War Room Lounge V38: Edgar Allan Pwn's 'The Cask of a Modillado'

[BarryDillon]

 

[Jack V Savage]

The War Room was able to turn an interesting topic (de-platforming) that could have had an interesting discussion (for instance on the democratization of media consumption) into an extremely uninteresting squabble-fest over semantics. Some deserve more blame than others, but that's my take.

That's the point I made from the start--it doesn't end the discussion about deplatforming to acknowledge that obviously it isn't censorship, and it isn't Orwellian. It can still be bad in a general sense or specific instances of it can be bad. There's a lot to discuss there once you get past Viva and Cubo's clumsy attempts at logic and semantics.

 

[JDragon]

That's the point I made from the start--it doesn't end the discussion about deplatforming to acknowledge that obviously it isn't censorship, and it isn't Orwellian. It can still be bad in a general sense or specific instances of it can be bad.

Exactly.

 

[Lead]

Fly over states referring to it as pop is nowhere near as bad as the people that call all soda Coke.

It's similar to the yous vs y'all people against that small fraction of yinz people living in Pittsburgh...... @Lead

I know it gets brought up nationally but I really can’t think of the last time I’ve heard a person say yinz. I think it’s generational and dying out. There’s some things that are Pittsburgh exclusive that I might be a little blind to as I’ve lived nearby here my whole life so I’m not sure.

 

[Ruprecht]

@Ruprecht, from wiki on Never Let Me Go:

None of those perspectives are without basis, but it does sound like some critics are disrespectful of SF and just don't want to think that Ishiguro just straight up wrote a SF story.

Doesn't surprise me. Not sure why that'd be the case with a younger generation, aside from plain snobbery.
Then again maybe they were invited to a Scifi convention.
Generally I'm not of fan of pop-scifi or conventions, so I guess I can understand that sort of snobbery.
Less necessary in this day and age anyway I think. Most of the authors I follow have their own blogs and forums.
The social/political Scifi discussions have drawn me in quite a few times.

 

[PEB]

So Mike Gravel possibly joining the race for President he is more to the left then Sanders but also very anti-war calling out Hillary and Obama on their stances.

 

[Anung Un Rama]

RIP Gravel 2020

 

[Higus]

The War Room was able to turn an interesting topic (de-platforming) that could have had an interesting discussion (for instance on the democratization of media consumption) into an extremely uninteresting squabble-fest over semantics. Some deserve more blame than others, but that's my take.

Semantic arguments are a pet peeve of mine around here. I'm glad I learned about the noncentral fallacy so I can just cut the legs from semantic arguments like "taxation is theft", or "affirmative action is racist", and skip into whether something is good or bad rather than if it is a thing that has good or bad connotations.

 

[curryjunkie]

Doesn't surprise me. Not sure why that'd be the case with a younger generation, aside from plain snobbery.
Then again maybe they were invited to a Scifi convention.
Generally I'm not of fan of pop-scifi or conventions, so I guess I can understand that sort of snobbery.
Less necessary in this day and age anyway I think. Most of the authors I follow have their own blogs and forums.
The social/political Scifi discussions have drawn me in quite a few times.

reccomendations?

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

I'm torn between wanting to continue shaming you all for continuing this argument and wanting to praise you for such an excellent post.

Dude I did that way earlier with bacon where's my thanks and praise

Spoiler

P1: Bacon is pig
P2: Pig has a generally negative connotation
P3: Bacon has a neutral or positive connotation
P4: Choosing to substitute a more positive word/term to avoid negative connotation is a euphemism
P5: This type of euphemism is Orwellian
C: Calling pig "bacon" is Orwellian.

Damn you @Jack V Savage!

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

De-platform for IP theft imo.

Oh IP would be a good thread topic.

 

[Trotsky]

Semantic arguments are a pet peeve of mine around here. I'm glad I learned about the noncentral fallacy so I can just cut the legs from semantic arguments like "taxation is theft", or "affirmative action is racist", and skip into whether something is good or bad rather than if it is a thing that has good or bad connotations.

I think semantic arguments can be really important and productive. Being clear and accurate is very important. This is not one that I care for.

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

My naive perception of how linguistics died is people were all like "what do people really mean when they say x?" and someone was like "we should probably do an actual survey of normies" and since no one cared to do that they just stopped asking about meanings at all.

And then X-Phi tried to rebrand and then that died too.

Tl;dr fuck surveys.

 

[Ruprecht]

reccomendations?

Depends what you're into.
My perspective on social development is soft technological determinism, which ties in with my work and my interest in speculative social/political Scifi.
Charles Stross has done some great British scifi and tends to speculate along those lines (Accelerando is a great book about the rapture of the nerds aka technological singularity).
I haven't followed him as much recently because he's shifted focus to Urban Fantasy, but his blog discussions tend to be interesting.
Max Barry is an Australian scifi author whose work tends towards taking the piss (recommend Jennifer Government).
He has a political sim on his website and forum.
China Mieville writes New Weird and is an inveterate old school Socialist. He's had a few blogs, but mostly he does interviews and opinion pieces for groups like International Socialist Review and was actually a founding member of Left Unity in the UK. Perdido Street Station is probably his most recognised book.

 

[Jack V Savage]

I think semantic arguments can be really important and productive. Being clear and accurate is very important. This is not one that I care for.

I think there's a tendency for some people to call an argument that they don't like "semantics" without really knowing that the word means, as if that's some kind of cheat code, just like they call arguments they don't like a "strawman" without getting that one. But Higus is right that there is way too much of "X is technically a form of Y, which is bad, and I'll argue to the death about that." Dishonest Republicans like @waiguoren have been especially fond of trying to do that with "CT" lately.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

Yes, but did you address the fact that not all censorship is "bad" and that therefore its negative connotation is misplaced sans context? In that event, can you concede there may be some who don't see "de-platforming" as "bad" censorship and that therefore a word with less negative connotation may be appropriate?

This is not my position necessarily, but it is a valid argument. Your argument is semantic to the point of ignoring real-world context, IMO.

All that needs to be said is that censorship carries a negative connotation. Whether you agree or not doesn't affect validity.

Concede what? People seeing "de-platforming" differently than "censorship" is part of my proof. A proof I used to show the use of the term is not Orwellian.

This is embarrassingly sloppy.

Build a valid proof based on the question at hand. Otherwise maybe you might be well-served to reflect on why I was able to construct a convincing argument and you weren't.

Spoiler: Hint

It's a non-starter to deny that when an authority says you can't say x, y, or z without facing some consequence that this is a form of censorship.

 

[Higus]

@Ruprecht do you recognize this War Roomer?

EDIT: my favorite part: "Why are you so triggered, my friend?"

 

[Jack V Savage]

Build a valid proof based on the question at hand. Otherwise maybe you might be well-served to reflect on why I was able to construct a convincing argument and you weren't.

Your argument was not convincing, your logic was bad, and your empirical claims were false. As I demonstrated in the parts you snipped.

 

[Ruprecht]

@Ruprecht do you recognize this War Roomer?

EDIT: my favorite part: "Why are you so triggered, my friend?"

Huh. I can see the eyes rolling as soon as they hear the accent.

 

[Trotsky]

Seriously, we need to have a top 10 reference thread for all the worst right-wing poll threads.

We have one about once a month: where the question is so imbalanced, the presentation so shameless, and the outcome so obvious, that the poll results in 90+% vote for one option, no actual debate occurring, and then a bunch of pages of conservative circle jerking because they're showing how delusional the libz are...despite no one actually taking the other side of the question in the thread.

Today's example: the black fatherlessness poll.