Personally I think not having karma limits is nice currently! I understand why they were used but grinding karma as a lurker on reddit was frustrating.

  • bh11235@infosec.pub
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    1 year ago

    I’m torn on this. One the one hand there’s something to be said against insta-banning a person just because they wrote “I don’t know if a 12-year-old can meaningfully consent to gender affirming care”. On the other hand you get people who engage in that kind of discourse just to hide their power level. e.g. one of the links in the above-discussed comment goes to transgendertrend dot com, a website I did not know of until today, but it took me exactly one look at its main page and its “about us” section to suspect that anyone who linked anything from there must be way more radicalized than the stage where they are “open to evidence and to honest discussion and debate”. As a filthy moderate myself, I know that a fellow filthy moderate would at least make the minuscule effort to find a source that pretends not to be propaganda.

    The author of that manifesto two levels up is not making an argument out of the bottom of their heart; they are proselytizing. They are engaging in what the Musk fan, Tim Urban, once described in his blog as “thinking like an attorney”:

    An Attorney and a Sports Fan have a lot in common. They both have a preferred [conclusion], while also still maintaining some level of dedication to [the process of objective reasoning]. They’re both conflicted between the values of truth and confirmation. The critical difference is in which value, deep down, is higher in their Values Stack. A Sports Fan wants to win, but when pushed, they care even more about fair play than winning. An Attorney’s job is to win, and no matter how hard you push them, nothing can alter their allegiance. Because has THIS ever happened? [A crude drawing of a courtroom; a judge asks “anything more from the defense?” and the defense attorney, to the horror of the defendant, answers: “actually, your honor, the prosecutor just made some really excellent points. I guess my client is guilty after all.”] No. That has never happened.

    “Civility fetishism” is a real problem and I have personally seen it destroy some spaces I have held dear, via attorneys attorney-ing all day and shouting “debate me, debate me, it’s just facts and logic, what are you so afraid of”. So I fully understand the weariness of the person I am replying to.