Author Topic: Politics  (Read 511301 times)

smirnoff

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6220 on: April 08, 2019, 01:48:18 PM »
I guess the important thing is that ultimately people are willing to settle for (and vote for) whoever wins. We'll all have our favourites, but when the dust settles it's xxxxx vs. Trump. I think that's why it's important that the democrats during their campaigning all take on a zero mud-slinging, non-adversarial, may the best person win attitude. The democrats cannot afford to have their supporters adopt an all or nothing attitude in regards to any particular nominee, which is what happens if nominees start going hard at each other and sour the mood. I don't know if that's a realistic thing to hope for though since it's so easy for outside forces to sour things whatever the nominees do. And Liberal voters, by their nature, seem easier to divide. Republican voters seem to be amenable to any policy their leadership puts forward (even ones which clearly go against their own self-interest), provided the it isn't about guns or abortions. They are so uniform. This makes it easy for them not to run afoul of their voters. But democratic voters have lines in the sand all over the place, and it's not consistent. And they're willing to lose an election rather than budge on those issues. Nominees will not be able to walk past their scandals like Trump does. If it comes out that Andrew Yang used the R word (in any context) in a tweet 12 years ago, he will be unelectable for a portion of democrats. If Warren is found to have taken a campaign contribution 20 years ago from a 3rd cousin of a CEO of a firearms manufacturer, she will be unelectable. I mean in some ways it's too a person's credit that they're willing to stick to their own particular principles but that is also a weakness in some ways. The atmosphere is less forgiving and less compromising than it ever has been.

I dunno, that's just how it looks sometimes.

Corndog

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6221 on: April 08, 2019, 02:12:48 PM »
At this point I have zero confidence that anyone other than Trump will win the 2020 election. Sadly.
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Beavermoose

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6222 on: April 08, 2019, 05:15:08 PM »
Ben Shapiro is not a good or rational dude.
This! People like Shapiro and Jordan Peterson are white dudes with opinions that people seem to view as intelectual because they "quote" philosophy and academia. They are super toxic people especially because of how prevalent they have become in various internet communities like YouTube.

Bondo

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6223 on: April 08, 2019, 06:17:08 PM »
Of course I'm a bit confused why we are considering Joe Rogan as someone worth listening to. My impression was he was an Adam Carolla meathead type.

I'm very much a "will vote for the Dem nominee" person, even if it is Bernie Sanders who I hold in very low regard both as a policy thinker and a political thinker. He is inchoate values personified. There is nothing he offers that Warren doesn't do better except peeing standing up, one presumes. Ironically, the leading second choice of Sanders supporters is Joe Biden (and the number two of Biden voters is Sanders).

jdc

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6224 on: April 08, 2019, 07:00:28 PM »
Of course I'm a bit confused why we are considering Joe Rogan as someone worth listening to. My impression was he was an Adam Carolla meathead type.


Because it is more about listening to the person he is interviewing and not about Joe Rogan. But he is somebody that is interested to talk to people in all areas of life, be it science, nutrition, sports, politics, comedy, etc and allows people to speak. It tends to make the podcast long, anywhere from 2 to 4 hours. I probably skip about 80% of them as I just don't have that kind of time or interested in the person being interviewed.
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smirnoff

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6225 on: April 08, 2019, 07:01:05 PM »
Ben Shapiro is not a good or rational dude.
This! People like Shapiro and Jordan Peterson are white dudes with opinions that people seem to view as intelectual because they "quote" philosophy and academia. They are super toxic people especially because of how prevalent they have become in various internet communities like YouTube.

Ugh Peterson. I don't have any exposure to him outside of JRE, and I listened with an open mind despite being aware of the controversy around him, but he basically dug himself a grave. He came off so petty. All he seemed to want to do was brag about times he put some intellectual's feet to the fire and they couldn't take it. At least that's his telling. He also cried a lot of people misrepresenting his arguments, which he countered by misrepresenting their arguments. He didn't seem honest. Basically came off as a troll.



Of course I'm a bit confused why we are considering Joe Rogan as someone worth listening to. My impression was he was an Adam Carolla meathead type.

He is, more or less... and says so himself often enough. He's not terribly savvy when it comes to politics, economics, science or many of the topics he covers. But if there's a reason I think the show works it's that he's honest and genuine with his guests. He rarely has any kind of angle, and his ego doesn't come into it. So it never becomes some battle of wits or ideas. He just lets his guests get their ideas out and asks questions that interest him. He'll sometimes play devils advocate but doesn't put up a real fight. So it's definitely not a Hard Ball type of interview. And in not being adversarial, and not hiding his low-level understanding of things, it really lets his guests dig their own graves (if they are so inclined) or do whatever the opposite of that is called.

The idea that Joe Rogan is "someone worth listening to" is the confusion. That's not the purpose of the show at all... he's definitely not an authority, nor is he ever presenting himself as such. So when someone like Yang is on, you're not really tuning in to hear Joe's side... he doesn't really have a side. JRE is like this opportunity for his guests to have as much time as they want to communicate their ideas, without interruptions or arbitrary stop times, etc. It's not a segment of some larger show, it's not a panel, it's not a six way split screen, and if something needs googling in the course of a conversation, they just go ahead and google it. If they go off on a 45 minute tangent about coyotes, that's just how it goes.

Rogan has very niche expertise: Float tanks, MMA, DMT, Elk meat, and Sam Kinnison bits. Heaven help a guest who inadvertently brings one of those things up. :))


jdc

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6226 on: April 09, 2019, 08:35:24 PM »
Ben Shapiro is not a good or rational dude.
This! People like Shapiro and Jordan Peterson are white dudes with opinions that people seem to view as intelectual because they "quote" philosophy and academia. They are super toxic people especially because of how prevalent they have become in various internet communities like YouTube.

Ugh Peterson. I don't have any exposure to him outside of JRE, and I listened with an open mind despite being aware of the controversy around him, but he basically dug himself a grave. He came off so petty. All he seemed to want to do was brag about times he put some intellectual's feet to the fire and they couldn't take it. At least that's his telling. He also cried a lot of people misrepresenting his arguments, which he countered by misrepresenting their arguments. He didn't seem honest. Basically came off as a troll.

I don't quite get the divide that Peterson has caused. He was a Clinical psychologist and University Professor that became famous due to a backlash and protest for taking an unpopular opinion that got him got labeled something he likely isn't. Maybe many were offended by his stance but it was reasonable to think that the country shouldn't be passing laws forcing compelled speech which was the larger view. Without those protests, he likely would still just be a University Professor making self-help Youtube videos.  Similar to what happened with Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College, neither likely would be well known if not for the protests that through them into a national spotlight on their campuses.

I have seen the Peterson interview on BBC channel 4 and a few other examples where the interview is certainly trying to attribute an opinion to him that he does not have or try to trap him so that he appears to have a horrible opinion of certain groups. I don't think he is what people are trying to make out to be. I didn't listen to the last interview on JRE (I believe he has been on a few times). He also has done Waking Up with Sam Harris a number of times (now Making Sense). The first interview was extremely painful as Harris and Peterson couldn't ever come to an agreement on some basic terms or definitions. Harris refused to move to a larger discussion as he was so focused on starting with a common agreement on something like "truth"  Without agreeing on the term, he didn't believe they could discuss other topics. So most of the episode what all around agreeing on a definition of a word, an extremely frustrating conversation. They tried again a month later and had a reasonable discussion after setting some other ground rules.  But I stopped listening to those episodes with Peterson afterward since he has done quite a few live events with Harris. I just don't find him that interesting to follow as he is usually very careful to give opinions on difficult questions.

I do have an interest on what he actually writes about and what he was trained to do in his practice; forming productive habits, mental wellbeing, etc. But he comes focuses so much on religious fables in examples and talks that I rather look to other sources. 


 
"Beer. Now there's a temporary solution."  Homer S.
“The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations” - David Friedman

Bondo

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6227 on: April 09, 2019, 09:01:04 PM »
So it isn't that Jordan Peterson is a transphobe who likes to deadname and deadpronoun trans people, it's that he's a free speech activist who insists on the right to deadneam and deadpronoun trans people by insisting on doing those things.

Twitter lawyer Popehat's Rule of Goats seems applicable. Even if you are CINECAST!ing a goat ironically, you are still CINECAST!ing a goat.

smirnoff

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6228 on: April 09, 2019, 09:16:29 PM »
I don't quite get the divide that Peterson has caused. He was a Clinical psychologist and University Professor that became famous due to a backlash and protest for taking an unpopular opinion that got him got labeled something he likely isn't. Maybe many were offended by his stance but it was reasonable to think that the country shouldn't be passing laws forcing compelled speech which was the larger view. Without those protests, he likely would still just be a University Professor making self-help Youtube videos.  Similar to what happened with Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College, neither likely would be well known if not for the protests that through them into a national spotlight on their campuses.

That's what people seem to miss about the outrage game on Twitter. You can only really shout down and shame people that everybody already knows about (or that feel shame). If you try and shout down a small fish like Peterson was, you're just putting more eyes on him... eyes of people who may not agree with you, and now they've found their leader. We haven't seen this yet with any anti-vax person as far as I know, but I feel like that's around the corner. We'll see a totally obscure snake oil salesman rise to become the face of the anti-vax movement because the planets aligned and twitter decided to try and take them out. Their business will boom overnight.

But I agree. At his origins I didn't find what he said outrageous.

Quote
I have seen the Peterson interview on BBC channel 4 and a few other examples where the interview is certainly trying to attribute an opinion to him that he does not have or try to trap him so that he appears to have a horrible opinion of certain groups. I don't think he is what people are trying to make out to be. I didn't listen to the last interview on JRE (I believe he has been on a few times). He also has done Waking Up with Sam Harris a number of times (now Making Sense). The first interview was extremely painful as Harris and Peterson couldn't ever come to an agreement on some basic terms or definitions. Harris refused to move to a larger discussion as he was so focused on starting with a common agreement on something like "truth"  Without agreeing on the term, he didn't believe they could discuss other topics. So most of the episode what all around agreeing on a definition of a word, an extremely frustrating conversation. They tried again a month later and had a reasonable discussion after setting some other ground rules.  But I stopped listening to those episodes with Peterson afterward since he has done quite a few live events with Harris. I just don't find him that interesting to follow as he is usually very careful to give opinions on difficult questions.

I do have an interest on what he actually writes about and what he was trained to do in his practice; forming productive habits, mental wellbeing, etc. But he comes focuses so much on religious fables in examples and talks that I rather look to other sources.

I just feel like he's really bad at fighting back. He is under attack, no doubt. And not always fairly. But he lowers himself to the level of the people arguing against him (mischaracterization, straw man arguments, whatever). And he seems to want to stoke those fires. It means a tremendous amount of money to him to keep his name alive, with all these speaking events.

So it isn't that Jordan Peterson is a transphobe who likes to deadname and deadpronoun trans people, it's that he's a free speech activist who insists on the right to deadneam and deadpronoun trans people by insisting on doing those things.

Like I said, he's a Troll. He may be other things too, but he can't help but troll.

jdc

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Re: Politics
« Reply #6229 on: April 09, 2019, 09:31:47 PM »
So it isn't that Jordan Peterson is a transphobe who likes to deadname and deadpronoun trans people, it's that he's a free speech activist who insists on the right to deadneam and deadpronoun trans people by insisting on doing those things.

Twitter lawyer Popehat's Rule of Goats seems applicable. Even if you are CINECAST!ing a goat ironically, you are still CINECAST!ing a goat.

Then Ricky Girvace qualifies as well if that is the case though I don't know if that should be a definition of transphobe. His original argument was against a law that forces somebody to use specific terms, it just happened to be around pronouns. It could have been anything else that would have gone unnoticed.

"Beer. Now there's a temporary solution."  Homer S.
“The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations” - David Friedman

 

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