shlant

I appreciate you stepping in to be the perfect example of the kind of thinking I'm talking about. People like you are the real enemy of progress and we are very thankful that you are so politically irrelevant.

this is not a serious rebuttal.

> they're arranged by Democratic Party insiders using spam farms

Ah yes, the tried and true "they are paid protestors" shtick. Yawn.

> The reason they're called "No Kings" is because nobody knows what that's supposed to mean.

It's very simple - Trump acts like a king, wielding his power however he wants while ignoring any checks and balances. People are very much against that for obvious reasons.

> because Democrats support oligarchs.

curious what your thoughts are on Elon Musk and DOGE

> trying to figure out different ways to yell "fuck Trump."

Yea there's no reason why anyone would have legitimate issues with Trump as a president.. He certainly doesn't provide new ones on a daily basis

> Which is to say you could've picked a better example than M4A. Holding that up as a minimum expectation is hardly radical.

I'm not commenting on whether it's radical, just that if they had the choice between something like the ACA and nothing, many in these groups would rather have nothing. In fact, many would argue (as they would against other things they consider "incrementalism") that anything less than their demands would actually be detrimental somehow. Very much in opposition to "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good". This is exemplified in the whole M4A "force the vote" nonsense.

wealth is pretty good at being a vehicle for other things humans value

if it's not perfect, it's useless or destructive is a pretty common perspective in left-wing groupthink. Some examples are how everyone to the right of a left winger is a republican/fascist/etc or that it's Medicare 4 All or nothing.

> It's a natural consequence of capitalism

Adam smith was hostile towards monopolies (which your link refers to - nothing to do with price fixing although the conclusion is the same) and his critiques being very apparent throughout Wealth of Nations. This is a common opinion with proponents of free markets.

So what specifically about capitalism makes this a "natural consequence"?

what immediately came to mind for me is something like gastown. If that is the case I think I'd agree with the auther and a parallel from pre-AI would be "using kubernetes for personal projects is a waste of time" - so much time and resources spent on something that is way overkill and in many ways just would get in the way of just shipping something, anything and then going from there.

I wonder how people (like yourself) would would feel about "un-watermarked AI-generated CSAM is illegal, but watermarked is not". Or is is your first argument irrelevant and the second one is what actually matters to you?

> Also, now that it's legal to own and consume content featuring realistic depictions of sexualized children, do you think that will lead to fewer or more children getting abused?

I'm not sure. Is the intuition that it will lead to more? because I think there are data-based arguments to the contrary.

when I read your first sentence, I was expecting what followed it to refute that argument but it didn't. Or are you saying lolicon does harm someone?

people who complain about modern art almost always know essentially nothing about art. Usually heavy overlap with those that complain about anything that is different from what they like/grew up with

no, you should go off of the preponderance of evidence. Why would we choose a report from a single country?

> The fact you won't deny it does say a lot, actually.

Yea I know you think everyone is a paid shill. Very rational, very reasonable.

> And for the last time, the existence of conspiracies in this case has been proven.

nope. Conspiracy theorists were wrong about essentially every single thing during the pandemic (as they are with almost everything).

> We know guys like Fauci deliberately misled the public because he has admitted it in writing several times.

writing in a diary at a time when information was still very much coming in and nobody really knew what was the most likely source is not a conspiracy, but keep digging!

> China cannot ever, for any reason be responsible for doing anything bad

Nope didn't say anything like that. All I said was that the motivations of China does not prove or disprove either idea about the origin.

> Before anyone goes further with you, please confirm you do not yourself get grant money to do scientific research, nor have you in the past?

You can't see that this is perfectly in line with conspiratorial thinking? You think everyone who has disagreed with you are essentially "paid shills"?

I'm good. I can see this is not going to be productive.