I don’t think your comparison works because Israel does not have a comparable anti-war movement that the US had during the Vietnam War. In fact, if the media is to be believed, there has been enthusiasm on the part of Israelis to take part in the fighting.
Wouldn’t that only make vietnam vets more blameworthy? There was a whole movement against it and they still chose to not give up their home/family and choose exile even when it was less stigmatized to do so.
Your comparison doesn't work because Vietnam War didn't start with Vietnam attacking USA, holding many hostages, the group leading the charge having religious ideology viewing Americans as second class citizens as well as people to ethnically cleanse, all while bordering USA.
> There are no useful discussion to be had on such topics
I think there are useful discussions to be had on these topics, and in fact, we must have those discussions. The issue is that, if we want to do so productively and a comment section is the only venue for us to speak to each other, then we must be extremely patient with others and ourselves and reflect on what they say and what we say (i.e., discuss in good faith).
That burden may be too high for most people, but collectively, we don't have a better forum anymore, and we need to have these discussions and come to consensus before the world is engulfed in authoritarianism or war (which is not hyperbole).
Comment sections are not the only venue for us to speak to each other and we must be able to consider that they might actually make the problem worse.
Other venues
- real life, talking to people in person
- telephones, audio & video calling, talking to people
- writing op-eds, blog posts, sub-stack newsletters
- podcasts
None of these of course produce the dopamine hit of seeing your likes/retweets/karma go up and that of your opponents going down though, so we would have to give that up. I think that's a good deal.
We can call internet comment infrastructure "community" but that doesn't mean it actually is one or functions to enhance community.
You might believe there are useful discussions to be had, but when a faction of readers like the GP flag or downvote every thread they don’t like, then it’s impossible to have any conversation, no matter how much good faith is brought to bear.
Manually appealing to dang for unflagging is not a workable solution either.
This really is an entirely unsuitable forum for this discussion.
It shouldn't be the case that people acting in bad faith can disrupt meaningful discussion between people acting in good faith. I am at a loss to suggest a better forum. Town halls, protests, talking to people on the street, Congress, etc, are not able to have these discussions either.
Maybe this is not the forum, but then what is? A philosophy class you took ten years ago?
> I advocate concerning yourself with the things you can control, which do not include this forum’s idiosyncratic moderation style.
I can control my comments, which are a part of this forum's moderation style, and I can advocate in those comments for people to act in good faith, and appeal for help in figuring out how to make it more common.
If we can't discuss important topics in good faith on a nerd website, what hope do we have of discussing them elsewhere? It's not hyperbole anymore to say that if we don't come to some consensus we are going to end up in authoritarianism or war.
The trump administration is labeling people against fascism as domestic terrorists. Please don’t make this website Reddit with your idiotic views about ‘snowflakes’
People can be terrorists regardless of what they are against. You can be against anything you want, just don’t terrorize and nobody would call you a terrorist. And by the way many are foreigners, not domestic.
These companies have no decency. Putting ads on a fridge! They’ve already invaded our phones and computers, and almost everywhere else. This needs to stop
Ehhh- if these men really wanted companionship, they could find it. It only takes a little social courage, and accepting others (as they wish to be accepted). They are not being canceled because they don’t play by women’s rules.
The fact is, these men are deeply confused and push away as they pull in.
My suggestion would be to lean into monasticism and not just use the term ‘monk’ as a euphemism for not having female relationships. I don’t think anyone should be a monk long-term, but use it as a transitional period to examine and explore why they are so confused and come to terms with it.
Blaming women for their problems just makes it intractable because their problem is within themselves
> Ehhh- if these men really wanted companionship, they could find it. It only takes a little social courage, and accepting others (as they wish to be accepted). They are not being canceled because they don’t play by women’s rules.
I know at least one guy who refuses to "settle" for anything but his ideal woman - and frankly, that ideal woman is out of his reach, mostly but not entirely due to his personality.
So yes - men could absolutely find companionship. But a lot of them refuse to accept anything that's not a supermodel whose day consists of administering on-demand blowjobs.
This is a severe oversimplification of young men (and women).
There's no way you could possibly know what this "one guy" wants. What a person finds ideal is going to be way more complicated than they can communicate in a few words. There's absolutely nothing wrong with chasing it. The refinement of that ideal is precisely what it means to have a relationship.
The real "problem" is that some people have a hard time seeing the potential when they're young because it takes a lifetime of experience. Instead of committing and working with what they've got, they just find another person until their ideal has been shaped by enough experience.
Long term monogamy can definitely be just as unhealthy and foolish. Most of those kinds of people jump into the deep end too early and overestimate their abilities and knowledge. Depending on how stubborn and egotistical they are they may double down and create a huge mess for themselves. They're lucky if their partner is forgiving, but make no mistake that's suffering not love. Either way everyone ends up knowing the same things.
I don't understand why these debates keep coming up on the internet since even our great grandparents could have said every word I just did. Old news.
> There's no way you could possibly know what this "one guy" wants.
What do you mean? He used to be a good friend. We've literally talked about this. He's talked about it with other people, including women, and the rest of the friend group has also discussed this. It was more than "a few words".
I mean, in one sense we can never truly know what's going on inside someone's head, but unless we just take the slide down to solipsism, that doesn't really get us anywhere.
> I don't understand why these debates keep coming up on the internet since even our great grandparents could have said every word I just did. Old news.
Our grandparents lived in vastly different times. Yes, the huge choice of dating partners in the modern world is a detriment, but it's better than living in a small town and knowing that you have two people you could potentially marry, or stay a bachelor (which isn't a choice often granted to women.) One grandparent in my family literally married a man to escape her abusive family; her love for him was strongly shaped by the fact that he was the only man in her life who didn't beat her, and offered to take her out of the situation by joining the military.
Nietzsche is brilliant and the best thing he did was to inspire other people to their own thoughts. That is what was needed then and needed now, and at all times. The article didn't share much insight but glad to see him talked about, if only because it gives us permission to talk about deep things. Everybody should embrace their role as philosopher, take it seriously, and develop themselves- and through that, prompt others to do so as well.
Amen! Philosophy is a personal and life long process of improvement. Everyone, knowingly or not, is a philosopher. Just the act of living is philosophy. If possible, live consciously and do not go through the motions. It will deepen and enrich your life, and hopefully, bring meaning into it.
Yes, but it does not provide health care, it provides a subsidy to the health insurance companies (I.e., throwing even more money at lucrative companies that profit by denying coverage). It is sad that it is the best our government can do for us.
That seems like a difficult one to provide evidence for. A major problem in the US seems to be that they've got this impenetrable thicket of legislation around healthcare, insurance and employment that makes it impossible for people to make rational decisions.
Just not having that legislation, letting employment & insurance decouple and a sane market for healthcare develop might easily be better than the ACA.
> Just not having that legislation, letting employment & insurance decouple and a sane market for healthcare develop might easily be better than the ACA.
Maybe? But what is the mechanism by which employment gets decoupled from health insurance? That would require a different law, I suppose?
But that wasn't what I suggested: I said having the ACA is better than not having it, not that having the ACA is better than other possible alternative laws. I can think of quite a lot of alternative healthcare reform laws that would be significantly better than the ACA.
And I think it's reasonably safe to say that in "ACA vs. nothing else", ACA wins, if we judge by the millions of people who will lose healthcare coverage if the ACA were to be repealed and not replaced with anything new.
> But that wasn't what I suggested: I said having the ACA is better than not having it, not that having the ACA is better than other possible alternative laws.
It seems to be the only way to interpret what you suggested. How could it end up in a situation where there aren't other alternative laws? There are automatically laws governing what people do - laws exist. The conversation is entirely about which laws are best. In this case, I'm arguing that generic rules (not specifically tailored to healthcare) are probably better, since a generic market seems to outperforms the US healthcare system.
> And I think it's reasonably safe to say that in "ACA vs. nothing else", ACA wins
Well I can't control what you think but I can point out that it is a hard stance to provide evidence for. Healthcare is fundamentally less important than really urgent and essential services like food production or utilities and they manage to get great coverage with relatively limited fuss. The reports I've heard are that people find the situation in healthcare to be quite substandard.
I honestly don't understand why good healthcare should develop under free rational conditions. Why shouldn't a hospital charge your everything while you are in critical condition? I mean, it's a voluntary deal, take it or leave it, right?
You could ask the same question most things. Food and water for example - both more urgent and more necessary than most medical care. The costs are still low.
For food and water, if you were caught in a tough place, I suppose I could charge you for everything. But most people aren't refugees in a hostile land, so they have the time to drive around.
For a medical emergency it does make sense for a doctor to ask if you would like to voluntarily consider an interesting bargain.
The vast, vast majority of the spending in the healthcare industry is for things that you have time to drive around for.
And I'd still rather have a private option in the event of a medical emergency. Ironically, insurance in a free market is actually really good at sorting out that sort of risk. The insurance company has strong incentives to negotiate what will happen in an emergency and it isn't that hard to make agreements with people in advance.
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