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Popular atheist who is totally not racist quits Patreon in solidarity with Milo and Sargon of Akkad


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1 minute ago, SFLUFAN said:

The bourgeois liberal needs the picture of the starving, crying child trapped in poverty to prick their conscience because they lack the capacity to grasp the collective "greater good". 

I don’t disagree with this notion 

its truly a sad state of the human condition... just kidding, I meant the white mans condition.  

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Just to touch on comments from a couple pages back, my parents definitely get pissed if you call them racist. Despite the fact they say racist shit all the time and harbor nasty views about blacks and other minorities, they don't think of themselves as racist. They "just call it like they see it," which is especially stupid since they live in a town with hardly any racial or ethnic minorities and they rarely venture out into places with actual diversity. 

 

Last time I visited my family, even my brother made some comment about not wanting to live in a city like me, because he doesn't want to live around a bunch of blacks. He didn't see a thing in the world wrong with saying something like that, even though I've never heard him use any of the rhetoric my parents use. He's just been warped by the culture he grew up in and hasn't had any experiences outside it. 

 

So, yeah, there are definitely racist white people who get more angry at the suggestion they're racist over actual racism. 

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2 hours ago, SFLUFAN said:

You had your time to be heard, now it's the time for "the others".

 

I'm more willing to entertain restriction of free speech than a lot of people are, but when exactly did I have my turn in this exchange of speaking?

 

I think there's a meaningful point about being mindful of how your comments will be interpreted given context, and to avoid saying things that are likely to be interpreted differently than you intend or cause negative consequences that weren't your original goal. But we can make that point without assigning credit to individuals for things they didn't do and then holding them accountable for it in some game of "fairness."

 

Identify what is you're actually trying to achieve, and describe how certain behaviors are useful or not to those ends. Assigning "blame" to entire populations that they all must account for because I guess things need to be "fair" on a tribal level is a level of nonsense ethical reasoning that is surprising to see from someone who often characterizes almost any form of ethics as nonsense.

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16 minutes ago, legend said:

I'm more willing to entertain restriction of free speech than a lot of people are, but when exactly did I have my turn in this exchange of speaking?

Simply put, our very existence as members of the dominant societal group means that we had/are having our "collective" turn, even if we didn't have our "individual" turns, with all those attendant ethical issues which are largely irrelevant to me because as you correctly pointed out that I'm largely unconcerned with ethics.

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14 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

Simply put, our very existence as members of the dominant societal group means that we had/are having our "collective" turn, even if we didn't have our "individual" turns, with all the ethical issues that encapsulates and which are largely irrelevant to me because as you correctly pointed out that I'm largely unconcerned with ethics.

 

Now you're over generalizing and equivocating. I do not for a moment doubt that I've benefited quite a bit from being white--that's not what I asked because that is not the same as me speaking and consequently needing to be quiet to let others have a "turn."

 

But this generalization you're making is quite a bit worse along the dimension I criticized earlier. It's reasoning by ethical "fairness" as if my letting minorities speak (without any response from me) will some how balance things even slightly back to account for the benefits I've had. It won't. And even if it did bring my and others net advantage down, bringing others down in the name of fairness is insane. What you want to do is make things better for other people. If to make things betters for others you need to bring others down, we can consider that trade off, and it might be worth it! But that's why you need to argue what your policy actually achieves. Not argue by "fairness" or reasoning by "you had your chance."

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1 hour ago, legend said:

 

Now you're over generalizing and equivocating. I do not for a moment doubt that I've benefited quite a bit from being white--that's not what I asked because that is not the same as me speaking and consequently needing to be quiet to let others have a "turn."

 

But this generalization you're making is quite a bit worse. It's reasoning by ethical "fairness" as if my letting minorities speak will some how balance things even slightly back to account for the benefits I've had. It won't. And even if I did bring my and others net advantage down, bringing others down in the name of fairness is insane. What you want to do is make things better for other people. If to make things betters for others you need to bring others down, we can consider that trade off, and it might be worth it! But that's why you need to argue what your policy actually achieves. Not argue by "fairness" or reasoning by "you had your chance."

You asked "when exactly did I have my turn in this exchange of speaking" and I provided an answer consistent with my original premise.

 

This society brings others down in the name of fairness all the time, especially in the realm of economics.  For example, the estate tax system is based on the principle of "bringing others down" to prevent the creation of economic oligarchies.  This is also why the non-existently enforced anti-trust laws exist.  There is nothing "insane" about it as when you strip away all the economic arguments that support these policies, they really do ultimately boil down to "fairness".

 

And I fundamentally disagree with the notion that there isn't at least some -- no matter how minuscule -- balancing of the scales by allowing marginalized groups to express themselves without our interjection.

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12 minutes ago, legend said:

I'll add that i realize I'm being a harsh in my response, but it's disappointing to see someone who used to laugh at some of the insane ethical reasoning out there start embracing some of the worst most nonsense forms of it. Please do snap out of it :p 

I decided that if I think all of it is largely silly anyway, why should I bother attempting to parse the "good" from the "bad".  I might as well just roll my intellectual dice, see what comes up, and run with it until it bores me!

 

Because in the long-run, we're all dead anyway.

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1 hour ago, SFLUFAN said:

You asked "when exactly did I have my turn in this exchange of speaking" and I provided an answer consistent with my original premise.

 

This society brings others down in the name of fairness all the time, especially in the realm of economics.

 

I'm well aware that people often engage in really awful unproductive "ethical" thinking. Please don't join them.

 

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For example, the estate tax system is based on the principle of "bringing others down" to prevent the creation of economic oligarchies. 

 

There's a critical addition you've added here. "To prevent the creation of economic oligarchies." You've just stated an objective of the policy. It's not a great objective, because it's still pretty indirect, but I think we could make some compelling arguments about why that state of affairs is not desirable. And if we establish that, we now have a purpose that has no need of ever invoking "fairness."

 

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This is also why the non-existently enforced anti-trust laws exist.  There is nothing "insane" about it as when you strip away all the economic arguments that support these policies, they really do ultimately boil down to "fairness".

 

Tell me, which is more real, "fairness" or "rights"?

 

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And I fundamentally disagree with the notion that there isn't at least some -- no matter how minuscule -- balancing of the scales by allowing marginalized groups to express themselves without our interjection.

 

Racists refraining from responding would probably result in a small net win. But it's not like racists are the easiest ones to stop and it's fair (in this context, meaning worth the cost) to capture everyone up in it. It also not a policy that you can either enforce in a sweeping way or nothing at all.

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5 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

I decided that if I think all of it is largely silly anyway, why should I bother attempting to parse the "good" from the "bad".  I might as well just roll my intellectual dice, see what comes up, and run with it until it bores me!

 

Because in the long-run, we're all dead anyway.

 

Okay, well then next time you laugh at someone for caring about social wellbeing or talking about rights, I'm going to laugh at you for caring about something as nebulous as "fairness." :p 

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1 hour ago, legend said:

Tell me, which is more real, "fairness" or "rights"?

Because the existence of both of them is largely in the "eye of the beholder", neither can make a claim to being "real" in any objective sense (not that such a thing even exists to begin with :p)

 

Having said that, I subjectively consider "fairness" to be "more real" than "rights" because the correction of a real or perceived disparity represents a more "tangible" notion (such as it is) than what I consider to be the quasi-metaphysical concept of rights.

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I'm just letting everyone know that in any discussion with me that I will NEVER call you out on any of that "logical fallacy" stuff because I seriously don't give a damn about it.  In fact, if you DON'T use it on me, I'm gonna wonder exactly what the hell is wrong with you!  

 

If it advances your case and maneuvers you into a "win", knock yourself out, dawg!

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19 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

I'm just letting everyone know that in any discussion with me that I will NEVER call you out on any of that "logical fallacy" stuff because I seriously don't give a damn about it.  In fact, if you DON'T use it on me, I'm gonna wonder exactly what the hell is wrong with you!  

 

If it advances your case and maneuvers you into a "win", knock yourself out, dawg!

You will also engage with people and answer honestly with reason when prompted. I'm not about to call people out on every single possible fallacy (I'm way out of my league there). But I want to converse with people, and I can't take a poster seriously if they won't even try. 

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