Hi, site dev here. Video debates are one thing we're considering. Tbh, there are a lot of features we could add, so it's nice to get feedback on what particular things people want. For now, video debates will probably be organized on the Discord.
I'm glad to see new users joining, as we are hoping to grow quickly! Do you mind me asking how you found the site?
Be anti abortion if you want (honestly, I am too)
What changed your mind?
Christian is just another club label.
So is Jew, or Muslim, or any other label that has led to people being massacred on a wide scale.
the clever thing for Nigerian Christians to do is join the Muslim Club
Won't always save them necessarily, and many people would die rather than renounce their values. Maybe you would call that "stupid," but I think people shouldn't be forced to convert at gunpoint. Plus, I don't see how it's good for evolution to kill off anyone who won't abandon their values to save themselves. You're just punishing moral consistency.
Throughout history, Christianity has been invoked to justify numerous wars, crusades, and violent campaigns—often in stark contradiction to the faith’s central teachings of peace, love, and “turning the other cheek.”
Yeah, except we were talking about the violent killings of Christians in Nigeria, which you described as "stupid people killing each other" and "the driving force in evolution." Is your position that the crusades and Hitler saying "God Is With Us" justifies mass killings of Christian men, women, and children in Nigeria? Because unless there's some other part of your response I missed, I'm struggling to see what else your argument could be.
the average person gets way more mad at someone wearing gear from Trumpian Christianity (MAGA hat)
Only in blue areas, and this is mostly because of political polarization and other issues. It has less to do with Trump's connections to Epstein, though I suppose that's one part of it.
Also, MAGA hat vs. rosary isn't even a fair comparison. It's not like Mary was a rapist, just some priests for the Catholic church. If you wear a shirt praising one of those priests, you'll get a lot of backlash, assuming anyone recognizes who it is. Meanwhile a MAGA hat is directly tied to Trump, so if someone thinks he raped kids, they'd obviously be more mad about that. It's like comparing a shirt with Karl Marx to a shirt with Mao; just because their ideologies were somewhat similar doesn't mean their actions were.
half the population shouldn't be allowed to vote
Half the eligible voting population already doesn't vote. So the least informed half is already filtering themselves out. A civics test is an interesting idea, but all it takes is a little corruption among whoever grades or write the questions to use it to exclude their political opponents.
The driving force in evolution is to have all stupid people kill each other.
Nonsensical response to violence that seems pretty one sided in this particular context. And even if it wasn't, extremists tend to target innocent people and not just "each other." Do you have the same flippant attitude about Nazis killing Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Catholics? Or about Stalin putting millions of Orthodox Christians to death? As I'm typing this I'm guessing you'll probably just make another flippant response that implies all religious people deserve to be systematically executed, but maybe you'll surprise me.
All I get in an open forum is yelling and insults.
DebateCraft is an open forum. People are actually reasonable here.
The statement "never underestimate the stupidity of people in large groups" is a paraphrased version of a quote by comedian George Carlin, highlighting the phenomenon of collective stupidity where group dynamics lead to poor decisions, even by intelligent individuals
I don't think the crowd makes people dumber. Most people just aren't qualified to make good large-scale decisions on things like how to fix the economy. That's why representative democracy is the best system we've come up with.
You have to select one over the alternative because Black people are the most LGBTphobic race in the US
I don't think you have to agree with the majority of black people's views to "stick up for" black people (as in supporting their rights). This is only a contradiction is "sticking up for" a group means agreeing with the opinions they disproportionately hold.
expanding LGBT rights into Africa from Europe is neocolonialism
Not everyone agrees with that, though I guess if someone thought spreading western values was neocolonialism but wanted to spread tolerance of gay people, they'd be a hypocrite. But supporting civil rights doesn't mean accepting the statement "expanding LGBT rights into Africa from Europe is neocolonialism."
Deontological, and Consequences you 'want and care for,
Less mattering the 'likelihood of success.
Well, morality based on your own preferences is just egoism. While I'd agree crowds are worse at philosophy, individuals are worse at it too. You probably borrow a good chunk of foundational philosophy from "common sense," otherwise we'd all still be arguing on if reality exists.
Being gay was illegal for a long time.
Well, it used to be very socially taboo to support gay marriage. Still is in some places, and in others, it's very socially taboo to be against it. I'd like to think we're smarter than societies that lock up gay people, but people seem incapable of identifying why crowds come to incorrect conclusions. If your position is obvious, then you should be able to convince people in an open forum. If somehow you are wrong, you'll be more likely to be corrected in an open forum. Either way, support the open forum. People's fear, usually, is that the other side will gain influence and censor them, so they have to preempt that. But when they do, it just serves as a justification for censorship when the other side is in power.
Crowds 'can be wrong, or manipulated.
I agree, and I think social taboos against fringe opinions are a big cause of this. If everyone was coming to an opinion independently rather than going along with the crowd, the average would be a lot more reliable. I'd suggest that people hold (a) an opinion based on what they would decide themselves, without input from the crowd, and we average that. Then people hold opinion (b) which is an updated opinion based on what everyone else has said. But (b) is only an improvement over (a) if someone is arguing the unpopular side.
Assume debt
If we assume the debts, the union gets
A new line of credit, a financial diuretic
How do you not get it? If we’re aggressive and competitive
The union gets a boost. You’d rather give it a sedative?
Now it's stuck in your head too.
we cannot decide who owns whom
Yes we can.
"I give myself the right to decide...I decided that other people are, in most cases, dogs who should serve me until they die."
- Best.Korea
The wisdom of crowds is a theory that assumes averages (or medians, in some cases) from large groups will be generally more accurate than any one individual in that group. While it might be tempting to simply agree with the majority to take advantage of this, the wisdom of crowds only works if individuals are willing to push against consensus, otherwise it becomes a self-referential feedback loop. This paradox has often been observed in poll "herding," where polls close to an election will attempt to mimic results from other polls, making the overall aggregate less accurate.
I think that generally speaking, groups should make decisions democratically, perhaps with slight variations to experiment with marginal changes and generate a larger body of evidence. Meanwhile, individuals who disagree with the status quo should be encouraged to voice their complaints loudly. Some of the complaints will be nonsense, but arguments will spread based on how convincing they are.
This is largely the aim of free speech. However, I think that social taboos can limit the scope of discussion as well. In some cases, it seems obvious that certain opinions should be widely unpopular. There is a lot of documented evidence for the Holocaust, which is in my view a pretty good reason not to be a Holocaust denier. If someone genuinely didn't believe in the Holocaust, I would respond by defending that evidence. Similarly, slavery is widely seen as wrong, and we spend a lot of time discussing why it's wrong. So while it can certainly be said that going against the consensus on these topics is taboo, I do not think the taboo prevents the majority of people from having informed opinions.
Take, for example, laws banning content that is vulgar or gratuitous, but does not produce harm directly. Many types of content fall into this category. For example:
(a) a banner of a swastika, or a banner with a drawing of slaves saying that slavery is good
(b) "rape fetish" content with consenting actors that nonetheless, depicts a character as being assaulted against their will
(c) animated child pornography (that does not use real-life children)
When it comes to the above, I think that arguments can be made in favor of banning these due to perceived harmful effects on society. I also think that a free speech argument could be made, saying that content can be gratuitous and shunned, but that the government shouldn't go so far as to ban content until it creates a clear and present danger. I tend to lean towards only banning content that violates someone's privacy or consent or incites violence—outside that boundary, not everything that is gratuitous or immoral needs to be banned by law. But that's not the point; I do think someone could probably make an argument for the other side.
The point is that an intelligent discussion can usually be had on (a) and (b). People will make arguments that (a) should be legal in the interest of free speech, and they will often defend (b) without reservation. But suppose we take the same free speech arguments that were used to defend (a) and (b), and use them to defend (c). Much of the time, when I have seen this play out, the people defending government restriction will no longer be interested in explaining why they feel the way they do. At most, a response will amount to a personal attack or some version of "just because you think something doesn't mean you have to say it." Presumably, many people think it is self-evident that animated child pornography ought to be banned due to its gratuitous nature. These people may have a point about banning it, but I do not think that the conclusion is as self-evident as they seem to presume. Arguments in favor of (a) and (b) are taken seriously, and the arguments largely take the same form as arguments against banning (c), so the taboo against discussing (c) seems out of place to me.
What's more surprising to me is that, while it seems rather obvious to me why watching regular child pornography is inherently bad (it's a violation of privacy), many people seem incapable of making this very simple argument. When Vaush compared child pornography to buying products made with child labor since both are produced by harming children, I was surprised to never see the obvious distinction brought up. You could simply say "using an iPhone is not violating someone's privacy, but looking at a naked child who is incapable of consenting is a privacy violation." Instead of bringing up this very simple point, people called his argument weird and creepy. Which was warranted, but probably should have been backed up with at least addressing the point he thought he was making. Some arguments deserve to be mocked, but if people seem incapable of understanding what is wrong with the argument, I start to question if those people are qualified to be mocking.
Crowds are often smarter than individuals. But crowds are smarter when individuals understand why they believe what they believe instead of following the crowd. If someone thought the Earth was flat, you would bring up all the reasons you believe it's round. And if the crowd says something is obvious, they're probably right. However, two caveats: (1) If the crowd is right, you should understand why before mocking someone who challenges it. (2) The crowd isn't right about everything. There's something out there that the crowd is wrong on, buried under all the things it's right about, but the fear of going against the crowd is what prevents us from discovering what that is.
Well the way you used the term it's ambiguous. I'm inclined toward allowing hiring to be based on ideology. It makes sense for someone working at a Catholic film studio to have to be Catholic, or for someone working at a Jewish film studio to have to agree with the tenets of Judaism. Like if a company exists for the purpose of promoting an ideology, that makes sense. But if that was leading to widespread unemployment and significant negative effects on people's well-being, I would want strict guidelines about when it's allowed.
We don't have one yet for users, the video on the main page I hardcoded in. Just post the link.
Should that be acceptable?
No, firing based on ethnicity seems less fair since it will mean some people will have no chance to be hired no matter what they do.
How about just don't consider %?
I'm not really considering %. I'm mostly going off on intuition and the results we've seen in the past.
Just like Jews can choose to post Torah verses.
Okay, but people who fire jews tend to fire everyone with that ethnicity, not based on their actions.
How much counts as, "a lot"? That's some vagueness that should be eliminated.
I don't know, you just have to estimate case by case whether a policy will help society. Making up a percentage is pretending you are more confident than you actually are.
Jews are rare.
It's not a matter of how rare the demographic is. If it's rare, less employees are affected, but less employers are also affected. The difference with being fired over political posts is that anyone can choose not to discuss politics at work or post controversial stuff online. So it can just work as a disincentive, not actually result in firing.
Also with a group like Jews, if there are a lot of discriminatory feelings toward them, it might be impossible to get a job. Whereas I don't think we're at that point yet with politics, but maybe at some point we will be.
Would you be fine with it if an employer decided to fire someone for being Jewish?
Prima facie, I think employers have a right to fire people for whatever reason they want. I only support laws against discrimination on utilitarian grounds, since discriminatory hiring could lead to large swaths of the population being unemployed because of illogical decision making. I would support the policies you're talking about if firing for political opinions was shown to be a major societal issue leading to widespread unemployment. However, it looks like it's happening on a very small scale right now compared to the entire workforce, not enough to justify violating the prima facie rights of employers. And if we're looking at effects on society, an incentive against being obnoxious about politics at the workplace might be a good thing.
if you lost your job, then what would you do?
Get another job. Even if that's not feasible, I don't see how anyone is obligated to employ people. Because if you apply that consistently, it just means everyone is obligated to hire everyone, or at least everyone they can afford to employ. Which is just silly.
The goal of a company should be to focus on profit margins
The goal of a company is whatever the owner wants it to be. Similar to the goal of an organization or any socially constructed entity. Why does it need to be profit margins?
Firing takes away their income (so they might starve)
Why is the employer required to keep paying them if they don't want to? I mean by this logic, everyone is obligated to hire as many people as they can.
That hypothetical Nazi worker (I'm not a Nazi) hates Jews, but it's merely talk.
And firing them is merely firing...seems to me as reasonable and non-harmful as talking.
establish that the freedom of verbal speech takes precedence over the freedom of association speech
Why should it though? Should a Jewish boss have to keep working with someone who talks about how much they hate Jews the whole time they interact? You're basically forcing people to tolerate a hostile work environment.
I thought FCC is there to regulate the content in television
Yeah but I'm against it being used to support a political party, regardless of which party is doing it.
Nope, the US Military was never intended to be weaponized against the American people for political purposes.
Yeah I get your point I was just being facetious. If I really wanted to be pedantic, I would bring up the Civil War.
He's weaponized the FBI, the Justice department, even the US Military
I mean I get your point, but isn't that literally the point of the military? To be weaponized?
there is nothing anecdotal about it, I lived through it
That's what anecdotal means. Personally I saw more hatred from the left after the Kirk shooting, so in terms of anecdotes, we are at a stalemate.
you are not saying Tyler is responsible for the shooting, you are saying the left is
No, only Tyler is responsible. But I do think he's on the left.
