How can we break our addiction to contempt? • Hacker News Board

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#131

Post by the_optimist » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

JasonCannon wrote: post #97

the_optimist wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One more point: your argument has very strong resemblance to that of a racialist trying to justify a belief system that is fundamentally rooted in stereotypes and hatred. Contrast that to the person who supports everyone irrespective of their visuals and self-identity.

How? You are literally just making things up now.

Simply change the labels in your statement and you have textbook discrimination in every country and historical context. “Not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” You saying this now and in the US doesn’t make it less hatred-based or fundamentally unacceptable than it should be.

> How about instead, you stand for women and people of color because it's the right thing to do? Regardless of how little they trust white men. Maybe, just maybe, try and understand why they wouldn't trust white men?

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#132

Post by bellyfullofbac » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

schoen wrote: post #83

wara23arish wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that note, I recently found out about a term “Tittytainement”, coined by Zbigniew Berzinski, a national US security advisor in the 90s. Message was that due to globalization, a 20/80 split in the job market was inevitable. So there needs to he work done on placating and nursing unrest by distracting people with movies, sports etc.. This was during the 1995 World State Forum. I tried to look up any more material wh…

> Message was that due to globalization, a 20/80 split in the job market was inevitable. So there needs to he work done on placating and nursing unrest by distracting people with movies, sports etc.. This reminds me of the "entertainers" in the Civilization series, where you can convert some workers into professional entertainers who help alleviate discontent that would otherwise throw a city into civil disorder.

Seems like Xi Jinping has decided to put a stop to the entertainers in China:

https://scholars-stage.org/xi-jinpings-war-on-spontaneous-or...

Interesting how "the market" has seemingly spontaneously created things like YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagram influencers, etc. Wherever there is money to be made, someone's there. Political news is hot in the attention economy? Macedonians make fake news sites with Google ads: https://money.cnn.com/interactive/media/the-macedonia-story/

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#133

Post by heavyheavy » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 10:26 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #54

abbub wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean...it's not 'The Left' that's pushing the 'fake news' and 'alternate facts' agenda when they come up against anything they disagree with...

As loathe as people are to hear "both sides", 'The Left' absolutely does this as too. They just use different names and insinuations to communicate the same point, that sources presented by the other side is not to be trusted.

Any examples of this?

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#134

Post by caylus » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC

tremon wrote: post #105

caylus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that areas of lower vaccination coverage are seeing higher infection rates? That does not seem to be the case under rigorous analysis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/ That's the problem with "reality" - the reality you see is driven by the media that reports the reality to you. Presumably the media you read likes to run stories like "lots of cases in Florida" to score points aga…

I would expect areas of lower vaccination coverage to show higher hospitalization rates, not necessarily higher infection rates. Got any studies on that statistic perchance? The infection rate is unreliable because it requires people allowing themselves to be tested when sick, and I would expect people that refuse to be vaccinated also refuse to be tested, on the same grounds.

Sure, it's pretty well established that the vaccines reduce severity of symptoms and risk of death. Just not transmission. It's an important distinction to draw, especially in the context of mandates.

Your suggested confounder is plausible, but I find the possible confounders in the other direction even more plausible:

- Many places have policies like "proof of vaccination /or/ positive test required", which would inflate the number of confirmed cases in less vaccinated areas.

- Someone with reduced symptoms due to vaccination is less likely to notice them and thus decide to get a test, or to have symptoms severe enough to be hospitalized and thus definitely get a test.

And then the really scary one:

- If vaccines hide symptoms but don't significantly reduce transmission, a vaccinated person is less likely to stay at home during an infection, increasing community transmission.

Further evidence for that hypothesis comes from comparisons of viral load in confirmed cases between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, which finds no significant difference: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.31.21261387v...

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#135

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 10:49 PM UTC

TomSwirly wrote: post #117

googlryas wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, and Rachel Maddow have all used "No one could honestly believe that what we say is really true" as an argument in legal proceedings against them.

> Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones These are well-known... > and Rachel Maddow I couldn't find any such thing in the news. Source for that one?

[deleted]

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#136

Post by md8z » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 10:51 PM UTC

notenoughbeans wrote: post #119

md8z wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The selling point of the mandates is to reduce spread of the virus.

Yes, that is ultimately the end goal of the mandates, but the selling point of the mandates is that they are a tool to get people who would otherwise remain vaccinated to get vaccinated by introducing additional costs (ie. coercion)

Not sure where you heard that. Maybe that's a secondary goal that some would like to reach if they're trying to convince someone else to get the vaccine, but for a business the primary goal is to prevent unvaccinated people from entering that business so they avoid getting other coworkers and customers sick. Few businesses seem to want to carry the liability of causing a super spreading event. Edit: I believe some health insurance rates for businesses also go up when employees aren't vaccinated, so that can cause more of a problem too. Being in the ICU for two weeks on a ventilator is not cheap.

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#137

Post by trashtester » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 10:51 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #75

shaldjfb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Democratic Party is conservative by any popular measure outside of the insular American worldview. In many European countries, the Democratic Party’s politics would be considered far right.

Some examples please.

I think virtually every conservative party in Europe supports single-payer healthcare. That's a big one that would put the Democrats to the extreme right in Europe.

Maybe even more importanly, the way Democrat representatives seem to be able to enrich themselves from lobbying money etc, would be totally unacceptable most places in Europe. It would place them more in the class of Plutocrats than conservatives. Democrats tend to have far closer ties to Big Capital than even the most business-friendly conservatives where I live.

It seems to me that their focus on identity politics is a cover for doing very little to actually help the unprivileged, but instead doing the biddings of their donors.

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#138

Post by shaldjfb » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 10:57 PM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #24

shaldjfb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Democratic Party is conservative by any popular measure outside of the insular American worldview. In many European countries, the Democratic Party’s politics would be considered far right.

It is fiscally conservative, Democrats doesn't try to reduce the dominance of the 1%. It is however not socially conservative, they are probably among the most left wing in the world with respect to race if you only count popular parties. And since "far right" today is mostly used to describe racists they wouldn't considered to be "far right". Instead in Europe the democrats would just be a typical right wing party.…

The Democratic Party’s “fiscal” policies are a scourge on the very disproportionately impoverished African American population. Any suggestion that the Democratic Party has any sort of commitment to overcoming racial divisions in the US is undermined by that fact.

There is no such thing as a decoupled “fiscal” conservatism. Politics in practice are inseparable from their historical context and Democratic politicians know that. Their virtue appeals in the media are not supported by their politics but rather serve to distract from their politics. Their politics, in fact, are a conservative politics.

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#139

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 11:05 PM UTC

iammisc wrote: post #95

Pxtl wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice to know the actual factual content of "What's The Matter With Kansas" is completely irrelevant. It doesn't matter who's correct, it matters who hurt their feelings. Which is pretty consistent - conservatives have become utterly disconnected from reality, and their absurd COVID policy has demonstrated what happens when reality doesn't give a crap how you feel.

> and their absurd COVID policy has demonstrated what happens when reality doesn't give a crap how you feel. Then why are so many blue staters vacationing in florida and texas right now? Honestly, all my friends from california, many liberals, have all decided to move to Florida and tennessee. I'm so sick of this narrative. The COVID policy in red states has not led to drastically different outcomes, despite all insi…

[deleted]

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#140

Post by JasonCannon » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

the_optimist wrote: post #131

JasonCannon wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? You are literally just making things up now.

Simply change the labels in your statement and you have textbook discrimination in every country and historical context. “Not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” You saying this now and in the US doesn’t make it less hatred-based or fundamentally unacceptable than it should be. > How about instead, you stand for women and people of color because it's the right thing to do? Regardless of…

Ok but tell me when in America have women and people of color ever oppressed white men? That's why "just change the label and it's totally racist bro" doesn't make any sense at all. Because it's been white men who have oppressed women and people of color. Not the other way around. It has never been the other way around. Ever.