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@Mopac
How do you see Orthodoxy as 'very different' from Catholicism? The main differences seem, to me, to be filioque, Papal supremacy, the calendar, and separate cultural evolutions. There are especially a lot of parallels with Eastern Catholic rites imo. I'm genuinely curious.
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@Analgesic.Spectre
I think that this is because stress is such a huge cause of many health problems, and optimism either in itself reduces stress, or is correllated with conditions which reduce stress.
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@Greyparrot
That's like saying that nobody can call anything blue because #0000FF doesn't really exist as a natural pigment. Things aren't disqualified or made 'subjective' by being inexact; if that were the case we would have to scrap all of taxonomy.
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@ethang5
Subjective means the quality is in the mind of the subject perceiving. Objective means that the quality is within the object itself. You seem to mean that 'subjective' means 'inexact', which is how the word is commonly misused, especially among the young. But color is100% objective. A leaf is green, I don't think that it is green. On the other hand, Doris being nice or mean completely depends on my perspective. Green being the best color depends on my perspective. Race is an easily measurable, real quality. We know this because if you lined up a bunch of people in front of me, had them guess their race, and then genetically tested them and compared the results, the guesses would be spot on 99% of the time. Subjective qualities don't do that.
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@keithprosser
Except race isn't just 'skin color', and includes just about every attribute of a person, including blood types, which vary pretty reliably depending on race. The 'more diversity within than between' mantra is just that: a tired old mantra which fundamentally misunderstands how genetics works. If you have the necessary technical understanding to parse it, this is a pretty good breakdown of why that's just a completely bad take on the issue which takes advantage of the general population's ignorance when it comes to the finer point of genetics: https://anthropology.net/2008/01/18/fighting-the-mantra-people-vary-more-within-the-groups-than-vary-between-groups/
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@ethang5
Race is as objective as color itself, being a general descriptor of ethnic origin that operates on weighted gradients. The term 'subjective' doesn't apply to anything that exists on a gradient, it applies to something which depends on the subject rather than the object for value (exists in the mind of the subject rather than in the object itself). Which race isn't, it's literally a quality of the object being discussed. I can't say 'I'm an Australian Aborigine', or 'Denzel Washington is Chinese' and then claim that race is subjective so my personal opinion is valid. That's what the world 'subjective' means. Whether someone is nice or not is subjective. Weather they are Polynesian or not is objective. Sure, they may be half Polynesian, but they are objectively half Polynesian.
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Widespread belief in the claim that human races don't exist will one day be looked upon as a weird mass insanity comparable to the Alsatian dancing sickness or Salem witch trials.
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Consumerism is the privileging of material comfort and possessions over human concerns, to the point where those concerns bring real misery while reducing short term discomfort. To understand why it is bad requires second-order thinking which looks beyond immediate consequences to how it affects larger systems. Cars make it easier to move, but they also leads to cities which are designed with said movement in mind. Cities are no longer designed to be walkable, so cars become a necessity instead of a life-improving luxury. Social interaction becomes more voluntary, which reduces short-term anxiety but also leads to alienation and social breakdown. Kin groups don't live in the same area, so people lose built in safety nets that reduce the normal load that people place on society at large. You can't mistake consumerism for technology, that's why we have different words for them. Sardinia isn't in the stone age, but its much less consumerist than the rest of the world, and has very high longevity, health, and self-reported happiness.
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@Castin
So the site is going to lose one of its better, controversial debaters over a dumb, jokey accusation? I could see a temp ban, but a permanent one just seems a bit retarded to me fam.He wasn't permanently banned from anything.I tend to like anyone who's stimulated my sense of humor so I'm not personally thrilled I had to bounce him.
My bad, I misinterpreted a few early posts.
Hit or miss is powerful, and it is stirring your memetic potential. Embrace the chaos and you can break free.Why do you sound like a Sith Lord whispering into my ear. And why am I disturbingly cool with that.
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@Analgesic.Spectre
Yeah, this is why true historians are pretty rare, and accurate historical study only really takes place when there is a stable, well-educated ruling class, because they have a vested interest in a realistic outlook on human nature. Mostly his little book is more of a cautionary tale: most histories, especially abridged ones, don't tell you what happened. They tell you what somebody wants to believe happened.
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@David
That doesn't make sense to me. If it's self-evidently sarcastic in the forums, then it's self-evidently sarcastic in a debate. And if it's thrown into the last part of the debate, then voters will punish him for it. That's why we have the conduct point, it exists so that when someone behaves badly, then they are punished by the voters by having that point taken away and given to their opponent. Regardless of whether the statement was false or not, it was clearly a debate etiquette violation that justifies taking the conduct point away. There's no need for the mods to come flying in and ban the person from debate for life, especially when the 'injured party' is the head mod himself, lol. You guys are kind of supposed to have thick skin, not respond with an insane level of aggression to something that you admit wouldn't even be an issue in the forums.
Plus it's not 'disgusting character assassination'; that generally has to be believable.
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@Castin
If someone personally attacks you with some vicious PM lie in the closing round of a formal debate so that you can't even counter in a next round or attempt to provide evidence defending yourself, and you consider that fine, don't report it. If someone does report it happening to them in objection to that behavior, I'm not gonna let it stand. Deal with it, mate.
"Wylted, go fuck yourself. You suck at debating and it is a slap in the face to have to suffer through a debate with such a retard"
If someone claimed that I said this falsely, I would laugh, because it's ridiculous, and the balsyness of the false claim is pretty damn funny. As far as I know, the nastiest PM that bsh has ever sent is like 'go jump off a cliff' or something, which is like the most milquetoast white guy insult I can imagine. I'm pretty sure he would have to be close to black-out drunk to ever call someone a retard in a PM.
I honestly can't comprehend the mindset which sees this as some horrible, offensive action. And he certainly has recourse, he can post a comment on the debate saying 'I never said that'. And most people would believe the denial, because it's like claiming that Jimmy Carter was a necrophiliac KKK grand wizard in his spare time.
You can always start an unmoderated debate if you want mods to fuck off and give you some space to get rough. I watch that shit with popcorn.
Most people want mod interaction that covers the basics, like doxxing or threats, without the nannying aspects. But that's not an option.
And his punishment was suspension from debate, which was gonna happen no matter what and will still be in effect once his temp ban expires. I don't really consider it groveling to own up to your own lie and admit your mistake, but you can call it whatever you like.
So the site is going to lose one of its better, controversial debaters over a dumb, jokey accusation? I could see a temp ban, but a permanent one just seems a bit retarded to me fam.
P.S. I freakin' love the new pic for reasons I can't explain.
Hit or miss is powerful, and it is stirring your memetic potential. Embrace the chaos and you can break free.
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@Castin
In any case, a ban was not my first go-to. I just told him to publicly take back the lie and apologize and he'd only get a brief suspension from the formal debate side of this site, and if he'd done that he'd be here talking to us right now. Gave him many chances to do it -- too many, I'm sure some thought -- and he refused. So I waited until after he made this thread and recommended a 3 day ban. He'll be back soon, and somehow... oh, somehow... I think we'll all get on with our lives.
Lol wtf? Grovel and apologize and you will be spared? A lie = a personal attack? Sorry, I know you didn't make the promise, but this is hilarious in light of assurances that moderation would be laissez-faire. If someone insults their opponent during a debate without something serious like doxing or threats, or lies, the voters punish them with a loss. There's no need for moderation to get involved. And if such a line is crossed, it's absurd to give someone a chance to grovel in order to avoid punishment. Just administer the punishment prescribed for whatever infraction took place.
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@RationalMadman
^^^ my knees don't need pads anymore, cuck of Jesus and the Pope.
Imagine taking 24 hours to come up with this and type it out with your noodle arms, lmao
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@Analgesic.Spectre
I'm sure that political considerations weigh on their conscience, but it's mostly structural limitations that they've imposed on themselves. In order to be defined as a subspecies under their current systems, animals normally have to be incapable of producing fertile offspring with one another. This is a dumb rule that ignores a lot of nuance, but zoologists like to stick to such dumb rules because they don't want to admit that botanists, mycologists, and microbiologists are literally right about everything.
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@Mharman
WTF Wylted. Shame on you.
Sorry to dox you, but photos of Mharman have been found:
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@WarriorQueenForever
Out of date mallrat.
Frustrated lumberjack.
Suicidal officeworker.
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@Greyparrot
That's fine, the world can revert back to the feudal era when egalitarianism was a fantasy, and only the people in power would have fossil fuels and nice things.
stop talking dirty to me, you little minx.
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@ethang5
I think the scale of society and consumerism play an even bigger role and that the loss of values and principles are just symptoms. Human social ecosystems are delicate things, and Schumpeter's gale is wailing louder now than it ever has before.
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@drafterman
That's the beauty of the Rorschach CoC: squint hard enough and you can find a justification for anything.
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Humans are undeniably polytypic, thought the quibble over whether to call the infraspecific taxa 'subspecies' has more to do with the limits of the zoological classification system imo. Botany is way more permissive of 'splitter' taxonomists, who have three different taxa available to them beneath the level of species, whereas zoologists only have one and get terribly pernickety over its use. If we used the botanical system, human races and ethnicities certainly qualify, as we divide things up over much, much less severe levels of differentiation.
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@keithprosser
Natural immunity is seldom absolute though, it's a degree of susceptibility. And it is incredibly rare for an epidemic to wipe out any population (hell, even to infect an entire population), no matter how isolated it is. They usually recover within a few generations, with added resistance. Look at any diseases with a 100% fatality rate, and most them aren't easily communicable to being with, requiring vectors or specific means of infection.
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@Castin
I don't see a whole lot of merit in the disease angle, as disease resistance in a population is acquired due to people within that population dying from disease. The only reason that people outside of the islands have disease resistance is the fact that the exact thing happened to them millennia ago. While the loss of human life is certainly tragic, it's something that's going to inevitably happen unless there's a worldwide population crash.
I've always found the Sentinelese fascinating. Their language is completely unique, the only such surviving language with no data on it, to our knowledge. Their hostility stretches back centuries, and I think that it's a really good thought exercise to put yourself in their shoes, within their narrowly circumscribed world. To them, Sentinel Island is the entire universe. We are the equivalent of UFOs. It almost makes you a bit envious, and makes the death seem more tragic than anything else. We call them savages, but would we react very different to any sort of extraterrestrial presence which had begun with a few fatal abductions?
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The volume and complexity of historical research are at the same time the result and the demonstration of the fact that the more we examine the way in which things happen, the more we are driven from the simple to the complex. It is only by undertaking an actual piece of research and looking at some point in history through the microscope that we can really visualize the complicated movements that lie behind any historical change. It is only by this method that we can discover the tricks that time plays with the purposes of men, as it turns those purposes to ends not realized; or learn the complex process by which the world comes through a transition that seems a natural and easy step in progress to us when we look back upon it. It is only by this method that we can come to see the curious mediations that circumstances must provide before men can grow out of a complex or open their minds to a new thing. Perhaps the greatest of all the lessons of history is this demonstration of the complexity of human change and the unpredictable character of the ultimate consequences of any given act or decision of men; and on the face of it this is a lesson that can only be learned in detail. It is a lesson that is bound to be lost in abridgement, and that is why abridgements of history are sometimes calculated to propagate the very reverse of the truth of history. The historian seeks to explain how the past came to be turned into the present but there is a very real sense in which the only explanation he can give is to unfold the whole story and reveal the complexity by telling it in detail. In reality the process of mutation which produced the present is as long and complicated as all the most lengthy and complicated works of historical research placed end to end, and knit together and regarded as one whole."
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@Analgesic.Spectre
One of the most staggeringly false beliefs that any person could possible hold is the one that one's own age has hit on truth, and has an accurate assessment of the world. Most people in every age have thought that (including ours), and they have all been wrong (including ours). We even reinterpret history to suite our distorted perception, as Herbert Butterfield pointed out in his 'The Whig Interpretation of History', and police speech and thought to create conformity. However, reality is much messier. As Butterfield put it:
"Real historical understanding is not achieved by the subordination of the past to the present, but rather by our making the past our present and attempting to see life with the eyes of another century than our own. It is not reached by assuming that our own age is the absolute to which Luther and Calvin and their generation are only relative; it is only reached by fully accepting the fact that their generation was as valid as our generation, their issues as momentous as our issues and their day as full and vital to them as our day is to us. The twentieth century which has its own hairs to split may have little patience with Arius and Athanasius who burdened the world with a quarrel about a diphthong, but the historian has not achieved historical understanding, has not reached that kind of understanding in which the mind can find rest, until he has seen that that diphthong was bound to be the most urgent matter in the universe to those people. It is when the emphasis is laid in this way upon the historian’s attempt to understand the past that it becomes clear how much he is concerned to elucidate the unlikeness between past and present. Instead of being moved to indignation by something in the past which at first seems alien and perhaps even wicked to our own day, instead of leaving it in the outer darkness, he makes the effort to bring this thing into the context where it is natural, and he elucidates the matter by showing its relation to other things which we do understand...
But after this attempt to understand the past the historian seeks to study change taking place in the past, to work out the manner in which transitions are made, and to examine the way in which things happen in this world. If we could put all the historians together and look at their total cooperative achievement they are studying all that process of mutation which has turned the past into our present. And from the work of any historian who has concentrated his researches upon any change or transition, there emerges a truth of history which seems to combine with a truth of philosophy. It is nothing less than the whole of the past, with its complexity of movement, its entanglement of issues, and its intricate interactions, which produced the whole of the complex present; and this, which is itself an assumption and not a conclusion of historical study, is the only safe piece of causation that a historian can put his hand upon, the only thing which he can positively assert about the relationship between past and present. When the need arises to sort and disentangle from the present one fact or feature that is required to be traced back into history, the historian is faced with more unravelling than a mind can do, and finds the network of interactions so intricate, that it is impossible to point to any one thing in the sixteenth century as the cause of any one thing in the twentieth. It is as much as the historian can do to trace with some probability the sequence of events from one generation to another, without seeking to draw the incalculably complex diagram of causes and effects for ever interlacing down to the third and fourth generations. Any action which any man has ever taken is part of that whole set of circumstances which at a given moment conditions the whole mass of things that are to happen next. To understand that action is to recover the thousand threads that connect it with other things, to establish it in a system of relations; in other words to place it in its historical context. But it is not easy to work out its consequences, for they are merged in the results of everything else that was conspiring to produce change at that moment. We do not know where Luther would have been if his movement had not chimed with the ambitions of princes. We do not know what would have happened to the princes if Luther had not come to their aid...
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@dylancatlow
This is why I subscribe to judicial realism. Judges are just people with power, power which reflects what people believe about them. They aren't bound by words, or principles, or ideas, but by perception and obedience. The fact of the matter is that a Constitution which left it possible for Judges to do what they have done in the last 200-odd years is a badly designed constitution, because it has allowed limits to erode on the branches which it sought to counterbalance. Personally, I think that this is a result of us not having a true Monarch. Ages ago, there was a very simple solution to judicial overreach or corruption. When they Persian judge Sisamnes accepted a bribe, the king Cambyses skinned him and lined the throne from which he once passed judgement with his tanned hide. He then appointed the son as judge, and the son ruled justly for all his days, sitting on perhaps the sternest reminder possible of the consequences should he err. The closest that we ever got to that was Andrew Jackson telling the judges to go fuck themselves.
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Going off Wylted's post, my grandfather talked about this, how a lot of local autobody shops owned by families closed down or sold out to big chains because they just couldn't manage with a bunch of the regulatory stuff that was coming down the pipes. The rags to stable middle-middle-class story that defined my family was only possible for that generation, all of the people who started their own businesses will tell you that it would be almost impossible to do what they did then, now. The combination of regulatory burden and competition with big chains would kill your business. He also talks about how much more trust-based everything was back then, and how, since there were no big chains, reputation was everything.
I know people who have worked in small body shops since then, and without fail the chains all pushed for profits. Mechanics were rewarded for marking up prices or selling repairs that customers didn't need, and met with an icy reception if they provided honest service. Most of them felt horrible working there, and a couple of guys that I knew left to work for a drone company instead. Just can't shake the feeling that in a saner world they would be doing body work and building a reputation with their skills, instead of squabling for other interns to design the most efficient means of delivering payloads to Yemeni weddings.
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Truly, Thett3 is the Ibn Sina of DDO, and the Avicenna of DART.
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@Greyparrot
Or is Luddism really the future for humanity?
God, we can hope!
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I really like some of Ron Unz's 'American Pravda' articles as well. This is one of the most eerie: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/chinese-melamine-and-american-vioxx-a-comparison/
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The world would be better off if it were hit by a giant sun flare.
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Weak bantz on this site, folks. Sad! I was worried I was going to get a cringy poem for a second, it might have given me a bit of a headache.
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@RationalMadman
'ur ugly and nobody likes you. Don't mind me, I'm a crazy rebel with well-worn knees'
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@RationalMadman
'I've got the new mod balls deep in my throat, but at least I don't believe in GOD!'
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Wow, the madman has really been breaking out the kneepads lately.
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@disgusted
Euthanasia means to deliberately end someone's life, which I am against. I think that the technology shouldn't exist in the first place. Giving people the option to consume ever increasing amounts of resources to prolong life isn't a positive development. Of course, we can't rationally expect people to just give up and stop spending, but the other option is a society which neglects the young in order to prolong life, which is suicidal in the long-term, especially coupled with the poisonous individualism which has gripped the West.
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Probably the most egregious example of 'lying-while-telling-the-truth' that I can recall is numerous articles which mentioned that the Charlottesville protests were 'deadly' and 'left three people dead'. One of those people was killed by a far right protester. The other two were cops who crashed their helicopter. Yet many, many articles include those cops in the 'body count' without specifying. When media outlets brazenly misrepresent things which can easily be checked for accuracy, why on earth should I trust anything that they say which isn't independently verifiable? Why should I even turn the news on at all, if I can't even take basic 'facts' for granted without double-checking them myself? Why not just watch the original livestreams, and then maybe juxtapose the news stories when I'm bored as a sort of entertaining farce?
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@Plisken
But there are diminishing returns. The resources devoted to keeping elders alive could accomplish much more if redirected to the support of children.
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@Tejretics
SlateStarCodex (Good introduction: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/)
Devin Helton's History blog (good introduction: https://devinhelton.com/busing-in-boston)
Paul Graham's blog (good introduction: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)
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@triangle.128k
I think that medical technology in particular is pernicious. Because despite dumb people screaming that it's a right, it literally isn't. It's a labor-intensive way to cheat nature with diminishing returns, and it by necessity accrues to the economically privileged members of any society. In a decadent society like ours, this translates to 'dumb rich people'. I see no reason to keep them alive any longer than necessary.
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@Greyparrot
Geopolitical isolation =/= political isolation. You should know this. The US had the CHOICE to be isolationist when it served their interests. Countries like the Ukraine and Poland did not have that choice. Neither did France and Germany, or even England. When we entered a war, it was half a world away, we sold weapons and supplies during the build-up, and then we sold the materials to rebuild infrastructure afterwards. Haiti's 'independence' consisted of a genocide of the ruling class and a descent into poverty and chaos. Very different from the American revolution on all terms.
The Monroe Doctrine was a real thing, and it was very effective, but it would not have worked anywhere else in the world.
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@Greyparrot
Not really, it's in the Carribean which was a playground of European colonialism for centuries after the US was independent. Islands which are isolated geopolitically and culturally aren't really a good comparison because they can't combine together as the thirteen colonies could. Haiti was also essentially a plantation as well, not a real country. Its catastrophic slave revolt ended in predictable dilapidation.
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@triangle.128k
Peasant culture, family stewardship of land, frequent hanging of politicians. Catholic, large amounts of land held by monastaries. High reproduction rate, with little medical technology. Basically if the Amish were TradCath and founded an empire. Obviously close to zero immigration.
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@Plisken
Americans are better than the English because everyone is better than the English. Even the Pygmies. Perfidious Albion is the most loathsome country on the planet.
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@Tejretics
1. How much damage will they cause to the current system? (9 importance, more damage is good)
2. Will they stop mass immigration? (8 importance, obviously pro for stopping)
3. Will they stop the check the growth of massive corporation like Amazon? (7 importance, Amazon is probably one of the biggest threats to human decency in America)
3. Will they engage in completely unnecessary foreign wars? (7 importance, I would prefer not)
4. Will they engage in smarter trade deals and not fall for the stupid neo-Ricardian pablum? (6 importance)
4. Will they fight the 'culture wars' deftly? (6 importance, against further alterations, and for a rollback of alterations which have already taken place)
5. Do they share my religious views? (4 importance, by which I mean traditionalist Catholicism)
By far the most important aspect for me is the ability to deftly dismantle every power apparatus in America, from the media to the bureaucracy to the courts. Tear it all apart, it's poisonous, corrupt, and downright evil. Longterm goal is the elimination of capitalism, but I don't think that it's likely in my lifetime.
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Lol
Something can be a 'punishment' without being unbearable. The technical definition of a punishment used in behavioral psychology is simply a facet of operant conditioning: a way to reduce the frequency of a target behavior through the introduction of an 'bad' stimulus (spanking) or the removal of a 'positive' stimulus (grounding). By your own argument, banning is a punishment, because you claim that it is a 'stupid rule' introduced to decrease the frequency of a certain behavior. That is literally the textbook defintion.
Something can be a 'punishment' without being unbearable. The technical definition of a punishment used in behavioral psychology is simply a facet of operant conditioning: a way to reduce the frequency of a target behavior through the introduction of an 'bad' stimulus (spanking) or the removal of a 'positive' stimulus (grounding). By your own argument, banning is a punishment, because you claim that it is a 'stupid rule' introduced to decrease the frequency of a certain behavior. That is literally the textbook defintion.
Also, to equivocate means to equivocate two things to one other. Hitler=Donald Trump is an equivocation. Hitler = A man; Donald Trump = A man is not. Just as 'Robber shooting a person = Blocking on a forum' is an equivocation, but 'Robber shooting a person = Punishment; Blocking on a forum = Punishment' is not.
I really don't care if you block me. As I've already said, I just view it as indicative of intellectual frailty or thin skin, but understand why the function exists, even if I've never personally made use of it. I was just correcting a mistake on your part because it'ss one that I see commonly repeated for whatever reason (I imagine the complete failure to teach grammar or logic in the American college and primary education systems, which I myself fell victim to for a long time).
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