rentar42

Do that two more times after you’ve died and you might have a shot!

That’s probably not a popular opinion here, but: parents do not have a right to their child. If the child was cool with this, then that is the important part (and from what I read I’d guess he would be).

Let’s posit it the other way around: a deeply religious pair of parents raises a kid that ends up being strongly anti-religion and comes to some “fame” due to that. Would you describe those celebrating that kid as “cunts” as well? And if not: why?

And no, I’m not religious myself and think a lot of that stuff is stupid and much of it is dangerous, but “those parents deserve better” is an argument that’s used in exactly the opposite way in other areas: to oppress kids that don’t “submit to the norm” that their parents think are best.

At a quick, manual count the roman catholic church has canonized about 40 new saints since 2000. Not all those other fuckers are in the distant past ;-)

I hear you, but I still think that the idea of the church and saints hasn’t gotten any worse: it’s “just” that the rest of the world has moved on when they haven’t (which is basically their founding principle).

Or put differently: saints haven’t gotten stupider, but our standards have changed.

Edit: I have to put my own point into relation: the only saints that actually lived in the 21st century from that list seem to be a pope and 21 IS beheading victims, so yeah, even among those recently canonized saints a huge chunk has bean dead for 100+ years.

But is it any more bullshit than any other saint? I don’t think it is.

He’s already #blessed since 2020, by the catholic church. That’s a precondition to becoming a saint.

I think the equivalent would be to let the fox guard the hen house.

And no, it’s not about having a scapegoat, it’s about putting exactly the wrong person with … let’s say “misaligned incentives” into some position (usually one of power).

That’s a huge part of the reason why it took so long to put out that official classification: They made sure that their classification would hold up in court. No one is served by getting it in a bit earlier, just for it to be thrown out at the first level of court, because someone got a bit lazy on collecting all the evidence and writing up a thorough report.

That’s oversimplifying it. There’s a difference between a politician being untruthful of what they promise or some corporation doing some bullshit PR about how much they love cause X and coordinated fake news campaigns to stoke anger and emotions to undermine functioning systems.

The former have to at least try to present with a straight face and can be called on their lies a few month down the line.

The later can make up all manner of bullshit and don’t have to hold back, because they have no “public face” other than that piece of fake news. And they don’t have to be able to stand up to any amount of journalistic scrutiny because as soon as enough people have read it, it’s had its effect: it doesn’t matter if it’s all proven to be made up after the fact, because the emotions that the initial reaction raised are the whole point: they are not trying to convince anyone about any facts, all they want is to influence emotions and behaviors.

The problem with your attitude is …

No. That’s your problem with my attitude.

“Free speech” absolutists don’t convince me with their hypotheticals.

Believe it or not: absolute free speech is not the end goal and not as valuable as you all believe.

Forbidding some kind of speech can be okay.

Because not forbidding it creates an awful lot of very real and very current pain. Somehow the theoretical pain that a similar law could create is more important for your argument, than the real and avoidable pain thatthis law is attempting to prevent.

but e.g. American free speech would be nonexistent

And I say that the specific American flavor of free speech is not very valuable at all.

Even if the state apparatus is bloated and needs to be improved, simply firing 10% of your workforce isn’t going to magically improve things (especially when done so quickly). You basically can’t know if you fire useful people or bloat. And for each “unnecessary” person you fire you also fire someone who was the only one in their department understanding their job and doing their actual work.

Don’t you have it exactly the wrong way around?

Also, since the hate itself is already irrational, any additional “quirks” in that hate shouldn’t be surprising anyone.

If the only thing I knew about a given law is that those three complained about it I would immediately and wholeheartedly support and endorse that law. It’s probably awesome and badly needed.

I understand your argument and there’s some truth to it. But on the other hand exactly these kinds of decisions (joining/leaving the EU/NATO/…) have an incredibly strong possible effect, so them being done only based on the decisions of some politicians that were elected on some promises possibly quite unrelated to that decision has its own set of problems.

Somewhere a monkey paw finger curls and you’re moved to the timeline where the world is in a nuclear winter …

I honestly have no real opinion on this (yet), as I don’t know if that would help or not.

But 90% of all policy proposals from the UK end up being terrible ideas, so I’ll just assume this is stupid.

I find that to be a tricky thought experiment.

Can you run a country in a way that peppers the general population with “all is well” propaganda thoroughly and still manages to capture all the necessary information to make properly informed decisions at some high level?

You’d need some “elite” layer of people who get to see unfiltered, honest information, but how would you even collect that information if even local, low-level government actors are subject to (and meant to believe) the propaganda?

Basically what I’m asking is: if I ignored moral concerns, is there a world where keeping the majority ignorant could actually lead to more efficiency than letting knowledge of the state of things spread?

The Ministry of Truth will make sure those facts are well-documented.

Fun fact: that movie is in fact way less known in Austria than elsewhere. Fun fact: I once saw Michael Moore talk in Vienna and he made some “Sound of Music” joke/reference and the reaction by the audience was … crickets. No one knew what he talked about.

Mind me asking where that was? Highschool/Sound of Music makes me guess the US. And what decade roughly?

If it was the US then I’m impressed how successful that myth was communicated outside of Austria. I always thought that was mostly our own delusion.

Honestly I don’t believe “Hitler was an Austrian” is as important for Austria to come to terms with as it is to accept/finally internalize that Austria wasn’t “the first victim”, but to a large degree welcomed the Anschluss (not 100%, obviously, but quite a big majority).