sfpeterm's recent activity

  1. Comment on After Charlottesville, solving the problem of angry men: What does healthy masculinity look like? in ~life.men

    sfpeterm
    Link Parent
    Reading your comments again, I think I'm likely reading more into what you wrote than you intended, so sorry about that. I'll list what you said that gave me that impression, though. None of these...

    Reading your comments again, I think I'm likely reading more into what you wrote than you intended, so sorry about that. I'll list what you said that gave me that impression, though.

    There's a distinct difference between angry and hateful. You can be angry without being hateful. Perpetuating violence as a valid response to anger is not an appropriate way to handle things. Violence is not a valid response to, well, anything - all it does is cause more violence.

    I admire someone who's able to do something without violence because it's absolutely the more difficult path. But it is the right path.

    We know historically that violence usually leads to more violence and suppression usually leads to rebellion which often leads to war.

    None of these are particularly harsh statements, but combined they bring to mind the sort of aloof condescension I associate with "white moderates" as described by MLK. I think the worst offender is talking about the "right path," as it clearly implies that the alternative is the wrong path, and later praising MLK while conspicuously avoiding mention of Malcom X implies that activists like him were following the aforementioned wrong path.

    3 votes

  2. Comment on After Charlottesville, solving the problem of angry men: What does healthy masculinity look like? in ~life.men

    sfpeterm
    Link Parent
    It's disingenuous to say that "MLK and Gandhi are real" while ignoring the entire segment of his argument stating that they succeeded due to the backing of a violent movement. I'm not sure that...

    MLK and Gandhi are real.

    It's disingenuous to say that "MLK and Gandhi are real" while ignoring the entire segment of his argument stating that they succeeded due to the backing of a violent movement. I'm not sure that he's correct about that—while it's true that movements from American civil rights to women's suffrage all had violent counterparts, correlation does not imply causation—but there's an argument there, and I also think it's dismissive to oppressed peoples to say that "I admire someone who's able to do something without violence because it's absolutely the more difficult path. But it is the right path." It's easy to say that from a position of power, but when you are actively being oppressed it's a lot harder to take the "more difficult path." For this reason, while I don't think I'll ever condone a violent movement, I find it incredibly hard to condemn violence from any oppressed peoples.

    I should note that I absolutely don't agree with the idea that poor white males are as discriminated against as people of color, or women, or LGBT individuals. I think the bulk of the attitude is from the feeling that, as is commonly stated, equality feels like oppression to the oppressor. But your comment criticized rights movements well outside of the scope of the OP so I felt the need to make a comment.

    6 votes

  3. Comment on What are peoples thoughts on NPR giving equal platforms to everyone? in ~talk

    sfpeterm
    Link Parent
    Unfortunately, this isn't as true as it seems. There are a few common techniques people can use to make an invalid argument seem legitimate, and they are often significantly harder to dismiss than...

    It's easy to debunk people who are factually incorrect, like anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers.

    Unfortunately, this isn't as true as it seems. There are a few common techniques people can use to make an invalid argument seem legitimate, and they are often significantly harder to dismiss than they are to initiate.

    1. By repeatedly mentioning obscure or minor statistics, they force the interviewer to either call them out and ask for a source—repeatedly, every time they say something, and then verify it on air—which grinds any conversation to a halt and makes the interviewer sound like they are avoiding a debate.
    2. By working around a central point by making tangential remarks but never outright stating it, they force the interviewer to either respond to the implied point (in which case they can simply say that they "never said that" or that they're "misrepresenting their point") or let it stand, in which case some percentage of the audience will believe that the implied point has been accepted.
    3. By making vague or obscure claims that seem potentially plausible and then citing a large body of work such as a book, they suggest that they are arguing from a position of authority—not only because their arguments are cited, but because they have presumably read the entire text they are citing from. This essentially halts any chance at refutation, unless the interviewer has already read the same work, as there is no chance that they will read through an entire book on air. Furthermore, the claim might not even be supported by the cited source, but very few people will bother to look through such a large source to verify the information.

    It is easy to argue in bad faith. Public debate is not conducive to anything but posturing, as should be obvious to anyone who has watched a political debate. Effectively arguing in real time against even a completely unfounded idea requires an immense amount of knowledge about the field, and if ideas are presented on air and not refuted immediately they will influence the opinions of some viewers.

    If you doubt my claims about how difficult it is to argue against even blatantly false ideas, look into the legal history of Holocaust denial. Deniers question a huge number of minute details which may seem odd to laymen about architecture or similar things, and it takes an incredible amount of research to disprove every single one of those claims. If even one is left unanswered, however, you get people who think that "well, if they got that wrong, what else might be?" The fetishization of "logical thought" and excessive skepticism provides plenty of footholds for propaganda.

    6 votes

  4. Comment on Giving up on privacy in ~talk

    sfpeterm
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    This is an interesting perspective that I have to say I’ve never heard before, but I honestly think I might disagree with it more than almost anything I’ve ever read. From my perspective, ignoring...

    This is an interesting perspective that I have to say I’ve never heard before, but I honestly think I might disagree with it more than almost anything I’ve ever read. From my perspective, ignoring technical specifics (I’m nowhere near qualified to talk about transfer protocols or anything like that), the Internet could almost be argued as the ultimate step in the development of human society at least until we’re a spacefaring species. I see the various methods of disseminating and preserving information we’ve developed throughout history as the keys to our evolution as a society, all the way from living in communities so we can learn from our elders to the printing press, and the internet allows for near-instantaneous transfer of information across the entire planet while also allowing for decentralized data preservation. I can’t imagine that there is any possibility humanity will ever willingly go back to relying on slow communications based on geographical distance.

    2 votes

  5. Comment on Are loot boxes part of the video game or illegal gambling? in ~games

    sfpeterm
    Link Parent
    I agree that situations where the prizes can’t be sold are different, but I think that they’re still fairly clearly predatory. The question then is whether the level of gambling is acceptable, and...

    I agree that situations where the prizes can’t be sold are different, but I think that they’re still fairly clearly predatory. The question then is whether the level of gambling is acceptable, and unfortunately based on real-life examples like claw machines which are similarly marketed to children I suspect that they’re perfectly legal. I’m far from a lawyer, though.

    As for the other issue of when prizes can be sold, I’m coming to the opinion that any real-money secondary markets in video games should cause the game to be age-restricted. Even in cases with no obvious gambling aspect there are almost always random events leading to the purchases, and from what I remember it seems like these markets almost never have a positive effect on gameplay. Again, though, I doubt they could be argued to be illegal except in the cases where outright gambling and a secondary market are combined.

    1 vote

  6. Comment on Should tech companies everywhere take a militant stand re: piracy? in ~tech

    sfpeterm
    Link Parent
    While I agree that the prevalence of digital media has made much of the past music industry irrelevant, we are well into the digital era by now, and even as streaming makes up the bulk of music...

    While I agree that the prevalence of digital media has made much of the past music industry irrelevant, we are well into the digital era by now, and even as streaming makes up the bulk of music consumption artists continue to sign to labels. Most widely publicized "independent artists" are already-succesful musicians who make deals directly with service providers like Apple; popular music (read: money-making music) is still generally produced with the benefits of a label. The market is shifting and has been shifting for years, but it still seems that labels provide a real benefit in handling distribution and advertising, and they need to be paid just as much as the artist. Furthermore, you as a consumer have no way of knowing exactly who is benefiting from residuals; a producer, for example, might be receiving half a percent and lose out on money every time someone pirates music and justifies it by saying "they'll go to a show."

    If an artist wants to receive the lion's share of profit, there are a multitude of options available ranging from bandcamp to distrokid, and if they're choosing to sign to a label it's because they see a benefit to it. I'm not claiming that labels are some sort of misunderstood underdog or anything, and I'm in favor of self-publishing, but I strongly dislike the common sentiment that it's acceptable to pay nobody but the person who's name is on the cover of the album and claim moral superiority at the same time.

    1 vote