darq @ darq @kbin.social

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2 yr. ago

Nobody decrees who is stupid or not. That's a judgement everyone makes for themselves.

If you want to “Give people the resources to educate themselves”, you have to have a definition of stupid and not stupid that guides your choice of what is and isn’t good education; in order to “Give them the benefit of the doubt, once”, you have to have a criteria for when they’ve stopped being stupid.

No. I don't.

When I hear people talking about climate change like it doesn't exist, or has "concerns" about transgender people existence, or something like that, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are just ignorant. I'll be willing to talk to them, and maybe explain some of the misconceptions they might have.

But if they aren't willing to listen, then they... Are either stupid or malicious. But the difference isn't meaningful. They act exactly the same, either way.

They don't have to agree me thinking they are either stupid or malicious. It literally changes nothing if they disagree.

What? Quite obviously not what I said.

Alright I don't know who you are talking to, but it's very clearly not me.

Yeah I still think you are talking about something else?

Okay, sure, what about vaccines then? Hypothetically, I think the idea that we shoot ourselves full of mercury and viruses is extremely stupid. Malicious too, by your model. And also, I don’t think climate change is real, so now I think you’re stupid and you think I’m stupid and it’s he said she said and if we both think the other is being malicious we have a brawl.

In reality though some people are right and some people are wrong. The person who talks about vaccines as just "shooting ourselves full of mercury and viruses" is either stupid or malicious. What they think of me doesn't matter, because this conversation is about how I should treat this hypothetical person.

And that was the point I made. Ultimately it doesn't matter if they are stupid or malicious, I should treat them the same way. Because their intent doesn't really matter, their actions do.

The thing that fixes this is a definition of “stupid” that we both agree on that is clear, useful, and objective. What is that definition?

That is not how language or communication works...

People who are thought of as stupid, rarely agree that they are stupid. Same goes for malicious, to be honest.

I mean, people do treat those things as malicious already. So if anything returning the same treatment would be fair-play.

But more to the point, I don't think that's analogous to what the above posters was trying to say? A person "being" transgender/poor/an immigrant isn't the same as say, a person denying climate change.

And that's how I read the above commenter. There are two reasons for people to hold a climate-change-denying view, ignorance and malice. Ignorance can be met with education. But if a person begins holding onto their ignorance, their actions are fundamentally indistinguishable from malice.

I assumed it was a comment about the tactics we decide to employ when dealing with people. And at a certain point, if a person is stupid or if they're malicious... Well it sorta does not matter.

At some point, does it matter?

Give people the resources to educate themselves. Give them the benefit of the doubt, once. But after that? Screw 'em. Move on without 'em.

Propaganda requires intent.

And editorial choice clears the bar for intent.

Admittedly I did not pick the article a part, but I saw no tell-tale signs of propaganda. It was primarily interviews with doctors. I saw no signs of manipulative wording, attempts at persuasion, or unsupported opinions of the writer.

You are ignoring what I'm saying. You are trying to look at a single article for evidence of propaganda. But that isn't the whole picture.

A news desk picks what articles that they publish. If they publish a whole bunch of articles saying "the average case of covid has become more mild" that is furthering a specific viewpoint. If they instead publish articles about "people are still suffering from long-covid", that is furthering a different viewpoint.

And crucially, both "the average case of covid has become more mild" and "people are still suffering from long-covid" can be true. Both types of articles can be written with absolutely zero bias, and still serve as propaganda.

No. Not a synonym. But the line between news and propaganda is not clear-cut. Especially in the case of a self-contained article. A news outlet may serve as a source of propaganda, based on the editorial decisions they make. The individual articles are still news, even as they serve as propaganda for their audience.

The choice of what to publish at all, is intent. News outlets are not just firehoses of all facts. They choose what to publish.

There is no need for the article to be "bent" in any way.

I didn't say it did? I didn't even say that propaganda is universally bad?

Oh sod off then, dickhead.

I think you might be using too broad a definition of propaganda.

Nah.

The result of influencing opinion does not make something propaganda. Propaganda needs some intent to persuade or push an agenda.

A bar this article very easily clears. What to publish is a choice. A choice was made to publish this article, with obvious influence on opinion and action.

The article might be propaganda, largely that depends on the motivations for writing and publishing it. But the fact that the content of the article might change people’s opinions does not make it propaganda.

Nah. Intent a nonsense metric. We can bicker forever about intent. Because we cannot know anyone's mind.

Using intent as a metric gives a lot of propaganda a free pass. Because we can't prove intent.

This article is a bit of propaganda though. That doesn't mean it isn't true or anything. But running an article in the news about how much milder the disease is, is still going to have an effect on how people respond to it.

Removing bigotry is the opposite of an echo chamber, really. Diverse opinions flourish when people with diverse experiences feel comfortable sharing their views.

Bigotry is a very mono-faceted opinion. It is basically always just a derivation of "Those people, who are different, are [inferior|dangerous|the cause of our problems|etc.]". And bigotry makes people feel uncomfortable.

So by removing a single viewpoint, you encourage the discussion of many more viewpoints. Alternatively, when you tolerate bigotry, the only people who stick around are the people to whom that bigotry is tolerable. There's a reason platforms become cesspools when they refuse to take out the trash.

I can't really relate? At least on my desktop. The software manager integrates with Flatpaks and upgrades them at the same time.

For most apps I'm going to prefer the usual way of doing things. But there are some apps that I actually kinda prefer as Flatpaks. Like Calibre I'm happy to install as a Flatpak. The updates are faster and it doesn't add a whole host of dependencies that only it uses to my system.

,"Identity politics" in this case meaning "trans and non-binary people exist and are trans or non-binary respectively".

The removal of the mod shows that activist fiat is necessary to present the illusion that people buy into gender ideology

Bullcrap. It shows nothing of the sort. It shows nothing more than that NexusMods doesn't feel like hosting assholes.

No, sorry, I'm not willing to play your stupid little word game where you try to semantically differentiate a demographic from the "ideology" that that demographic meaningfully exists and should have the right to pursue happiness in society.

The set of ideas that you refer to includes the ideas that transgender people exist as transgender, and non-binary people exist as non-binary.

Yes. Existence.

Trans people exist. Non-binary people exist. And they exist in ways that people refer to as "woke garbage".

Well, sure. Lots of people don't want woke garbage in their games.

"Woke garbage" being things like "the existence of a type of people I think should not exist".

No, there is no difference.

Your previous comments implied that there was a difference in type between the inclusion of women or people of colour, and the inclusion of trans of non-binary people.

There is a difference in magnitude of the controversy. But not a difference in type. Something can be more or less controversial, but it's still the same type of controversy.