Politics thread (USA Elections 2016) - Page 343

On June 24 2023 01:57 Baalim wrote: I've never seen an expert lose against a crazy idiot ever, could you please prive examples? You mentioned that Medhi Hassan was doing fine until he admitted to believing in flying horses LOL, well yes thats precisely how you defeat idiots in debates, RFK seems to be against ALL vaccines not just the Covid one, so it will be easy to destroy him regarding vaccines everyone has and acknowledges as good. I dont know if they debate Michu Kaku but I've seen debates with Deepak Chopra when he is absolutely embarassed by actual phycisists, to the point where the audience laugh at Chopra. Debate isn't perfect but its 100 times better than to publicly run away from it, and claim they are conspiracy theorists that should be censored cementing the idea into anybody who is remotely suspicious of vaccines that their fears were right, people aren't going to read scientific journals and unlike with physics, you actually need the compliance regarding vaccination, and Dr Hotez probably has done much harm to the adoption of vaccination with this than anything positive he has done in his career.

I went and watched a debate with Kaku and 2 real physicists. I've changed my mind a bit as it seemed productive. I guess it depends on how the debate is carried out. On political topics, it often seems like a waste of time from the sample size i've encountered. I watched Dershowitz debate Chomsky a while ago and I'm not sure if the audience learned anything from that one, I couldn't make it to the end. I doubt anyone could decide who was correct on that debate unless they were familiar with israel-palestine conflict, and no one was claiming that flying horses existed.

Usually when I want to know if someone's a fraud, and I don't know anything about the topic, I just go read what other experts are saying about their work. That's my approximation heuristic for evaluating the truth. Doesn't always work..

On July 07 2023 06:25 Liquid`Drone wrote: Did you read the article though? Literal quote: the bill has come under fire from the left (...). The progressives are the ones opposing it.

Yes i did, in fact I said "the progressives" to not mention the left since left center and right obv oppose this, as Stroggoz said they are the formely-known-as: The neoliberals, but never truly spoused liberal values and now that liberalism is boomer stuff, they wear the progressive costume hanging the trans+POC flag in the white house they obv don't believe in any of it, I don't even know how to call them without sounding like Alex Jones, the swamp, the globalist, the vampiric lizards.

On July 06 2023 21:50 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On July 06 2023 09:37 blackjacki2 wrote: Macron threatened to shut down the social media sites in France. You know, for safety. Biden's going to appeal a federal court ruling that no longer allows the government to coordinate with social media on which posts to censor as minsinformation The Congressional Progressive Caucus is renewing it's efforts to pass legislation to add 4 new supreme court justices to outnumber the 6 conservative justices on the court Of course we also remember Trudeau last year freezing the bank accounts of people affiliated with the trucker protests Shutting down social media sites, censoring public posts as misinformation, packing courts, freezing bank accounts... it's all a small price to pay to make sure the fascists don't get elected! https://myind.net/Home/viewArticle/fr...y-on-suspects-through-digital-devices Progressives have become extremely authoritarian in the past few years.

(From article):

"We're far away from the totalitarianism of '1984'," George Orwell's novel about a society under total surveillance, Dupond-Moretti said.

What they are suggesting in the article is not far off 1984 and not there yet. All gadgets surveilled including audio from computer is 1984 as far as I am concerned. The media is worse than 1984. Social media is even worse than that.

But, whatever. I am pretty certain this surveillance already occurs in the USA they just don't talk about it in the open. The CIA / NSA is certainly not discussing this stuff in open forums.

On July 07 2023 20:36 Stroggoz wrote: Show nested quote + On June 24 2023 01:57 Baalim wrote: I've never seen an expert lose against a crazy idiot ever, could you please prive examples? You mentioned that Medhi Hassan was doing fine until he admitted to believing in flying horses LOL, well yes thats precisely how you defeat idiots in debates, RFK seems to be against ALL vaccines not just the Covid one, so it will be easy to destroy him regarding vaccines everyone has and acknowledges as good. I dont know if they debate Michu Kaku but I've seen debates with Deepak Chopra when he is absolutely embarassed by actual phycisists, to the point where the audience laugh at Chopra. Debate isn't perfect but its 100 times better than to publicly run away from it, and claim they are conspiracy theorists that should be censored cementing the idea into anybody who is remotely suspicious of vaccines that their fears were right, people aren't going to read scientific journals and unlike with physics, you actually need the compliance regarding vaccination, and Dr Hotez probably has done much harm to the adoption of vaccination with this than anything positive he has done in his career. I went and watched a debate with Kaku and 2 real physicists. I've changed my mind a bit as it seemed productive. I guess it depends on how the debate is carried out. On political topics, it often seems like a waste of time from the sample size i've encountered. I watched Dershowitz debate Chomsky a while ago and I'm not sure if the audience learned anything from that one, I couldn't make it to the end. I doubt anyone could decide who was correct on that debate unless they were familiar with israel-palestine conflict, and no one was claiming that flying horses existed. Usually when I want to know if someone's a fraud, and I don't know anything about the topic, I just go read what other experts are saying about their work. That's my approximation heuristic for evaluating the truth. Doesn't always work..

How do you find the "esteemedest" experts though?

On July 08 2023 03:46 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On July 07 2023 06:25 Liquid`Drone wrote: Did you read the article though? Literal quote: the bill has come under fire from the left (...). The progressives are the ones opposing it. Yes i did, in fact I said "the progressives" to not mention the left since left center and right obv oppose this, as Stroggoz said they are the formely-known-as: The neoliberals, but never truly spoused liberal values and now that liberalism is boomer stuff, they wear the progressive costume hanging the trans+POC flag in the white house they obv don't believe in any of it, I don't even know how to call them without sounding like Alex Jones, the swamp, the globalist, the vampiric lizards.

I used to hang out a lot in leftist circles. I don't think any of them would call themselves progressives besides the DSA people and the Bernie people which had a lot of crossover. It's like if you call me a progressive I go "well, yeah, but..."

It's not as bad as calling someone on the further left a "liberal" but most of these people have romanticized views of revolution or are simply anti-capitalist and depressed with no solutions so step by step "liberal" solutions are not going to be there thing really.

Neoliberal maybe a tricky thing too. If someone has been in power in the West since Thatcher and Reagan they are a neoliberal basically. Didn't Obama kill more civilians with drones than any US President? Classic Neoliberal move. Clinton signed the NAFTA agreement. These were not progressives.

The globalists and vampiric lizards is not far off. I heard Epstein fucked Biden in the ass wearing 10 point moose antlers to sign the deal on the presidential run. Then Biden raped 10 Epstein sex workers yelling at them to call him The Big Guy.

Baal (and others),

What are the chances that there is 0 corruption involving Biden / Hunter and Ukraine / China?

I think that is what fucks the democrats up. Go through all this drama arresting Trump for something probably every president is guilty of and cover up what to me looks like obvious corruption with Biden. I guess They have no other options it seems. Fucking crazy world. There is no actual fairness or justice in the world just crazy apes running amok.

Mostly all american presidents are to some degree corrupt. Personal impression is that Carter and Obama were less guilty of this, if we look at the past 50 years, and that Trump is the most guilty of all. So it ends up not really being that big of a deal when comparing different candidates (but still notions like 'vote Trump to combat corruption' ends up being a ludicrous idea')

I remember my wife lived in Malaysia for 4 months and there was a scandal involving the sitting president at the time, where he had embezzled like $2 billion or something, enough money to actually negatively influence the country's economy. When she asked people about it they just shrugged and went 'still better than the previous guy'. Myself I was in Russia in 2018 and I asked my russian friends how they felt about the state of russian politics. They laughed and said they didn't care. I pressed the issue saying I teach this stuff and I'm just genuinely curious, and then mentioned how in the west, Putin is portrayed as this guy who kills critical journalists and stuff like that. The answer to that was, yeah, it's true, we all know about that. But we don't care.

If you're used to Stalin, then Khrushchev and Brezhnev look really good. If you're used to the Soviet Union, 2018 Putin looks good. (I think if I asked the same question today, they wouldn't laugh and say they don't care, but at the same time, they might be less willing to be candid.) If you're used to all your politicians being corrupt, it stops being a decisive factor - although successfully selling yourself as non-corrupt can be a winning point.

Also I guess the terminology is a bit iffy. Tbh I've never really used the word progressive to describe myself. I think it's a loaded word without much actual political meaning. In Norway the 'progress party' is the most right wing party in government. I think it's obvious that nearly everybody considers themselves progressive as opposed to regressive, although I can understand the phrase when juxtaposed with 'conservative', in a sense. However, I do think as it exists and is used, it's used to describe a political movement significantly left of Macron, and distinctly different from 'liberal'. (You can say that the Democratic party consists of two wings - the progressive and the liberal, where Sanders would be part of the progressive wing and Clinton, Biden and most of the heavy hitters are liberals.)

Adding to the confusion, 'liberal' kinda means something else in Europe from what it means in the US, in Europe, the liberals are generally right-of-center, favoring tax reductions and more privatization, coupled with socially liberal policies. In the US, the liberals are in opposition to the republicans rather than to social democrats, so they actually end up favoring higher taxes and more government spending.

The terms 'far right' or 'right wing' are also slightly losing their meaning, tbh, because some of the big 'far right' parties that have gained momentum over the past decade(s) in Europe are left-of-center economically. PiS in Poland is one example - they're touted as a 'far right' party because of their opposition to immigration, to EU overreach and their view on abortion and LBGTQ+ stuff. However, their most popular piece of policy, domestically, is their redistributive economic policy, in particular a program giving every family in Poland 500 zloty each month for each child under 18. They also changed (or is planning to) the tax system in a way that benefited the bottom 90% and added taxes for the top 10%, in a way that was even branded 'Marxist' by the Polish liberal party.

Sweden Democrats in Sweden, too, is hardly laissez-faire. And while I think the disclaimer 'fascist' was fairly applicable when describing Jean Marie Le Pen, and with the disclaimer that I don't know too much about his daughter, I do have the impression she's much more of a modern day nationalist, with economic policies and social policies that are probably left of center and right of center respectively.

Basically the 'right vs left wing' used to describe economic policy and it was pretty accurate then. It then started describing social policies and attitudes towards immigration as well, at at time where you fairly consistently saw that the socialists were also the socially liberal group, so it continued making sense. But in the past decade(s) you've gotten a bunch of nationalistic parties whose economical platform is left of center and a bunch of economically liberal parties with liberal social policies and an affinity for overnational institutions. It has become harder to find single words that accurately describe most political movements than what used to be the case because political movements have changed.

Yeah the progressive term isn't used much anymore, probably because it doesn't really make much sense to use it anymore.

On July 08 2023 05:17 RiKD wrote: Show nested quote + On July 07 2023 20:36 Stroggoz wrote:   On June 24 2023 01:57 Baalim wrote: I've never seen an expert lose against a crazy idiot ever, could you please prive examples? You mentioned that Medhi Hassan was doing fine until he admitted to believing in flying horses LOL, well yes thats precisely how you defeat idiots in debates, RFK seems to be against ALL vaccines not just the Covid one, so it will be easy to destroy him regarding vaccines everyone has and acknowledges as good. I dont know if they debate Michu Kaku but I've seen debates with Deepak Chopra when he is absolutely embarassed by actual phycisists, to the point where the audience laugh at Chopra. Debate isn't perfect but its 100 times better than to publicly run away from it, and claim they are conspiracy theorists that should be censored cementing the idea into anybody who is remotely suspicious of vaccines that their fears were right, people aren't going to read scientific journals and unlike with physics, you actually need the compliance regarding vaccination, and Dr Hotez probably has done much harm to the adoption of vaccination with this than anything positive he has done in his career. I went and watched a debate with Kaku and 2 real physicists. I've changed my mind a bit as it seemed productive. I guess it depends on how the debate is carried out. On political topics, it often seems like a waste of time from the sample size i've encountered. I watched Dershowitz debate Chomsky a while ago and I'm not sure if the audience learned anything from that one, I couldn't make it to the end. I doubt anyone could decide who was correct on that debate unless they were familiar with israel-palestine conflict, and no one was claiming that flying horses existed. Usually when I want to know if someone's a fraud, and I don't know anything about the topic, I just go read what other experts are saying about their work. That's my approximation heuristic for evaluating the truth. Doesn't always work.. How do you find the "esteemedest" experts though?

Google search?

There are lots of experts that write blogs.

So, Michio Kaku just wrote a book on Quantum computing. So I looked up what experts had to say about it, and one blog that had a review is Scott Aaronson, and he said it was by far the worst book ever written on the topic, lol.

I don't have any expertise at all on this stuff, but it seems kinda obvious to me that Michio, who has a phD, is not an expert. He says wild things that sound like sci-fi, hasn't published a paper in decades, all the other experts point out various flaws and they make it understandable to a non expert to me. It's not rocket science to figure out who the experts are, we can just use some common sense and be wrong 1% of the time.

$2 billion is peasant money. The consulting industry spends well over $10 billion on being paid to give "consulting" advice to governments or the private sector on why their fake green energy non-plans are the best way to go. The entire environmentalist consulting industry is a fraud, basically. It's actually impressive how much money is spent on pretending to do something about the environment.

It's really mind boggling that anyone would care about corruption in the west when there's much bigger crimes being commited. The reason is because rich and poor both agree that corruption is a bad thing. That's why it gets more coverage than say, idk, mistransfer pricing tax evasion. Most people havn't heard of that even though it's about a trillion in tax evasion funneled from poor countries mostly, every year.

On July 08 2023 06:58 Liquid`Drone wrote: Mostly all american presidents are to some degree corrupt. Personal impression is that Carter and Obama were less guilty of this, if we look at the past 50 years, and that Trump is the most guilty of all. So it ends up not really being that big of a deal when comparing different candidates (but still notions like 'vote Trump to combat corruption' ends up being a ludicrous idea') I remember my wife lived in Malaysia for 4 months and there was a scandal involving the sitting president at the time, where he had embezzled like $2 billion or something, enough money to actually negatively influence the country's economy. When she asked people about it they just shrugged and went 'still better than the previous guy'. Myself I was in Russia in 2018 and I asked my russian friends how they felt about the state of russian politics. They laughed and said they didn't care. I pressed the issue saying I teach this stuff and I'm just genuinely curious, and then mentioned how in the west, Putin is portrayed as this guy who kills critical journalists and stuff like that. The answer to that was, yeah, it's true, we all know about that. But we don't care. If you're used to Stalin, then Khrushchev and Brezhnev look really good. If you're used to the Soviet Union, 2018 Putin looks good. (I think if I asked the same question today, they wouldn't laugh and say they don't care, but at the same time, they might be less willing to be candid.) If you're used to all your politicians being corrupt, it stops being a decisive factor - although successfully selling yourself as non-corrupt can be a winning point. Also I guess the terminology is a bit iffy. Tbh I've never really used the word progressive to describe myself. I think it's a loaded word without much actual political meaning. In Norway the 'progress party' is the most right wing party in government. I think it's obvious that nearly everybody considers themselves progressive as opposed to regressive, although I can understand the phrase when juxtaposed with 'conservative', in a sense. However, I do think as it exists and is used, it's used to describe a political movement significantly left of Macron, and distinctly different from 'liberal'. (You can say that the Democratic party consists of two wings - the progressive and the liberal, where Sanders would be part of the progressive wing and Clinton, Biden and most of the heavy hitters are liberals.) Adding to the confusion, 'liberal' kinda means something else in Europe from what it means in the US, in Europe, the liberals are generally right-of-center, favoring tax reductions and more privatization, coupled with socially liberal policies. In the US, the liberals are in opposition to the republicans rather than to social democrats, so they actually end up favoring higher taxes and more government spending. The terms 'far right' or 'right wing' are also slightly losing their meaning, tbh, because some of the big 'far right' parties that have gained momentum over the past decade(s) in Europe are left-of-center economically. PiS in Poland is one example - they're touted as a 'far right' party because of their opposition to immigration, to EU overreach and their view on abortion and LBGTQ+ stuff. However, their most popular piece of policy, domestically, is their redistributive economic policy, in particular a program giving every family in Poland 500 zloty each month for each child under 18. They also changed (or is planning to) the tax system in a way that benefited the bottom 90% and added taxes for the top 10%, in a way that was even branded 'Marxist' by the Polish liberal party. Sweden Democrats in Sweden, too, is hardly laissez-faire. And while I think the disclaimer 'fascist' was fairly applicable when describing Jean Marie Le Pen, and with the disclaimer that I don't know too much about his daughter, I do have the impression she's much more of a modern day nationalist, with economic policies and social policies that are probably left of center and right of center respectively. Basically the 'right vs left wing' used to describe economic policy and it was pretty accurate then. It then started describing social policies and attitudes towards immigration as well, at at time where you fairly consistently saw that the socialists were also the socially liberal group, so it continued making sense. But in the past decade(s) you've gotten a bunch of nationalistic parties whose economical platform is left of center and a bunch of economically liberal parties with liberal social policies and an affinity for overnational institutions. It has become harder to find single words that accurately describe most political movements than what used to be the case because political movements have changed.

Yes we know our politicians are corrupt to the core with literally no exception and people vote for the one who they think will steal the least, and about half the votes are actually bought, they give food and money to poor ppl in exchange for votes months before the campaign and this is a huuuge factor in elections in shitty countries, also anti-corruption campaings are popular and only decieve idiots, our current president ran on that campaign and he has been the most corrupt and worse president in the countrie's history.


I hate it when social issues started to be aliged with left and right which should be exclusively an economical policy metric, why in the fuck is now abortion a left wing thing and nationalist a right wing thing ffs.

this rfk guy is a fucking lunatic.

he just said he'd back the dollar with Bitcoin, so shut up and all hail RFKJr (before the commies jump on this, I'm aware RFKJr is a moron)

More curious as to what bitcoin backing the dollar even means.

On July 19 2023 12:04 Stroggoz wrote: More curious as to what bitcoin backing the dollar even means.

The same as how the gold standard was, it has to be backed 1:1 and being redeemable at any time, so abandoning the fiat money printing model.

India good G20 host, consensus was pretty accurate. I hope we have more cooperation in the future so no more wars

On March 27 2023 19:56 RiKD wrote: Where exactly do you think the USA is on this graph?

loco where are we now? u never answer my questions

We are at 4, Strong Culture.

I think -4, weak culture