RexFavilla

I tried posting here and it was accepted.

How's it hangin, Deb?

Getting Chris-chan vibes, ngl.

I mean in most situations the pardon would be inexcusable. But if Ghislaine is prepared to testify in exchange for the pardon and the end result is putting hundreds of Epstein clients in jail then in that light it would be worth it to many people. My personal theory is that Trump is using the blackmail material to control people on his side and, if he does go through with this, he will use Ghislaine's selective testimony to make examples out of his political enemies to give that blackmail material even more potency to those for whom it isn't revealed.

Is this, like, an ideal situation? No, but it's what you get given political actors following rational incentives in a system in which a foreign country is allowed to blackmail and bribe your entire political class with impunity for decades. You get a perverse system with perverse incentives.

The addicts? Round them up, put them to work, let them clean up, then tag and release. Shoot the drug dealers in the head.

It's a problem with Economics as Hystrionic Ideology. This is a diverse umbrella of various schools of thought which has come to suck much of the oxygen out of the conversation, because it gets a lot of funding by think tanks. This is because it is not about an actual grappling with economic and historical realities - rather, it serves as a smokescreen for lobbying for particular policy changes and then spinning up justifications post hoc. What they all have in common is a complete divorce from reality/hard examples and a fall-back on this special pleading of ‘real x has never been tried’. As if only their ideology can suspend the hard facts and exist as this gauzy, floating abstraction in a vacuum. But if an opposing ideology (like communism) tries to pull the exact same trick these people will lose their shit and rightly call it out.

While true that dumb people can do good things, the main problem is that to determine what is good requires high intelligence which dumb people dont have. So a dumb person can do good accidentally, but not willingly, due to lack of knowledge. Likewise, dumb person is much easier manipulated into doing evil while thinking he is doing good. The only reason why evil and intelligent people can do as much harm as they can is because they can manipulate dumb people very easily. Being dumber makes person more likely to be manipulated, less likely to know what good is, and doesnt make person any better person. So being dumb isnt exactly desirable in this case.

No it doesn't. To mistake good for evil requires high intelligence, because higher intelligence allows one to rationalize more absurd things to oneself. Look at something like foot binding in China. All the most educated, intelligent people rationalized it, saw it as aesthetically superior, as a logical and reasonable thing to do to a young girl. The young girl being subjected to it, even a not really bright one, who spoke up and said the simple truth - ‘this hurts and I don’t want to do it' - understands good much better than the legions of scholars, doctors, and courtiers who have managed to twist their logic to praise something so plainly barbaric. There's a reason why a child is the one to point out that the emperor is naked in the classic story - all the creme de la creme have successfully reasoned themselves into believing the absurd. I'd say that the capacity of the intelligence to manipulate themselves, to rationalize evil to themselves, is far more responsible for their outsized ‘evil footprint’ than the ability to ‘manipulate stupid people’. Most simple people, for example, see a pedophile and simply say: ‘throw them in the woodchipper.’ Attempts at manipulation are fruitless, they are rejected out of hand. It's only the perversely intelligent who can rationalize something like that away.

To append scripture:

'5 Thus saith the Lord; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.

6 For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.

7 Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.

8 For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

10 I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.'

Jeremiah 17:5-10

Good fruits =/= great fruits. A humble man who refuses to recant his faith in the face of persecution and dies for it, a simple hermit who contemplates God, or a blasphemous whore who repents and wanders in the desert to atone, all of these have become saints alongside great bishops and theologians, which is the highest accomplishment in Christendom. None of these ‘good fruits’ required great skill, ability, or intelligence. I think one of the ugliest aspects of modern society, and one of the main drivers of the Dunning-Kruger effect, is the conflation of intelligence/ability with ‘goodness’. Intelligent, competent people can do far more harm if they have evil intent, while even the simplest man or woman can bring good into the world if they have good character. Furthermore, the idea that intelligent people are 'better' drives many to strive for higher intelligence, a trait which is largely heritable and, when faked, just leads to a not-intelligent person being unable to recognize their own limits. People should strive for good character, as character is much more malleable and, imo, important.

Hm, I 'have heard that one before.

 

Berean Standard Bible
"For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God,"

https://biblehub.com/ephesians/2-8.htm

 

It's a very less than egotistical way of looking at it.

. . . But there's also verses such as The Parable of the Talents, holding individuals accountable for their choices, efforts, and work.

This is because your faith is revealed through works. A great saint will make virtuous choices and will do holy works. A good tree bears good fruit, and evil tree bears evil fruit. Good works are the necessary consequence of faith, and that is the rubric which Christ gives to measure that faith which brings salvation.

It's Christian doctrine pretty much across the board that nobody is worthy of heaven, and ‘there but for the grace of God go I’, so it's bad to say of any person ‘you are going to hell’. The only person who is canonically in hell, as far as I know, is Judas.

However, telling someone what kind of behavior is sinful, and that sin is what leads us to hell, is a Christian duty. You just have to not always look for fault in others, criticize the sin itself in the hope that they reform.

No. Facts are a subset of data which has truth value. The (supposed) purpose of a journalist is to disseminate facts to the public for consideration. The same is true of an FBI statistician preparing a public report. Once the fact is disseminated their job is done - if they play a role afterwards in how the facts which they presented are analyzed, discussed, or deployed in debate than you introduce a kind of totalitarian creep that's very dangerous. Peeping toms really have nothing to do with this and are a bad analogy - they aren't looking for facts, they're looking to get off. This is why pornography is treated differently than political discussion when it comes to 1A protections.

I'm RexFavilla. Was ResurgetExFavilla on DART, was Skep on DDO. I think I'm now one of the oldest members now aside from Airmax? If Thett makes an account, he will have a grander pedigree than me but yeah, I've been posting for a long time on and off.

I'm interested in history, philosophy, sociology, and religion, primarily. I like to play mafia.

How about you?