3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
As a woman this interests me. The assumption I'm seeing from a lot of people seems to be that Judy's child would have been fine, that something this unprecedented, this alien would just... work out and that the main crux of Judy's argument was her career. Let me tell you,regular human births can go haywire, as far as we know about half spontaneously abort and things can get very,very messy. I don't even KNOW how rabbit and fox genetics would interact. There's a very real concern there that can't be brushed aside.

How does the fact you're a woman make any difference? Does that mean you're siding with the horrible person that BJudy is? Like you seem to think being male makes one side with the horrible person that BNick is? What would happen if the roles were suddenly reversed?

You complain about people picking sides and then the the first thing you do is take a side, if only implicitly.

Anyway, I can tell you how fox and rabbit genetics would interact, they wouldn't, if the egg can get fertilized it will very quickly abort 100% of the time, not 98% or 99% of the time, 100% of the time.

Which means that if you're going to argue for this you have to basically suspend all disbelief regarding pregnancies.

This also means that you cannot make assumptions or inferences like you normally could. Basically could they have a kid? Maybe, who knows? Well, only the author knows. Anything else is pointless speculation.

However if we are going to make assumptions then we could at least base that of the fact interspecies breeding is shown to be fully possible to some extent, it's not so alien in this setting as you seem to think. Which means the only assumption you can make is that it could work out this time as well. Additionally a "predator" doesn't automatically become less related to a "prey" just because of what they eat, then what about the apex predator, are they even more "savage" than your other predator? The whole you're a predator and you're a prey argument has very little meaning, which is even demonstrated in the actual film.

So if you are going to assume things, then assume what seems logical in the setting that it takes place, i.e. that interspecies is possible.

And regarding the size difference, as mentioned, there are other couples in the previous comic which has kids where the size difference is about the same, so again, nothing really telling us it wouldn't work again.

I actually haven't seen a lot of people saying that she'll be fine, I have however seen people asking why she thinks she wouldn't be fine. Which is a very legitimate question as it seems like all she is saying comes from nothing.

She goes on how their child could become some freak and when questioned about this she just goes, eh, it's not impossible. It's also not impossible for every particle of your body to experience spontaneous coordinated quantum tunneling and make you phase through the floor, that doesn't mean it's gonna happen anytime soon. She hardly sounds well informed, or even informed.

E.g. people wanted them both to go to a specialist, or some kind of physician, she could even have gone alone and then bring it up later, mostly to give us answers as viewers and give some meat to their argumentation bones, but that would be what normal people would do and doesn't fit in this extraordinary (bad) story.

And then she has an abortion and apparently gets complications from that, so getting that abortion wasn't the safe option either, and that is factual for once, not even speculation. Of course it could be a freak accident, but we don't know that.

So all we've seen is that interspecies breeding works, not that it doesn't work. And that getting abortions is bad for you.

In conclusion, it's easy to see why people would jump to these conclusions when you pick it apart. That doesn't make it right, but it doesn't make it wrong either, it's just... meh.

Judy's biggest problem in the first comic was that she wasn't being inclusive, and before you say something, that doesn't mean she has to keep the baby, you can be inclusive yet go the opposite way of your partner's wishes and a lot of times come out as partners afterwards, and the very least friends. And Nick hardly responded well to BJudy's communicative "skills" and shit hit the ceiling fan.

I.e. both of them are trash.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
On the other hand, Nick risks nothing except Judy's wellbeing in trying to see this through. If career is an issue the least he could have done was offer to raise the kid he seems to want so much. And adding in her family background which this comic so briefly fills in only makes the situation worse, that stuff splits families to this day.

BJudy safety would be a legitimate concern in real life pregnancies, but it's never legitimized in the comic, it just looks like BJudy's deepest darkest fears are haunting her, hence it loses a lot of its usual power. Basically it comes across as irrational fear rather than grounded fear.

Then BJudy literally said "I don't want this child!", there's not a lot of wiggle room there, especially when it comes out that it's all because her beloved oh so important out of character career. She didn't say something like "I don't have time to take care of the baby and work at the same time, maybe if things were different it could have worked" and she didn't mention that she has hundreds if not thousands of relatives who could surely help out. Of course that disregards of the time being pregnant which can be many months out of work and other smaller or greater inconveniences.

Lol (that's literally lol) the family background? "carrotholics", is that a joke? You can't take that serious at all, it's like whoever is writing this has no idea what they're doing, or have all the idea and is doing it on purpose, just horrible story.

If she wanted Nick's help and support then tough luck, she made her bed. And it kind of serves Nick right to get the cold shoulder now in return, just horrible characters.

I don't care one shit about the characters, they're pathetic, besides they're not real. I care a thousand times more about the people writing these comments and their thoughts and ideas, that, if anything, is what I get worked up over. But since I keep talking about the characters it looks a whole lot like I care about them, but it's the comment section that engages me, not this comic.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
In the end they're both poorly written idiots, as Rob says, but at the same time, as he ALSO says, we're arguing over them and picking sides. And, in the very same response, he argues a side.

What are you talking about, they didn't take a side they just gave a counter argument. How are you supposed to argue about anything if you can't say anything about what any character does? You make it sound like he said "don't do this" and then did just that...

Are you gonna say I picked a side because I bring up a lot of pro-life stuff here? Does that mean I'm not allowed to talk shit about BNick since he's the one who wanted to keep the baby?

Well, tough luck, I wish this comic ends with the two of them dying; suicide, homicide+suicide or double homicide, it doesn't matter as long as it would mean final closure. The victor would be Shay hopefully gaining valuable life experience and coming out stronger for it, hopefully not scarred for life. That's the ending I want most. The other two characters are pretty much unredeemable. Of course it won't matter 'cause when the comic is finished the comments will die out and there will be nothing left for me here.

Chessax said:
How does the fact you're a woman make any difference? Does that mean you're siding with the horrible person that BJudy is? Like you seem to think being male makes one side with the horrible person that BNick is? What would happen if the roles were suddenly reversed?

It makes a difference in that a lot of the arguments seem to flip towards the 'classic' pro-choice pro-life angles whereas my own life experiences have mainly dealt with medical issues. I myself haven't known a woman who aborted for career. (Abortion itself is... not a done thing here.) but I've seen plenty of pregnancies go wrong.

It's not so much I think that men will, out of some sort of solidarity, side with Nick. If you view IWS you'll find the same people siding with Judy most of the time. But I wonder if a male perspective leans towards certain arguments.

Mostly it was a minor observation, but it did get a big reaction so that's interesting too.

I'm curious, what do you mean 'if the roles were reversed'? If we're talking characters in the comic, would that be a post-abortion Judy breaking down and apologizing to Nick? It'd depend then on how Borba treated it and honestly that's a very interesting question. There are a lot of possibilities there and I really couldn't know unless given a specific situation.

Chessax said:
You complain about people picking sides and then the the first thing you do is take a side, if only implicitly.

And that's what's so twistedly great about this. It's almost impossible to appear neutral, arguing that one character is also bad is seen by many as an endorsement of the other. If Nick is bad for IWS then Judy here MUST be justified. I'd honestly lean more towards Nick since he alone seems sorry, but both characters are just so BAD that I can't sympathize with either.

I'm not complaining on side-picking, that's the POINT of this comic, to make you take Nick's side. It's a 'humiliation conga' as TVTropes puts it. What interests (But in no way annoys me.) is how successful it is at doing so, in two different ways.

On Deviantart critics are fawning over this comic because Judy is apparently lesbian now. Here.. well it's hard not to feel sorry for BNick right? Even though it's so, SO terribly written and you KNOW it's terribly written... you gotta feel a LITTLE for the guy, right? Or at least a lot do.

Chessax said:
However if we are going to make assumptions then we could at least base that of the fact interspecies breeding is shown to be fully possible to some extent, it's not so alien in this setting as you seem to think. Which means the only assumption you can make is that it could work out this time as well. Additionally a "predator" doesn't automatically become less related to a "prey" just because of what they eat, then what about the apex predator, are they even more "savage" than your other predator? The whole you're a predator and you're a prey argument has very little meaning, which is even demonstrated in the actual film.

So if you are going to assume things, then assume what seems logical in the setting that it takes place, i.e. that interspecies is possible.

Yes, that's basic logic. Judy is pregnant so a fetus can be produced. That's not my argument at all.

My issue is that there seems to be an assumption, that I think you're arguing,, that there is a high chance of success, that complications are trivial. Now if the comic didn't bring up the issue then fine. I'm not going to go over to some box or funny fancharacter and rant about their impossibility or insist they be 'more realistic' and write in some terrible birth complications. In THOSE universes the simplest assumption is 'Lego Genetics', anything goes.

But the comic brings this up as an issue. As an analogy with real world problems. Which means we can't just ignore it as unimportant. We're given reason to assume that complications ARE possible.

You note that complications in abortion are 'factual' and not 'speculation', but complications during pregnancy are factual too. Why do they not apply then as well? Because THESE pregnancies are special and inured from negative consequences? I can't accept that. I won't insist that itnerspecies MUST end in tragedy but if abortion can in this universe so can pregnancy.

The 'difference' I invoke is not predator-prey, but morphological. It's simple to create a chimera (Something produced by shredding zygotes and combining them so that the resulting offspring has two genetically different lines of cells from two different individuals or species.) of two similar species than two different ones.

We have real world equivalents, from attempting xenotransplantation (Pig hearts when transplanted try to grow too large for the donor's bodies.) to chimerism to breeding different breeds of dog. When two 'parents' are different in size and shape thins don't match up and cause serious issues.

We know that an offspring of such different parents is, if not unprecedented, then very rare. Is this just because such diverse couples don't exist or due to medical complexity? People may well ask why Judy doesn't think she'll be fine, and a big flaw in the comic is that it just doesn't address the issues in any depth. It seems like this comes out of nothing, but then so does Nick's religion and Judy's career obsession. My issue at heart is that we're given little choice BUT to speculate and that a lot of that speculation seems focused on how things should turn out fine. There even appears to be resistance to the possibility that it won't be. Is that because we care for these characters, as far removed as they are from the movie, and want things to turn out ok? That we jsut don't like bad things happening? I don't know.

Assume someone in a lab coat comes up to you tomorrow and says 'Sorry, due to a mixup your breakfast was contaminated with a newly created compound, we don't really know what it does.' Would you assume your own safety? Certainly you'd have no prior reason to be concerned, you wouldn't have heard of anyone dying horribly after ingesting it. But I think you'd be worried. That might turn out to be baseless, but the concern, even fear would be understandable.

Phasing through the floor is generally impossible for reasons I could write a paragraph about if anyone cares.

Chessax said:
Judy's biggest problem in the first comic was that she wasn't being inclusive, and before you say something, that doesn't mean she has to keep the baby, you can be inclusive yet go the opposite way of your partner's wishes and a lot of times come out as partners afterwards, and the very least friends. And Nick hardly responded well to BJudy's communicative "skills" and shit hit the ceiling fan.

That's the crux of it. They make points that come from nowhere and aren't addressed and refuse to discuss compromise and working together. It's the opposite of the movie.

It's why I think BNick here isn't the same as IWS BNick or even the Nick starting this comic. All of a sudden he just breaks down and is sorry, yada yada. I mean he started with a suicide gambit, THAT'S the Nick from IWS. If Nick had been like he is now from the start, that'd be tragic and he'd have my complete sympathy.

Chessax said:
Lol (that's literally lol) the family background? "carrotholics", is that a joke? You can't take that serious at all, it's like whoever is writing this has no idea what they're doing, or have all the idea and is doing it on purpose, just horrible story.

No no; I can take it 'seriously' because this comic is so stupid. In a serious comic I'd be going 'Really? That's idiotic!' But here I can imagine Borba doing a story where her parents disown her and have her driven out of town. That's not outside the realm of possibility here. Likewise I don't think they'd do a good job with the baby because this is a Very Special Episode about... something and they'd make easy stupid bad guys.

Chessax said:
Are you gonna say I picked a side because I bring up a lot of pro-life stuff here? Does that mean I'm not allowed to talk shit about BNick since he's the one who wanted to keep the baby?

Would you say that *I* have a preferred side? Well you have, if only implicity. I'd say I don't but then of course I would, wouldn't I? We each of us know that we alone are unbiased and aloof, it's everyone else who is not quite as right as us. And that applies doubly if we think we're aware of our own biases.

Again that's one of the interesting results of this comic.; look at how passionately we're discussing it, even if only on issues. We now the characters are trash and that the writing is garbage. And yet...

I don't know if you have a side, implicit or explicit, but I cannot deny your passion. And in the end that is what matters and what we will all get out of this. The comic will end (Lord may there please not be a threequel...) and the comments will die out, but people will have learned something. Despite what another commenter has said, opinions WILL have changed; those who go away from this will not quite be the same as those who saw the first page.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
It makes a difference in that a lot of the arguments seem to flip towards the 'classic' pro-choice pro-life angles whereas my own life experiences have mainly dealt with medical issues. I myself haven't known a woman who aborted for career. (Abortion itself is... not a done thing here.) but I've seen plenty of pregnancies go wrong.

It's not so much I think that men will, out of some sort of solidarity, side with Nick. If you view IWS you'll find the same people siding with Judy most of the time. But I wonder if a male perspective leans towards certain arguments.

Mostly it was a minor observation, but it did get a big reaction so that's interesting too.

Fair enough. The reason I react strongly every time someone goes "As a ...", is that it, even if unintentionally, signals that someone has inherent legitimacy, and that arguing against their point is wrong. Basically it's a "power tactic", that doesn't belong in two sided argumentation. And if it's used, at worst, it makes everything someone say purely anecdotal, hence can make it easier to dismiss everything they say. It can also introduce bias and stereotypes into a discussion. I'm not saying you did any of that, but it's the reasons why it is only very rarely suitable in a discussion.

Also if it sounds like I'm making personal attacks, it's not my intention. I feel like all arguments can be questioned, and sometimes I'm very blunt about that. Additionally, I'm not gonna defend an idea if someone comes up with constructive criticism of what I say.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
I'm curious, what do you mean 'if the roles were reversed'? If we're talking characters in the comic, would that be a post-abortion Judy breaking down and apologizing to Nick? It'd depend then on how Borba treated it and honestly that's a very interesting question. There are a lot of possibilities there and I really couldn't know unless given a specific situation.

Eh, it was mostly rhetorical, e.g. if BJudy wants to keep the baby and BNick doesn't. Just meant to spark thinking. But I guess your interpretation is interesting as well.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
And that's what's so twistedly great about this. It's almost impossible to appear neutral, arguing that one character is also bad is seen by many as an endorsement of the other. If Nick is bad for IWS then Judy here MUST be justified. I'd honestly lean more towards Nick since he alone seems sorry, but both characters are just so BAD that I can't sympathize with either.

I'm not complaining on side-picking, that's the POINT of this comic, to make you take Nick's side. It's a 'humiliation conga' as TVTropes puts it. What interests (But in no way annoys me.) is how successful it is at doing so, in two different ways.

Well, it sounded like you were a bit antagonizing, so I guess it's my fault for interpreting things like that. For me picking sides means that you ignore the other side, or will blindly argue for your side, I guess it's a fault at how I see things around me.

That's why I don't "pick a side", I just argue for whatever I believe in, if that happens to coincide with one or the other side then that's just coincidence. I have very little group think in general and I'm not afraid to tell friends and family that they're being stupid (my mother isn't exactly fond of that). It's also why I don't like politics and representative democracy is a joke if you ask me, only kind of democracy I support is direct democracy, and preferably then as E-democracy (but I think we got enough to argue than to bring that into the discussion).

However, speaking of "sides", I kind of feel like BJudy was the one introducing the argument and the instigator even if nick kept pouring the gasoline on the fire. So I do sometimes feel like BJudy has a bigger blame, regardless of what happened later, so maybe this is I "picking sides". But as I think I've made it clear I dislike both characters quite a lot, which is why I've lost interest in the comic and just read comments.

If it makes any difference and you're curious, I'd say I'm pro-choice, to a point, but probably come across pro-life due to BJudy's poor argumentation.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
On Deviantart critics are fawning over this comic because Judy is apparently lesbian now. Here.. well it's hard not to feel sorry for BNick right? Even though it's so, SO terribly written and you KNOW it's terribly written... you gotta feel a LITTLE for the guy, right? Or at least a lot do.

The "problem" with comments on artist galleries is that a lot of people there are fans, hence they might get blinded or have a clear bias. Here, a lot less people are fans so they will take things more at face value, and are much quicker to question things, while a fan might wait a lot longer, even if they still will do so. It's just natural to not hurt the things you love, even if they're being stubborn. If you don't love it then there's no such buffer.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:

Yes, that's basic logic. Judy is pregnant so a fetus can be produced. That's not my argument at all.

My issue is that there seems to be an assumption, that I think you're arguing,, that there is a high chance of success, that complications are trivial. Now if the comic didn't bring up the issue then fine. I'm not going to go over to some box or funny fancharacter and rant about their impossibility or insist they be 'more realistic' and write in some terrible birth complications. In THOSE universes the simplest assumption is 'Lego Genetics', anything goes.

But the comic brings this up as an issue. As an analogy with real world problems. Which means we can't just ignore it as unimportant. We're given reason to assume that complications ARE possible.

You note that complications in abortion are 'factual' and not 'speculation', but complications during pregnancy are factual too. Why do they not apply then as well? Because THESE pregnancies are special and inured from negative consequences? I can't accept that. I won't insist that itnerspecies MUST end in tragedy but if abortion can in this universe so can pregnancy.

The 'difference' I invoke is not predator-prey, but morphological. It's simple to create a chimera (Something produced by shredding zygotes and combining them so that the resulting offspring has two genetically different lines of cells from two different individuals or species.) of two similar species than two different ones.

We have real world equivalents, from attempting xenotransplantation (Pig hearts when transplanted try to grow too large for the donor's bodies.) to chimerism to breeding different breeds of dog. When two 'parents' are different in size and shape thins don't match up and cause serious issues.

We know that an offspring of such different parents is, if not unprecedented, then very rare. Is this just because such diverse couples don't exist or due to medical complexity? People may well ask why Judy doesn't think she'll be fine, and a big flaw in the comic is that it just doesn't address the issues in any depth. It seems like this comes out of nothing, but then so does Nick's religion and Judy's career obsession. My issue at heart is that we're given little choice BUT to speculate and that a lot of that speculation seems focused on how things should turn out fine. There even appears to be resistance to the possibility that it won't be. Is that because we care for these characters, as far removed as they are from the movie, and want things to turn out ok? That we jsut don't like bad things happening? I don't know.

Assume someone in a lab coat comes up to you tomorrow and says 'Sorry, due to a mixup your breakfast was contaminated with a newly created compound, we don't really know what it does.' Would you assume your own safety? Certainly you'd have no prior reason to be concerned, you wouldn't have heard of anyone dying horribly after ingesting it. But I think you'd be worried. That might turn out to be baseless, but the concern, even fear would be understandable.

Phasing through the floor is generally impossible for reasons I could write a paragraph about if anyone cares.

The problem with the comic bringing up issues with abortion is that as mentioned it's anecdotal or fear based, we never get a third party stepping in, not even a friend of BJudy who can tell BNick that she's right, it's all speculation, that's why these arguments don't have their usual real life power.

I'm not saying that BJudy therefore has to have the child, but it brings fire to the pro-life argument, which seemed to be what you were wondering why there were so many people arguing for that, despite problems with the pregnancy seemingly being put forward yet ignored.

Very little of this argumentation would have happened if an objective knowledgable third party would have given their advice and agreed with BJudy's layman assessment.

The whole size thing is played down due to other interspecies couples being showed in the comic. Which also shows that it is possible, hence playing down that it doesn't work or even works badly. We never get the same thing for the pro-choice side, just BJudy's ramblings, which are hard to take as seriously, or at least objectively.

The reason I argue about factual and speculation so much is because we've left the realm of real life biology behind us simply by showing us these happy interspecies couples. It messes up speculation to such a degree that it makes it hard to do realistic speculation and comparison with real life, no matter how absurd that sounds.

I see your point about that "lab coat"-person analogy, but they are clearly the third party I'm missing in the story, i.e. a knowledgable individual with outside information, despite that information being not knowing what the compound does.

And not to forget; spontaneously phasing through your floor is entirely possible, it's just that the probability of doing so is so ridiculously low that it's seemingly impossible. Just a single particle (at least a non-electron) in your body doing that is seemingly impossible as well.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
That's the crux of it. They make points that come from nowhere and aren't addressed and refuse to discuss compromise and working together. It's the opposite of the movie.

It's why I think BNick here isn't the same as IWS BNick or even the Nick starting this comic. All of a sudden he just breaks down and is sorry, yada yada. I mean he started with a suicide gambit, THAT'S the Nick from IWS. If Nick had been like he is now from the start, that'd be tragic and he'd have my complete sympathy.

Yeah I agree... I can't really sympathize with BNick here, since he just up and left earlier, and I can't sympathize with BJudy in the other comic since she gave him an ultimatum and took the consequences.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
No no; I can take it 'seriously' because this comic is so stupid. In a serious comic I'd be going 'Really? That's idiotic!' But here I can imagine Borba doing a story where her parents disown her and have her driven out of town. That's not outside the realm of possibility here. Likewise I don't think they'd do a good job with the baby because this is a Very Special Episode about... something and they'd make easy stupid bad guys.

Well good for you then, and I don't mean that in a bad way, not at all, 'cause the moment I read that I think my brain shut down for a moment, I just went "No.".

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
Would you say that *I* have a preferred side? Well you have, if only implicity. I'd say I don't but then of course I would, wouldn't I? We each of us know that we alone are unbiased and aloof, it's everyone else who is not quite as right as us. And that applies doubly if we think we're aware of our own biases.

Again that's one of the interesting results of this comic.; look at how passionately we're discussing it, even if only on issues. We now the characters are trash and that the writing is garbage. And yet...

I don't know if you have a side, implicit or explicit, but I cannot deny your passion. And in the end that is what matters and what we will all get out of this. The comic will end (Lord may there please not be a threequel...) and the comments will die out, but people will have learned something. Despite what another commenter has said, opinions WILL have changed; those who go away from this will not quite be the same as those who saw the first page.

Chessax said:
Fair enough. The reason I react strongly every time someone goes "As a ...", is that it, even if unintentionally, signals that someone has inherent legitimacy, and that arguing against their point is wrong. Basically it's a "power tactic", that doesn't belong in two sided argumentation.

You make a good point, I probably should have left those words out but I'm somewhat new to the forum of comment discussion. Or at least worded them better. (Alas the best reply is always a day late!)

Chessax said:
Eh, it was mostly rhetorical, e.g. if BJudy wants to keep the baby and BNick doesn't. Just meant to spark thinking. But I guess your interpretation is interesting as well.

That's an interesting idea. With the characters we're given you'd need to shuffle things a little. If Judy was committed to having the child, but also a career and thus didn't intend to CARE for it that'd be a minus on her side. If Nick wanted it gone to hide his religious transgression that'd be a minus on his. But I think the reverse would be less dramatic than IWS since IWS's characters seem designed to be as antagonistic as possible. (Of course she could have the kid, leave Nick and dump it on Shay, that'd be a real dick move.)

Chessax said:
Well, it sounded like you were a bit antagonizing, so I guess it's my fault for interpreting things like that.

That's a pitfall of text based discussion. It's easy to paint the other side with the colors you want them to wear. I try not to do this, but I probably do somewhere in the dark corners of my mind.

Chessax said:
It's also why I don't like politics and representative democracy is a joke if you ask me,

Looking out at the world, I don't hope a country is run the best it can be, only that it's not run the worst. Politics is a mess we'll have to leave until IWS3: Election Year.

Chessax said:
If it makes any difference and you're curious, I'd say I'm pro-choice, to a point, but probably come across pro-life due to BJudy's poor argumentation.

Oddly enough I'm mildly pro-life in that I feel abortions should be minimized. But when you take that position people (On either side) usually expect it to go along with 'Reducing sex is the only way to do this. No contraception, or sex ed. In fact can we bring back stonings?' We could have a lot less trouble if we were more progressive on these surrounding issues, not less.

This whole comic (And its precursor.) seems built on twisting discussion. (Judy wants a career? Why? Because that's a big pro-choice issue, not because of her character.) You're not wrong, BJudy, you're just an asshat.

Chessax said:
The problem with the comic bringing up issues with abortion is that as mentioned it's anecdotal or fear based, we never get a third party stepping in, not even a friend of BJudy who can tell BNick that she's right, it's all speculation, that's why these arguments don't have their usual real life power.

I think this is a difference in how we view the comic. I see it as a direct parallel to IRL discussions and the issues raised, thus treating them as seriously as the RL counterparts. You, I think, look at what the comic itself emphasizes or refutes and so you see several arguments that lack justification.

I don't like to do that because this comic is just so poorly written; in a better comic I could take the artist's word, but here I find it possible that Borba just skips a whole lot of stuff. The writing says Judy is ok, but the writing is stupid.

Amusingly I see the in-comic arguments almost the opposite as you do. Judy cites medical issues to her and the child and her career. These are material objections that could very well be true in-universe. Nick's arguments are religion and the possibility of future greatness, which can only be pure speculation even in-universe. (And raises a whole bunch of issues. If your kid would be average can you abort them? What if they turn out to be evil? (Hey they'd have BNick and Bjudy as parents...))

What was needed, what could have defused everything, would be an informed perspective; as you noted. Preferably the pair of them chilling out, visiting a professional and getting told exactly what the issues were. But that'd fit their characters too well.

My point on the lab coat analogy was, even if you were informed by an authority that you were fine, wouldn't you have some doubts? I know I would. Even expert advice can be biased or wrong. Judy's objections may indeed be fear-based but they're at least as valid as Nick's hope-based objections until they can be credibly dismissed.

Chessax said:
And not to forget; spontaneously phasing through your floor is entirely possible.

Oh no. No, no no. Quantum tunneling requires two things to be even a possibility; first the tunneling system has to be able to extend its wave function (Position uncertainty) to the point where it will tunnel to, and secondly that position has to be an equal or lower energy state.

Being stuck in ground or even air is a higher energy state, as atoms are too crowded; two things trying to be in one place. So you can't phase into anywhere where stuff is (Or higher up Earth's gravitational field.) You'd need a nearly you-shaped hole to tunnel into.

And all the air molecules and other stuff bumping into you 'observes' you (As well as bits of you observing yourself.) These limit the spread of your position uncertainty and thus how far you can tunnel. In fact we can 'trap' a particle by repeatedly observing it and 'resetting' it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Zeno_effect

Chessax said:
But I don't see why being aware of your biases would be a bad thing, or am I misinterpreting something here? Or are you just saying that it's not possible to take your own bias into account? Either way, I'm not so sure I agree with that.

I've found there's nobody quite so prone to blatant bias than someone who *thinks* they know their own biases. I've debated flat earthers on youtube and many will tell you proudly about how (unlike everyone else) they're not biased towards the globe. THEY treat the evidence skeptically and therefore only their conclusions have merit. At this point I often find ignorance to be bliss since you can sometimes un-bias such people by pointing things out.

Smart people generally know what they don't know, fools think they know everything.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
You make a good point, I probably should have left those words out but I'm somewhat new to the forum of comment discussion. Or at least worded them better. (Alas the best reply is always a day late!)

Don't worry, no harm, just I making a big deal out of it.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
That's an interesting idea. With the characters we're given you'd need to shuffle things a little. If Judy was committed to having the child, but also a career and thus didn't intend to CARE for it that'd be a minus on her side. If Nick wanted it gone to hide his religious transgression that'd be a minus on his. But I think the reverse would be less dramatic than IWS since IWS's characters seem designed to be as antagonistic as possible. (Of course she could have the kid, leave Nick and dump it on Shay, that'd be a real dick move.)

Yeah, as said mostly rhetoric, changing something like that will of course require other drastic change, which was basically my point, it can flip things on its end and create a whole different scenario.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
Looking out at the world, I don't hope a country is run the best it can be, only that it's not run the worst. Politics is a mess we'll have to leave until IWS3: Election Year.

Oh my god, we do not need to involve politics in this, please don't give Borba any ideas X_X

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
That's a pitfall of text based discussion. It's easy to paint the other side with the colors you want them to wear. I try not to do this, but I probably do somewhere in the dark corners of my mind.

Very true, it's what one has to be careful about when engaging others online.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
Oddly enough I'm mildly pro-life in that I feel abortions should be minimized. But when you take that position people (On either side) usually expect it to go along with 'Reducing sex is the only way to do this. No contraception, or sex ed. In fact can we bring back stonings?' We could have a lot less trouble if we were more progressive on these surrounding issues, not less.

Not sure I find that odd at all, I mean who doesn't want few abortions? Ideally there shouldn't be any at all and someone who literally says they want lots of abortion have probably not understood the underlying problem, unwanted pregnancies. We want few of those, not lots of abortions.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
This whole comic (And its precursor.) seems built on twisting discussion. (Judy wants a career? Why? Because that's a big pro-choice issue, not because of her character.) You're not wrong, BJudy, you're just an asshat.

To be honest, I'm kind of lost about the message of these comics, you don't have to explain it, but I think that says something about the writing.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
I think this is a difference in how we view the comic. I see it as a direct parallel to IRL discussions and the issues raised, thus treating them as seriously as the RL counterparts. You, I think, look at what the comic itself emphasizes or refutes and so you see several arguments that lack justification.

I don't like to do that because this comic is just so poorly written; in a better comic I could take the artist's word, but here I find it possible that Borba just skips a whole lot of stuff. The writing says Judy is ok, but the writing is stupid.

Amusingly I see the in-comic arguments almost the opposite as you do. Judy cites medical issues to her and the child and her career. These are material objections that could very well be true in-universe. Nick's arguments are religion and the possibility of future greatness, which can only be pure speculation even in-universe. (And raises a whole bunch of issues. If your kid would be average can you abort them? What if they turn out to be evil? (Hey they'd have BNick and Bjudy as parents...))

What was needed, what could have defused everything, would be an informed perspective; as you noted. Preferably the pair of them chilling out, visiting a professional and getting told exactly what the issues were. But that'd fit their characters too well.

Wow, I just had an epiphany, yeah, we're clearly looking at this from two completely different viewpoints, that makes so much sense to why we've been arguing like this, that's very interesting.

Although, I'm not sure what difference that makes, I mean we clearly have different views on this, and just to emphasize I get exactly what you're trying to say, I'm probably just a bit stubborn in trying to get my point across, and doing this in text may cause repetitions...

As I've mentioned there's nothing wrong with having different opinions about stuff.

The only very real problem I have is the evil monster box/funny irrational fear, that's not concern for abortion, and as you mentioned open up a whole new can of issues. Everything else is to some extent pretty acceptable, considering the whacked out characters.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
My point on the lab coat analogy was, even if you were informed by an authority that you were fine, wouldn't you have some doubts? I know I would. Even expert advice can be biased or wrong. Judy's objections may indeed be fear-based but they're at least as valid as Nick's hope-based objections until they can be credibly dismissed.

Yeah, I got your point, but the argument still feels a bit weak in relation to the discussion; expert advice is still almost always better than the layman advice. Anyway my only real issue with BJudy in this situation is still the "It's not impossible"-statement. It's such a cop-out reply designed to give legitimacy to a weak argument, instead of the argument itself holding the power. I guess I see it as such that since she's pregnant the default is there will be a child, so BJudy is already lying down and then starts kicking herself with her, maybe not bad, but very simplified arguments. Basically her argumentation should strengthen her point but I never really get that impression.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
Oh no. No, no no. Quantum tunneling requires two things to be even a possibility; first the tunneling system has to be able to extend its wave function (Position uncertainty) to the point where it will tunnel to, and secondly that position has to be an equal or lower energy state.

Being stuck in ground or even air is a higher energy state, as atoms are too crowded; two things trying to be in one place. So you can't phase into anywhere where stuff is (Or higher up Earth's gravitational field.) You'd need a nearly you-shaped hole to tunnel into.

And all the air molecules and other stuff bumping into you 'observes' you (As well as bits of you observing yourself.) These limit the spread of your position uncertainty and thus how far you can tunnel. In fact we can 'trap' a particle by repeatedly observing it and 'resetting' it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Zeno_effect

I was very certain that the problem with quantum tunneling is that controlling or measuring it is next to ludicrous, but that if it is spontaneous then I don't really see the problem (or I didn't), either way the probability would be essentially zero. But maybe I have misunderstood something fundamental and need to hit the books again... Either way this was never supposed to be a detailed discussion.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:

I've found there's nobody quite so prone to blatant bias than someone who *thinks* they know their own biases. I've debated flat earthers on youtube and many will tell you proudly about how (unlike everyone else) they're not biased towards the globe. THEY treat the evidence skeptically and therefore only their conclusions have merit. At this point I often find ignorance to be bliss since you can sometimes un-bias such people by pointing things out.

Smart people generally know what they don't know, fools think they know everything.

Chessax said:
Well, it sounded like you were a bit antagonizing, so I guess it's my fault for interpreting things like that.

This is a bias, which I recognized, I often tend to think people want to fight, so I'm aware of that. Of course I still stepped over the line this time, but sometimes people do want to fight. I'm not saying that I'm 100% in control of my bias all the time, but I tend to think about what I say quite a lot, which is one of the reasons I like debating in text form since it gives more time to think about what I want to say, despite the cons.

But, flat-Earthers are super-biased, they don't take things at face value, i.e. it's one of the fundamental things of science that you have to accept that you exist, can think and that what we see is what we get. If you don't do this nothing you do works. Flat-Earthers go out of their way to ignore this and come up with convoluted explanations that often contradicts itself. E.g. they love confirmation bias, because it proves their point, irregardless of how many times it has been disproven. It's easy to fall victim to confirmation bias, but they go out of their way to do it.

That Earth is a round is not bias, because there's no other option, if it's not then it breaks science at a so fundamental level that it's fully okay to say that we don't exist as a fact. Accepting mainstream fact is not something I'd ever call bias in itself, because then everyone is 100% biased 100% of the time, and the word loses all it's meaning.

Or wait, did I completely misunderstand and you meant the complete opposite? Eh, just ignore me in that case.

Why did we have to bring up flat-Earthers and quantum tunneling, I had hoped we had reached zenith, not for us but for everyone else's sake :P

Chessax said:
Oh my god, we do not need to involve politics in this, please don't give Borba any ideas X_X

'I believe anyone can do anything Nick! That's why I'm a Libertarian! We need to abolish all government and their artificial restrictions! Taxation is theft!'

Chessax said:
To be honest, I'm kind of lost about the message of these comics, you don't have to explain it, but I think that says something about the writing.

IWS I can honestly see as a poorly written attempt to explore what it'd take to break up an OTP. As for BTBA... I can see it as a response to criticism of IWS, but aside from that... if you squint maybe it tries to show that once some things are broken they cannot be fixed?

Chessax said:
Although, I'm not sure what difference that makes, I mean we clearly have different views on this, and just to emphasize I get exactly what you're trying to say, I'm probably just a bit stubborn in trying to get my point across, and doing this in text may cause repetitions...

I hear you, I hear you. But consider this: let me repeat my arguments a second time, but louder.

Chessax said:
The only very real problem I have is the evil monster box/funny irrational fear, that's not concern for abortion, and as you mentioned open up a whole new can of issues. Everything else is to some extent pretty acceptable, considering the whacked out characters.

I like to draw a line between accepting a character's believing an argument and whether that argument is objectively sensible. People are stupid after all. Though exaggerated you'll find plenty of accounts of people who thought all sorts of nonsense would halt pregnancy; sex standing up, after certain foods, using lemon juice as a douche... We're not too far removed from the time when it was thought a woman looking at the wrong things while pregnant could mutate her baby. (So seeing a pig might make the child fat or ill-mannered.) Indeed there's a famous fraud case that involved a woman who claimed to be giving birth to rabbits because of this effect.

Zootopia seems like a place that easily believes such nonsense. So I can accept any nonsense excuse Judy provides as valid *for her.* Especially since neither she nor Nick is approaching this from a logical and calm position. In situations such as IWS it's easy to let fear and worry get the best of you.

Take the case of Melissa Drexler who got pregnant, hid this from everyone, gave birth at prom and threw the baby in the trash. That... that's ridiculous. What possible kind of sense does it make? A woman undertook an incredibly risk (and definitely criminal) procedure after lying to everyone for months all due to fear about what people would do if they knew she was pregnant.

As a plot in IWS you'd shoot it down as being utterly idiotic, illogical and too far-fetched to be true, yet it actually happened. And that wasn't just a single night of argument, it was half a year of sustained effort.

In short, I don't necessarily see Judy as being engaged in a logical debate where facts must win out and an audience waits to be persuaded. This is two, very emotional and irrational individuals voicing their deepest fears and hopes.

I still favor Judy's viewpoint, in the face of any evidence against it, over Nick's pure speculation. But on an emotional level I can also accept her concerns even if there WERE evidence against them. Fear is seldom rational and people DO kick themselves to pieces over the dumbest things.

In fact, the more I look at this, the more I can see IWS's situation actually working. Drop Judy's career angle and Nick's suddenly found religion and their remaining points really COULD be an (at the time) irreconcilable difference that caused them to split in the heat of the moment. (Of course I'd expect one or both to quickly realize their mistakes and for there to be a quick and less drama-ridden reunion than BTBA.) But that's asking for far better writing than Borba could provide.

Chessax said:
I was very certain that the problem with quantum tunneling is that controlling or measuring it is next to ludicrous.

Controlling is easy, if it CAN happen it WILL. Measurement is no problem either, when it happens it stays happened. It's what causes things like alpha radioactive decay. The main problem is that if you're not an atom then constant observation by everything means you can't sneakily do quantum stuff.

Another issue is that quantum mechanics isn't magic. People tend to think it means you can do ANYTHING if you just wish hard enough but they forget that the iron laws of energy must be obeyed, even by the weird subatomic world.

Chessax said:
But, flat-Earthers are super-biased, they don't take things at face value, i.e. it's one of the fundamental things of science that you have to accept that you exist, can think and that what we see is what we get. If you don't do this nothing you do works.

Flat-earthers, I feel, recognize ONE possible source of bias; appeal to authority. (I say so, therefore it is.) And I welcome that. You can investigate the shape of the world in your own backyard and I feel it'd be instructive to do so. It certainly beats 'Just because' and taking at face value some photographs. The Earth's shape may seem incontrovertible, but that's lazy thinking (Which in fairness you need to avoid having to rediscover the wheel constantly.) It's fine to ask 'But how do we KNOW?' and demand to be able to check things ourselves.

But knowing this bias, FEs tend to assume that they, and those allied with them, are the only unbiased sources of truth. A sensible source couldn't be questioned or dismissed in the way they do, but if they project bias onto everyone else then it's a simple matter to reject anything they wish.

This is easy to spot in FEs since their arguments are so poor. But it's more malicious when it comes to more mundane matters. It's aggravating to see a good argument brushed aside as 'liberal bias' or 'religious dogma' or a dozen other things. by someone who is totally assured of knowing their own biases while in fact only knowing the ones they don't have.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
'I believe anyone can do anything Nick! That's why I'm a Libertarian! We need to abolish all government and their artificial restrictions! Taxation is theft!'

*shudders*

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
IWS I can honestly see as a poorly written attempt to explore what it'd take to break up an OTP. As for BTBA... I can see it as a response to criticism of IWS, but aside from that... if you squint maybe it tries to show that once some things are broken they cannot be fixed?

I think that might be the actual problem; that there's too many ways to interpret this, that's usually good when the audience can make up their own mind, but this time it feels like a failure.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
I hear you, I hear you. But consider this: let me repeat my arguments a second time, but louder.

Sure thing ;)

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:

I like to draw a line between accepting a character's believing an argument and whether that argument is objectively sensible. People are stupid after all. Though exaggerated you'll find plenty of accounts of people who thought all sorts of nonsense would halt pregnancy; sex standing up, after certain foods, using lemon juice as a douche... We're not too far removed from the time when it was thought a woman looking at the wrong things while pregnant could mutate her baby. (So seeing a pig might make the child fat or ill-mannered.) Indeed there's a famous fraud case that involved a woman who claimed to be giving birth to rabbits because of this effect.

Zootopia seems like a place that easily believes such nonsense. So I can accept any nonsense excuse Judy provides as valid *for her.* Especially since neither she nor Nick is approaching this from a logical and calm position. In situations such as IWS it's easy to let fear and worry get the best of you.

Take the case of Melissa Drexler who got pregnant, hid this from everyone, gave birth at prom and threw the baby in the trash. That... that's ridiculous. What possible kind of sense does it make? A woman undertook an incredibly risk (and definitely criminal) procedure after lying to everyone for months all due to fear about what people would do if they knew she was pregnant.

As a plot in IWS you'd shoot it down as being utterly idiotic, illogical and too far-fetched to be true, yet it actually happened. And that wasn't just a single night of argument, it was half a year of sustained effort.

In short, I don't necessarily see Judy as being engaged in a logical debate where facts must win out and an audience waits to be persuaded. This is two, very emotional and irrational individuals voicing their deepest fears and hopes.

I still favor Judy's viewpoint, in the face of any evidence against it, over Nick's pure speculation. But on an emotional level I can also accept her concerns even if there WERE evidence against them. Fear is seldom rational and people DO kick themselves to pieces over the dumbest things.

In fact, the more I look at this, the more I can see IWS's situation actually working. Drop Judy's career angle and Nick's suddenly found religion and their remaining points really COULD be an (at the time) irreconcilable difference that caused them to split in the heat of the moment. (Of course I'd expect one or both to quickly realize their mistakes and for there to be a quick and less drama-ridden reunion than BTBA.) But that's asking for far better writing than Borba could provide.

Oh my god, you're too good at this, you're like super close to winning me over. Not quite, but damn, you make some excellent points, to the point I don't really have anything else to say. Except that I liked this a lot more than your "lab coat analogy", I never was too sold on the whole transference deal of analogies since they can introduce other concepts into what can already be tricky questions, I guess it's great if it works, but eh...

Though I'd like to add that not all fear is irrational, there's a lot of fear that's grounded in reality as well, it's when the fear makes you stop rationalizing, possibly even after the source of the fear is gone, that it becomes what we call a phobia.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
Controlling is easy, if it CAN happen it WILL. Measurement is no problem either, when it happens it stays happened. It's what causes things like alpha radioactive decay. The main problem is that if you're not an atom then constant observation by everything means you can't sneakily do quantum stuff.

Yeah, the whole "observation and sneakily do quantum stuff", was sort of what I was alluding to, but as said, I need to hit the books.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
Another issue is that quantum mechanics isn't magic. People tend to think it means you can do ANYTHING if you just wish hard enough but they forget that the iron laws of energy must be obeyed, even by the weird subatomic world.

That is very true, quantum mechanics is definitely seen as a bit of the trickster of physics. I guess a big problem with the whole phasing idea is one of energy.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
Flat-earthers, I feel, recognize ONE possible source of bias; appeal to authority. (I say so, therefore it is.) And I welcome that. You can investigate the shape of the world in your own backyard and I feel it'd be instructive to do so. It certainly beats 'Just because' and taking at face value some photographs. The Earth's shape may seem incontrovertible, but that's lazy thinking (Which in fairness you need to avoid having to rediscover the wheel constantly.) It's fine to ask 'But how do we KNOW?' and demand to be able to check things ourselves.

But knowing this bias, FEs tend to assume that they, and those allied with them, are the only unbiased sources of truth. A sensible source couldn't be questioned or dismissed in the way they do, but if they project bias onto everyone else then it's a simple matter to reject anything they wish.

Couldn't you just flip it around and say that they have their own appeal to authority bias, since they don't recognize the authority it pretty much means they're the authoritative ones since they come armed with claims and hence has bias towards themselves; everyone is biased.

It's alright if you just question authority, but lets face it they don't just question authority, they have their own hypothesis and agenda.

Flat Earth is such an out of this world hypothesis that because basically anyone can disprove it means that it doesn't really feel authoritative in the first place to call the Earth de facto round. It's almost like you telling someone that they exist and them going "nuh-uh, you can't tell me I exist".

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for questioning and exploring things around you, but FEs isn't exactly something that needs to be disproved, you just ignore them, because a lot of them are probably not so convinced about what they're actually arguing for, and when people respond to FEs going "But how do we KNOW?", they ignore, cherry pick or try to circumvent the arguments. It's not a real debate, it's a monkey show.

I really don't know how to explain what I'm thinking right now, I'm just rambling, hopefully you get some of what I'm trying to say.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
This is easy to spot in FEs since their arguments are so poor. But it's more malicious when it comes to more mundane matters. It's aggravating to see a good argument brushed aside as 'liberal bias' or 'religious dogma' or a dozen other things. by someone who is totally assured of knowing their own biases while in fact only knowing the ones they don't have.

I have to agree with you on that. I would never use bias as a targeted weapon, I hate labels in general, and dismissing someone for being biased is just weak. Labels are sometimes handy but they almost always bring as much or even more baggage that they're often not worth using. I tend to bring up how I "suffer" from bias, but that's different as it's not targeted at someone else. If you want to argue then argue what's on topic and that's it. It's why I called you out on your gender, despite it having nothing really to do with the discussion (at least not when you dig deeper). I just don't like it, I don't need to know about that, it won't change my opinion but may instead 'cause me to subconsciously act differently towards you and I don't like it.

Ugh... I'm such a downer...

Chessax said:
I think that might be the actual problem; that there's too many ways to interpret this, that's usually good when the audience can make up their own mind, but this time it feels like a failure.

It is; the difference being that a good work can offer several logical and reasonable arguments leading to different interpretations while a poor one has several interpretations because it lacks a coherent case for any single one of them.

For BTBA it really does seem to be a 'Take That' to critics with no theme of its own.

Chessax said:
I liked this a lot more than your "lab coat analogy", I never was too sold on the whole transference deal of analogies since they can introduce other concepts into what can already be tricky questions, I guess it's great if it works, but eh...

That's always the problem. An analogy is an attempt to explain something that has failed to convince in another way. And thus the analogy can likewise fall flat.

Chessax said:
Though I'd like to add that not all fear is irrational, there's a lot of fear that's grounded in reality as well, it's when the fear makes you stop rationalizing, possibly even after the source of the fear is gone, that it becomes what we call a phobia.

Phobias tend to be emotional, they bypass a lot of rational thinking and go straight to gut response. Which is useful, if you were attacked by a tiger it helps, next time a tiger's around, to be able to scream and flee instantly.

But in modern society a lot of perfectly fine threats (Snakes, spiders, those fancy wolves we keep in our houses...) aren't really dangerous anymore and so the fear of them is more a hindrance.

Of course fear is an emotion, even when rational (If not sensible) you're making your brain push a button labelled 'glandular stuff' and letting your body run things from there.

Chessax said:
That is very true, quantum mechanics is definitely seen as a bit of the trickster of physics. I guess a big problem with the whole phasing idea is one of energy.

And he analogies people are given don't help. The whole wave-particle duality thing is just so SO misleading. You get so many people with incorrect ideas but they never had a chance when they were fed incorrect analogies to start with.

Chessax said:
Couldn't you just flip it around and say that they have their own appeal to authority bias, since they don't recognize the authority it pretty much means they're the authoritative ones since they come armed with claims and hence has bias towards themselves; everyone is biased.

Not really. Appeal to authority is based on a third party being 'greater' in some sense (More knowledgeable, wiser, more moral...) than either debater. In even arguing one side is indicating their greater authority on a subject to the other.

Chessax said:
It's alright if you just question authority, but lets face it they don't just question authority, they have their own hypothesis and agenda.

Everyone does, which is why mere authority isn't supposed to be an arguing point. We're supposed to take NASA's views seriously because of their expertise and resources not just because they're a government agency or 'scientists'.

Chessax said:
Flat Earth is such an out of this world hypothesis that because basically anyone can disprove it means that it doesn't really feel authoritative in the first place to call the Earth de facto round. It's almost like you telling someone that they exist and them going "nuh-uh, you can't tell me I exist".

In a way yes, but I also think no. The world LOOKS flat We're told it's a globe, but how many of us could give a line of evidence for why? I think the FE 'movement' has only gone so far because a lot of people when asked this realize that they CAN'T defend their beliefs. That they have no reason to beleive other than 'Someone told me' and this is why anti-authoritarianism is the main staple of FE.

I don't think arguing with FEs will accomplish much, but I DO think that asking regular people to question and confirm their own helps build up mental strength against fringe ideas. If you live near a lake you can personally see an object vanish below the horizon. You can make something to detect the gravity of a large rock in your own garage. These things are illuminating but also build practical investigative tools.

For example a flashlight and a plate is enough to show that a basic FE model would have no time zones and day all the time. (So the FE sun cannot be a glowing ball but more of a focused searchlight.) A stick with a ball on it can show why the sun isn't close to Earth. (If it's 100 miles up as some suggest it'd appear at different heights in the sky in neighboring cities.)

Minds that can answer 'The Earth isn't flat because then it'd always be day' have a surprisingly effective shield against falling into the rabbithole of FE beliefs.

Chessax said:
I have to agree with you on that. I would never use bias as a targeted weapon, I hate labels in general, and dismissing someone for being biased is just weak. Labels are sometimes handy but they almost always bring as much or even more baggage that they're often not worth using. I tend to bring up how I "suffer" from bias, but that's different as it's not targeted at someone else. If you want to argue then argue what's on topic and that's it. It's why I called you out on your gender, despite it having nothing really to do with the discussion (at least not when you dig deeper). I just don't like it, I don't need to know about that, it won't change my opinion but may instead 'cause me to subconsciously act differently towards you and I don't like it.

That's interesting. I've found labels quite *useful* for the same reasons.

When I was young I thought that everyone must think like me, have the same basic worldview and be working with the same basic facts. But as I've got older I've found more and more differing worldviews that take things I consider too basic to mention and treat them as false, or ignore them.

Labels have proved useful to me in that they tell me what to expect from a person. When someone tells me they're Christian I know that comes with a whole swathe of cultural and religious stuff, let alone the politics. This can drastically change things; once I was discussing free speech with someone and was illustrating a point with the idea of a repressive government forcing people to swear loyalty every day only to be told that was the Pledge of Allegiance and required to be said by children. Suffice to say my argument was not effective.

And that's not always accurate. My neighbor is an 81 year old woman. Statistically frail. She's cutting her grass right now in 96 degree weather using a push mower. (No ride-ons in MY country!) Being X or Y will change probabilities, but exceptions will always exist in abundance. But more likely is more likely.

And that DOES come with baggage, it DOES change how I respond to and treat people. But I like to think that it to their, and my, benefit most of the time. That it helps give me insight into the way they think. I've never been a fan of the idea that everyone's somehow the same and must be approached identically. People are different and I like to know a little about whoever I'm talking to so that I don't waste time and energy on things they will be meaningless to them.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
'I believe anyone can do anything Nick! That's why I'm a Libertarian! We need to abolish all government and their artificial restrictions! Taxation is theft!'

You mock me.

Chessax said:
Though I'd like to add that not all fear is irrational, there's a lot of fear that's grounded in reality as well, it's when the fear makes you stop rationalizing, possibly even after the source of the fear is gone, that it becomes what we call a phobia.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
Phobias tend to be emotional, they bypass a lot of rational thinking and go straight to gut response. Which is useful, if you were attacked by a tiger it helps, next time a tiger's around, to be able to scream and flee instantly.

But in modern society a lot of perfectly fine threats (Snakes, spiders, those fancy wolves we keep in our houses...) aren't really dangerous anymore and so the fear of them is more a hindrance.

Of course fear is an emotion, even when rational (If not sensible) you're making your brain push a button labelled 'glandular stuff' and letting your body run things from there.

I'll take 'Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers' for 500, Alex.

Chessax said:
I have to agree with you on that. I would never use bias as a targeted weapon, I hate labels in general, and dismissing someone for being biased is just weak. Labels are sometimes handy but they almost always bring as much or even more baggage that they're often not worth using. I tend to bring up how I "suffer" from bias, but that's different as it's not targeted at someone else. If you want to argue then argue what's on topic and that's it. It's why I called you out on your gender, despite it having nothing really to do with the discussion (at least not when you dig deeper). I just don't like it, I don't need to know about that, it won't change my opinion but may instead 'cause me to subconsciously act differently towards you and I don't like it.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
When I was young I thought that everyone must think like me, have the same basic worldview and be working with the same basic facts. But as I've got older I've found more and more differing worldviews that take things I consider too basic to mention and treat them as false, or ignore them.
...
I've never been a fan of the idea that everyone's somehow the same and must be approached identically. People are different and I like to know a little about whoever I'm talking to so that I don't waste time and energy on things they will be meaningless to them.

George Lakoff literally changed my life. The key to persuasion is understanding two things: that the overwhelming majority of our thought is unconscious, and that humans are hardwired to think in terms of metaphor. Facts and statistics ipso facto matter a great deal less than the overarching frame by which they're presented, because what our brain does is take the data and fit it into a larger, pre-existing narrative pattern. And because this model is built up largely unconsciously through life experience, it can vary wildly from person to person: using Lakoff's favourite foundational metaphors, someone raised in a "strict father" household where there's a clear hierarchy between parent/child, man/woman, elder/junior etc. and emphasis on self-sufficiency and individual accountability, will approach the notion of what makes a Good Leader differently than someone raised in a "nurturant parent" household where relationships are more egalitarian and well-being is measured more in terms of the family as a whole.

The mistake that the average person makes when trying to argue (and what Lakoff says political progressives have stumbled over for decades) is that we'll enter the discussion assuming our position is a self-evident truth and simply try to hammer it in wholesale, without realizing the other person may have a completely different conceptualization of the base metaphor, which not only wastes both people's time, but leads to the phenomenon of reinforcing the opposing view. Instead what we need to do is identify what that conceptualization is, and work to change that to be receptive to our position.

Example: Taxation is Theft because it takes money out of my hardworking hands, versus Taxation is a Necessary User Fee because it ensures the public services and infrastructure that allow my employer/self-owned business to operate in the first place.

I haven't gone though all the available interviews online, but these two are a good (if explicitly political) overview of Lakoff's thesis; he covers much of the same in both, though the former is more direct and the latter is more detailed.

Epantsimator said:
"I'll take 'Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers' for 500, Alex."

No, that's stress, not fear. Things like phobias, PTSD and panic attacks are generally temporary emotional imbalances, even if the condition is chronic. Nobody's out there going 'My poor friend is afraid of snakes, they've got an ulcer from mistaking their belt for one.' Likewise in IWS Judy's not really, chronically stressed over anything, all the events take place in minutes.

Epantsimator said:
George Lakoff literally changed my life. The key to persuasion is understanding two things: that the overwhelming majority of our thought is unconscious, and that humans are hardwired to think in terms of metaphor. Facts and statistics ipso facto matter a great deal less than the overarching frame by which they're presented, because what our brain does is take the data and fit it into a larger, pre-existing narrative pattern. And because this model is built up largely unconsciously through life experience, it can vary wildly from person to person

In other words, people will learn what feels good, not what's objectively true. This has been known from time immemorial, but it's nice to see an academic has put it into fancy words.

I personally think he underestimates how our brains BUILD a narrative. We don't just seek pieces of information that fit the narrative we've created, we seek to alter and build on our narratives in ways that make us feel better or more secure. Especially in this day and age we can invent a new narrative, such as 'What if people from Idaho are scum?' and then actively seek out information to build on that. Three days later you're convinced they're destroying America by sneaking hormones into the potato crops.

Epantsimator said:
The mistake that the average person makes when trying to argue (and what Lakoff says political progressives have stumbled over for decades) is that we'll enter the discussion assuming our position is a self-evident truth and simply try to hammer it in wholesale, without realizing the other person may have a completely different conceptualization of the base metaphor

Fallen into? No, as you say, that's the way EVERYONE tends to think, progressive or otherwise. I certainly don't think there was a time when any large group DIDN'T think its viewpoints were self-evident.

A related problem however I'd moot as sheer ignorance. A lot of people don't necessarily think their viewpoint is self evident so much as they don't think there is any alternative.

Epantsimator said:
Taxation is a Necessary User Fee because it ensures the public services and infrastructure that allow my employer/self-owned business to operate in the first place.

"No Nick! It's a hustle, surely even you can see that? The government taxes me, then redistributes the money. But what happens to those who get the money? They're taxed! So the government gets it all back, they have all the money Nick!"

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
No, that's stress, not fear. Things like phobias, PTSD and panic attacks are generally temporary emotional imbalances, even if the condition is chronic. Nobody's out there going 'My poor friend is afraid of snakes, they've got an ulcer from mistaking their belt for one.' Likewise in IWS Judy's not really, chronically stressed over anything, all the events take place in minutes.

I gotta learn to stop seizing on the slimmest of tangents to plug accidental learnings. :p

In other words, people will learn what feels good, not what's objectively true. This has been known from time immemorial, but it's nice to see an academic has put it into fancy words.

I personally think he underestimates how our brains BUILD a narrative. We don't just seek pieces of information that fit the narrative we've created, we seek to alter and build on our narratives in ways that make us feel better or more secure. Especially in this day and age we can invent a new narrative, such as 'What if people from Idaho are scum?' and then actively seek out information to build on that. Three days later you're convinced they're destroying America by sneaking hormones into the potato crops.

I'd say it's about fifty-fifty. He gets into the neuroscience much more comprehensively in the book than what I can properly explain here, but the salient point is that whether the chicken or egg came first, far too little attention has been paid to how the brain actually works, and how the stories we tell ourselves are physically made (because synapses are physical constructs)—consciously or otherwise.

Fallen into? No, as you say, that's the way EVERYONE tends to think, progressive or otherwise. I certainly don't think there was a time when any large group DIDN'T think its viewpoints were self-evident.

A related problem however I'd moot as sheer ignorance. A lot of people don't necessarily think their viewpoint is self evident so much as they don't think there is any alternative.

Oh, for sure, most of us will only assert what we're convinced is true; the difference is that mainstream progressives (Lakoff's political writings are essentially a handbook for American Democrats) tend to present their side as "bare facts" and expect the audience to arrive at the same conclusion through their own intuition, what he describes as the "Old Enlightenment" model of reason, eschewing framing as they consider it "spin-doctoring", resulting in a list of policies but a unifying narrative that link them all together. To people already leaning centre-left, it's preaching to the choir, but to the actual middle ground, they were consistently hammered by the GOP who have used dog-whistles and emotional rhetoric to sell their agenda without even the need to describe it in detail, with Trump's election the epitome of style over substance.

One of the most infamous examples was Reagan's "Sons of the Welfare Queen," which by name alone immediately set the terms of debate: a single (probably overweight, probably promiscuous) black woman mooching off government handouts. Never mind that the majority of American welfare recipients were single white men; they looked at themselves, said "I'm not black! I'm not lazy!" and voted against their own interest because they didn't identify themselves in the narrative—one specifically constructed to obfuscate that interest.

The "War on Terror" is another good example. In the early days, 9/11 was regarded (unevenly but fairly prominently) as a crime, and bin Laden et al. were persecuted as criminals. Then with a single speech, Bush turned it into a war—and the entire narrative shifted from criminal prosecution to a global game of Cowboys and Indians in which the law didn't matter—thus the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, thus the infamous PATRIOT Act (the title itself a bold case of dog-whistling). Fast forward to now and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in NATO willing to suggest the war approach has been a failure and a new paradigm is needed, since a de-escalation would mean Defeat and Defeat can only happen to The Enemy.

And on the subject of no conscionable alternative, if you have an afternoon to kill, there's a documentary all about enduring lies by which we live.

"No Nick! It's a hustle, surely even you can see that? The government taxes me, then redistributes the money. But what happens to those who get the money? They're taxed! So the government gets it all back, they have all the money Nick!"

I have the ugliest urge to rewrite Borba's comics as parodies of Ayn Rand's novels. XD

I'm tired and this is a mess, please take this with a grain of salt.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
Phobias tend to be emotional, they bypass a lot of rational thinking and go straight to gut response. Which is useful, if you were attacked by a tiger it helps, next time a tiger's around, to be able to scream and flee instantly.

But in modern society a lot of perfectly fine threats (Snakes, spiders, those fancy wolves we keep in our houses...) aren't really dangerous anymore and so the fear of them is more a hindrance.

Of course fear is an emotion, even when rational (If not sensible) you're making your brain push a button labelled 'glandular stuff' and letting your body run things from there.

Fear is healthy, phobias are not, being emotional doesn't make something bad.

Fear of snakes and spiders and other venomous or poisons things are hardly a hindrance, fear makes you back off and not pick it up, phobias on the other hand are definitely a hindrance as it make you panic and overreact, while fear is mostly just reacting. Of course fear can lead to panic as well, but it usually takes much more time to get there.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
And he analogies people are given don't help. The whole wave-particle duality thing is just so SO misleading. You get so many people with incorrect ideas but they never had a chance when they were fed incorrect analogies to start with.

I have only heard that it's hard to interpret, but is there really an alternative?

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
Not really. Appeal to authority is based on a third party being 'greater' in some sense (More knowledgeable, wiser, more moral...) than either debater. In even arguing one side is indicating their greater authority on a subject to the other.

But that's exactly what I meant, if you go in with greater knowledge, which FEs clearly think they have in their own way, they become authoritative.

And the authoritative party doesn't have to be a third party, there aren't always three parties when discussing things, it can be two parties and you can still be the authority of your own party.

If it's required to have three parties, then lets just call the theory put forward the authoritative third party.

If you haven't noticed I'm basically arguing about semantics at this point, not sure how that's helpful...

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
Everyone does, which is why mere authority isn't supposed to be an arguing point. We're supposed to take NASA's views seriously because of their expertise and resources not just because they're a government agency or 'scientists'.

Yeah, no arguments there. Maybe I have a much more neutral stance when it comes to authority, in my mind that doesn't really have much negative connotation. Authority isn't an absolute and any authority gained can be lost. It just means one or more people agreed with what someone else thinks.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
In a way yes, but I also think no. The world LOOKS flat We're told it's a globe, but how many of us could give a line of evidence for why? I think the FE 'movement' has only gone so far because a lot of people when asked this realize that they CAN'T defend their beliefs. That they have no reason to beleive other than 'Someone told me' and this is why anti-authoritarianism is the main staple of FE.

That's true, but humans only experience a small fraction of the whole "truth", which is why we have microscopes, sensors, tools, etc to aid us. Someone could just as easily as a FE say that atoms don't exist because we can't see them and that everything is made up of earth, water, fire and air, because if you look at the macroscopic world without knowledge it's not that unreasonable, of course it doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
I don't think arguing with FEs will accomplish much, but I DO think that asking regular people to question and confirm their own helps build up mental strength against fringe ideas. If you live near a lake you can personally see an object vanish below the horizon. You can make something to detect the gravity of a large rock in your own garage. These things are illuminating but also build practical investigative tools.

For example a flashlight and a plate is enough to show that a basic FE model would have no time zones and day all the time. (So the FE sun cannot be a glowing ball but more of a focused searchlight.) A stick with a ball on it can show why the sun isn't close to Earth. (If it's 100 miles up as some suggest it'd appear at different heights in the sky in neighboring cities.)

Minds that can answer 'The Earth isn't flat because then it'd always be day' have a surprisingly effective shield against falling into the rabbithole of FE beliefs.

Absolutely, I really enjoy those little backyard experiments, especially because you can sometimes show fairly complex phenomena with very simple tools.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
That's interesting. I've found labels quite *useful* for the same reasons.

When I was young I thought that everyone must think like me, have the same basic worldview and be working with the same basic facts. But as I've got older I've found more and more differing worldviews that take things I consider too basic to mention and treat them as false, or ignore them.

Labels have proved useful to me in that they tell me what to expect from a person. When someone tells me they're Christian I know that comes with a whole swathe of cultural and religious stuff, let alone the politics. This can drastically change things; once I was discussing free speech with someone and was illustrating a point with the idea of a repressive government forcing people to swear loyalty every day only to be told that was the Pledge of Allegiance and required to be said by children. Suffice to say my argument was not effective.

That's my problem with labels, they're very often too generic, saying someone is Christian says very little about their views since there are so many different forms of Christianity and even more ways people interpret those forms, and even then to what degree do they follow this label. As I see it the baggage is always worse than the gain in information from such a label. Being prejudicial and dismissive towards a label is very easy, being it to an individual is harder (not saying it's hard, just harder).

Additionally I honestly don't see the problem with knowing that it's the pledge of allegiance or not, that's still a form of indoctrination, saying that it isn't doesn't not make it so, but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily harmful, and could in certain ways be positive (though maybe the definition of indoctrination requires it to be negative?).

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
And that's not always accurate. My neighbor is an 81 year old woman. Statistically frail. She's cutting her grass right now in 96 degree weather using a push mower. (No ride-ons in MY country!) Being X or Y will change probabilities, but exceptions will always exist in abundance. But more likely is more likely.

Which is another point about labels being inherently bad, why do you need to know all this extra information about someone to argue about a specific topic?

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
And that DOES come with baggage, it DOES change how I respond to and treat people. But I like to think that it to their, and my, benefit most of the time. That it helps give me insight into the way they think. I've never been a fan of the idea that everyone's somehow the same and must be approached identically. People are different and I like to know a little about whoever I'm talking to so that I don't waste time and energy on things they will be meaningless to them.

So you're basically using the labels to assume things about other people, why do you need to do that? Not meaning to be antagonizing, it's just that I can't see a reason for this in a discussion. What I mean is that people make enough assumptions without having to mix labels into the pot.

Anyway, I don't like it and I never use them, at least not intentionally or when I can avoid it, most often I talk about labels to show that when you label someone you take away their individuality.

I'm probably also making the whole label thing a bigger deal than it really is.

Epantsimator said:
[lots of interesting stuff]

Those are some quite interesting concepts (which I'll have to look into more when my head is clearer), but I feel like the more I hear about these kind of things the more I realize I'm not normal, and I don't mean that in some good way or in a way that I'm superior to anyone else (probably the opposite), and I'm sure I'm not alone, but calling myself "average" John Doe seems stranger and stranger for every day. My ideas or thoughts are certainly not unique but somehow I can't recognize myself in much of what you say. Can't tell if that's a good or bad thing either, but as said, probably bad :(

Chessax said:
Fear is healthy, phobias are not, being emotional doesn't make something bad.

Is it though? If I accidentally pick up a poisonous spider, notice it, panic and toss it away, is that

somehow a good 'fear' while doing the same with a house spider would be a bad 'phobia'? Would there be

some definable pause, a mental process that went 'I know this is poisonous, run the fear response instead

of the phobia one.'?

Phobias ARE fears. Their literal definition is 'An extreme or irrational fear'. They're 'bad fears', if

you define ANY sort of bad something as something else so that your something can always be good, that's

a No True Scotsman fallacy.

It's what leads to mockery of caffeine addiction, because caffeine must always be good. It's not like any

other substance, say alcohol, could be good for some people and bad for others. It's SURELY not the case

that the same drink could be nothing to one person but horrible for for another. (Alcohol addiction, it

is to laugh!)

Chessax said:
I have only heard that it's hard to interpret, but is there really an alternative?

Garbage! Peddled by people who like to wave their hands about and go 'Wooo! Physics is so complicated and

nonsensical. Your pinhead mind could never grasp it.'

Particles are waves. 100%. Take a look at a wave on the ocean; notice you can tell when it spalshes you.

It doesn't have exact edges but you're hardly going to say it's everywhere. Every wave is a lump to some

extent, it has a center, a peak where it's most intense, and some area around that where most of the

action is.

Ever see a smoke ring? Pure wave, but boy it looks sorta solid doesn't it? From a distance it could even

look like a well defined donut or even sphere. But there's no need to imagine it also being some sort of

'ringeon particle' at the same time.

Waves from a distance look like lumps of stuff. And when you zoom in on any lump of stuff you'll find it

has fuzzy edges. It's all waves, particles are just our imaginations.

But that's exactly what I meant, if you go in with greater knowledge, which FEs clearly think they have

in their own way, they become authoritative.

Chessax said:
And the authoritative party doesn't have to be a third party, there aren't always three parties when

discussing things, it can be two parties and you can still be the authority of your own party.

If you can find someone citing an appeal to authority fallacy that doesn't involve a third party I'd be

interested in seeing it.

I dislike the semantics here, what if I accused someone of an ad hominem attack because they called FE

theory stupid? I mean, I can make the theory a third party right? Then any attacks on it are just like

attacks on a person.

If we do this, if we change the definition of 'authority' involved I think we not only exceed the limits

of the fallacy but we also overlook the FE reasoning and undermine our own arguments.

If I argue 'You are an authority just like NASA ergo your arguments are as invalid as you say mine are.'

then I'm being foolish, at best it's a 'No u!' or calling Origin of Species the atheist bible.

FEers generally regard their proof as lying in 'common sense' and everyday observations rather than

themselves being some self proclaimed scientific expert. Their contention is that we blindly accept

anything authority says while they demand proof. And there are 'proof' videos out there, such as taking a

spirit level on a plane.

An argument against that sort of thing need more than massaging semantics to fit OUR desires.

Chessax said:
That's true, but humans only experience a small fraction of the whole "truth", which is why we have

microscopes, sensors, tools, etc to aid us. Someone could just as easily as a FE say that atoms don't

exist because we can't see them and that everything is made up of earth, water, fire and air, because if

you look at the macroscopic world without knowledge it's not that unreasonable, of course it doesn't

really hold up to scrutiny.[/patch]

Okay, so here's another group of people I'm pleased to introduce you to: 'Atom skeptics', just search

'atoms don't exist' on youtube. A LOT of arguments are based on 'has anyone ever SEEN an atom?'

A lot of this arises, I think, from a misunderstanding of science and an adversarial culture.

It's commonly believed that if ONE SINGLE FACT can be found that opposes a theory then that theory is

instantly WRONG and must be dismissed in its totality. A lot of scientific history is presented as if a

big wrong theory was accepted, but then something was discovered and, IN A SINGLE NIGHT our theories and

outlook were revolutionized.

No, almost never. First of all, did you REALLY discover that new fact, or were you mistaken? Second, can

the old theory be expanded to include it? And most importantly, is there a better theory out there? If

there isn't then the old theory rules as the least wrong. We know most big theories in science are

'incomplete' (Otherwise science would stop.) that doesn't mean we abandon them.

But you'll see in FE and likeminded circles, the sort of idea that if you find ONE FLAW in the big theory

that it's all false and you win. Few ask 'But if not that then what?' If the sun isn't a big ball of gas,

what IS it? How can it shine on only PART of a flat earth? You don't get to destroy a theory until you

have one better to replace it. FEers don't, and it shows.

Chessax said:
That's my problem with labels.

This is another difference of worldview, which is interesting. Out of order time!

Chessax said:
Which is another point about labels being inherently bad, why do you need to know all this extra

information about someone to argue about a specific topic?

So you're basically using the labels to assume things about other people, why do you need to do that? I

can't see a reason for this in a discussion.

Not just for arguing, but just talking and relating to people. Because a label is INFORMATION.

What say I'm arguing with someone as we are now. But what say English isn't their first language? I'd

want to know that, especially if it causes them difficulties. If they had issues with vocabulary, it

might change my views of their poor grammar for a low-effort or trolling post to someone earnestly trying

to do their best in an unfamiliar language.

When explaining things I'd try and use common and simple words, sure 'coruscate' might really FEEL right

to me and be JUST the right concept I want, but I'll use 'burning' because I can't be sure how much

they'd be able to translate. My point won't change, but HOW I argue should.

Likewise, what say I'm arguing with a Christian about dog inbreeding. I can't just drop in 'evolution'

and assume they believe it to be true and will accept evidence that involves it. I COULD just blunder

ahead, then get sidetracked on arguing the validity of evolution-based evidence and then discard my point

when no agreement is reached. But isn't it easier to know in advance so I don't have to waste both our

time?

I want to KNOW who I'm talking to, as well as possible. A life story at every contact is impractical and

impossible to remember.But a few labels can tell me so much. They're generic, but so are my responses.

Christians don't like bad language, Americans call football soccer, people from Pennsylvania are prone to

using German\Dutch grammar and are not, in their eyes, making mistakes.

In short we seem to have opposing views on the use of labels; you see them as leading to assumptions, I

see them as being useful to avoid them.

I mean, surely you must assume me to be many things when talking to me now. And I don't buy anyone saying

'Oh I just think you're a person in general' or 'I'm open to anything'. No, people assume. Usually tat

I'm a white, atheist, American man around 20-30 years of age.

And for quite some time I held your view. My usernames are neutral-semi-gibberish for a reason. When I

was first online people would treat you VERY different if you stood out.

I was easier to let people assume I was someone they wanted me to be. Sure there was a lot of 'These

people, who are actually you, suck, let's laugh at them fellow person just like me!' But at least *I*

wasn't being given grief.

But more and more over the years I noticed it was to my disadvantage. Things have become more diverse; I

started missing out on things because without any labels people put me in the most 'mainstream' box and

assumed I wouldn't like stuff I like or couldn't talk about stuff I was interested in. Labels to me now

are more a help than a hindrance.

Because you (Yes you!) WILL put people in a box, you WILL label them. And the label 'People' or even

'Unlabelled' can be well meaning but it too strips away individuality and can cause damage. The bane of

many a minority group is being treated 'just like everyone else' with their specific needs ignored.

Chessax said:
Additionally I honestly don't see the problem with knowing that it's the pledge of allegiance or not, that's still a form of indoctrination, saying that it isn't doesn't not make it so, but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily harmful, and could in certain ways be positive (though maybe the definition of indoctrination requires it to be negative?).

See, now that's EXACTLY the problem. If I'm talking to one of my countrymen, or an Australian or German or so many other nationalities, when I talk about children daily pledging loyalty to their government, that's seen as bad. Sometimes horrifically so. 'Indoctrination' with an implicit emphasis on the negative.

An American though? Total crapshoot.Some agree others fiercely DISagree. I can't assume that they'll take it as bad. If I'm arguing against government coercion and I raise such a scenario, an Australian will go 'Yeah, that's bad, good point.' An American may well go 'But that's good, you're a moron!'

My point is the same in both cases but I need a different way of arguing it to different people.

Chessax said:
Those are some quite interesting concepts (which I'll have to look into more when my head is clearer), but I feel like the more I hear about these kind of things the more I realize I'm not normal, and I don't mean that in some good way or in a way that I'm superior to anyone else (probably the opposite), and I'm sure I'm not alone, but calling myself "average" John Doe seems stranger and stranger for every day. My ideas or thoughts are certainly not unique but somehow I can't recognize myself in much of what you say.

And there it is, or something like it. Is it bad, or does it just seem bad because of the assumptions we make of 'average people', the roles and boxes we put them in? People lament the fragmentation of the 'average' into a hundred different communities but I see a lot of people able to be more themselves. I can't embrace all of it, but I'm broadly in favor.

Epantsimator said:
I gotta learn to stop seizing on the slimmest of tangents to plug accidental learnings. :p

I'd say it's about fifty-fifty. He gets into the neuroscience much more comprehensively in the book than what I can properly explain here,

So hey, there's this book called Kluge that gives a good overview of just how slapdash the human brain and mind is: https://www.amazon.com/Kluge-Haphazard-Evolution-Human-Mind/dp/054723824X Some of it might even be relevant here!

Epantsimator said:
Oh, for sure, most of us will only assert what we're convinced is true; the difference is that mainstream progressives (Lakoff's political writings are essentially a handbook for American Democrats) tend to present their side as "bare facts" and expect the audience to arrive at the same conclusion through their own intuition, what he describes as the "Old Enlightenment" model of reason,

Funny thing, I see appeal to 'common sense' on the right all the time. They too seem critical of the left's spin-doctoring, the safe spaces and gender pronouns, relativism and all that artsy stuff.

No, the right deals in FACTS and science! There are only two genders, that's basic biology, common sense and supply-vs-demand argues against minimum wage hikes, morals are self evident. The left by contrast are always offended at things, always emotional and using that in place of actual argument to force things through.

No, I still see no difference between left and right. EVERYONE thinks they argue on self-evident facts. EVERYONE uses emotion based on those fact to add force to argument.

Some of those facts will be wrong, even willfully spread lies. And one side WILL be more correct than the other, but the basics are the same and will remain so until right and left diverge genetically into two different species.

Epantsimator said:
Fast forward to now and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in NATO willing to suggest the war approach has been a failure and a new paradigm is needed, since a de-escalation would mean Defeat and Defeat can only happen to The Enemy.

We're talking NATO NATO right? Made of 28 non-America states many of which were and are highly critical of the USA, especially now that America is threatening to pull out, cut funding and otherwise devalue the organization?

And even at home, the most reccent state of the union had, as a talking point 'If the left had won we'd be in a war with North Korea! That would be bad!'

There's a definite movement on the right to withdraw from wars and international politics in general aligned with the belief that such things cost America while not really benefiting it. It's why people on the right complained when Syria was bombed, why we're being told troops will be withdrawn and so on. A lot of people are sick of wars, left or right.

Epantsimator said:
I have the ugliest urge to rewrite Borba's comics as parodies of Ayn Rand's novels. XD

'An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).

Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?'

-Ayn Rabbit: “Of Living Death” (The Voice of Reason, p58–59)

Oh my friend... Ayn would make Borba's Judy look like a nursemaid. Her views on abortion are as harsh as you could hope. Nick would be kicked out the door on page 2.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
So hey, there's this book called Kluge that gives a good overview of just how slapdash the human brain and mind is: https://www.amazon.com/Kluge-Haphazard-Evolution-Human-Mind/dp/054723824X Some of it might even be relevant here!

The mind is a beautiful mess, no doubt about that. :p I think Dunning-Kruger cropped up on a previous page and even though I know what it is, I've yet to find an explanation of why it happens.

And in other brainy readings, turns out those Mental Palace sequences aren't just fancy imagery??

No, I still see no difference between left and right. EVERYONE thinks they argue on self-evident facts. EVERYONE uses emotion based on those fact to add force to argument.

Some of those facts will be wrong, even willfully spread lies. And one side WILL be more correct than the other, but the basics are the same and will remain so until right and left diverge genetically into two different species.

Again, I'm not disputing we presume ourselves right first and foremost, or that similar rhetoric is employed by both sides. What I failed to properly articulate is that, pertaining specifically to reaching across the aisle, the mistake people make is failing to identify the opposition's frame of reference and tailoring their message to be identifiable within that, rather than trying to supplant it wholesale in a single blow. For example, we might pitch Universal Basic Income to a socialist as ensuring equality of opportunity and combating poverty, and to a neolib as giving aspiring entrepreneurs the financial security to actually start that small business and therefore Grow The Economy. Different frames, same result.

Consider Bernie Sanders at Liberty University. A Baptist college would seem to be the heart of enemy territory, and based on the crowd one can argue how effective he was, yet he still tried to build bridges: he took on the big religious mantras (Morality, Justice, "Family Values") and argued his platform under those auspices. When the inevitable abortion question came up (38:35 ), he accepted hardliners would never agree on the wedge, but challenged for extending their definition of "most vulnerable" to the child after birth—since the Republican position is to fight tooth and nail to bring the baby to term, then do jack all to make sure the mother can actually raise it.

There's a definite movement on the right to withdraw from wars and international politics in general aligned with the belief that such things cost America while not really benefiting it. It's why people on the right complained when Syria was bombed, why we're being told troops will be withdrawn and so on. A lot of people are sick of wars, left or right.

I won't deny the war weariness has taken its toll—I've been to some of the debates first-hand. But even though the leadership is conceding the proverbial battles, much like McCain's "the fundamentals of the economy are still strong," I've yet to see a concerted move away from the War Narrative as the organizing model to terrorism as a global phenomenon. We may be abandoning the foreign battlefields, but the response to shooters at home is still "we'll arm the police, we'll increase surveillance, we'll better screen for enemy infiltrators suspicious refugees," etc. Everyone knows the root cause of extremism is a toxic blend of destitution, instability, and inequality, which airstrikes will never fix, but the international response is still "fortify the home front" and wait for someone else to actually solve the problem—because War may only scratch at the symptoms, but it's a hell of an easier sell to bomb a country than earmark Precious Taxpayer Dollars to actually counteract imperialism's long shadows.

Hell, Drumpf barely finished declaring the Syrian withdrawal before casually hinting he might double down on Iran...

Oh my friend... Ayn would make Borba's Judy look like a nursemaid. Her views on abortion are as harsh as you could hope. Nick would be kicked out the door on page 2.

Well it's less than thirty pages, we'll need all the space we can for John Goat's speech. ;)

Epantsimator said:
The mind is a beautiful mess, no doubt about that. :p I think Dunning-Kruger cropped up on a previous page and even though I know what it is, I've yet to find an explanation of why it happens.

People who are bad at something are bad at knowing what being bad at it looks like. Combined with our natural tendency to think we're all above average and you get people who think their bad performance is above average.

Epantsimator said:
And in other brainy readings, turns out those Mental Palace sequences aren't just fancy imagery??]

I'm not at all convinced by Gärdenfors' ideas. First of all he argues brains are different from turing or neural networks because they use cognitive spaces. This is like arguing a smartphne isn't a computer because it can take phonecalls. A brain IS a neural network by definition. It just so happens to be possible for it to do things our modern computers cannot (or possibly simply DO not), that doesn't mean the two must have radically different designs. (Well in the case of the turing machine it does, but I can't think of anyone in science who seriously thinks the brain IS one. It can be reduced to one yes, but given its use of parallel processing and chaos it isn't the classical single processor predetermined type.)

And his 'cognitive spaces' don't strike me as particularly innovative. Outside of the few small areas like grid neurons things get awfully abstract. I fail to see much difference in apparently arranging friends by something like income and neural nets that link things like 'is rich' to particular individuals. (I mean for one thing can any one of us list our friends by height or weight or income without a whole lot of thinking.)

I can buy that information in the brain is connected and ordered, that there will be networks of neurons associated with 'costs a lot of money' or 'is blue' and quite likely arranged in some way. But I can't see it as a physical space, that's too limiting on the brain. What happens if you start a 'cognitive space' based on income but then exceed the number of items that small network can store? How does he network grow and expand? A more chaotic 'web' of neurons works better, simply sprawling outwards.

So interesting ideas, but until it's been proven for at least five years I don't buy anything in science. This maxim has served me well so far.

Epantsimator said:
What I failed to properly articulate is that, pertaining specifically to reaching across the aisle, the mistake people make is failing to identify the opposition's frame of reference and tailoring their message to be identifiable within that, rather than trying to supplant it wholesale in a single blow.

I actually think people on both sides do this a lot. It's sometimes called 'spin' or 'propaganda' and has been a part of politics since we realized that a poll could flip 40% depending on how you asked a question.

I mean just look at Orwell's 1984, and its Ministry of Truth. General appeals to 'peace' and 'security' and 'freedom' have been everywhere since the year dot. Politicians have always tried to shape their message to fit their audience and that raises a number of problems.

A big one is that a lot of the time you're not going to be taken as sincere, when you attempt to frame your position in the opposite side's terms they're going to see it as duplicity. Sure you may SAY that a UBI provides financial security for innovation but your opponent is likely to fire back that it's socialism unless you can avoid linking it to your terms entirely so they don't 'catch on'.

You can try and convince people on their terms, but there will be interested parties on both sides who will always be able to re-reframe your actions. You can talk a great game about investing in infrastructure but all it takes is someone standing up and saying 'They're talking about raising taxes' and the whole argument is reset to square one.

Epantsimator said:
I won't deny the war weariness has taken its toll—I've been to some of the debates first-hand. But even though the leadership is conceding the proverbial battles, much like McCain's "the fundamentals of the economy are still strong," I've yet to see a concerted move away from the War Narrative as the organizing model to terrorism as a global phenomenon.

Honestly I think this has been the dominant paradigm for everything forever. We (that is, 'you') have a war on drugs, cancer and poverty. One reason I think this is is that simply throwing money at the problem very seldom works. Saudi Arabia for example is very well off,but hardly a moderate country. And that's a relatively stable and rich economy. Trying to fix a country like Iraq... well good luck. Its malaises are many and complex and its systems corrupt. I would hate to have to try and fix any of that quagmire.

And war used to be very effective. The 'problem' nowadays is that we're not willing to massacre people like we used to. A few well placed bombs can solve your problems by simply not leaving anyone alive to seek revenge. And boy howdy have we done that before. Trying to filter the bad guys from the good is nearly as difficult as trying to fix problems through compassion.

And a lot I don't really see as war talk. Arming police and citizens is a gun lobby thing. That's seldom framed as war and more as security,defense and freedom. The alternative is often making guns harder to get, which might well reduce terrorism and shootings but annoys a lot of gun industry people. Certainly nobody's saying domestic terrorism can be solved with tanks or bombing towns.

Epantsimator said:
Hell, Drumpf barely finished declaring the Syrian withdrawal before casually hinting he might double down on Iran...

Yes, but that's due to his guiding principle: Do the opposite of Obama. He's cuddling up to Turkey and North Korea for the same reason.

Epantsimator said:
Well it's less than thirty pages, we'll need all the space we can for John Goat's speech. ;)

Oh, oh you could write such a novel. Catlas Shrugged. About the rising tide of parasitic bunnies, spawning massive families of hundreds while doing nothing to contribute to society. One man stands alone against a corrupt, sheep-led government that floods the city of Zootopia with surplus population.

In the end John Goat retreats to his own objectivist ewetopia, where he looks out on the world as the rabbit plague devours every bit of green before turning on each other. The world is plunged into savage anarchy out of which only he and his small band of enlightened survivors will emerge.

But seriously Judy, a family increasing by 200x every generation is not sustainable! Free abortions for everybun!

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
People who are bad at something are bad at knowing what being bad at it looks like. Combined with our natural tendency to think we're all above average and you get people who think their bad performance is above average.

Or as Rummy would say, the Unknown Unknowns masquerade as Known Knowns. ;)

I actually think people on both sides do this a lot...

And here I feel I must bow out, as we seem to have circled around ourselves, and I don't think I can offer more to the discussion that isn't simply rehashing the initial theses. Thanks for humouring me, at any rate.

Oh, oh you could write such a novel. Catlas Shrugged. About the rising tide of parasitic bunnies, spawning massive families of hundreds while doing nothing to contribute to society. One man stands alone against a corrupt, sheep-led government that floods the city of Zootopia with surplus population.

In the end John Goat retreats to his own objectivist ewetopia, where he looks out on the world as the rabbit plague devours every bit of green before turning on each other. The world is plunged into savage anarchy out of which only he and his small band of enlightened survivors will emerge.

Although I will just add how I always close a talk on Objectivism. ;p

Epantsimator said:
Although I will just add how I always close a talk on Objectivism. ;p

Oh but my friend, Rand had an answer for that, you may need to rad more of her. (She has some great arguments that I fear most of her 'fans' have not read. I have already quoted her on abortion.)

In short a utopian (Zootopian?) Objectivist society would ahve its tradespeople and menial laborers and Galt's Gulch had an array of people, not just elites. Indeed Rand argues that a lot of problems with low-paying jobs exist BECAUSE our society is not sufficiently objectivist. People like nurses and teachers often go into their jobs because of a feeling of contributing to the greater good and society while Rand argues they could demand better working conditions and pay if they were more selfish.

An objectivist paradise would have highly paid garbagemen since the job is so unpleasant. (People wouldn't be trapped in such objectionable jobs since anyone can rise in the world if they merely try. Highschool dropouts would work hard and educate themselves and leave any job they didn't feel properly compensated for.

Interestingly it would also be devoid of highly paid CEOs and a lot of the financial sector. Rand was wary of parasites that are paid well but don't contribute to creating actual value.

This all sounds quite fine, even logical. This is the case for most utopias of course, which would work brilliantly if people weren't so depressingly human. Certainly I feel some who claim to have read Rand could do with a refresher course on some of her essays.

TL,DR: We need to kill all the rabbits to usher in a worker's paradise. This cannot possibly fail.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
Oh but my friend, Rand had an answer for that, you may need to rad more of her. (She has some great arguments that I fear most of her 'fans' have not read. I have already quoted her on abortion.)
...
TL,DR: We need to kill all the rabbits to usher in a worker's paradise. This cannot possibly fail.

Serves me right for playing softball a month after listening to a substantial documentary. :P

Setting aside Objectivism's fundamental fault (the central precept that humans are Rational, Autonomous Individuals), I find it a banal version of Nietzsche's Overman, but stripped of serious philosophical rigour. Nietzsche was honest enough to admit that Great Men would inevitably step on others to realize their potential (so-called "creative destruction"), but Rand seemed to want her cake and eat it too: it's all well and good to trumpet Egoism as a net positive in the optimal scenario, but to outright dismiss its inevitable co-option by the greedy and exploitative smacks of that same "no-true-Scotsman" duplicity the ancaps trot out to handwave failures in the capitalist promise. As a matter of scholarly principle I agree it's a shame critics tend to go for the low-hanging fruit, but given Objectivism manages to be incongruent even within its own scope (eg. claiming to be based on LOGIC and FACTS, yet basing its epistemology on psychology and sensory perception), I'm not surprised sympathizers outside the official Movement cherry-pick what suits their aims and ignore the rest. After all, it took Nathaniel Branden to actually consolidate Rand's writings into an attempt at cohesive philosophy—and he was excommunicated by the Cult Leader herself.

It seems fitting to call Objectivism the true Anti-Communism: they formulate around socioeconomic antipodes, they're utopian to a fault; Marx and Engels could unravel the flaws of capitalism blindfolded but struggled to articulate a Dictatorship of the Proletariat that wasn't just wishful thinking; Rand had meaningful critiques of a top-heavy bureaucratized society, but her pathological detest of the Soviets ended up driving her to the opposite extreme. The irony, if you'll permit me to bring back Lakoff, is that the focal issue for both movements is full actualization of the self—the difference being Marxism sees the problem as a systemic failure and prescribes a systemic solution, while Objectivism views "society" as an impediment to an individualistic solution. Same facts, different frames. ;)

Linking this all back to Bad Furry Webcomics, Better Days by Jay Naylor is an interesting case study of Objectivist idealism crashing into realistic application. (N.B. Naylor says he's Objectivist though he comes across as more of a neocon, so True Believer at your discretion.) The story at its core supposedly trumpets the principles of Individualism, Rationality and Self-Interest, yet even at his most Mary-Sueish, Naylor manages to make glaring hypocrites of all his characters. Lying and cheating is Bad, unless you're countering rivals doing it to muscle you out of the promotion, in which case you're Good. Having an affair is Bad, unless you're doing it for your happiness, in which case you're Good. Wanton violence is Bad, unless you're cappin' dem damn dirty terrists, in which case you're Good. Seeking sexual gratification from your blood relative is Bad, unless she asks you, in which case... actually, even Naylor couldn't make up his mind on this one. The biggest irony is for all Fisk's ceaseless pontification about individual choice, the whole comic he's groomed to replace his dad, both metaphysically and in-universe. One can argue whether the characters embody the "true" spirit of Objectivism, but suffice to say, my takeaway was: Acting solely for yourself makes you a titanic jerk.

Or to sum up one of the arcs:
"Are you happy with my new marriage, son?" (brought to you by the affair that forced your childhood best friend^{*seen only in that chapter} to move away)
"I literally couldn't care less, and you're deficient for asking."

So yeah, Ayn Rand: fascinating spectacle, but I wouldn't want to be her. :^)

Epantsimator said:
Setting aside Objectivism's fundamental fault (the central precept that humans are Rational, Autonomous Individuals)

Honestly I don't see this as a major fault in most belief systems; if people were rational they'd obviously all believe in your system, because after all, isn't your system the most rational one?

There's certainly a lot of talk about what people SHOULD do and Objectivism and its founder has a lot to say on the many, many stupid things people DO do when they could instead be doing far more profitable Objectivist things.

The only system I've found this to be an issue in is ecconomics, which until reccently has been heavily based on a rational, perfectly informed human. And that is why it is 'the dismal science'.

Epantsimator said:
I find it a banal version of Nietzsche's Overman, but stripped of serious philosophical rigour. Nietzsche was honest enough to admit that Great Men would inevitably step on others to realize their potential (so-called "creative destruction"), but Rand seemed to want her cake and eat it too: it's all well and good to trumpet Egoism as a net positive in the optimal scenario, but to outright dismiss its inevitable co-option by the greedy and exploitative

THIS is the major flaw in belief systems. The idea that only good can come of them and that therefore there are no harms to be mitigated.

The next step from this depends on people believing the universe is fair. If this is true than any harm must be deserved and due to personal flaws. The poor then are not unfortunate, they are actively bad. And hoo-boy do you see THAT sentiment a lot.

At this point it's not even a specific objection to me, more a general background noise that I'm occasionally pleasantly surprised to see absent. But that's a rare case, nobody wants to admit their beliefs could have any sort of negative consequence.

Epantsimator said:
smacks of that same "no-true-Scotsman" duplicity the ancaps trot out to handwave failures in the capitalist promise.

Hush your mouth! Objectivism's sketchy handwaving is nowhere NEAR AnCap's hilarious philisophical contortions. (Aaah non-aggression principle... truly you won't be broken by people who are far more trustworthy than governments.)

Epantsimator said:
As a matter of scholarly principle I agree it's a shame critics tend to go for the low-hanging fruit, but given Objectivism manages to be incongruent even within its own scope (eg. claiming to be based on LOGIC and FACTS, yet basing its epistemology on psychology and sensory perception), I'm not surprised sympathizers outside the official Movement cherry-pick what suits their aims and ignore the rest. After all, it took Nathaniel Branden to actually consolidate Rand's writings into an attempt at cohesive philosophy—and he was excommunicated by the Cult Leader herself.

Again this is a thing I tend to find a lot of systems do. All the facts support them of course, and it's plainly logical that they're correct... but this does of course include 'psychological facts' and things like human nature. And surely you, in your heart, know it to be true?

I wonder if there's a sort of Godel Incompleteness Theorem for philosophies? That any belief system complex enough to be useful must be internally inconsistent (Or contain beliefs that are in the whole.)

Epantsimator said:
It seems fitting to call Objectivism the true Anti-Communism:

Anti-marxism perhaps. Communism itself is a broad thing, many tribal societies are highly communist for example. The strain seen in Russia and China is a variant (And it would be foolish to claim, as some have, that it's not 'true' communism) but it comes with a whole raft of other beliefs and practices. It is to communism as a whole as Objectivism is to capitalism.

Epantsimator said:Same facts, different frames. ;)

I don't think so. Both sides willfully ignore a number of facts the other uses. If you could get representatives from both to agree on some fundamental facts I doubt there'd be much in common. (Okay, so we agree the sky can be blue, but also red when we take into account sunsets.'...)

Epantsimator said:
Linking this all back to Bad Furry Webcomics, Better Days by Jay Naylor is an interesting case study of Objectivist idealism crashing into realistic application. (N.B. Naylor says he's Objectivist though he comes across as more of a neocon, so True Believer at your discretion.)

Oh Better Days... Better Days! Such fond memories. Naylor was Borba before Borba was Borba...

Weirdly there's a Jay Naylor Art Shop located in the business district of my city. I daren't investigate if they're related somehow.

Epantsimator said:
The story at its core supposedly trumpets the principles of Individualism, Rationality and Self-Interest, yet even at his most Mary-Sueish, Naylor manages to make glaring hypocrites of all his characters. Lying and cheating is Bad, unless you're countering rivals doing it to muscle you out of the promotion, in which case you're Good. Having an affair is Bad, unless you're doing it for your happiness, in which case you're Good. Wanton violence is Bad, unless you're cappin' dem damn dirty terrists, in which case you're Good. Seeking sexual gratification from your blood relative is Bad, unless she asks you, in which case... actually, even Naylor couldn't make up his mind on this one. The biggest irony is for all Fisk's ceaseless pontification about individual choice, the whole comic he's groomed to replace his dad, both metaphysically and in-universe. One can argue whether the characters embody the "true" spirit of Objectivism, but suffice to say, my takeaway was: Acting solely for yourself makes you a titanic jerk.

What I find so refreshing about Rand is that she'd poke so many holes in this, and she wouldn't pull her punches. She had her blindspots (Don't we all?) but she had a laser focus for hypocrisy in many areas. Possibly because she saw a lot of society as inherently hypocritical or at least using a double standard. (Along the lines of 'You tax the rich more for using the same, nay LESS societal resources such as roads?')

I wish she were still living, there'd be none of this 'Free market, but not for prostitution' or 'Free market capitalism is on the right side of the Lord' She especially had a lot to say when men made excuses for their behavior that they weren't willing to allow to others.

Needless to say the comic is a mess and has had several communities dedicated to mocking it. This is a height that Borba may only yet dream of.

3HC-Hg-CH3 said:
The only system I've found this to be an issue in is ecconomics, which until reccently has been heavily based on a rational, perfectly informed human. And that is why it is 'the dismal science'.

"The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist."
—Nassim Nicholas Taleb

THIS is the major flaw in belief systems. The idea that only good can come of them and that therefore there are no harms to be mitigated.

The next step from this depends on people believing the universe is fair. If this is true than any harm must be deserved and due to personal flaws. The poor then are not unfortunate, they are actively bad. And hoo-boy do you see THAT sentiment a lot.

At this point it's not even a specific objection to me, more a general background noise that I'm occasionally pleasantly surprised to see absent. But that's a rare case, nobody wants to admit their beliefs could have any sort of negative consequence.

I'm sorry again that I couldn't give you a proper explanation of Lakoff, because what he's exploring is precisely how these logical patterns develop. And I swear, that's my last word on the matter. :p

Hush your mouth! Objectivism's sketchy handwaving is nowhere NEAR AnCap's hilarious philisophical contortions. (Aaah non-aggression principle... truly you won't be broken by people who are far more trustworthy than governments.)

wHaT iF tHe ChIlD cOnSeNtS tHo

Again this is a thing I tend to find a lot of systems do. All the facts support them of course, and it's plainly logical that they're correct... but this does of course include 'psychological facts' and things like human nature. And surely you, in your heart, know it to be true?

I wonder if there's a sort of Godel Incompleteness Theorem for philosophies? That any belief system complex enough to be useful must be internally inconsistent (Or contain beliefs that are in the whole.)

Maybe not ipso facto, but definitely if you want it to scale up to anything beyond immediate family and friends. I know a guy who's mapped out a life philosophy that's impregnably Hegelian in its logical tautology... but any attempt to apply it wholesale beyond himself would immediately degenerate into Hobbes' State of Nature.

Anti-marxism perhaps. Communism itself is a broad thing, many tribal societies are highly communist for example. The strain seen in Russia and China is a variant (And it would be foolish to claim, as some have, that it's not 'true' communism) but it comes with a whole raft of other beliefs and practices. It is to communism as a whole as Objectivism is to capitalism.

And here I was holding off seeing if I could bait you into elaborating from the opposite side. :P At least we can agree Juche is really just an ideological caste system masquerading as..?

Oh Better Days... Better Days! Such fond memories. Naylor was Borba before Borba was Borba...

Weirdly there's a Jay Naylor Art Shop located in the business district of my city. I daren't investigate if they're related somehow.

https://media.giphy.com/media/4WRfY6epo5vZ6/giphy.gif

Anticlimactic round-off, but, any idea who best to contact for a staff review? Someone's been mass-downvoting comments on several of these pages.