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Cake day: June 8th, 2024

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  • “As a German, I find myself groaning when I see this discussion come up. Conspiracy theorists are not rational. If fascists could be swayed by facts and reason, they would not believe what even the most minor bit of fact checking would disprove. Allowing them to spew their nonsense freely or join a coalition won’t disabuse them of their notions; it will help them seek and build echo-chambers and become further radicalized.We see the echo chamber effect on every online platform. Whether or not the holocaust happened, for example, is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact. You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. Making up your own facts is called lying. And when your lies are so malicious and harmful that they actually pose a threat to other people or the nation itself, then yes, that should absolutely be punishable. It’s no different than slander or libel.

    “What value is there to allowing holocaust denial? Serious question. And I don’t mean appealing to the slippery slope of how it leads to other worse prohibitions. There’s a lot of arguing for Free Speech for its own sake - that Free Speech is the highest virtue in and of itself that must never, ever be compromised, for any reason, and that this should be self-evident. But I ask, what’s the harm in not allowing holocaust denial, specifically? What is the benefit in allowing it? There is none. Nothing good will ever come out of someone spewing holocaust denial. Ever. You won’t get a thoughtful debate beneficial to both parties. They’re wrong, simple as that. The “best” outcome you’ll get out of it is that you can convince a denier or someone on the fence that they’re wrong. Great. The best outcome involves suppressing it. There are, however, a hell of a lot potentially bad consequences in that their stupidity can infect others and shift the Overton window their way.

    “The reason that the majority of modern Germans look at the Nazi flag and feel nothing but revulsion whereas a sizable portion of US southerners actually fly the confederate flag and defend it (Heritage, not hate, or It was about states’ rights, not slavery, or Slaves weren’t treated so bad) is that Germans were forbidden from telling each other comforting lies about their past."

    — quote I stole from unknown redditor











  • I don’t believe all pointless killing is bad

    In the example you gave, the plant killing wasn’t “pointless” (meaning unjustified). If a person is pulling up weeds because they like how things look without the weeds, that’s potentially justifiable.

    A reason is a fact that counts in favor of some belief or course of action. The reason that you like something could be such a fact. But the reason that it might cause suffering or end an innocent life would be a countervailing fact. Human beings are capable of rational judgement. We do this all the time in science, and we have to assume that our judgements aren’t arbitrary, or we descend into nihilism, which would undermine your capacity even for logic (whose axiomatic structure is also based on intuitions).

    This is why nihilism is not a position any serious philosopher defends. It’s self undermining. You would need to reason your way to the conclusion that nihilism is true in order to conclude that reasoning is impossible.

    You understand an intuitive belief can exist for all of those things right? (Nationality, race, speciation.)

    The meaning of the word “intuition” in philosophy is a bit different. It’s an intellectual given, part of a web of belief that would ideally be free of contradictions. Your belief that 1+1=2 is an intuition.

    We don’t think of people as having an “intellectual given” that being a different nationality is morally relevant. We think of them as having a bias (or a prejudice), because the whole concept of a nationality is made up, and any intellectual examination of nationalism will reveal it’s not an intellectually coherent category.

    Even if it were, it would be a very weak intuition, because the whole concept of nationality is made up. Race and speciation are like that. We made up these categories out of convenience and they have no real meaning.

    Suffering is not made up. The goodness of life is not made up. How do I know that? Because I have suffered and I have lived. I am in direct contact with these phenomena.