Posted by:
Lot's Wife
(
)
Date: November 25, 2023 01:28AM
lawr3nce Wrote:
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> Lot's Wife Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > So your opinions, based as they are in
> > demonstrated factual errors, are going to lead
> > society to a better place?
>
> That question, as it is currently phrased, is
> neither true nor useful, is it? You know fine well
> that you have demonstrated almost nothing.
It is exceptionally useful. When deciding whose arguments to credit and whose to disregard, nothing is more important than track records.
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> Yes, because a healthy society benefits from more
> than one opinion and a large degree of personal
> autonomy.
Society benefits from those who believe in witchcraft? Those who believe the earth is flat? Those who think communism is a better economic system than capitalism?
No. Society doesn't need that.
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> No, because everyone makes errors (you certainly
> do) and has the right to change their opinion on
> anything.
When have you changed your opinion on any matter on this board?
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> Maybe, because unlike you, I look at a wide range
> of ideas from a variety of sources, cultures and
> time periods.
I venture that I am familiar with a lot more sources, cultures, and time periods than you are. Hell, you literally told us two days ago that the PRC used communism to generate an economic performance vastly better than any other country has in history--which is screamingly false. You told us you have "friends" from East Central Europe but evince no familiarity with anything that has happened there since 1989--really since the 1950s. Why, just today you misread a post about Europe's religious wars as meaning the 20th century rather than the 16th, 17th, and early 18th centuries that is what the phrase "Europe's religious wars" means.
You're out of your depth, son.
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> Some of my predictions have already
> been proven correct, e.g. that certain pandemic
> restrictions would be rebranded in non-health
> related terms, even though they do not benefit
> society.
First, you prove my point. You claim that people have the right to change their opinions, which is a truism, and then immediately proceed to declare how insightful you are rather than indicating any willingness to reconsider your views. Second, what "pandemic restrictions [were] rebranded in non-health related terms [that] do not benefit society?"
Dare you put that out in the open and risk the potential sanitization of sunlight?
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> It is clear that my ideas are more beneficial than
> yours.
Uh, not with regard to Orwell, Malthus, Chinese history, Soviet history, Eastern European history, or European religious history.
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> Why? Because I would allow you to have an
> opinion and you wouldn't return that favor to
> others.
How have I "disallowed anyone his or her opinion?" What power do I have to do that?
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> You also display a high degree of
> compliance to those who hold power. . .
You are free to explain where I err as other people frequently do. But without specifics, ominous phrases like "those who hold power" mean nothing.
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> . . .without asking
> the very basic questions of how they got into
> power, how they maintain power and how they will
> hang onto power when challenged.
We can test that proposition with the Chinese example. I know exactly how the PRC came to power; I know how the ROC achieved power, too. I know, for instance, that the KMT modeled its internal structure after that of the CPSU and that Chiang Kai-shek sent his son Chiang Ching-Kuo to Moscow to learn how to run a country properly. I know that the latter spent 13 years in the USSR and married a Russian woman who accompanied him back to China and then to Taiwan. Did you know that?
I know that in the middle 1970s the ROC attempted to negotiate an alliance with the USSR through the offices of the unofficial Soviet emissary Victor Louis. Did you know that?
More recently, I know how the PRC achieved and maintained its modern power through Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. While you argue that the Chinese government remained "communist" and despite that fact its economy somehow grew explosively, I know that the answer to the paradox is that Beijing used capitalism to enrich China even as, in the last decade, it recentralized political control in the hands of CCP. Likewise, I know what Stalin's NEP was and how it differed from what China has done.
The bottom line is you have a few mistaken ideas imbibed from right-wing sources that date to the 1950s and would like others to believe those are valuable. But they are not. They provide zero insight, for example, into the nature of Chinese power and the hence the threat that that country poses to the West.
A variety of sources is great provided that they are accurate. But your sources are patently ridiculous and you don't read or think widely enough to realize that. It is you who are the sheep unwilling or unable to fact-check what his shepherd feeds him.
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> Once you ask
> those questions, a lot more becomes clear like how
> useful that power grouping is to the rest of us.
Questions are great. Answers are better. You never get to the answers; rather, you spin like a scratched vinyl album, repeating the same old half-baked theories again and again and again.