I guess it’s a huge relief for Bradley Manning (whom M.M. has carefully avoided mentioning along with Assange and Greenwald, although all three tend to get media exposure in connection) that he tried to “bully” a weak, indecisive Pentagon, whose hands are tied by its mortal enemies in the civillian bureaucracy—and thus the military can’t stand up to the treasonous filth and has to treat him with kid gloves on.
And of course, the dirty, brainwashed, cowardly commies who hung out at the Occupy “protests” are the Obama regime’s wet dream, spewing abuse against the already powerless big business and financial institutions—a perfect opportunity for it to further rob the deserving and appearse the plebs! Which is why the regime is intimidating its police into accommodating the lawless rioting scum—and the cops slavishly obey. The forces of law and order wouldn’t dare lay a finger on those good-for-nothing hippies, not with the propaganda media watching!
Oh wait, this isn’t relevant! Moldbug’s above such inconvenient commie-sympathizing “facts”, he’s using Schwartz’ death as an occasion to preach the hallowed and unchanging party line. He’s for Truth and Clarity, unlike all the delusional left-wing fanatics!
Normally, posting all this tripe on LW would be merely adding noise, but it also happens to be exploitative of a community figure’s recent and shocking death. Moldbug fails. You fail.
Unlike him, you seem to be capable of critical self-evaluation. Seems like you should employ some right now, and learn from it.
In my opinion, your reply would be significantly more powerful if it didn’t contain that much sarcasm and overall didn’t resemble a typical comment in a random political discussion on the internet. I am not sure whether signalling own political bias helps in internet discussions in general, but strongly suspect that it doesn’t help here.
(Written by someone who’s too getting annoyed at this moldbuggish madness.)
You present a very one sided take on this. I wouldn’t have reposted this article, but I strongly disagree with you on the interpretation of the original article and your tribal language.
I thought the other “side” was supposed to have its case presented in the original? I saw an entirely political attack that relied on skewed facts and opportunistic grandstanding over a recent death. I retorted with some ways in which it’s dishonest, fallacious and doesn’t constitute anything like a proper rational argument.
My retort was also quite political in substance, true. And yet, if Moldbug or some of his fans were really interested in making the whole thing more truth-tracking, they would listen to my counter-examples and either refute them or make their case incorporate it somehow. The same goes for other people’s objections in this thread.
I was replying to the case as presently made (as e.g. summed up by Athrelon), and wasn’t attempting to steel-man it - frankly, there’s people who’d do so far better than me. My gratuitous use of sarcastic tribal language was entirely intentional, as MM and some of his fans seemingly can’t get enough of it.
I thought the other “side” was supposed to have its case presented in the original? I saw an entirely political attack that relied on skewed facts and opportunistic grandstanding over a recent death. I retorted with some ways in which it’s dishonest, fallacious and doesn’t constitute anything like a proper rational argument.
So you responded with a political attack on a similar level? Surely you see the problem with that kind of reasoning.
My retort was also quite political in substance, true. And yet, if Moldbug or some of his fans were really interested in making the whole thing more truth-tracking, they would listen to my counter-examples and either refute them or make their case incorporate it somehow. The same goes for other people’s objections in this thread.
I didn’t write nor share this article by Moldbug. And I have always tried my best to make proper rational arguments by the highest LW standards when introducing such material.
Yet due to the climate in this thread a rational argument wouldn’t be judged fairly. By the voting patterns and shifts I can tell users have gotten tribal.
Personally, I don’t follow Moldbug’s writings. Sometimes, when excerpts are posted here, I upvote them, and sometimes I downvote them. In this case, it seems to me that his argument fails to account for the influence of context in confrontations between entities. His formulation implies a transitivity of power, where A beats B, and B beats C, so A should also beat C. In practice though, you can easily end up with situations where A beats B because A’s interests in the confrontation are more in line with public opinion than B’s, or take less work to implement, etc., but loses to C without the same situational advantages.
Trying to define “whoever wins” as the overdog isn’t an improvement over the more standard formulation where the overdog is the entity which will win in most contexts if those entities come into conflict, or will win against more other entities which themselves have a record of being powerful.
I would have been unimpressed whether or not I thought Moldbug was using this as part of a narrative about who is and isn’t “powerful” in our society that I’d take issue with.
I guess it’s a huge relief for Bradley Manning (whom M.M. has carefully avoided mentioning along with Assange and Greenwald, although all three tend to get media exposure in connection) that he tried to “bully” a weak, indecisive Pentagon, whose hands are tied by its mortal enemies in the civillian bureaucracy—and thus the military can’t stand up to the treasonous filth and has to treat him with kid gloves on.
And of course, the dirty, brainwashed, cowardly commies who hung out at the Occupy “protests” are the Obama regime’s wet dream, spewing abuse against the already powerless big business and financial institutions—a perfect opportunity for it to further rob the deserving and appearse the plebs! Which is why the regime is intimidating its police into accommodating the lawless rioting scum—and the cops slavishly obey. The forces of law and order wouldn’t dare lay a finger on those good-for-nothing hippies, not with the propaganda media watching!
Oh wait, this isn’t relevant! Moldbug’s above such inconvenient commie-sympathizing “facts”, he’s using Schwartz’ death as an occasion to preach the hallowed and unchanging party line. He’s for Truth and Clarity, unlike all the delusional left-wing fanatics!
Normally, posting all this tripe on LW would be merely adding noise, but it also happens to be exploitative of a community figure’s recent and shocking death. Moldbug fails. You fail.
Unlike him, you seem to be capable of critical self-evaluation. Seems like you should employ some right now, and learn from it.
In my opinion, your reply would be significantly more powerful if it didn’t contain that much sarcasm and overall didn’t resemble a typical comment in a random political discussion on the internet. I am not sure whether signalling own political bias helps in internet discussions in general, but strongly suspect that it doesn’t help here.
(Written by someone who’s too getting annoyed at this moldbuggish madness.)
What party? The monarchists?
You present a very one sided take on this. I wouldn’t have reposted this article, but I strongly disagree with you on the interpretation of the original article and your tribal language.
That’s all I’ll say on this for now.
I thought the other “side” was supposed to have its case presented in the original? I saw an entirely political attack that relied on skewed facts and opportunistic grandstanding over a recent death. I retorted with some ways in which it’s dishonest, fallacious and doesn’t constitute anything like a proper rational argument.
My retort was also quite political in substance, true. And yet, if Moldbug or some of his fans were really interested in making the whole thing more truth-tracking, they would listen to my counter-examples and either refute them or make their case incorporate it somehow. The same goes for other people’s objections in this thread.
I was replying to the case as presently made (as e.g. summed up by Athrelon), and wasn’t attempting to steel-man it - frankly, there’s people who’d do so far better than me. My gratuitous use of sarcastic tribal language was entirely intentional, as MM and some of his fans seemingly can’t get enough of it.
So you responded with a political attack on a similar level? Surely you see the problem with that kind of reasoning.
I didn’t write nor share this article by Moldbug. And I have always tried my best to make proper rational arguments by the highest LW standards when introducing such material.
Yet due to the climate in this thread a rational argument wouldn’t be judged fairly. By the voting patterns and shifts I can tell users have gotten tribal.
Personally, I don’t follow Moldbug’s writings. Sometimes, when excerpts are posted here, I upvote them, and sometimes I downvote them. In this case, it seems to me that his argument fails to account for the influence of context in confrontations between entities. His formulation implies a transitivity of power, where A beats B, and B beats C, so A should also beat C. In practice though, you can easily end up with situations where A beats B because A’s interests in the confrontation are more in line with public opinion than B’s, or take less work to implement, etc., but loses to C without the same situational advantages.
Trying to define “whoever wins” as the overdog isn’t an improvement over the more standard formulation where the overdog is the entity which will win in most contexts if those entities come into conflict, or will win against more other entities which themselves have a record of being powerful.
I would have been unimpressed whether or not I thought Moldbug was using this as part of a narrative about who is and isn’t “powerful” in our society that I’d take issue with.