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Cake day: June 23rd, 2025

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  • You are subjective in your perception of reality and therefore what you perceive as reality isn’t necessarily going to coincide with the perception of reality of other people so pretending that your perception is the one true set of relevant perceived truths is just your bias. So when you say you want people to make arguments based in reality, you’re only referring to your own perception, not the greater picture.

    But even this argument is irrelevant. Your defensiveness to every comment in this thread indicates that you’re not open to criticism, you’re possibly looking for an argument rather than other perspectives, and you’re likely disinclined to change your perspective based on feedback because you’re not asking questions, only arguing with responses.


  • Some particular things being “true” is not some absolute and limited set of facts that encompasses all relevant information about any given topic. You can know a lot about the truth of a particular issue but be completely unaware of a greater context that makes that knowledge moot or even detrimental to focus on in neglect of the greater picture. Your desire for people to believe true things is actually silly because observed patterns would indicate that they likely won’t. But even more, they’ll believe their own “true things,” the truths or “truths” that they choose to focus on and value. Shouting like Willy Loman’s wife will never get the attention you want. And it’s entirely possible that your focus is dictated by your own bias because you don’t want to accept valid criticism of something you value.




  • People already know that people aren’t equal in skills or talents or abilities. You’re not really saying anything new there. But you are saying that people should be treated inequally by virtue of undefined criteria, and that necessarily requires someone to make a judgment call as to what is valuable and what is not. You’re not following your assertions through to their logical conclusions. Hypotheticals are useful for evaluating proposals to see if the proposals are practical or humane or achievable. If you aren’t sure how your proposal would play out, you’re admitting you haven’t thought it through enough. There isn’t much value in a raw concept with no feasibility.


  • you being better at math will make you favored for the accounting job

    This isn’t always the way it shakes out because there are more factors than skill or merit that determine who has what position. You might be better at math, but you’re also better at cooking, so you get a job as a chef and someone who is worse at math is your accountant, but since it’s their job, they know the accounting laws that apply to your business better.

    There isn’t some grand artificial intelligence with a universal database that has categorized all people and their skillsets such that we could easily identify who is better than anyone else at something and equitably apportion those people to those positions and doing so would violate individual freedoms.

    What if you’re better at math, but you find being an accountant sucks and you become an artist instead? Should you be treated worse just because you didn’t choose to be an accountant?

    Many determinations of “better” will be highly subjective, so it’ll just come down to what the people currently in charge think is of value, and that’s a recipe for unethical discrimination. Sure, we can determine who can run faster, but there’s not an easy measurement for who is a more deserving person if there are limited resources to apportion.




  • Is there a particular declaration of equality that you’re arguing against? I don’t know that I encounter a lot of people who would disagree with your assertion that we’re not equal in ability or traits. That likely seems obvious to a lot of people. When equality is spoken of, I usually find that it’s addressed as an ideal relating to treatment and opportunity. Some people espouse that society should treat all people equally, in the idea that we all have the same human rights, that we all have the most commons needs, we’re all born and die, etc. And treating each other equally is a generally straightforward way to navigate human relationships.

    If you focus on the idea that we’re all different as the basis for a value system rather than a factual observation that informs your perceptions, that might lead to some people arguing that being different in some ways means you’re “better” as a person and should be treated better and have more rights or privileges or freedoms over other people.

    If we’re categorizing people based on their top speed, yes, an Olympic athlete is likely “better” in that category than an obese guy who doesn’t get much or any exercise. But that category may not be relevant to many people outside of sports and athletic competitions and being better in that category doesn’t make you a better person in general. A fast runner could also beat their spouse or murder people or kick puppies or just generally be a sociopath. And an obese person who doesn’t get much exercise could be a volunteer worker at a children’s cancer ward. So “better” in some categories doesn’t mean “better” over all or in categories that others might value.

    Have you read Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut? It’s a dystopian short story about a future in which the government attempts to make everyone equal by handicapping people with above average abilities. There’s also a decent movie adaptation called 2081.

    https://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html

    https://www.teaching2081.org/

    It’s a good story, but it’s arguing against something that as a society, we don’t seem even close to being in danger of. We have large swaths of the population who don’t want people to be equal or perceived as equal and they’re actively pursuing policies that treat people inequally, especially in regard to civil and human rights.



  • Please read my comment until the end because I am addressing every thing you said.

    Not coherently or relevantly. “Please read all the nonsense.”

    Wrong. Watch this video and check the list of people who voted against it:

    I’m not clicking any link you provide. I don’t trust you. And I’m not clicking on X links because you have to sign in to see full content and I don’t support fascists like Musk.

    You can check the voting history of the bill (not the amendment). She voted against the bill. If you assert otherwise, you’re admitting you’re incapable of searching the Internet for the vote and therefore aren’t worth discussing the topic with.

    She owns her political career to Israeli government businessmen with strong ties to AIPAC. She and her family are also Jewish.

    This is some yarn on the corkboard conspiracy theorism with a sprinkling of racism thrown in. You’re ignoring a lot of nuance and context. Religiously, she’s Catholic. Genetically, she’s only partially Jewish and primarily Latino/Puerto Rican. I might have German heritage but you’d be remiss to accuse me of siding with Trump because he also has German heritage. Shared DNA isn’t a smoking gun.

    I’m going to skip the rest of this so you can wipe the froth from your lips and reread what you wrote. It’ll help if you take the Klan hood off first.

    Barack Hussain Obama

    Obama didn’t do enough of what I wanted and wasn’t a leftist, but the only people who I ever see use his middle name are conservatives dog whistling their racism.

    How dumb are Americans to still fall for the same fucking trick

    You seem really confused. There is no functionally left American option and there hasn’t been throughout the time you’re referencing. AOC is left leaning at most and not enough for my preferences. Obama and Biden were centrists and corporate Democrats. But you vote for the least worst option because otherwise you get 2016 and 2024 results and then you get genocide of undocumented immigrants here in the US.

    You’re missing the point though. Vilifying AOC and lying about something she didn’t do (she literally, factually, actually, provably voted against the bill to fund Israel) isn’t going to do anything useful to push the US further left. Why are you functionally giving ammunition to conservatives to continue to remain in power and push further right? Are you an accelerationist or just don’t understand how politics works?

    Also, when you ask how dumb Americans, are you not including yourself? If you’re not an American, it means you can’t vote or legally influence an election in a meaningful way, so you’re just wasting your time and mine. I hope it made you feel good. Happy to provide you with the chance for hollow senses of accomplishment and pride.







  • Iron Dome protects Israel as it invades its neighbours and commits a genocide. It’s that simple.

    No, it protects Israel regardless of whether Israel is committing genocide. But all of that is beside the point.

    You are defending a vote against stripping iron dome funding,

    I’m not defending the vote so much as pointing out that it was a meaningless vote. There’s nothing to defend or attack because the amendment is a non-issue. It was a meaningless political stunt by a racist conspiracy theorist.

    accusing others of being in favour of killing civilians

    Favour? As in British or Australian English? You’re not an American voter? This seems like a pointless discussion then.

    whilst trying to claim you also don’t support funding Israel.

    I don’t support funding for Israel. It’s an apartheid state and has committed genocidal war crimes.

    You can’t have it both ways.

    You can if you see the nuance and not just look at everything like it’s just so simple based on your first gut reaction.

    You support killing of civilians with your own stupid fucking rhetoric,

    No, I don’t. Quote me where I said I want civilians killed.

    but you want to dance around the issue and pretend you aren’t doing what you are in fact doing.

    You’re getting caught up in side issues. The issue is AOC voted against funding genocide in Israel. People are claiming she funded genocide by Israel. That is a provably false claim. It is a lie. Arguing over the amendment vote that didn’t matter is a distraction.

    You are genuinely a fucking moron. I said nothing about Dresden or dropping nukes.

    You were discussing the deaths of civilians. Those are historical events relevant to that discussion. Also, there’s no need for the ad hominems and name-calling.

    You are literally advocating for sending AA guns to Hitler by equating and reducing all forms of military response as being one and the same as mass murder of civilians to suggest it’s legitimate to support funding for the Iron Dome as “defensive”.

    I’m literally not. I was responding to your meaningless points that don’t matter because you brought them up, but you haven’t thought through all the implications. AA guns shoot down planes that have human beings in them. They aren’t the same as missiles that only shoot down other missiles.

    All of these discussions about AA guns and Russian civilians are just bad analogies that ignore the context and the nuance. We can continue to discuss them if you like, but they have no bearing on whether the amendment vote was ever possibly going to have any functional or practical effect whatsoever.

    If MTG brought up an amendment that said everyone gets to live forever and AOC voted against it, would you claim AOC is pro-death or would you recognize that MTG’s proposal was a useless measure that shouldn’t be taken seriously?

    But honestly, I don’t care. If you’re not an American voter, as I suspect you aren’t, there’s no value in convincing you of anything.