We must be vigilant, they remind us, about taxpayer dollars. The important thing about creating the next pandemic is the same as the important thing about preventing the next pandemic, which is making sure our tax dollars do not pay for it.
I think, as a corollary to never interrupt your enemy while they’re in the process of making a mistake, we may adopt never interrupt someone when they’re doing something you want, even for the wrong reason. Or, at least, maybe “taxpayer dollars” is the good-sounding excuse and they actually want to ban GoF for its world-ending powers and just can’t say that directly.
we may adopt never interrupt someone when they’re doing something you want, even for the wrong reason.
Don’t take this too far though; calling out bullshit may still be valuable even if it’s bullshit that temporarily supports “your side”: ideally doing so helps raise the sanity waterline overall, and more cynically, bullshit may support your opponents tomorrow and you’ll be more credible calling it bullshit then if you also do so today.
But in this exact case, banning GoF seems good and also not using taxpayer dollars on negative-EV things seems good, so these Republicans are just correct this time.
This is true, too. Perhaps we can refine it as never interrupt someone when they’re doing something you want, unless their reasons would incur other damage—this lets us ban GoF while only caring about taxpayer dollars (true but not the main reason) while avoiding banning GoF for, say, pwning the Democrats (bad if we start doing more things to pwn the Democrats).
If the republicans are bringing out the accusations of exploited taxpayers, then you know they’re serious.
(disclaimer: this doesn’t actually tell you how serious they are, the only way to track the seriousness of anything related to congress is to follow the money).
I think, as a corollary to never interrupt your enemy while they’re in the process of making a mistake, we may adopt never interrupt someone when they’re doing something you want, even for the wrong reason. Or, at least, maybe “taxpayer dollars” is the good-sounding excuse and they actually want to ban GoF for its world-ending powers and just can’t say that directly.
Don’t take this too far though; calling out bullshit may still be valuable even if it’s bullshit that temporarily supports “your side”: ideally doing so helps raise the sanity waterline overall, and more cynically, bullshit may support your opponents tomorrow and you’ll be more credible calling it bullshit then if you also do so today.
But in this exact case, banning GoF seems good and also not using taxpayer dollars on negative-EV things seems good, so these Republicans are just correct this time.
This is true, too. Perhaps we can refine it as never interrupt someone when they’re doing something you want, unless their reasons would incur other damage—this lets us ban GoF while only caring about taxpayer dollars (true but not the main reason) while avoiding banning GoF for, say, pwning the Democrats (bad if we start doing more things to pwn the Democrats).
If the republicans are bringing out the accusations of exploited taxpayers, then you know they’re serious.
(disclaimer: this doesn’t actually tell you how serious they are, the only way to track the seriousness of anything related to congress is to follow the money).