ideas about free speech are more nuanced than "censorship good". I put them in a previous point and don't want to repeat myself.
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On March 25 2026 11:04 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:
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 are like the 3rd person who is essentially asking "if free speech works why aren't things perfect", come on dont make me answer these silly questions again. We are a deeply flawed being in a complex world, speech an open discussion is better to navigate through ideas than central censorship, that doesn't mean free speech means a perfect pink unicorn world lol. Ideas are organically discussed at the level they deserve, for example Richard Dawkins decided to stop debating young earth creationists because frankly it was beneath him, but he debated with many other people in a higher level of discussion, however there were still many atheist who discussed with young earth creationists on smaller platforms, this serves well to watchers on different levels of the discussion. Debate doesn't legitimize bad ideas, have you ever seen Dawkins debate a crazy fundamentalist and think "damn this Imam has a good point on killing apostates"? No, it shows the world that Islamists are violent and crazy.
Deplatforming is a good solution to stop the spread of misinformation (or bad ideas if you will).
The ‘Big Lie’ of election fraud pushed by former President Trump which culminated with the January 6 insurrection against the U.S. Capitol has profoundly reshaped the social media landscape. With @RealDonaldTrump and other prominent conspiracists no longer able to reach wide swaths of the public, misinformation about election fraud has already fallen dramatically
This has been particularly effective at stopping terrorist recruitment:
After being deplatformed in 2015, Islamic extremists migrated to Telegram and marginal social networking platforms. Then, in November 2019, Telegram and the EU’s main law enforcement body collaborated to clean up the remnants of the movement online. By forcing them into smaller and more clandestine digital locales, the groups ability to recruit, coordinate, and organize real-world violence significantly diminished.
So this is a good argument to stop the spread of bad ideas. What it doesn't do is fix the people that have already been exposed to the bad idea:
Shutting down accounts helps prevent average unsuspecting users from being exposed to dangerous content, but it doesn’t necessarily stop those who already endorse that content. When analyzing data from r/The_Donald and r/Incels, two forums that were removed from Reddit last year and later became their own standalone websites, researchers found a significant drop in posting activity and newcomers. Still, for those that continued to post on these relocated forums, researchers also noted an increase in signals associated with toxicity and radicalization.
For that we would need a different approach, but Deplatforming does help to avoid new people getting infected with the bad idea.
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On March 25 2026 15:39 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 11:04 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:
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 are like the 3rd person who is essentially asking "if free speech works why aren't things perfect", come on dont make me answer these silly questions again. We are a deeply flawed being in a complex world, speech an open discussion is better to navigate through ideas than central censorship, that doesn't mean free speech means a perfect pink unicorn world lol. Ideas are organically discussed at the level they deserve, for example Richard Dawkins decided to stop debating young earth creationists because frankly it was beneath him, but he debated with many other people in a higher level of discussion, however there were still many atheist who discussed with young earth creationists on smaller platforms, this serves well to watchers on different levels of the discussion. Debate doesn't legitimize bad ideas, have you ever seen Dawkins debate a crazy fundamentalist and think "damn this Imam has a good point on killing apostates"? No, it shows the world that Islamists are violent and crazy. Deplatforming is a good solution to stop the spread of misinformation (or bad ideas if you will). Show nested quote +The ‘Big Lie’ of election fraud pushed by former President Trump which culminated with the January 6 insurrection against the U.S. Capitol has profoundly reshaped the social media landscape. With @RealDonaldTrump and other prominent conspiracists no longer able to reach wide swaths of the public, misinformation about election fraud has already fallen dramatically This has been particularly effective at stopping terrorist recruitment: Show nested quote +After being deplatformed in 2015, Islamic extremists migrated to Telegram and marginal social networking platforms. Then, in November 2019, Telegram and the EU’s main law enforcement body collaborated to clean up the remnants of the movement online. By forcing them into smaller and more clandestine digital locales, the groups ability to recruit, coordinate, and organize real-world violence significantly diminished. So this is a good argument to stop the spread of bad ideas. What it doesn't do is fix the people that have already been exposed to the bad idea: Show nested quote +Shutting down accounts helps prevent average unsuspecting users from being exposed to dangerous content, but it doesn’t necessarily stop those who already endorse that content. When analyzing data from r/The_Donald and r/Incels, two forums that were removed from Reddit last year and later became their own standalone websites, researchers found a significant drop in posting activity and newcomers. Still, for those that continued to post on these relocated forums, researchers also noted an increase in signals associated with toxicity and radicalization. For that we would need a different approach, but Deplatforming does help to avoid new people getting infected with the bad idea.
I also like this paragraph from your source, since a primary motivator for spreading lies and conspiracies is to make money off gullible saps:
"Deplatforming also carries economic repercussions. Propelled by algorithms that favor sensationalism over truth, the online dissemination of rumors, conspiracies, and apocalyptic beliefs on social media have become a lucrative staple of the consumer Internet. Digital “attention vendors” tap into human informational behaviors and cognitive habits, monetize the disinformation, and subsequently profit from it. Whether it be the Islamic State or Alex Jones, disrupting the disinformationists’ revenue model have had a significant impact on their visibility, the maintenance of their fan bases, and the flow of their income streams."
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On March 25 2026 09:19 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 08:13 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 19:20 Billyboy wrote:On March 24 2026 15:24 baal wrote:On March 23 2026 20:53 Biff The Understudy 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. I’ve actually read Mein Kampf, it’s preeeetty unambiguous. I haven't read it but I know he fantasizes about gassing jews and mentions spilling blood, so yeah It's way less ambiguous than his speeches, but it's a very reasonable assumption that most people didn't read his book at the time. I mean there's a reason why Hitler toned down his speeches. Is this similar to the Trump party and project 2025? You have the non Trump voters who are like, this is terrifying and what he wants. Then you have his voters who are like, naaa listen to his speeches he doesn't say that, and the bad stuff is just jokes to trigger the libs. Then a couple years later were living through them enacting project 2025. Yes. if you believe half of 1920s germans were just ontologically evil then you are likely to believe the same thing about modern day republicans and I think it's a grave misreading of human nature. I'm not saying Trump is a Nazi, I find that paranoid crowd retarded, what I"m saying is that it's important to understand the lesson and it's not that anything resembling nazism is bad, but about how normal people can do awful things, how our instincts like tribalism can be hijacked understanding these things are important for personal growth, not form political movements. Setting aside the Nazi/non-Nazi labels, I think you're letting Trump off easy if you say that he's merely a "normal" person who has done awful things. He's a legitimately terrible human being, and is way, way, way worse than the norm. He's literally in the 99th percentile when it comes to the sheer number of crimes and unethical deeds he's committed. He's done more harm than 99% of all Americans (and 99% of all people worldwide, too). Or are you also referring to the MAGA cult (and not just Trump) as a group of "normal people who have done awful things", since you also mention tribalism? Who are you referring to, and how would you define "normal"?
He is also richer than 99%. While money doesn't necessarily make evil, rich and powerful people tend to think they can get away with anything and Trump just proves that.
EDIT: To clarify, if you give a "normal" person enough power and money, most would just get coke and hookers but a lot might try some shady shit.
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On March 25 2026 11:16 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 02:53 Broetchenholer wrote:
A party that gets in power can then censor things that are dear to you? Yeah, but if a party willing to censor stuf we consider to be free speech, the issue is not precedent. Like does anybody believe Trump would have destroyed the fabric of democratic soeciety in the US by now if only he were allowed to censor diversity in federal....oh wait, he just did.
False equivalency. The German government made it a crime for citizens to deny the holocaust, it is not a crime for American citizens to talk about DEI.
No, you just get fired from your job because the trump administration does not like diversity in federal employees or even companies from abroad that have contracts with the American federal government. And in Germany you can also still talk about the Holocaust, but you cannot deny it. The US in this regard is retaliating way more against free speech compared to the German government and that is without any censorship.
The point stands, if a government is willing to cross the territory into making something that is normal and dear to the population a censored topic, that government is already in a position where the rights of people has been trampled. The idea that if the government can censor the denying if the government it can also censor talking about kittens is just wrong. Harmful ideas need to stop spreading.
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EPT
