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Time to Take a Stand

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Time to Take a Stand

#381

Post by geofft »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #260
geofft wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Five-year-olds don't commit genocide. Five-year-olds don't become tyrants. Five-year-olds don't deport people. Five-year-olds might say "I told you so," but they have a far better track record at the things that matter than adults. Maybe we should take a lesson from them.

I find your comment a bit bizarre. You ignored the point of my entire comment, instead deciding to focus on a meaningless portion of my metaphor and apply it to an equally meaningless point about how humans ought to be. This comment becomes even more bizarre whenever my comment was about acceptance of everyone, including Trump supporters, which is in line with your tao of five year old here.

Five-year-olds don't feel compelled to accept everyone. They love everyone, yes, but when someone hurts them, they cry and fight back, they don't say "Hm, how can I work together with this person like an adult."

The inclination to treat unreasonable people as if they're reasonable is a major and easily exploited failure of adulthood. Plenty of Trump supporters are reasonable. Peter Thiel is not.

Every five-year-old knows a dozen stories about a good king with an evil counselor, and how the king would have been better off getting rid of the counselor.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#382

Post by scarmig »

mythrwy wrote: post #313
stonogo wrote: post #168

> This is very important people It's also complete bullshit. I actually live in a Trump-supporting area, and everyone I know who voted for him is ecstatic about this disgusting, offensive action. Trump is a bad person, and the people who voted for him are bad people, and I hope to God I 'push them away' as far as they'll get from me.

"Trump is a bad person, and the people who voted for him are bad people" I voted for Trump. I support many (not all) of his policies. I don't appreciate being called a bad person. Certainly you have a right to think this but I disagree. I won't go into what I think of people who voted for Hillary because I try not be mindlessly nasty but I don't think they are all "bad people".

I think anyone who supports ethnic and religious bans and persecution is a bad person. Even if they deprioritize them in voting over other policies, thinking, well, who cares, a little bit of racism never hurt anyone, that makes them a bad person.

And Trump promised voters that, and now they're getting what they voted for. The only very thin escape route a Trump-voter has is "I thought he was lying to trick the rubes, this was totally unexpected."

In which case, the voter is just really stupid. That doesn't make them a bad person--I know lots of kind stupid people! But it does make them, you know, stupid.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#383

Post by anigbrowl »

leesalminen wrote: post #346
bobzibub wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that their desire for safety is not valid either. If an immigrant population believes they are unwanted by the majority, they'll tend to have "no skin in the game" for the society which they live and be much more open to political violence, crime etc. I believe if you compare (in this case) Muslim immigrants to England vs Muslim immigrants to Canada you'll see a difference in acceptance by the majority. Obvio…

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American ... There c…

That's why I favor outlawing things like St Patrick's day parades - do these people want to be Irish or American?

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#384

Post by t_20170128 »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #205
mwfunk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably you are smart enough to see the difference between those two cases, given that one group was actively fleeing state-sanctioned oppression and eventual genocide. I would hope that no one has to explain that to you.

I'm not in Syria and thus can only repeat what other people say, but I've heard that ISIS is committing genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and Shiites. The source of this information is John Kerry.

How does a ban on Muslim refugees help Shiites, the followers of Shia Islam?

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#385

Post by Scirra_Tom »

bassman9000 wrote: post #319
Scirra_Tom wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, it's not a "ban". It's a temporary suspension until new vetting procedures are put in place. He's got his foot in the door. That's all he needs right now. > But there's another aspect of this that baffles me. Somehow Sam has no issues with democrats totally destabilizing the Middle East, and funding/arming ISIS to depose Assad. Yet the moment Trump attempts to mitigate the negative side effects of that to th…

> He's got his foot in the door. That's all he needs right now. That's a nice slippery slope you got in there. There's zero mention to muslims in the text of the order, and it's clearly stated that it's temporary, with several revision dates for assesment, the goal being to strengthen the vetting procedures. I bet most people commenting here haven't read it. Do it. Now. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/…

What's wrong with using the slippery slope argument here? Regarding slippery slope logical fallacy:

> This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because there is no reason to believe that one event must inevitably follow from another without an argument for such a claim.

In this instance, plenty of reason and argument to believe this event will lead to another. It's what he campaigned on.

> There's zero mention to muslims in the text of the order

Plenty of Muslim mentions in his campaign.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#386

Post by zardeh »

refurb wrote: post #241
megous wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misleading statistic. Compare the distribution of people who asked to immigrate, not the population of the whole country.

Yet Christians are specifically being targeted in Syria.[1] Wouldn't you think they would be the first ones who want to leave? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/magazine/is-this-the-end-... By the way, this article is from one of your reputable news sources.

But would they be more likely to be refugees?

That is, I'd expect that a Christian in the middle east would be more likely to have citizenship or family in a western nation than your average Syrian.

Now it could be, but 'they are being specifically targeted' doesn't immediately imply to me that 'they should be a disproportionately high number of refugees'.

That story mentions Bishops and priests who are very likely to not be Syrian Citizens, and instead be capable of just flying back to their home countries.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#387

Post by cjslep »

bassman9000 wrote: post #319
Scirra_Tom wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, it's not a "ban". It's a temporary suspension until new vetting procedures are put in place. He's got his foot in the door. That's all he needs right now. > But there's another aspect of this that baffles me. Somehow Sam has no issues with democrats totally destabilizing the Middle East, and funding/arming ISIS to depose Assad. Yet the moment Trump attempts to mitigate the negative side effects of that to th…

> He's got his foot in the door. That's all he needs right now. That's a nice slippery slope you got in there. There's zero mention to muslims in the text of the order, and it's clearly stated that it's temporary, with several revision dates for assesment, the goal being to strengthen the vetting procedures. I bet most people commenting here haven't read it. Do it. Now. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/…

- A ban is not needed while revising the rules.

- Revision doesn't mean suspension of the ban.

- Temporary can mean indefinitely.

- The overwhelming number of terrorists that commit acts of terrorism on American soil come from people born in the United States of America.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#388

Post by 234dd57d2c8db »

This guy is really dramatic and acts like this is the end of the world. The USA is at war with Muslim terrorists. If Muslim terrorists come from certain countries, it makes sense to have strict checking on people from those countries.

If I have a webapp, I'm going to be rejecting and sanitizing user input from things I know to be dangerous, such as single quotes and HTML tags. If you can't prove you're safe inputs to my country, you're not getting in, sorry.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#390

Post by panic »

To Republican voters: I agree Hillary wasn't the greatest candidate, but there are bigger things at stake now.

You have more power than most of us here to stop this Muslim ban. Call your representatives in Congress before your party allows America to be destroyed by white nationalists.

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