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twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Golbez posted:

Correct, but they're afraid that he WILL when he wins a second term. This is based on absolutely nothing but irrational fear of the "left."

(Bolding is mine)
The bolded part here is definitely wrong. Obama campaigned on re-instituting the Assault Weapons Ban, and Joe Biden sponsored the bill containing the ban. That said I think it's pretty clear at this point that bringing back the Assault Weapons Ban was just another campaign trail lie, and he has no intention of passing vast gun control schemes, but it is wrong to say that beliefs that he wants to do so is based on absolutely nothing.

edit: He also nominated a judge on the anti-gun side of McDonald vs Chicago.

twodot fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Oct 29, 2012

# ¿ Oct 29, 2012 04:49

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 03:49

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

baw posted:

Abortion is easy as poo poo to argue. Ask him if he considers an embryo a person. Then, ask him if he considers abortion the killing of an innocent person.

Then ask him why, in the face of millions of innocent people being murdered with government complicity, the only action he takes is to vote republican when election season comes around.

You'll quickly find they don't even believe their own bullshit.

What is that you would expect them to do other than vote? "millions of innocent people being murdered" is a pretty accurate description of my views on the US military, but I haven't started a guerrilla war campaign against the US military, largely because it wouldn't be very effective.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2012 01:59

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

baw posted:

I don't think "millions of innocent people being murdered every year" is an accurate description of the military.

If abortion is murder, then there is a government-mandated holocaust and any person whose sole action against that is to vote for a certain party then their hearts really aren't into it. At least the people who bomb abortion clinics are consistent.

I asked you a direct question, would you care to answer it? I don't think your argument holds up if you can't supply the one true minimum moral response to a government mandated holocaust. As a thought exercise, I might consider the moral responsibilities of everyone during World War 2, if you don't find our current wars compelling.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2012 09:03

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:

Would anyone mind critiquing my performance in this thread? I made what I thought to be good points, and the people who really disagreed with me on abortion (I'm not counting the people I disagreed with about the personhood debate specifically) just ignored me. I've lurked for a long time but this is my first time actually posting in D&D, and I'm kind of frustrated that I made what I thought were good points that nobody listened to. Am I in the wrong here?

If this is inappropriate, I'm sorry and I won't pursue it.

I'm not sure which posts you felt were ignored, and in the spirit of this thread, I'm limiting this to posts where I think you failed to actually debate something and ignoring posts that I just disagreed with (but on that subject, argument by analogy is pretty much always terrible).

HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:

The pro-lifers itt seem very sloppy on the subject of rights in general, like when I said that fetuses do not have rights and Saeix said "No, they're alive," as though that was what I had said.

Edit: rights are established by means of contracts, which do not exist in a state of nature or among beings who do not think, hth.

Edit 2: Hobbes? I thought he didn't believe in natural rights, since there is no law in the state of nature. As I remember, all he said was that everyone has the natural right to preserve their own life by any means necessary. Am I remembering wrong?

This is not an argument, this is just you demanding that everyone recognize you as the one true arbiter of what the definition of the word "rights" is. The proper definition of rights is totally irrelevant to the discussion and even if you are correct about the definition of this word, you should be able to imagine the pro-lifers are saying "blorgon" instead "rights" and continue the conversation on topic. Further if the pro-lifers are being sloppy on the subject of rights, why aren't you quoting those posts and explaining the error they are making instead of cheerleading?

HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:

Saeix and his girlfriend had an abortion due to birth control failure. They went to Planned Parenthood, a federally funded institution of the kind that Saeix, as a libertarian, opposes in all other instances. This was OK though because reasons.

There is nothing inconsistent in being opposed to a program's existence, and realizing benefits from that program. This just looks like cheerleading to me.

HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:

The fetal personhood crowd isn't saying they're people, it's saying they're persons in the legal or philosophical sense. And I think there is something dangerous here, even if you plug that notion into a progressive worldview. In the first place, if you attribute rights to an entity which cannot exercise those rights (or interact with anyone else), those rights are exercised not by the fetus but by those who claim to speak on its behalf--not necessarily the mother. Secondly, if two rights-bearing individuals are occupying the same body, if one of them is growing out of the other, when things go south their rights will come into conflict.

You posted this in response to someone asking you to explain why fetal personhood is logically incoherent, but you failed to make a logical argument here. You've pointed out why adopting this stance might be morally ambiguous (without clarification), but did not point out any logical contradiction.

twodot fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Nov 23, 2012

# ¿ Nov 23, 2012 20:50

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:

Edit: I feel like my point that consent to sex was not necessarily consent to pregnancy was ignored, not by the first person I said it to, but by the second and third.

I don't think this line was a bad line, except that with at least the first person you spent more time telling Saeix he was stupid and didn't understand words then you spent explaining why consent to an action implies consent to foreseeable consequences leads to untenable situations.

edit: I'm not saying Saeix isn't stupid, just that saying that saying people are stupid is not conducive to discussion.

twodot fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Nov 24, 2012

# ¿ Nov 24, 2012 18:45

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:

How do you avoid just giving up, though? If this were a face-to-face discussion, either someone else would have jumped in (hopefully) to support me or I could just tell Saeix to gently caress off.

Sorry, I don't understand this question. In a face to face discussion there is very little likelihood of a random stranger jumping in to back you up, and even if they did, a random stranger is about as likely to back up Saeix. Your ability to tell Saeix to gently caress off is equal in both face to face discussions and online discussions. If you are asking "How do I not call someone stupid repeatedly in the middle of a reasoned discussion?" I can only really answer, don't do that, or at least be funny or interesting when you do.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2012 18:58

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Muscle Tracer posted:

I'm curious about strategies for keeping an argument on track in the face of semantic nitpicking. Most of the debates I have out in the world, and almost all discussions I've seen on this forum, are casual discussions between non-experts with different definitions of important terms (for instance, capitalist or Palestinian).

How do you either deflect semantic arguments, or resolve disputes about terminology quickly and without ceding ground over them?

As has been pointed out by others, assuming you are engaged in a good-faith discussion, I prefer to just cede the ground, but additionally ask they substantiate why they made the nitpick. Fundamentally, I don't care what definitions people use for words, as long as they are clear about the definitions and can defend why they are using particular definitions. If you want to define any coercive acqusition of someone's property as theft, then sure taxation is theft, but why is that a useful definition of theft/what actual point do they think that asserting "taxation is theft" (which at this point is essentially a tautology) supports?

edit:
I'll pull a falcon2424 and offer a LessWrong article, I think that often these kinds of disputes are disguised queries where the technical definition of capitalism is uninteresting, and the person who says "x economy is capitalist", is really trying to link some unnamed quality he links with capitalism, to x economy by making an irrelevant definition argument (not usually on purpose).

http://lesswrong.com/lw/nm/disguised_queries/

twodot fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Dec 3, 2012

# ¿ Dec 3, 2012 19:04

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Zeitgueist posted:

Capital gains are taxed on realized gains. There is no situation in which capital gains would make you negative gains, and essentially they don't figure into investing.

Capital gains tax won't ever make someone think stuffing money into a mattress is a better idea than investing (assuming we don't have deflation). It might affect someone's willingness to actually realize their capital gains though. If I own some stock or property for 30 years that has been just tracking inflation, my asset has nominally increased 2.44x, but my real net worth is unchanged, which means I have to eat 8.9% of the total value of the asset just for the privilege of turning it into money. Practically this is a non-issue, because primary residencies are exempt, and beating inflation by even half a percent (in the 30 year scenario) leaves you with a real profit after taxes, but I do think nominal/real gains are worth keeping in mind when discussing capital gains.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2012 14:20

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

gaan kak posted:

I'm trying to show that consent to a particular activity does not entail consent to all possible outcomes of that particular activity. The objection I'm getting is pretty much, "yea, it is, they shouldn't have done -x-, so that -y- wouldn't have happened." I'm obviously not getting through to them, is there a resource I can read up on to try and structure my reasoning more clearly and persuasively? I've checked the Stanford Encyclopedia but can't find a salient article that addresses that point directly.

I suspect the person you are speaking with is either arguing in bad faith or working off of a definition of consent you disagree with. The statement "Consent to an activity entails consent to all possible (foreseeable?) outcomes" isn't a wrong/right statement, it is a partial statement of what definition of consent you are using. But definitions are boring, we can adopt whatever definition we feel is appropriate for whatever conversation, what is interesting here is why is such a definition of consent useful. Presumably they are arguing that consent to an outcome implies the individual shouldn't be helped or we shouldn't feel bad if the outcome is bad. Whatever the case I think you need to address, given his definition of consent, how does that inform our beliefs and actions, and are those beliefs and actions desirable. I should note, that I think it's likely that this line of conversation will lead to you just saying "gently caress you, you are a bad person."

# ¿ Jan 31, 2013 02:18

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

CommieGIR posted:

I do not know how to properly respond to or argue against this

All of these statements are either 1) not arguments and thus requires no response (maybe a "I don't know feel like reading random books") or 2) just true statements (bitcoins are a bubble, no one wants to use policies from Austrian economics, no one wants to live in Somalia) and shouldn't be argued with. Why would you feel compelled to respond to this?

# ¿ Aug 7, 2013 17:25

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

BlueTesla posted:

I'm seeing this being posted a lot today about the the radiation from Japan. If anyone has any actual science either supporting/debunking this stuff it would be much appreciated.

There are a lot of claims in there, and a lot of "I'm just asking questions", so I wouldn't care to address them all, but at a minimum this is in dispute:

quote:

Let�s boil it down quickly: Scientists say the only safe level of radiation is zero.

This is probably referring to the linear no-threshold model meaning there is no threshold at which radiation isn't dangerous, and we can assume the dangerousness is linear to dosage (in terms of cancer risk for small doses). Given the nature of physics it's a reasonable assumption, but there isn't good evidence it is true, and there's proposed mechanisms for why low level doses of radiation may not be harmful.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2013 20:26

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

FISHMANPET posted:

Is there anything I can read on how to be a better internet arguer? I'm in a Facebook group arguing about a local development and my tone seems to be putting a lot of people off (though they're also mostly crazy and don't listen to reason anyway). But I'd at least like to improve my tone. The link in the OP has been archived, could anyone pull that out and repost it, or link to something else of use?

I would wager improving your tone won't improve your situation, but in any case, I'm a big fan of LessWrong, and this long series of short articles may be of interest:
http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/How_To_Actually_Change_Your_Mind
If I were forced to suggest only one, I'd probably pick this one:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/gz/policy_debates_should_not_appear_onesided/

# ¿ Aug 29, 2013 20:13

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

E-Tank posted:

I've been looking for help for things to prove to my father that unions aren't in fact evil, cruel, or seek to steal your money while ruining the business you work for until it goes bankrupt. Any suggestions?

Is your goal to prove that at least one such union exists, that all unions aren't those things, or that an undeclared number of unions between one and all aren't those things? One such union shouldn't be a problem, and if he isn't willing to grant that there exists one just for the sake of conversation, he's probably not worth talking to. All unions is impossible and likely incorrect. The unknown number is tricky and probably not interesting.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2013 18:07

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

E-Tank posted:

My father has told me in the past that one reason the American Car industry is failing so hard is because the unions demand too much money and the car manufacturers just cannot keep up the pay and build decent cars at the same time. He's not a stupid man, he's just been told this all his life, that unions hurt businesses to the point that joining one is a bit like trying to destroy the business.

He's also got personal anecdotes about how the NHS in Canada sucks a fat one because this one time he talked with a Canadian and he TOTALLY said that at 65 or older you get gently caress all from the government and you're put so far back it'll never happen. Which I'm not sure about, but I'd really like to find something confirming/denying it.

There's a lot of things going on here, and they aren't all related. It's entirely possible for the UAW to demand excessive pay without being "evil, cruel, or seek[ing] to steal your money", it's entirely possible for car manufactures to be unable to build decent cars regardless of whether UAW is getting paid too much. Here's an interesting blurb I found:

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/09/nation/na-green-cars9 posted:

But Detroit automakers long ignored signs that higher fuel prices would shift demand, said Walter McManus, an economist at the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute and former sales forecaster for GM. McManus said he and other GM analysts tweaked projection models when they didn't believe their results. "We thought we were smarter than consumers," he said -- particularly in regard to fuel economy, the impact of which they minimized "in a way we would never [minimize] horsepower or cup holders."

Basically foreign companies were forced to deal with realities of high gas prices earlier than American companies were, and also our car companies are dumb.

I should also note that it is definitely true that unions hurt businesses in that they demand higher wages, and thus reduce profits. This is the very reason for their existence, and it's a good thing.

Healthcare is an entirely different thing, I'm sure Canada's system has good aspects and bad aspects, it's not really meaningful to inspect these things on their own, it really should be done in comparison to either other systems or hypothetical changes to the same system.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2013 19:39

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

salisbury shake posted:

I'm talking with a friend, typical libertarian engineer, who also posts on a dumbshit site for dumbshit nerds(me):

I'd go for the low hanging fruit but I don't want to alienate him any more than I have by playing the libertarians_are_the_real_leeches.txt card again (it is so tempting). I want to craft an argument that will appeal to whatever libertarian framing he's adopting, but it is just so backwards and naive that I end up LF posting in response.

What is your friend practically arguing? If they are merely arguing that "taxes are theft" is a coherent moral axiom which can used as part of a coherent moral system, then they are right, and you shouldn't be arguging with them. (Note: I don't think such a system would be a good moral system, but it is a moral system, and your only functional argument is "I don't like your moral system, please switch to mine") edit: Though their analogy is dumb (as are all analogies), the correct analogy is we are the dad saying that you can love whoever you want, but we will later require you to marry the person we want you to.

If from the propostion "taxes are theft" they are arguing for some sort of policy change, then that policy change is almost certainly dumb, but we'd need the actual policy change to know why it is specifically dumb. Policy wise, it doesn't matter whether anyone involved perceives paying taxes as a social responsibility or as unjust stealing, taxation just works.

twodot fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Sep 3, 2013

# ¿ Sep 3, 2013 18:42

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

salisbury shake posted:

It's the typical non-aggression principle based belief for not paying taxes. Since taxes are 'taken by force', that isn't right.

Are you attempting to disagree with the fact that holding the non-aggression principle should lead people to conclude that tax collection shouldn't be back by threat of force? Note I'm not saying that holding the non-aggression principle is a good idea, just that once you choose that axiom, the "taxes are theft" idea falls out pretty directly.

Arguing that people ought not hold the non-aggression principle is a different argument, but if you want to argue that it's fruitless to argue whether taxes are theft, because whether you believe that is entirely based on your stance on the non-aggression principle. You can argue that it's extremely inconvenient to believe taxes are theft, but this doesn't change the nature of taxes, just whether or not we care about theft.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2013 20:59

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

salisbury shake posted:

Well, I'm arguing from the perspective that the non-aggression principle is a well thought out red herring and that is selectively chosen so that they can easily weed out any threat to their purse strings from the get go. Property rights, contracts, court orders etc are all enforced by the government and necessary for libertarian society to function, so what makes the IRS any different?

I get that he isn't about to let go of the NAP, so I'm trying to manage the scope at which it is selectively applied and ignored.

In that case I think your argument is broken. The government enforcing property rights, contracts, and court orders do not violate the non-aggression principle, because the enforcement of those things always starts with some third party aggression. Once an aggressor exists, using violence to stop the aggressor isn't itself aggression. The non-aggresion principle isn't a long winded way of saying pacifism.

For this analogy to work, you need to argue that people who fail to pay taxes are in some way aggressing on some entity (society?) and that the government use of force is justified in response. There are limited scenarios where this reasoning makes sense, a non-tax payer shouldn't be able to use public roads, and if one does the government is justified in seeking compensation. Other scenarios are trickier, there isn't any apparent aggression in simply enjoying the not-getting-invaded benefits of a functioning military, or in sitting by the side of the road while the fire department puts out a fire in your house.

quote:

I'm trying to think of the best way to put 'maximizing real human suffering to save pennies is worse than hypothetical threat of force to get those pennies' in words; but as I said, I am getting easily frustrated with this person. They are a brilliant engineer, but goddamn. I hope to wedge the absolute wrongest of wrong that the NAP currently serves as with an even higher moral wrong.

This is a functional argument but it requires the person to abandon the non-aggression principle which you earlier said you weren't trying to do.

twodot fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Sep 3, 2013

# ¿ Sep 3, 2013 21:31

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

OwlBot 2000 posted:

Talking about the "non-aggression principle", and saying that taxes are taken by force or coercion, how does he think a worker's labor is taken?

Coercion via threat of force and coercion via not giving you things you need to live are pretty plainly different things. I agree that capitalism is coercive, but it's not coercive in a way that you could conclude is bad simply by working from the non-aggression principle.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2013 22:03

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

OwlBot 2000 posted:

Not really. And it isn't "not giving you things you need to live", it's "taking away from you things you need to live" -- it's not a passive process, it's active denial via the threat of force (police, army, etc.)

How are the statements, "work for me or die" and "give me money or die" any different? Just because one will kill you by taking your food (after all, it's YOU who grew the food, not the landlord) and one will kill you with a gun doesn't seem like an important distinction. It's still force and aggression.

This argument only works if you accept built in assumptions that a person advancing the non-aggression principle isn't going to accept. If everyone agrees that the laborer owns the food, and the capitalist takes that food by force or threat of force, the capitalist has clearly violated the non-aggression principle (in the same way that taxes would). However, in virtually every society that possesses capitalists, it rather unlikely that is literally what's happening, because the very nature of being a capitalist is that the capitalist does in fact own the food (and everything else). This situation may be injust, and we might argue for revolution to fix the injustice, but this doesn't change the legal realities of the situation.

"work for me or die" and "give me money or die" are equivalently aggressive statements. "Work for me or you'll end up dying because you won't be able to acquire the resources that is necessary to you living" and "give me money or I will kill you" are plainly different statements as far as the non-aggression principle is concerned. I would personally advocate for adopting different axioms where these things are rather similar, but merely using the non-aggression principle doesn't get you there.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2013 22:52

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Parallel Paraplegic posted:

If you want to go all mental gymnastics you could argue that taxation is not "give me money or I'll kill you," its "give me money or voluntarily choose to leave society peacefully (by going to jail or leaving the country)." Violence only comes into it if you resist, at which point you're the aggressor because you're effectively committing theft of services by violating society's agreement (pay taxes for services or choose not to live in society anymore). You could even probably wrangle that into an equivalent argument to the "work or starve" argument being thrown around by pointing out that you have the choice of starving but not the choice of taking food for yourself.

This is a dumb argument please poke holes in it.

This is more commonly referred to as the social contract, and anyone arguing that taxes are theft is just going to reject the social contract as a legitimate notion out of hand. There are actual criticisms of social contract, but I personally find responses of "nuh uh" to be the norm.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2013 23:06

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

OwlBot 2000 posted:

Yes, for the same reason that not feeding your child until if dies (and hitting them when they attempt take food) is morally superior to choking them to death. "I didn't kill him, I just ensured he would die!"

Yes, I agree, analyzing this in the light of the non-aggression principle (and adopting no other axioms whatsoever) I think we'd have to conclude that starving your child to death is morally superior to choking them to death (since failing to feed someone isn't an act of aggression, but choking someone is).

edit: I should clarify that I agree that this is the position that the non-aggression principle leads us to, I don't agree that using the non-aggression principle is reasonable, and I especially don't agree it's reasonable to use that axiom and no other axioms.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2013 23:21

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Zuhzuhzombie!! posted:

Outside of "poor people shouldn't own some basic necessities?" What say you?

These are all factually true statements. They are useless statements, but they are not wrong. What is your actual disagreement?

# ¿ Sep 12, 2013 17:43

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Muscle Tracer posted:

The implication is that if you can afford a refrigerator, you're not poor and on obviously don't deserve welfare/unemployment/food stamps.

Poor is just a word, we can define "poor" as people not having refrigerators that's fine. Basing government programs on whether or not people own refrigerators is obviously an insane thing to do for almost any program, but the reasons why it would be an insane thing to do vary with each program, so again we need an actual specific disagreement to intelligently engage this.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2013 17:53

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Blowdryer posted:

Really the gist of her answers were, other countries have it worse, you don't know how good you have it, everyone can succeed if they work hard enough, every country has the same issues that we have or worse. Ugh it's just not fair that I have to deal with people who have no loving clue what they're talking about have the idea that America is #1!!!! because they were raised there.

If the argument is "you can succeed if you work hard enough" I think you are pretty much trapped. The statement is obviously false, but likely any amount of statistics you show will be responded with "Yes upward mobility is low, but it's non-zero, and the people with the upward mobility are the ones that I'm referring to as working hard enough (please ignore the fact that people who work "hard enough" are mysteriously disproportionately white)". The thing you're seeking to show is that there are people who meet the standard of work hard enough who aren't succeeding, which requires both an actual definition of what that even means (which I doubt you'll get) and statistics on that specific metric (which likely doesn't exist).

# ¿ Sep 19, 2013 22:05

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

darthbob88 posted:

Are there any major liberal-supported infringements on individual rights? I'm arguing against "STATES RIGHTS!!1!", on the grounds that states usually use those rights to trample individual rights, like voter ID, abortion and gay marriage bans, drug laws, and gun control. I'm trying to put him in a position of arguing against a conservative issue or for a liberal one, and I'd prefer it if I had at least two liberal causes to cite. Public displays of religion? Hate speech?

It should be self-evident that some rights given to a state would be good, and some rights given to a state would be bad (presuming you support the notion of states at all). If you think they will literally support any right given to a state then you should just give up because they are a crazy person. If you think they are supporting specific rights being given to a state, then you should address those specific rights, bringing up arbitrary leftist causes like gun control or hate speech is a total non sequitur and I don't see how it would move the conversation forward.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2013 18:29

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

darthbob88 posted:

I just want to confront him with the fact that the sovereignty of individual states as distinct from the nation as a whole is not always a good thing because they haven't always done things he'd agree with, like gun control and hate speech, and also slavery and voter ID.

When you say "a good thing" do you mean "literally incapable of causing any harm whatsoever" or "beneficial overall"? Your examples show that state sovereignty is not always a good thing for the first definition (the stupid one), but does not show that for the second definition (the good one).

If you want to lay down some sick burns, you could just call them ugly or something, this thread will be more useful to you if you are actually trying to debate or discuss something.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2013 20:27

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Salis posted:

I mean, I can often times see where he is coming from. Maybe that's why I'm a bad debater, I understand his frustration so it makes me sympathetic to his viewpoint at times. Like, yes, it's very frustrating to me that many of my taxes go towards things like bombing the Middle East or what have you. Some of my money has been used to kill innocent people. That is, indeed, a moral outrage. Yes, the government fucks up REAL bad at times and uses our money poorly and in ways we wouldn't wish. But I just don't have an easy time conveying to him that without government, our situation would be much, much worse. Everything from building codes to zoning laws to to public water supply, maybe if I had a list of all the things that only one concentrated body can do effectively it would help. Eh, probably not, he'd say private enterprise could do it better.

Is he arguing that a society which did not force people to pay taxes would be more moral or more good? It's pretty easy to take "thou shalt not force" as a moral axiom and from there conclude that taxes are morally bad. There's nothing wrong with this line of reasoning, even if I don't personally agree with it. Saying that "if we did not force people to pay taxes, the same number or less people would die from starvation" is an entirely different argument. In this argument, the morality of force is wholly irrelevant, and it should be obvious that, barring some massive inefficiency in government charity, forcing people to give money to feed people will always result in more food than asking nicely. (edit: and since people do in fact die from starvation having more food will always result in less starvation deaths)

twodot fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Sep 28, 2013

# ¿ Sep 28, 2013 22:44

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Accretionist posted:

Is nature considered immoral by his view? I'm coerced into eating, sleeping, drinking, breathing, blinking, etc.

If I want the economy to reflect my perception of the world as an abstract plane across which the unlimited extension of human will plays out, where political correctness is a frustrating and inane social limitation on speech, where taxes are a frustrating and immoral social limitation on my resources, etc., all of which we are immorally coerced into understanding as normative, then why wouldn't I spurn nature all the same?

What does this have to do with anything? Any sane person would say that nature has no agency and thus is amoral (not moral or immoral). Even if we did feel compelled to assign some sort of morality to nature, what's stopping us from simply saying "yes nature is immoral"?

# ¿ Sep 28, 2013 23:01

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Salis posted:

We have had arguments he has concluded with "perhaps taxation makes some people better off via government programs. However, I should not be forced to contribute to these. It is regrettable that people are in these bad situations (he also thinks the majority of bad situations come from taxation and government regulation, as an aside), but no one should be mandated to help them if they don't wish to."

To him, that's okay because as you mentioned, he believes 'force=bad'. However he also happens to think that if there was no government things really wouldn't be that bad.

Ignoring the aside, this is an unassailable opinion. It's one I disagree with, but there are no contradictions in being willing to sacrifice the well being of people in order to uphold some other principle. The only way you are going to make progress on this is government programs he believes are bad but aren't, or by addressing what "that bad" is supposed to mean concretely. When someone takes a moral axiom like this, you can say "I don't like your moral axiom" but there isn't any way to show that it is wrong.

Accretionist posted:

*Unless one's down with the consequences. Like if the above guy was all, "Well, I'm okay with increased mortality and disability rates attributable to these diseases because those are my values."

If your trap simply requires one to say that they are ok with bad things happening (especially when their original argument had nothing to do with the prevalence of such bad things) then it's not a very good trap. Also traps are stupid rhetorical devices.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2013 23:39

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Accretionist posted:

How's it a trap? I don't think you can really decouple the consequences of not having had small pox and polio vaccinations from having had small pox and polio still kicking around.

You're working on the assumption that a person who is opposing mandatory vaccines (do these even exist in the first place?) may not find the direct consequences of opposing mandatory acceptable. These consequences are so obvious (and honestly acceptable) that the only way this can possibly be effective (assuming we aren't talking to a crazy person) is if you think they don't have the fortitude to say something that is, on the surface, slightly distasteful. If you think they somehow haven't connected the dots between "people shouldn't have to get vaccines" to "people will get less vaccines" to "more people will get sick", you shouldn't attempt to educate them about these incredibly obvious consequences by asking nonsensical Socratic questions like "Do you consider nature to be immoral?", you should just directly ask if you they think the consequences of their beliefs is acceptable. You yourself noted that your argument falls apart if they are aware of and accept the consequences, you have no evidence that this isn't already the case, so you need to check that your argument won't immediately fall apart before making it.

If you are dealing with someone who literally thinks that reducing vaccinations won't lead to more sickness, I think the polite thing to do is to give them a lollipop and go about your business.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2013 18:02

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Salis posted:

We've had discussions on monopolies before, though I can't quite remember all of his arguments. His main points were:

-If you hate monopolies so much, why do you like government institutions (such as the police force)? That is a complete monopoly and they do a terrible job because no one can threaten their existence.

The issue here is that monopolies are not intrinsically bad. Whether or not a monopoly is behaving in a way that is good (whether it be government or Microsoft) is entirely a preference thing. You can debate the actual effects of a particular monopoly, but whether those effects are desirable isn't something that can be argued.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2013 18:25

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Dr. Arbitrary posted:

I've been trying to find the best analogy for the situation, something that'll really drill into people's heads.

Analogies are almost always terrible, the facts of the situation should be enough to convince any sane person. The Republicans deliberately shut down the government in an effort to seek concessions from the Democrats, this means either: the Republicans regard the shutdown as a good thing (insanity) or that the Republicans are willing to literally damage the country to achieve their political goals (at best essentially accelerationism, at worst super villain territory).

# ¿ Oct 10, 2013 08:20

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Dr. Arbitrary posted:

People don't understand facts, they understand stories. If your facts don't fit with a credible narrative, your facts will be rejected.

The most dangerous story right now is the "Both sides are bad, neither wants to work with the other" story.

Sure, but "The Republicans are literally engaging in terrorism (they are trying to extract policy concessions from Democrats by harming America)" is a story that doesn't require analogy.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2013 16:42

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Habibi posted:

But really any assistance on this would be helpful as my entire link library is currently MIA.

I think your approach is backwards. I would ask him to back up his assertion since it doesn't seem compatible with how essentially every country with better healthcare than ours functions. I don't think pointing out the for-profit healthcare is screwing us is going to work here, he seems to agree that we are indeed being screwed in the current situation. You can't take the burden of showing the only possible way to avoid being screwed is your solution, you need to instead show why his particular solution doesn't do the thing he wants (or show that the thing he wants is reprehensible).

# ¿ Oct 10, 2013 23:00

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Habibi posted:

When I tried answering his initial question re why single payer would help reduce costs by explaining the idea of a single negotiator representing an enormous amount of customers...he began comparing it to the system back in the USSR and what is apparently going on now in Venezuela.

If the fact that single payer could possibly be better than what we have right now is in dispute, then countries existing that have single payer should be sufficient evidence to prove that is true (since our healthcare is terrible). If it's not, he must have a wrong assertion laying somewhere. Note that this is an entirely different discussion from the cause of our current high costs, which was the subject of your quote.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2013 18:08

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Habibi posted:

Since I am talking about how a UHC would help reduce costs vs the private system we have now, which is a large part of those extraordinary costs, I don't see why the questions differ?

"Would single payer be better for America than status quo?" and "Would a health insurance industry that was properly competitive instead of being basically monopolies be better for America than the status quo?" are entirely unrelated questions and can both be true at the same time. There's only conflict if you arguing what is best, but what is best isn't directly related to what's bad (the best thing will obviously fix the bad things, but we can determine what's bad without determining what's best).

# ¿ Oct 12, 2013 17:18

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Habibi posted:

Well, yes, if you change the question from 'would single payer do more to reduce costs' to 'would single payer be better for America,' I can see how it becomes unrelated. But the only time I mentioned the word 'better' was in the context of financial impact, so...

I addressed this, "do more" is functionally no different from "best" in this conversation. The quote you posted said nothing about the best outcome, just a path to a better outcome.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2013 06:55

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Captain Frigate posted:

I was wondering about the possibility of getting some anti-MRA bits of info in the OP. Anyone have a good collection of resources that would be useful?

The issue here is that "MRA" isn't any sort of coherent philosophy, so there isn't a generic argument that will always make sense or be effective. There certainly exists a variety of issues specific to men that can make sense to advocate for. There's also (many more) issues that are stupid/don't exist/aren't worth addressing. This is definitely not a one size fits all conversation, to have a meaningful conversation, you are going to have to engage the specific issue they are advocating.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2013 09:31

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Parallel Paraplegic posted:

I admit I sort of handled this half-assedly since I was focusing on the Reddit-type nerd MRA's but really I think the idea of a concise list to reference when needed is a good one.

I don't think such a list is good, and I would argue that it is actively bad, because it implies that everyone/most people in that group believe those things. We don't need a list of every bad idea ever. Bad ideas all have one common fact: they are bad. When you encounter a bad idea you should attack it by demonstrating why it's bad. As you noted, there's no need to attack MRA's good beliefs, so why bother to make a list of this particular subset of bad ideas?

If there were a central idea in MRA I might agree, but you've plainly demonstrated that even a small subset of MRAs have a variety of unrelated bad beliefs. To use an earlier example, climate change deniers have a specific core belief either:
1) Climate change isn't happening
2) Climate change is happening, but there's nothing to do about it
Anyone who doesn't believe one of these two bad ideas isn't a climate change denier. I'm comfortable with having to ask a climate change denier one question to find out which bad belief they possess. To find out which bad belief an MRA possesses you need to ask a potentially infinitely long list of questions, because it may be the case that they don't possess any bad ideas.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2013 18:19

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 03:49

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

V. Illych L. posted:

^^The basic idea of a men's right activist is that we do not live in a patriarchy, but in a society that systemically favours women in most areas of life. This is a fairly easy basic position to refute, which is why they don't generally frame it in those terms and throw up lots of weird other opinions or reasoning to cover for it.

How is this any different from certain MRAs arguing that the basic idea of feminism is the promotion of women over men? That's definitely a wrong statement about feminism, but how am I to evaluate whether this is a wrong statement about MRAs? You specifically acknowledge that MRA wouldn't publicly or directly state the thing you believe is their basic idea, so I'm pretty much left with just trusting you that this isn't a massive straw man.

quote:

Which I'll admit doesn't quite support what I was saying, but the skewing is much less grotesque than a lot of MRAs claim it to be, with a slim majority of fought-over cases turning to not-maternal custody (joint custody has 40%, paternal 11%, maternal 44% and 'other' has the rest) - I assume these stats are for the USA. In a divorce, the kids usually go with the mother because the mother wants them more (see the preferences - 82% of the mothers want to have sole possession of the child after divorce). Site might be a bit hacky, though, I can't be arsed to dig up actual primary sources of statistics about this.

I've bolded the problem with trying to discuss MRAs beliefs generally. How much less grotesque? How many MRAs claim this to be? You can't have a sane discussion on this sort of thing without someone first putting forward a specific argument.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2013 18:54

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