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Reading a specific thread about guns and the issues surrounding it (I won't reveal that treat to you, figure that one out by your self!), I suddenly had a thought..
Are people who want stricter gun regulations (mostly left leaning people who think gun related deaths are too frequent even though they are much more infrequent than other ways of dying) using the same logic (or fallacious reasoning) as people who want stricter immigrational policies (mostly right leaning people who think a small percentage of immigrants causing issues will cascade into something unmanageable)? Are both parties cherrypicking to further an agenda that is ultimately non relevant, but is only made relevant by blowing up the issue so largely that it can't be ignored any longer? I understand this might be the fundamentals of politics - picking your battle grounds and fighting for it - but isn't this missing the (bigger) picture?
I understand that your evironment will have a large impact on what type of ideological stance you'll have in life. You can turn from a socialist to a conservative and vica versa depending on life altering experiences. But don't most people ultimately agree on most things anyway? Doesn't it all become moot to squabble ovet these things?
I've come to think that society moves too slowly. But I also understand why: you're held up by your weakest (slowest) link. These demographics need to be able to adapt, too. They need to at the very least know what's changing and how it's changing. But this comes at a price. I already think knowledge bodies and technology are vastly outpacing societal progress creating an unbridgeable crevasse which will ultimately split up society anyway.
Maybe authoritarian regimes work better, like in China for instance, where what they say, goes. Maybe we're too fond of our freedom to be able to be obstructive without necessarily strong reprocussions.
Is democracy a waste of time? Will it be looked at as a barbaric way to organize society in the future? I slowly seem to think we're overly fond of gettig hung up on "petty" issues and should revamp the whole system, or, at the very least rethink how politicians shoud impact society.
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No I don't think wanting gun control is using the same reasoning as closing country to immigrants. Nor do I think it is a petty issue. Gun proliferation is out of control in the US, far out of proportion for any imagined use or need.
As for democracy, I think it certainly has great weaknesses. The biggest one to me is that every uninformed person's vote counts just as much as the most informed. Hence the simplistic appeals to people's basest instincts in order to get votes. However, history abounds with examples of terrible authoritarian regimes as well. It's hard to say what will happen when any government type manifests from theory into reality. A great example being the seemingly charitable impulses of Marxism turning into incredible bloodshed and suffering.
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Uldridge, when you say society moves too slowly, are you implying it’s on an evolutionary path? What does the end result of following that path look like to you? By that I mean, what are the defining characteristics of the best of all possible societies? What would it have that our current one does not that would make it better than ours?
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Well, you can move in a direction without stopping, doesn't mean you are going in the right one.
And you can decide to go in a direction and forward, if there is a fork in the road your goal is to still go further and forward, but you can't be on both roads.
Most people, so not all, agree on most things, so not everything.
Also a random thing: if people apply the SAME logic in your case, you can still have people being in favour and some being against it...
PS: not all people on one side agrees on the same things, not all voter for one candidate/answer agree 100% with it.
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@Starlightsun
The marxist regimes were executed during very tumultuous times. I don't think governments could get away with destroying tens of millions of lives in this connected world. I definitely agree that theory translates poorly into practice, but we shouldn't become complacent when it comes to our current infrastructure. We should look to improve wherever we can instead of following tradition that have only been set for about a couple of centuries. Keep in mind our way of living has changed dramatically in the last 50 years.
@Ryzel
I guess you could look at it that way, yes. Theres a constant push and pull to reach incremental change, but I feel it's ever so slightly leaning more to a status quo than actual incremental change. It's like comparing your face now and 20 years ago. You don't notice the day to day differences and the overall thing is very recognizable, but the overall change is quite impactful. As to how I think a society should look like, I don't know. I'm an extreme pacifist and quite love to be able to do whatever I want, so I'll support whatever goes towards that direction. There are things I love about the way China works and there are things I love about different Western governments. More and more I wish there wasnt such a devastating impact from colonialism or the US influence on South America. I would have loved to see independent development and powers that are on par with other regions of the world.
Ultimately, though, I think we will see the upsides of a highly specialized (or group of) neural net(s) which will guide global finances, automate back breaking labor and optimize resource management. This will go hand in hand with more and more specialized people representing their branch of government (doctors, engineers, economists, city developers, ...)
@winlessplayer
Does the general demographic that feel there is a gun related death epidemic disagree on what to do about the situation?
Obviously there are nuances. Not everyone in the same political party even agrees on certain issues. It's mostly a gut feeling you're trying to rationalize I think. Basically explaining why there should be less apples in the store because you don't like apples.
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Canada8980 Posts
Gonna be a long one sorry.
Just because two argument follow the same "logic" doesn't in any way mean they are inherently the same, and in any case it's not even the same logic in the two cases, with the stronger gun control measure it's about solving a current situation (which you seem to think is blown out of proportion, I don't agree but whatever), and immigration policy is about preventing a perceive risk for a situation yet to come.
But anyway even if it was the same, using the same thinking canvas doesn't amount to thinking the same things and I don't see why gun violence is suppose to be a "petty" things. Guns do kills less people than other sources of death, let say cancer, but the reason why it is a political question and cancer recherche isn't is exactly because there is a division on the subject, because there is a divergence of opinion on a pretty fundamental question: if individual should be allowed the right to have a mean to use coercive power as individual or if the government should be the sole owner of coercive force.
Immigration is even less of a petty issue, in fact it's one of the most important political issue of the 20th and 21th century, immigration policy are literally life changing, and even a question of life an death for millions of individual around the world, on top of being a central economic question and a central challenge poses at the legitimacy of the Nation-States.
Saying that an authoritarian state like China would do better at solving those issue then a democratic state is a misunderstanding of the actual issue at stake. Those are not simple administrative of management decision, they are decision that impact profoundly the future of a given society and democracy is a way to ensure both that everyone is given a chance to have a say in those question and that the decision taken by the states won't be drastically harmful for a given part of a society, with the given of ideally creating an idea of the nation and favouring collaboration and communication in the society. Now do democracy fail at those task? Well yes it does,often, and a lot of the time it does because certain groups or individual want it to fail for their own goal, but that doesn't mean that the core concept is to throw away but ratter that we need to find a way to make it work.
China may be better at "getting things done" but it doesn't mean in any way that it's actually a good thing for most of it's population, for example they just legalize "reeducation camp" which all and all are pretty much Goulags for the Uyghurs, a Chinese-Muslims population, as a way to eliminate potential opposition to the regime and ultimately erasing their culture. (for example it's illegal for them to own a book about Uyghurs)
Also, there is no standard path of progress given by technological enhancement only an opening of new opportunity to use and mobilize those technology that "we" can chose to go down or not, having the nuclear bomb doesn't mean we need to blow up the world, but it gives us the choice to do so, and democracy is a way to make sure there's at least some kind of thinking about the common good, at least at the government level, when choosing about what to do with those technology.
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>Does the general demographic that feel there is a gun related death epidemic disagree on what to do about the situation?
Yes, some are about bans, some are about control.
If you are for a ban, then you may disagree on the manner the ban is going to be run, but yes ultimately they are going to be satisfied with whatever.
If we take immigration, Señor el Potus himself is, maybe pretending to be, in favour of immigration, controlled one to serve his own plans of course.
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@Nakajin
Never meant to seem like I find these petty issues. But when we look at, from the arguments opposing the advocates of the policy changes, gun related deaths and bad apples in immigration streams, are statistically quite insignificant. That doesn't mean they are.
My thought essentially was this: the people who think people wanting to clamp immigration because of bad apples are not looking at the picture in an accurate way, but are focussing on an issue and then blow up because of some sort of insecurity or whatever, are the same people who think the statistically insignificant (in relation to much more pressing issues) gun related deaths are an issue and vica versa.
It's basically your own line of reasoning to defeat someones argument being used against you, but not identifying it because it's about a different issue.
About China: it can be a very oppressive state, I agree. I don't have the background to actually go deeper on it or have a meaningful discussion about their tactics. I just know they can get things done because the government has absolute power, has made great developing progress in the recent past and can literally do things a democracy would take decennia to achieve.
I just sometimes loathe the obnoxious push and pull between political ideologues only to have a tiny clausule being changed only to be revised or scrapped again a few years later. Maybe we've reached the end state?
@winlessplayer
I understand that working towards a common goal can be difficult (different strokes, different folks and all that), but sometimes the goal is more important than the road. I think the people most adamant on wanting a total gun ban will be at least satisfied with more stringent regulations. At least it's a step in the right direction for them.
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Ban on guns might come from the same place as ban on muslims, but what is mostly favored by gun advocates in the US is gun regulation rather than a complete ban. If you want to follow this logic to the end, what they have now regarding guns is somewhere close to open borders, while what they have regarding immigration is already very regulated. Because the two don't start from the same point, you can't really apply the same standard.
Now I'd be okay with open borders myself, but that's a different question.
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I guess my analogy falls short when assessed a little more critically. You did a great job taking the reasoning a step further to expose the limitations of it. I thought the two points were representative of how thought processes between different demographics could be generalized. I know it's always a little more nuanced than that; people who debate for a living obviously should've noticed by now if they were doing the same thing as their opposition. But it might be that the water gets just get muddy enough for them not to notice it. Rhetorics is a beast where you definitely need to tread carefully if you don't want to be eaten alive or fall into the obvious traps.
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People still do what you’re describing all the time though in a variety of different circumstances. Biases, cognitive dissonance, and the Lake Wobegon effect are all well documented phenomena that combine to lead one to ignore fallacious reasoning in themselves while being aware of it in others. Only a very small minority of humanity have the ability to control for these variables when engaging in discussion.
Our current political climate is bringing to light a well-known facet of animal existence; winners decide what is right and wrong. Historians can confirm this. Being “right” doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have the ability to make your assertions come from a place of power. It has only been recently throughout human history that we have given those who seek the truth the authority that they deserve, and even then only during times relatively free of strife and turmoil. Otherwise, those with strength and bull-headed insistence of their convictions compete with and overpower those who don’t hold their convictions as strongly, regardless of accuracy.
This natural selection of ideas and personalities is a reflection of the natural selection in evolution, and it is why our minds have evolved with those previously mentioned fallacious yet empowering traits. It is also why political arguments are always going to be plagued with grandstanding and imperfect logic, especially over the Internet. The way to overcome this is through empathy, which is much more likely to happen through repeated face-to-face and non-competitive exposure to one another. Which is why local politics are not nearly as charged.
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EPT
