markchangizi

THEM: Israel lost the PR battle when they militarily responded. ME: No. Israel lost the PR battle when they were massacred.

Rather than provoking condemnations of the barbarism of Hamas, much of the anti-Israeli world, smelling blood, was emboldened by the massacre. These are the cowards that rush in to kick the victim that the mob already downed.

Mainstream media has, since Trump, become radically even more partisan, and yet those on the Left haven’t wondered if that just might be a sign that they should seek out wider sources.

“Social contagion is much more dangerous than biological contagion. All of the crimes against humanity, genocides, democides, they’re caused by righteous mobs trying to implement their ingenious schemes to save the world. It’s always the case that there are emergencies. Emergencies don’t justify violating civil liberties. When the state starts violating civil liberties en masse, the greatest emergencies that humankind has ever experienced is when that happens. Everybody has to take civil liberties a thousand times more seriously. It’s a different kind of animal than welfare and food and healthcare and transportation and highways and all of the other kinds of things. No, it’s not one of those animals that you balance within that mix at all.” This was an excerpt from my opening remarks to a Spaces on how to react to the medical tyranny over the last 3.5 years. Video put together by The Hart Group

The Covid interventions were useless, harmful and tyrannical by design. Each of these three things: - being useless - being harmful, and - being tyrannical serves the persistence of the righteous community.

How face masks induce this speed illusion, which induces wearers to underestimate their speed, and to move more quickly despite seeing less well.

Conspiracy theories are a special case of hypotheses with radically too many parameters, or cases of overfitting. They consequently have negligible prior probability, there are countless many empirically equally (un)justified variants, and they are fragile to incoming data.

“It’s an emergency so we have to balance civil liberties with safety.” No! Society tries to find a balance among many competing trade offs including healthcare, defense, schools, highways, etc. BUT ONE THING NOT ON THAT LIST IS… — Civil Liberties — Civil liberties are *constraints* on action, not a utility in the mix to be compromised. Civil liberties are like property: You’re free to build a great back yard on your property, and in doing so you will encounter trade offs among grass space, deck size, pool size, fence height, etc. But notice that moving the property line is NOT on that list — it’s a fixed constraint.

Don’t confuse cancellation (BAD!) with humiliation (GOOD!). CANCELLATION If I try to cancel you, it’s an attempt to censor you. Often it comes with threats against your job, your business, or even doxxing. And often it amounts to shouting over your voice, sometimes literally. These are all a means for me to remove your voice from the public square. HUMILIATION If instead I try to humiliate you, it’s not at all an attempt to censor you. Humiliation is an organic result of pointing out your flawed arguments, inconsistent claims, special pleading, unethical behavior, or hypocrisy. When you express, you put social capital on the line. If you put forth a bad take, then I want your speech UNcensored. I want it to be broadcast widely, along with my counter-arguments, because only by doing that can your reputation actually be lowered (and mine raised, “winning” some of your social capital you put at stake). Free expression’s ability to slowly move us toward the truth depends on the reputation network’s ability to modulate people’s social capital up and down over time depending on their claims. That is, free expression depends on humiliation as a possible consequence. Cancellation, on the other hand, is an attempt to altogether undermine the processes of free expression. [For more information, find my newest book at Amazon: EXPRESSLY HUMAN]

Argue about the idea all you want. Just don’t stake the case for (medical) freedom on it.