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The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

charliechaplin.com

401–410 of 412 posts

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#401
post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just asking questions" isn't a low-flamebait strategy for that material. Worse, your account is giving the impression of mostly being interested in promoting it, and that's not an ok use of HN, so please stop.

Meta: confused, upset INFO: I've gone through my last 200 comments on HN[1] trying to figure out what it is I'm trying to promote. Other than the last few comments it seems to be heavily AI and Musk related with nothing related to Nazis, Eugenics or other such things. I've also done full history searches for various things that could be the "it" you refer to, but my HBD discussion was about three years and several th…

You've got:

What if eugenics was ok, actually? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38680523

What if race science wasn't a cause for the Holocaust? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38674998

What if LLMs included more race science? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38376438

What if white supremacists weren't so bad? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36068057

What if people of African descent were actually dumber than other people? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34835306

That's just in the last few months, it just keeps on going with 'What if we didn't call people with Nazijacent ideologies Nazis' and so forth. Just cut it out.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#402
post #142

I'd wager it's more like we don't think at all and feel only anger. At least online that is.

Given the amount of bad encounters I've had driving post-2020, and interacting with strangers, I think it's seeping into the real world as well. The way people act and speak in public feels noticeably different than even a few years ago, let alone 10-20. People are very short with each other now. Even more disturbing, I think I can feel the change in myself too at times.

Anecdotally I noticed the same back in 2016-ish, especially when driving on the freeways in the city. It's astonishing what people can turn into behind the wheel of a car or a keyboard.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#403

It would be really cool if people stopped being gullible marks for psychopathic pedophiles. ‘Perverted, degenerate and indecent acts’ http://archive.today/2020.07.25-172048/https://www.telegraph...

Blahhh, this is difficult.

On the one hand, it's absolutely important to have an understanding of your sources but on the other... it doesn't discount the value of the statement itself. (Rather it provides context)

I'm honestly not defending Charlie Chaplin, he was in my opinion a irredeemably awful person. At the same time, it would be both academically and emotionally lazy not to give him credit where it is due.

He did in fact use his considerable influence and privilege to highlight the plight of the jews during a time where they were radically persecuted (literally being slaughtered on the street and sent to extermination camps) and no meaning benefit to himself is something I'd deem worthy of my respect.

History and people are both complex and it's entirely possible to celebrate a bad person's good deed without being considered a "mark"

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I keep thinking when reading your comment is “what kind of democracy?” What anarchists want is “democracy” too but it looks very, very different to the form of government we have in most “democracies”. Anarchists want political control by federations of cooperatives, or federations of cooperatives of cooperatives. What we have in most “democracies” is “representative democracy” where every few years we exercise…

We can barely get 40% turnout on huge generationally dramatic elections but we’re gonna vote weekly on minutae?

It's a very different system. When you are part of a cooperative, you are worker and management in one. (We need an educational system that prepares people for this. It is totally doable but obviously today's workforce does not have the training for this.)

When you are part of a cooperative, you will periodically need to vote on internal issues. Once a month you may need to vote in a regional issue. But you are showing up to work and everyone takes a few minutes to vote on something they are deeply involved with. No one would be voting weekly on national policy.

If you want to understand how such a system could be organized, you could see the imperfect but very interesting Mondragon Corporation of Spain:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#405
post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta: confused, upset INFO: I've gone through my last 200 comments on HN[1] trying to figure out what it is I'm trying to promote. Other than the last few comments it seems to be heavily AI and Musk related with nothing related to Nazis, Eugenics or other such things. I've also done full history searches for various things that could be the "it" you refer to, but my HBD discussion was about three years and several th…

You've got: What if eugenics was ok, actually? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38680523 What if race science wasn't a cause for the Holocaust? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38674998 What if LLMs included more race science? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38376438 What if white supremacists weren't so bad? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36068057 What if people of African descent were actually du…

Meta: Stressed, trembling, an hour spent

Every single one of those is either a bold-faced lie about the content or shows no reading comprehension on your part. You're behaving like a phrasal affect model that simply checks for the presence of words and whether the surrounding context is more positive or negative rather than actually reading and understanding sentences.

Aside: They are also from the past 12 months out of 1000 comments in that period.

First one is "eugenics is an ill-defined term that means different things to different people, some meanings such as offering free embryo screening are things that have mainstream debate about whether they are good or not".

Second one is "eugenics was not the reason for the Holocaust", which is basically true as far as I know. It was racism, hatred and jealousy.

Third one is a complaint about confusing "AI not embarrassing corporations" with "AI not killing everyone". With an example of an embarrassing thing to say being answering questions about IQ distributions.

Fourth one is using "supremacist" as an example of a general problem where people conflate every form of bad all together with no nuance or understanding.

Fifth one is about the limits of science and whether some research should be banned.

My most important goal in almost every case is teaching people how to think. To substitute in a word for the specific meaning intended in that instance and stop thinking in terms of word affect and tribal signalling. Sure, I could use less contentious examples but then the lessons lose a lot of impact and people shrug and go "Oh, no one would be so stupid as to confuse being in the same superset with the identity function", but people actually do this all the time whenever politics or tribalism comes into play!

That said, I'm sufficiently unsure on what dang's intent is that I'm going to try to come up with other examples... It's just really bloody hard when the main thing that triggers people to stop thinking clearly is strong emotion and politics, so every example that people will recognize as a real example that I can think of has... strong emotions and politics. Probably something about the word "family" is the best I can do.

---

I find it very irksome how you seem to have the idea that anyone who has not subordinated every single principle of honesty, specificity and reason in favor of ensuring bad guys are always labelled maximally bad is also bad. If someone says "Hitler really enjoyed kicking puppies!" and someone else said "That's incorrect, Hitler was a dog lover" you'd probably assume the latter person is a Nazi rather than thinking they're an xkcd 386. An assumption which is very likely going to be factually incorrect (and if it wasn't then the local environment's discourse norms would have degenerated sufficiently that they can no longer self correct, with every statement that signals the right direction/allegiance being perpetuated regardless of accuracy in a manner that will purity spiral aggressively as the body of common knowledge distorts).

I don't know if the fact you're still making these same mistakes is because I'm a bad teacher or because you literally aren't reading what I'm writing. Not assessing sentences for meaning/truth but instead trying to understand motivations and allegiances, rounding every statement to the most similar sounding one you recall seeing before and assuming your models of people's personalities and motivations is correct and complete based on your bubbled experience.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#406
post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>..someone said that believing in democracy is like believing in the metric system.. I have no idea whatsoever the hidden meaning here.

I found it, it was "dying for democracy..." instead. The meaning? Democracy is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Humans can die for freedom. Democracy doesn't sound as such an epic thing to die for.

Good. Replacing 'believing' with 'dying' gives meaning to an otherwise odd maxim.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#407
post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got: What if eugenics was ok, actually? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38680523 What if race science wasn't a cause for the Holocaust? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38674998 What if LLMs included more race science? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38376438 What if white supremacists weren't so bad? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36068057 What if people of African descent were actually du…

Meta: Stressed, trembling, an hour spent Every single one of those is either a bold-faced lie about the content or shows no reading comprehension on your part. You're behaving like a phrasal affect model that simply checks for the presence of words and whether the surrounding context is more positive or negative rather than actually reading and understanding sentences . Aside: They are also from the past 12 months ou…

People can simply read your comments and make up their own minds whether they are about 'nuance' or simply promotion of a baleful ideology with genocidal consequences. You're a self-described 'race realist', another word for race pseudoscience:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27181222

who nods along to Nick Land's Hyper-racism

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23710962

Your Holocaust thing is entirely ahistorical as anyone can check on Wikipedia or in just about any history book not written by neo-nazis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics#/media/File:Bund...

The rest is thoroughly transparent and generic 'just asking questions' schtick. You're not owed nuanced understanding for that - just social opprobrium, an insistent request you keep this shit off HN and the earnest hope you outgrow what is not some secret suppressed truth but garden variety bigotry.

I don't want you to spend another hour stressed and trembling so let's stop here.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#408
post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got: What if eugenics was ok, actually? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38680523 What if race science wasn't a cause for the Holocaust? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38674998 What if LLMs included more race science? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38376438 What if white supremacists weren't so bad? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36068057 What if people of African descent were actually du…

Meta: Stressed, trembling, an hour spent Every single one of those is either a bold-faced lie about the content or shows no reading comprehension on your part. You're behaving like a phrasal affect model that simply checks for the presence of words and whether the surrounding context is more positive or negative rather than actually reading and understanding sentences . Aside: They are also from the past 12 months ou…

Please stop.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t think of a single fact on its own that presents any danger. If anything, facts through the lens of ideology may become dangerous, but data on its own is like technology. Neutral without application, good or evil depending on situation.

Hypothetically if the world's scientists were to all prove that blacks were inferior to whites, what good would come out of that? I can't think of a single good thing that would come from that- the world would be worse for knowing such a fact.

The issue with your hypothetical is that it presupposes a factual metric for superiority and inferiority. They’re all at best reductive to a single metric that likely doesn’t have much power in making a determination or a subjective weighting of many different factors. There is no factual superiority or inferiority, you’re again getting at judging facts through the lens of ideology.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#410
https://youtu.be/J7GY1Xg6X20?t=97

the line "The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…" gave me a chill.

i believe in science, progress, and long for a day where everyone is treated with equality and empathy. but- once billionaires start living longer with longevity regimes / giant piles of money, how long until we are subjected to the whims of a maniac who will not die like musk, bezos, or gates?

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