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Plans you're not supposed to talk about

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Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#611

Post by mst »

jvanderbot wrote: post #560
UnFleshedOne wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While practical and maybe inevitable, this approach will alienate exactly the kind of people you want on your side if you want to _actually_ reach your goal and course correct when needed. Instead you will attract people who will happily pretend to be on the right path and will keep performing rain dances on titanic. What you propose can work if it is a technocratic conspiracy where people who know what's going on ma…

It's not all or nothing. Good policy accomplishes the goal and attracts masses. For whatever quality metric you assign to a voter, you can't get the majority without including some of those below the median. In large populations, for example, 'knowledgeable' implies you need to convince people who know less than average as well as the most knowledgeable. And the average is real, real low on specific knowledge about c…

The alienation issue is real ... but it's simply another thing that has to be factored in to effective policy work.

Trade-offs all the way down.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#612

Post by wolverine876 »

ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #527
wolverine876 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consequences of societal change are inherently unknowable, which is why revolutions usually end in tragedy. The sane approach is to change society incrementally, see what happens, and adjust and learn as you go. > The educated reader may notice that 1+2 is pretty much the sane version of Conservatism. Incremental slow change sounds good if you are reasonably happy with the current situation. If you children are get…

> If you children are getting killed, beaten, and imprisoned by the legal system, and have no access to good education, you might want to move a little quicker. "People are suffering now" is not a good blanket argument for rapid change. First, it needs to be shown that the changes proposed will not be worse than the original condition. To use your example, last summer many people were arguing for quickly defunding th…

> "People are suffering now" is not a good blanket argument for rapid change. First, it needs to be shown that the changes proposed will not be worse than the original condition.

It's a necessary and important argument, but not sufficient by itself. I agree that decisions must be analyzed closely.

At the same time, that approach is used to create endless delays by people who are unmotivated for or opposed to change. Police reforms have been delayed for generations. It's not credible to either say 'people are suffering' or 'we must think it over'. Analysis can happen quickly.

> last summer many people were arguing for quickly defunding the police. While that would certainly solve the problem of children suffering under the legal system, it might also result in vigilante groups stepping up to enforce the law, or in increased urban gang activity, or in increased domestic violence, any of which might end up with increased overall victimization of children.

A bit tangential: 'Defund the police' didn't mean defund the services, just shift them between departments. The idea is to move many services to other government agencies. As a simple example, move response to mental health crises from police to mental health agencies. For a long time, police have (reasonably) complained that they are somehow expected to solve all of society's problems.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#613

Post by mst »

jfrunyon wrote: post #92
jvanderbot wrote: post #26

The underlying issue, and one that bugs the hell out of me, is Policy vs Truth. You can say true things all day, and convince nobody. You can enact policy based completely on Truth (e.g., Trust the Science), and completely fail. People don't care about Truth, they care about what changes they need to make, and who is asking them to make them. Good policy is only partially based on truth, it's more based on easy imple…

> I'm afraid we've completely forgotten to separate the means from the end goal. I'm afraid we've completely forgotten "the ends don't justify the means". ;)

I tend to think about it as: The ends never justify the means, but sometimes the ends are important enough that you do it anyway.

As a limiting example, I don't consider violence to ever be a good thing per se, but I still accept its use in self defence. I don't like using the word 'justified' to describe that acceptance, though that may say more about how I see 'justified' as a concept than it does about anything concrete.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#614

Post by objectivetruth »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #435
vineyardmike wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t think that forcing other people to get vaccinated further reduces the risk to me (which is already very low). It objectively does... the hospital capacity risk, the risk of variants spreading among the unvaxed, or the breakthrough cases. > At least, it doesn’t provide enough of a benefit to offset the costs of removing freedom. That is an opinion not all agree with. > Dying from Covid is more or less option…

What about people who have already survived Covid? Studies are pretty clear that they're somewhat more immune than folks who've had the shot.

No, studies have proven the opposite: the jab is better than natural immunity. Also, from what I've read, natural immunity is basically useless against Omicron while the different jabs are all fairly effective, and boosted jabs especially so.

Are you a Joe Rogan fan, by chance? I seem to frequently encounter his fans saying absolutely incorrect statements like this.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#615

Post by mst »

63 wrote: post #388
rmckayfleming wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...about something that isn't socially acceptable for no obvious reason... What was the thing?

Being a furry. It seems like they get a lot of shit for no good reason.

They're really weird and lots of them are gay so the social mechanisms that stop us giving groups a lot of shit for no good reason are weaker for them.

This is not a particularly comforting explanation, but I'm unaware of a better one (and I've discussed this with a bunch of smart furry friends over the years).

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#616

Post by lovich »

the_doctah wrote: post #192
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you anecdotally know vaccinated people who got Covid and that Covid vaccines lower the chance of being infected with Covid can both be true?

Yes, I knew I would get called out for an anecdote on this website. Thanks for not disappointing.

Perhaps you shouldn’t knowingly use flawed arguments if you don’t wish for the flaw to be called out

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#617

Post by lovich »

rthomas6 wrote: post #561
mherdeg wrote: post #54

Reading this gave me a kind of horrifying idea that goes something like: You know about a deadly disease whose most serious outcomes can be avoided by getting a shot. Many members of a group in your society have decided they don't want to get the shot. You are annoyed by the way they talk about a lot of things, including the way they talk about avoiding the shot. They, in turn, call you "smug" for the way your group…

If Democrats/the left could pull back enough to model the minds of Republican voters, they could have framed the vaccine as "the war against China's virus". They could have talked about a great foreign threat to our nation, and that we need to band together as Americans to fight it. Degenerates in other countries might not be taking the fight seriously, but Americans are, because we are the greatest nation on earth w…

You know we could have. We could have sacrificed a whole lot of our values to capitulate to people who think Facebook posts counter decades of research, we could have capitulated to one of their several abhorrent values like xenophobia so that they might finally go along with something that’s good for themselves and the country.

Frankly I’m not interested in that sort of capitulation anymore. I’m not even interested in the phrasing of the argument. The unvaxxed masses need to figure out how to capitulate to us. They need to step back and model our minds to figure out how to frame their views in an acceptable manner.

Otherwise they can continue to lose their jobs, get kicked off internet platforms, and keep filling hospital beds gasping for the vaccine after it’s far too late to help them.

Fuck em

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#618

Post by confidantlake »

jhgb wrote: post #576
codeisawesome wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the bad form just normalizes something that is common at the time. Exactly. I think there should be a blanket negative to customs, practices or systems that objectively cause harm. It would be reprehensible to see someone try to defend, say, Female Genital Mutilation… using “Chesterton’s Fence”. Just don’t fucking do it to people; stop doing it right now, the “why” might be for anthropologists to ponder at a later…

Why not just "genital mutilation"? You don't have to be that specific about it as if there were some acceptable cases of it.

Society does not care as much about males?

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#619

Post by confidantlake »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #308
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Consequences of societal change are inherently unknowable" Let's imagine for a second that we really believe is this idea - society is in a fragile equilibrium, and any change is dangerous and could be for the worse. Well, first obvious effect is that any change regarding woman rights, etc. would not have happened the way it did. That's in line with the Conservative viewpoint. But more importantly, the society chang…

>Let's imagine for a second that we really believe is this idea - society is in a fragile equilibrium, and any change is dangerous and could be for the worse. Surely you see the problems with technology, you don't think that the world was more social, people less polarized, and less isolated? Why do we have to assume its not when its obviously true, smartphones did change society greatly, so did online dating apps. T…

Is it about less governmental control? Conservatives are more opposed to drug legalization and are more supportive of police than liberals.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#620

Post by confidantlake »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #539
WalterBright wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to investigate the economic collapses caused by government run monetary systems. Like the Weimar Republic you mentioned - that collapse led to Nazism. Not a ringing endorsement for central banking, amirite? BTW, are you enjoying the 9% haircut we all got in the last year courtesy of central banking?

"Not a ringing endorsement for central banking, amirite?" Which type of spherical cow free-market economy should i compare it too? No matter what system i pick, from medieval gold based systems to modern floating currency, someone goes "ThaTs NoT Real Free MaRKet!" It's like communism, not real life system was ever the real deal.

You can't, it is a religion.
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