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Dickeye did you ever do anything with the podcast I mixed and mastered for you? E: Tesseraction posted:- chinese room - Something libertarians love to do, and I know this because I get dozens and dozens of comments from them on my videos, is break down a counter-argument into composite parts so thoroughly that they no longer have to engage with the argument, and can simply shoot down individual phrases, but sometimes just individual words, and sometimes even jokes that didn't have any relevance to the point being made. I think that process is key to libertarian thinking. It's an allusion to 'objectivity' (coughs sarcastically) in some abstractly pseudoscientific sense, where you're breaking things down into composite parts and rebutting them piece-by-piece, but in doing this you actually lose the essence of the argument. This gets more glaring when you notice that certain topics get brushed off in single sentences. In their second post Rode just writes 'communism is a disaster and everyone knows this' and moves on to the next thing. So libertarian thinking consists of filibustering opposing points of view into oblivion by offering more and more quibbles without actually engaging with the point, combined with very specific assertions about what makes society good, which change and shift in accordance to new evidence and are usually unfalsifiable - society gets better when things are laissez-faire, oops, turns out I accidentally supported slavery there, erm, slavery doesn't count! - backed up with common knowledge - 'because if you're smart, like I'm sure I am, you already know X and I don't have to prove it or think about it more than this'. Hbomberguy fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Feb 19, 2016 |
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Feb 19, 2016 14:12
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That's actually something else I notice in comments. There's this insistence that 'the free market', again in some kind of abstract way, would make things better for everyone if it weren't for X people blocking the way with their...light criticism of portrayals of characters in video games and movies. These people, unsurprisingly, usually have a tenuous understanding of how markets actually work. Guy in my comments section, calling themselves The Crimson Fucker, is very, very upset that the new Ghostbusters are women. It is proof that there is a conspiracy to destroy things he likes. Perhaps, if he complains loudly enough in the comments of a video about cultural marxism, the writers and creatives who decided to make the film that way will become uncorrupted by feminism and make a 'normal, pure' Ghostbusters film. Presumably with all men. It doesn't help that the free market in libertarian fantasy functions like a god. If you just trust the invisible hand, everything will be okay. What? The rich are getting richer? Don't complain. Let the free market do its work. If you complain that's censorship. All lives matter. Hbomberguy fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Feb 19, 2016 |
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Feb 19, 2016 15:12
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Tesseraction posted:Wait, The Crimson Fucker? That's the fake troll name of Hellsing from the TeamFourStar parody of Hellsing. Is someone seriously using a specifically designated troll name and expecting to be taken seriously? Yup:  This is an excerpt from one of many ridiculously long comments. Whether they openly identify as libertarian or not, you can see the tacit belief that there's a way the market 'should' function - you have fans, and cannon [sic] and you 'serve' the fans and stay true to the canon. But the fans are being screwed over by 'outside forces'. Feminazis, SJWs, what have you, who are altering the canon to make it more feminist, and this is bad and dangerous and they're trying to take over our minds. The company is doing this because they're being greedy ("to make a quick buck"). The assumption is that the natural order is for fans to get exactly what they want, in accordance with what they believe is the unchangeable parts of the canon, in this case the genders of the main characters, and in doing so they give the corporation their money, and everything is fine. Unfortunately this underestimates how markets actually work in a fundamental way. Big companies are smart. They know how fandom actually works, from an economic perspective. Fans throw money at things they identify as 'fans' of, even if they're a little worried it's not going to be great. Is Crimson Fucker going to spend money to see Ghostbusters, even if only to see how bad it is (in his dumbshit opinion)? Oh, I'll bet! Additionally, properties with massive popcultural impact will sell regardless. In other words it's actually in the company's best interest to make something that will appeal to new people who might not have liked the original, or been interested in going to see it. In other words, basic economics doesn't actually serve fans when it comes to stuff that 'goes over' and becomes popular in a wider way, because they already have your money and they know it. Instead of accepting this and maybe learning to be critical of free-market economics itself (because the consumer loses out in more than just films they're fans of (which is a loving stupid problem to obsess about), but all over the place for a wide variety of reasons, planned obsolescence etc.), it's easier to pretend the company has somehow been 'corrupted' and can be fixed if you shout hard enough or something. Which, as Hawkins points out, is essentially prayer. They also denounce the greed of corporations, as if wanting to make money wasn't the entire modus operandi of a corporation.Presumably, corporations actually exist solely to do nice things for their fans.
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Feb 19, 2016 15:37
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It is, but the tacit underlying belief is that the market secretly supports them. When that turns out not to be the case, well...time to harass journalists on twitter.
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Feb 19, 2016 16:05
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I hope JRod or the other libs come back and make a new thread so we can watch the meltdown all over again. It was a run ride.
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Feb 21, 2016 19:00
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SedanChair posted:Hey I'd love to find a libertarian who learned good hand-to-hand skills but they end up learning mall ninjutsu due to the same lack of critical thinking that made them libertarians
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Feb 21, 2016 22:34
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