Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism • Hacker News Board

Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism

#131

Post by runawaybottle » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #88

wildmusings wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people are throwing around inflated or manufactured accusations of racism. Or trying to publicly ruin private citizens for sharing forbidden thoughts among friends and even family. There have been a string a highly dubious rape accusations in the press. In many cases, gross exaggeration or outright fabrication of the claims has been proven. The climate we live in now is very similar to these previous purges…

> Plenty of people are throwing around inflated or manufactured accusations of racism Such as? > There have been a string a highly dubious rape accusations in the press. In many cases, gross exaggeration or outright fabrication of the claims has been proven Such as? Are we back to finding the worst possible examples of a cause on twitter and using it to discredit the whole cause, just like McCarthyism used one or two…

There was a recent case of a Karen receiving mob justice to the point people began harassing the law firm her husband runs (granted she also works there), affecting their livelihood. We don’t want to get to a point in society where your character flaws destroy your life.

Just the other day, an out of context video embarrassed a supposed Karen on the front page of Reddit. We later learned the situation was more complex and didn’t have racial undertones. The mob still publicized a woman’s life.

#MeToo had several examples of people’s career being thrown out for offenses that were basically round objects being pushed into a square hole (Aziz Ansari, Al Franken, there were a few more).

I understand the need to use a chainsaw to cut a birthday cake, it highlights the desperation of the lack of tools to do a very basic thing. We now know, and quite frankly, we need to replace the chainsaw with a table knife sooner or later. Someone’s going to get hurt.

To keep the parallel, it’s important to see that the mob becomes the authority figure.

Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism

#132

Post by kstenerud » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #116

kstenerud wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it seemed that I'm lumping the last two together with the complete negativity of the others, that's not my intent. These modern sudden positive moral shifts are new phenomena made possible by the internet (and so one would be hard pressed to come up with significant older examples besides the temperance movement), whereas the older (negative) shifts were all driven by fear. But it doesn't change the fact that oppo…

Your lead paragraph omits anything about why they are included. Anytime there's a moral shift (good or bad), there's an opportunity to co-opt it in order to remove rivals, and it works very nicely because all you need to do is sow seeds of doubt about someone if they happen to be in a vulnerable group, and then let the mob do the rest That doesn't much address the dynamics of #metoo or Black Lives Matter.

What I mean by "moral shift" is a rapid change (as in over the course of months rather than decades) in what society considers morally correct and acceptable.

The dynamics of #metoo and BLM are different in that they are addressing longstanding attitudes and behaviors contributing to oppression or harassment of a minority group (I use the term "minority" very liberally considering that women make up 50% of the population).

We've also seen other moral shifts such as with homosexuality, although there was no "punishing wrongdoers" phase following that movement.

It's only when a punishing phase gets mixed in that you run the danger of mob justice, because there will likely at the time be either no laws covering the issue, or weakly enforced laws. Without clear leadership on what's right and wrong and the consequences, opportunists take it upon themselves to mete out punishment as they see fit. Sometimes it's for the better, but usually it gets out of hand pretty quickly.

Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism

#133

Post by justinclift » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

vmception wrote: post #51

eirini1 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe not witchcraft accusations per se, but im quite unsure how you can be aware of events occuring in the world right now and think that exploiting the current socioeconomic order to gain land and wealth is not done.

Right it wouldn’t be a witch craft accusation , in the west Its one example

Seems more a case of "use whatever the hot topic is for circumventing rational thought".

Recent version could be something like this:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin...

Or any of the other modern topics people have mentioned. It'd need to be combined with having the ability and intent to acquire the property of the targeted people.

In the above example, being the people don't seem to really own much/any property anyway, maybe it's harder than it first looks?

Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism

#134

Post by adrianN » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

achillesheels wrote: post #129

pjc50 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more or less how the Israeli "settlements" work; land is taken for "security" reasons and given to someone else. The Russian privatization post Communism also handed a large amount of state resources to the well connected, who are now in many ways more entrenched than they were under Communism.

Except that the Israeli “settlements” are on previously annexed land from 1967. It is more like an eminent domain seizure. And it is quite reasonable in theory to exercise sovereign power for such purposes to improve the land’s cultivation, so long as compensation is awarded (not sure if Israel gives it to the Palestinians)

I was under the impression that it's illegal to settle on occupied land and what Israel is doing is hence illegal under international law. Am I somehow misinformed?

Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism

#135

Post by dreen » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

> Universities were being founded, and scholars in Western Europe began to pore over ancient texts as well as learned writings from the Muslim world. Some of these presented complex systems of magic that claimed to draw on astral forces or conjure powerful spirits. Gradually, these ideas began to gain intellectual clout.

So could we say in other words, all that happened as a side effect of Education? Greater exposure of ideological minefields to people highly susceptible?

Reminds me of all the conspiracy videos on the internet you know. And people who spend an insane amount of hours pouring over those.

Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism

#136

Post by kstenerud » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

drdeadringer wrote: post #120

kstenerud wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern word is "moral panic", and it's used just as effectively to destroy rivals as it was in times of old. The only difference is that we don't kill the losers anymore, but rather imprison, harass, fire, and bankrupt them. Anytime there's a moral shift (good or bad), there's an opportunity to co-opt it in order to remove rivals, and it works very nicely because all you need to do is sow seeds of doubt about som…

> The Dungeons & Dragons scare Do you mean Dungeons & Dragons specifically or are you including the Satanic Panic in that phrasing?

The whole shebang in the 80s. I believe it was someone observing their kid playing D&D that set the initial hysterics in motion?

Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism

#137

Post by empath75 » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 3:29 PM UTC

dreen wrote: post #135

> Universities were being founded, and scholars in Western Europe began to pore over ancient texts as well as learned writings from the Muslim world. Some of these presented complex systems of magic that claimed to draw on astral forces or conjure powerful spirits. Gradually, these ideas began to gain intellectual clout. So could we say in other words, all that happened as a side effect of Education? Greater exposure…

Information without wisdom is a dangerous thing. Merely reading books isn’t an education.

Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism

#138

Post by SenHeng » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 3:34 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #134

achillesheels wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the Israeli “settlements” are on previously annexed land from 1967. It is more like an eminent domain seizure. And it is quite reasonable in theory to exercise sovereign power for such purposes to improve the land’s cultivation, so long as compensation is awarded (not sure if Israel gives it to the Palestinians)

I was under the impression that it's illegal to settle on occupied land and what Israel is doing is hence illegal under international law. Am I somehow misinformed?

It is illegal but no one can/will enforce the law,

Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism

#139

Post by oehpr » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 3:39 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #88

wildmusings wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people are throwing around inflated or manufactured accusations of racism. Or trying to publicly ruin private citizens for sharing forbidden thoughts among friends and even family. There have been a string a highly dubious rape accusations in the press. In many cases, gross exaggeration or outright fabrication of the claims has been proven. The climate we live in now is very similar to these previous purges…

> Plenty of people are throwing around inflated or manufactured accusations of racism Such as? > There have been a string a highly dubious rape accusations in the press. In many cases, gross exaggeration or outright fabrication of the claims has been proven Such as? Are we back to finding the worst possible examples of a cause on twitter and using it to discredit the whole cause, just like McCarthyism used one or two…

Normally people wait till they get the examples that they have asked for before they dismiss them.

I commend your efficiency.

Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism

#140

Post by fuzzfactor » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 3:40 PM UTC

spiritplumber wrote: post #99

Satanic witchcraft considered harmful.

It still lives and popped up in the 21st century.

Different curses can have different effects in different situations.

Even computers or equipment can seem possessed sometimes.

In the 90's all we had were IDE hard disk drives with their parallel connections made using ribbon cables. Floppies for backup booting were parallel too.

Over ten years ago the serial connections started to show up on HDDs which otherwise appeared no differently. USB flash drives for backup booting have always been serial as the name implies, besides being _universal_ (to boot :) years earlier.

Prayers failed to be answered when today it's more rare for average users to have removable backup boot media standing by, or easily and quickly whipped up when needed. Plus USB drives are less _universal_ than floppies and can not yet be expected to reliably even fundamentally boot on every PC as widely. Without warning they can easily give you the feeling they switch over to the dark side simply as a visible manifestation of evil that can remain lurking.

One day my buddy gets a new PC and wants to put his previous HDD in there as secondary storage.

So he opens it up and does not find the correct parallel connectors available, calls me up and says "Why is there SATA printed on the plugs of the power supply connectors?"

We could only both agree it was because there was not enough room for Satan's full name.

Numerous curses were employed afterward, all to no avail.

And don't get me started on ghost data, after all there's nothing to be afraid of.

Edit: An effective ritual is to actually zero your drive space appropriately, every time you get the chance as long as it makes sense. It's actually superstitious to think you never need to do this. Timely meditation, and prayer for a fortunate outcome during this period would not seem to be inappropriate, or even blessing of the device. Not a waste of time going back to the garden. It does seem to result in less chance of having it run completely astray and acting absolutely haunted.