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 No.11847[Reply]

File: 1675242114885.jpeg (14.77 KB, 400x292, 100:73, 51007d2d1fd8b.jpeg) ImgOps Google

Suppose there is a charity, say, a charity dedicated to helping poor families covering medical bills when their kids need urgent care.
This charity, however, is run by a few people who also on the side oppose LGBTQ rights.

Suppose in a naive way that all the money given to this charity is also fully allocated to the charity's goals, nothing is siphoned away for some more nefarious goals.

If you donate to this charity, are you donating money to an LGBTQ hate group?
Is it morally reprehensible to donate money to this charity?
1 post omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.11849

>>11847
I don't donate to charity to begin with because the bulk of the funding goes to paying salaries and funding advertising, not to mention whatever else is marked as a 'business expense'.
Look at the lifestyles of the people running these 'charities' and nine times out of ten, they're living a thoroughly luxurious life.

But either way, I'm not going to say it's morally reprehensible to donate to a charity, full stop.
I do not consider it immoral to donate to the DNC, NRA, ADL, and so on and so forth, irrespective of my beliefs of the organizations and what they do.

Ultimately we all have different beliefs and different reasons to donate.
I'm not going to presume someone's a bad person purely because they throw money to a cause they personally believe in, irrespective of what my own presumptions of what they actually do may be.

 No.11850

I think it's immoral to support a charity or otherwise laudable nonprofit organization if it's either a> actively causing intentional harm to people or b> passively causing quasi-intentional harm by passively refusing to help people.

Best example that comes to mind is how the American Medical Assiciation actively supported racial segregation in health care services and consciously made Jim Crow society much worse in the middle and early part of the last century, violating core medical ethics flagrantly.

If people in the service group are doing activities that are sus but are unrelated to their jobs, I think it doesn't quite matter. It's similar to wondering what political party your doctor votes for in the AMA example. Doesn't necessarily matter. However, if your doctor is actively being malicious on the job... no. That's totally wrong.

So, I'd give, if you think that's a good idea.

 No.11858

>>11847
I disagree with the premise that opposing LGBT necessitates a "hate" designation, even if the money is being siphoned away for anti-LGBT purposes.  You can oppose something without hating it.  The "hate" designation in this case is clearly an attempt to discredit and not a technical designation.

to quote the first line from Wikipedia, the always-reliable source...
>A hate group is a social group that advocates and practices hatred, hostility, or violence towards members of a race, ethnicity, nation, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other designated sector of society.

I'm personally not too concerned with the disparaging remarks from the "words are violence" crowd.  Therefore, to answer the OP:

>If you donate to this charity, are you donating money to an LGBTQ hate group?
not unless the charity "advocates and practices hatred, hostility, or violence" - a situation that is incredibly unlikely, hence "no" in almost all cases
>Is it morally reprehensible to donate money to this charity?
If the above is "no", then also "no".

 No.11842[Reply]

File: 1674860101863.png (251.85 KB, 1080x718, 540:359, Screenshot_20230127-084910.png) ImgOps Google

Is *Madoka Magica* a good anime?

 No.11843

What does it mean to be "good"?  How are we defining the criteria?

 No.11844

>>11843
>>11843
It's open-ended.  Use whatever criteria are most important to you.

 No.11846

I think so. I feel like i would have gotten more out of it had i been more familiar with magical girl shows, but even without that context it had some interesting writing, good subversion, and intense moments! Gen does good stuff, what can i say?

 No.11792[Reply]

File: 1672199965222.jpg (281.18 KB, 1280x905, 256:181, large.jpg) ImgOps Exif Google

The cat is playing with a brown marmorated stink bug.  It's the first year these insects have been in my area and they are plentiful.  Fluttershy is not a cat and the image shows a ladybug, and none of this is relevant except that I needed an image.

Let me present a debate assertion that is simple, defensible, something I believe myself, and has no direct connection to politics:

Socrates is mortal.

Supporting discourse:

All men are mortal -- an inference and part of common sense.

Socrates is a man -- an assertion of connection between an element and a category.  As the category has not been defined and physical evidence to prove Socrates fits the category will be hard to come by, this is probably the weak point of the argument.

I suppose the use of “the historical present” or “the eternal present” for referring to Socrates will be debated.

Reference: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26495/26495-pdf.pdf (But I didn't read very much of it.)
2 posts omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.11840

>>11839
OK.  Do you think stinkbugs are mortal or immortal?  That might pass as on topic.  I can make a new thread about stinkbugs but I need a strong assertion to debate.  Stinkbugs are new since fall of last year.

 No.11841

>>11840
Unfortunately for the stinkbugs, they tend to not live long when most people find them, so individually, mortal.

I do hope that the stinkbugs as a whole will outlive humanity in the long run.

 No.11845

>>11841
>Unfortunately for the stinkbugs, they tend to not live long when most people find them, so individually, mortal.

Mumu ate a few.

>I do hope that the stinkbugs as a whole will outlive humanity in the long run.

An unexpected hope.  I feel like the next few centuries for humans is a great filter.  I feel like the odds are 50/50, and if humans go some bugs will probably remain.

 No.11823[Reply]

File: 1673401189674.jpg (299.3 KB, 1280x905, 256:181, full.jpg) ImgOps Exif Google

Debate assertion: Debating politics with strangers on the internet is largely pointless.

Political and moral questions in general are 90% sentiment and only perhaps 10% rational.  People form alliances based on how they perceive organizations, political parties, and state powers are friend or foe to themselves or those they love.  These feelings lie close to feelings about self and self-worth, and therefore political debate supporting a foe or opposing a friend are likely to trigger strong emotions.  Influenced by strong feelings people mostly create rhetorical nonsense.  Debate is only possible when the 90% sentiment part in two people align, which can not be relied on in a group of strangers.

Enlightenment thinkers posted that politics could be made a branch of mathematics.  Maybe it's still possible, but in observing political debate on the internet, I don't see it.
2 posts and 1 image reply omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.11828

File: 1673571032413.png (195.5 KB, 1000x1089, 1000:1089, f19.png) ImgOps Google

>>11823
I think you can have a debate about political issues if you separate them from the larger umbrella of politics under which they fall.  For example, you can imagine a fairly straightforward debate about the question: "Should city waste management add an additional garbage truck to the northwest district?"  It's pretty straightforward, and anyone can look at the pros and cons.  But if you now add a political layer to it, that Party A is fully in favor of it as part of their platform, and Party B is fully opposed as part of their platform, then the simple question of whether the city should purchase an extra garbage truck gets saddled with all of the other unrelated political issues as pertains to the party whose platform your position indirectly supports.  Suddenly people are calling out your moral failings and wishing for your death, because you have a position on whether the city should purchase an extra garbage truck or not.  The garbage truck question itself is not political, but it has been politicized, and this is the real problem.  And to extrapolate from there, things in the modern day have been politicized to an absurd degree, intentionally, to weaponize the resulting tribe mentality against the opposition and/or to shut down debate entirely.  Now we can't even talk about the garbage truck question, because doing so is "political", and on a site like Ponyville, politics is generally not allowed to be discussed.

So debating politics?  Yes, it's pointless, because if you treat something as political, then it can't be disentangled from the issues associated with it.  But if you can debate the issue isolated from the politics surrounding it, then you can have a decent conversation.

 No.11829

Personally, I feel that a lot of "political" issues aren't all about facts and logic. A lot of ways to deal with issues are validated mostly based on the presiding moral.
I don't think there's a perfect solution to deal with immigration, environment, budget cuts, social wellfare,...
Everyone has their own opinion to deal with such issues and acording to their moral compass, one solution will be favourable, but in most cases, you can't set an objective true solution.

If you get what I mean.

On the flip side, is debating politics useful?
I think there's ways in which it can be very useful and ways in which it's not.
I do think as an outlet, it's so popular because people can say what's on their mind and get their opinion heard. Somewhere  that's useful.
I am sure that listening to someone's well thought out post brings that satisfaction you get from an echo chamber, but surely there are arguments that make me review or rethink my stance on it.

In greater scales, in times of unrest, regimes can shut down the internet, because voicing those opinions brings people together.
There's a good reason this would be feared.
If you find that people all across the words are suffering the same injustices as you are it can be a call to action.

 No.11835

Ive heard it said that debates are more to convince the audience one way or another rather than to convince the other side to change their minds.

Which, if that is the case, makes arguing online with strangers, where there is little to no audience, a complete and utter waste of time.

Nobody likes Debate Bros. Pretty much the only people that find the experience worthwhile are the people doing the arguing, while people either look on with distaste or just ignore it entirely.

There may be something to be said about the matter of debating and how it relates to how the people involve learn reasoning and how to get their point across and other such things, but for the most part I think it is just a waste of time, an inflated sense of self importance, and something for those bored to do when they have nothing else.

 No.11822[Reply]

File: 1673273912856.png (300.27 KB, 435x523, 435:523, 3017267.png) ImgOps Google

I have a moral perspective that violence is bad, and especially that those who escalate violence are not doing good deeds.  Violence in this case are actions that [purposefully] cause, are open to the likelihood of causing, or are intended to cause physical harm.  I don't know if I call causing psychological trauma violence, but I'll say in this paragraph I have similar feelings about that.

I believe morals to have a degree of subjectivity, so likely my personal moral beliefs are not debatable.  If you would like to debate something, let me also claim that this is not conventional view.  Violence is often seen as an important tool for maintaining order, encouraging desirable behavior, asserting control or rule, responding to fear, and maintaining systems of respect.  I likely am seen as naive for my view, and perhaps I have not been subject to enough violence to wish it applied to others liberally, but I wish only to debate how much my view differs from conventional ethics.  Thank you for your time.
2 posts and 1 image reply omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.11830

>>11825
>>11826
The problem with self defense somewhere is the question to how far can it be allowed?

Like, letting others attack yourself without reacting will result in others abusing you. Letting others violently assault someone else without you coming to the victim's aid, hence sacrificing the victim's well being over a principle can be morally wrong itself.

But if someone slaps me one and I react by throwing them on the ground and kicking them so they need to be hospitalized, that also doesn't seem acceptable morally.

 No.11831

>>11830
>is the question to how far can it be allowed?
A rough answer is self defense is acceptable when it is the minimum force needed to neutralize a threat.  Generally self-defense should not escalate violence unless there is no other option for survival.

>sacrificing the victim's well being over a principle can be morally wrong itself.
I think I'd agree with that.  My sense, though, is violence used with the purported goal of protecting others and especially hypothetical others (society) is often really oppression.

 No.11832

>>11830
Comes down to perspective some, but as I see it, the ideal ought be to essentially ratchet to the next level as necessary, only when you cannot match the force given.

The baseline for justice, after all, at its bearest, is an eye for an eye.
So if someone slaps you, slap back. If you're not going to be able to retort the same for whatever reason, a punch may well be appropriate escalation.

 No.11786[Reply]

File: 1672036235584.png (877.79 KB, 593x790, 593:790, Screenshot from 2022-12-26….png) ImgOps Google

Debate: Safe scientific work is important work.

Here kitty and OP are measuring properties of air in a space that OP is able to safely and legally occupy.  The previous sentence is not part of the debate, you'll have to take OP's word for it or not -- the debate can go on either way.

The reason scientific work can be important is scientific understanding can be combined with technology to help processes become more efficient.  I suppose you have to believe processes humans apply technology to *should* become more efficient, but I think the contrary belief is nihilistic and useless.

You may pose a more efficient way of understanding the world, but my argument for science is that in science's domain, I don't know of a more efficient way of developing models.

Happy debating!
2 posts and 1 image reply omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.11793

>>11787
One of the measures is volatile organic compounds.  There's potential for some experimentation in that direction.

>>11791
Thanks.  He's my room-mate's cat.  The cat of 1000 hungers, he'll eat about anything.

 No.11804

>>11786
It's important. The issue is funding. As it stands, it's become entirely too inscrutable and inaccessible to be useful to all but the most devoted specialists. only way to really fix this is to tax the ultra-wealthy a lot more and use that money to fund a more open-book policy of research that isn't paywalled behind 3 subscriptions and a fee. I'd be down for that, but the powers that be won't see it happen.

The other issue is readability. To be blunt, scientific papers can be a headache to parse. This is for good reason, they're written the way they are for a reason, but idk, some form of more readable synopsis to go along with it would be reasonable i think, like how they have the Shakespeare books with the translation on the other page.

 No.11806

>>11804
Thank you for entering this tread.  The paywalling is a function of private publication firms, I believe, but no scientist is forced to publish through them.  Well, those working for universities may be.  But the state could make free access a stipulation for a grant -- that would do a lot.

Some scientists don't work for universities or the state.  They may be free to self-publish or publish documents that are not paywalled.  They may be free to write non-specialist abstracts.  I hope this becomes a growing group.

 No.11640[Reply]

File: 1669604376674.jpeg (184.53 KB, 1080x1052, 270:263, FiZuEeBWYAE9CJe.jpeg) ImgOps Google

Is it true that woke propaganda is being pushed in public education? And if so, what should be done about it?  I would say that the morals taught in public school should be those that are widely supported by ordinary Americans.  Public schools shouldn't really endorse one side of a politically contentious issue.

I remember a decade or two ago, it was far-right Christian fundamentalists who were trying to prevent the teaching of science of human evolution in public schools.  Nowadays, i guess it's the woke far left.
19 posts and 2 image replies omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.11713

I do really wish that people who oppose ending discrimination based on race, religion, sexual orientation, and the like and who thus oppose equality of opportunity stopped using the expression 'anti-woke' as a blanket term for their positions.

If you want school administrators to crack down on, say, transgender children by making decisions such as ending care for those students who have talked about committing suicide, just say 'I want this because those students are bad/evil' and not 'I oppose the woke and support this anti-woke measure'.

Arguments should not be based on jargon.

I understand that a teacher making the statement "nobody should be subject to prejudice based on what they were born as" is generally understood in the political context to be preaching "left-wing" and "woke propaganda" ideology, yes, but I strongly agree with Scott Alexander and others that in debates you should try to taboo symbol statements and replace them with substance statements.

 No.11803

>>11658
Teachers have power over students. I think adults have a tough time remembering just how beholden they had to be to the adults in their life when they were kids, just how much those adults could fuck up their standard of living. It's weird to me. I didn't forget that stuff.  

>>11693
Eh, I'm not sure how much police enforcement really motivates someone to drunk drive or not. If the high physical risk isn't enough to motivate someone to not drunk drive, i don't see how a ticket will be.

 No.11805

>>11803
The risk of getting into a crash or getting arrested might not be fully grasped until it happens.  Someone who gets arrested for drunk driving is less likely to drive drunk again in the future, both because of better appreciation of the risk and because of being physically removed from society for a time.

 No.11742[Reply]

File: 1671853320958.jpg (43.21 KB, 848x477, 16:9, cf1c36f4-4f19-419a-9825-5e….jpg) ImgOps Exif Google

ITT: let's discuss https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-media-very-rarely-lies

Scott's main point seems to be that the media, ranging from the New York Times to InfoWars, rarely outright fabricates the basic facts and instead misleads by faulty analysis and lack of context.  Do you agree?
19 posts and 7 image replies omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.11799

It's weird that he's creating an equivalency between outright lying for profit and "this government study data needs to be analyzed with caveats in mind". Rightly or wrongly, it triggers my bullshit alarm that the author may have some agenda.

And again, it's my faulty bullshit alarm firing when it wouldn't be entirely appropriate, but lately I've been getting the same impulse feeling from threads that start with "discuss", a link to an incredibly dubious article, and a handful of leading questions. Part of it is the feeling I get when somebody in a political T-shirt asks me to fill out a survey. Part of it is the feeling I get when I get a text from the IRS at an international number asking me to pay my back taxes in google play cards.

 No.11800

File: 1672698193141.png (682.07 KB, 1079x2000, 1079:2000, Screenshot_20230102-171617.png) ImgOps Google

>>11799
>the author may have some agenda.
Scott explains his agenda at the bottom of the blog post: That it is impossible to censor misinformation by censoring only objective falsehoods, because most misinformation is technically not lying but is still deceptive.

 No.11801

>>11798
Fair enough, then. Still real bad,
I know he says some crazy stuff, but I think that's something I would've heard about.

 No.11789[Reply]

File: 1672101545165.jpg (59.46 KB, 765x600, 51:40, medium.jpg) ImgOps Exif Google

The key, I think, are simple assertions that are difficult to argue against, because it would be foolish to create a loosing Assertion on purpose.  We'll keep going until things don't go badly.  I guess this is on the topic of time, and New Years is soon.

Debate Assertion: Old adults are no more bad than adults other than old adults.

 No.11790

>>11789
I thought of a new problem.  Those political concepts that I believe strongly and for which I can mount a defense here will be those at the core of liberal democracy.  One of the reasons they would be defensible here is that expressing otherwise is against site rules.  That's a winning strategy, except that putting these ideas forward for debate will be seen as "baiting." So maybe politics is just a no-go.  There are other topics, though.  We'll get the knack of this page (or I'll lose interest).

 No.11778[Reply]

File: 1671954873813.jpg (178.88 KB, 1280x720, 16:9, large.jpg) ImgOps Exif Google

I feel like I've been doing a bad job about creating threads.  I need to create simpler and clearer debate threads.  My thoughts are sometimes confused, so let's focus less on me.

Now, I'm picking this from a list of easy debate topics: https://noisyclassroom.com/debate-topics/

Debate Assertion: It is better to live in the countryside
3 posts omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.11782

File: 1671957297656.png (783.31 KB, 923x548, 923:548, 2823093.png) ImgOps Google

>>11780
> I have no interest in convincing anyone one lifestyle is better than another.
Which I guess is debating in opposition to OP's assertion, technically.  People have different needs and desires in life, so a global judgement on this kind of thing is inappropriate.  And if the city or country is bad in general, it's probably a social choice or series of social choices and those choices might be reversible.  I could talk about myself and my experiences and needs, but that is anecdotal and inappropriate for this thread.

I'm not sure that's quite a debate.  My goal was to pick a clear topic I don't care very much about.

(The image is not meant to have anything to do with the politics or military engagements of Russia.  Maybe I made another error in using it.)

 No.11784

>>11778
Depends on what you're after, but in the modern era, it's really hard to say otherwise.
Country living seems to beat city life on every major item.

 No.11785

>>11784
I see.  I know there are places in an urban/suburban environment where leaving your residence for non-essential reasons will be met with suspicion or incur unneeded danger, especially in times of low ambient light (even though the place is so light-polluted that it's not that hard to see).  Many outdoor activities such as going to parks, getting exercise, or astrophotography are unsafe.

But these places are nearby work and you don't need a car.

 No.11783[Reply]

File: 1671972370079.jpg (42.19 KB, 787x1024, 787:1024, large.jpg) ImgOps Exif Google

Debate question: Christmas music may be sung or performed if one does so softly or digitally and one has the legal right to do so.

Supporting evidence: O Come O Come Emmanuel was sung by this poster last year on or around December 25.

 No.11734[Reply]

File: 1671841680813.jpg (23.86 KB, 300x450, 2:3, jersey-shore-no-grenades-a….jpg) ImgOps Exif Google

Let's try this again without attempting to be respectful to the state.

Debate question: it should be illegal to deploy grenades (or similar explosives) against people or in occupied spaces, and this law should apply to everyone in America.

I suppose I need to exempt those using grenades against a foreign enemy, not because I think that's OK, but because that's another topic.
9 posts omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.11754

>>11753
There's a lot of things that are nonlethal.
Nonetheless, they follow the same rules.
I don't see why that ought change.

 No.11755

>>11754
Excellent.  I think our opinions are similar.  Now I guess we wait for representatives of the conventional opinion.

 No.11774

>>11754
I think what I really want to argue is that police should not have special privilege to cause harm at their prerogative, in ways that would put someone in prison for a long time if the roles of police officer and non-police officer were reversed.  For hypothetical example it being legal (or not a crime, not punishable -- something like that) for police to denote a stun grenade in a residence that causes serious harm to an infant, or to beat an old man and cause a concussion and loss of hearing in one ear.  I feel that the standards should be symmetric, I guess.

 No.11769[Reply]

File: 1671937717581.png (1.27 MB, 1080x1125, 24:25, Screenshot_20221224-210149.png) ImgOps Google

A thread for debates about the holiday season.  I can't think of anything specific to assert that is not inane, but the thread seems most appropriate now.  Post your own debate assertions or questions.

 No.11739[Reply]

File: 1671843662252.png (76.66 KB, 523x651, 523:651, thanks_blue.png) ImgOps Google

I think we should make ponies that are not potentially in violation of Hasbro's copyright.  I think that would allow the fandom maximum freedom -- no more worrying about take-down action or being sued.  I'll make my drawing blurry because it's not very good, but I believe this post is legal.

 No.11746

Is there some significant amount of takedowns going around?  In any case, new horse designs shouldn't be a major hurdle.  Plenty of horse out there.

 No.11756

>>11746
>Is there some significant amount of takedowns going around?
I don't know.  Most of what I've seen lately is YouTube taking down videos because they can't determine if they are kid friendly or not.  But it's dangerous for some pony fans and they want to be careful.

 No.10833[Reply][Last 50 Posts]

File: 1650070703590.png (441.31 KB, 1400x951, 1400:951, Moony Money.png) ImgOps Google

For discussing the other thread, in /pony/, concerning Elon Musk
81 posts and 15 image replies omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.11703

File: 1671271176070.jpg (534.96 KB, 2000x1333, 2000:1333, elon-musk-alleged-stalker-….jpg) ImgOps Exif Google

Am I the only one who finds it sus as hell that some IRA looking motherfucker forces the vehicle carrying the infant son of the richest man on earth to a halt, jumps on the bonnet of the car, and all he gets is a camera shoved in his face and a "do you know this man?" on Twitter? The more I think about this the more everything feels off. Our PLA friend should be a statistic smeared thin across downtown LA, not a footnote in a story about flight trackers.

I know LA is such a safe city that nobody would ever consider something bad might happen, and Mr Elon comes from the kind of country where things like that just don't happen, and that he's always gone through pains to have a minimal public profile so he wouldn't have a reason to feel any sort of vulnerability, but it still seems rational to have some security present while his two year old goes out on the town alone, if he can afford it.

 No.11704

>>11702
Oh, I see.  Protecting personal information a person considers confidential seems....good?  Presumably the rules are consistently applied.

 No.11716

That Elon Musk and those who follow him define the term 'free speech' as 'what I personally dislike should be censored and what I personally like should be celebrated' with no higher ethical principles involved whatsoever is really useful information, honestly.

If you're a sincere and informed observer of the world, it's going to be pretty clear in the U.S. context by now (in 2022) that neither the activist political right nor the related left counterpart believes in 'free speech' either in the legal sense (as in 'governments shouldn't censor except when there's no other option') or the moral sense (as in 'authoritative actors outside the state should be the same, maximum space being allowed for expression').

And businesses certainly don't care either, given that obviously they just want to enhance their bottom lines.

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