Common Arguments
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How sure you need to be depends on what you’re doing (Or: As usual I think social media discussions are missing a more fundamental disagreement, this time about a SCOTUS nominee)
Brett Kavanaugh is being considered for a position on the Supreme Court of the United States. He’s also been accused of sexual assault. This information has been all over social media lately, and there seems to be, as there often is, a fundamental disagreement behind the arguments. On the surface, we see basic support versus… Continue reading
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Freedom of speech does not end at the First Amendment
Someone said or did something controversial. Then, private companies decided not to let the person use their platforms anymore. (Or they deleted a few posts or whatever.) Not too long after, the person (or their followers) make an appeal to freedom of speech. Something like “[Company] is violating [person]’s free speech!” with “and that’s bad”… Continue reading
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Another attempt to bring out the two most critical points in the abortion debate
A month or two ago Ireland made a stride towards legal abortion, and the US made a stride in the opposite direction. Abortion is always on the political table though. I imagine a perfect pregnancy-prevention mechanism would cool the flames quite a bit, but even then, people can change their minds, and the question will… Continue reading
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Dragging people down instead of trying to make things better
Perhaps I’ve blogged about this before. The tendency has existed long before social media, but social media makes it even easier to broadcast one’s ressentiment. Today this one popped up in my newsfeed, edited because Facebook and Twitter will use it as the image for this post: See what I did there? The original post… Continue reading
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The “actually women make 96 cents on the dollar” response to the wage gap misses the point
Sometimes someone will bring up the wage gap, that women on average make only 75% of what men make. Then some crusaders of truth charge in to inform them that in fact if you hold all factors constant, then you end up with something closer to 96%. Do some people think that, when holding everything… Continue reading
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Today’s a Christian holiday; time for social media to smugly reveal that there’s some connection between Easter and Ishtar
There’s plenty of images to this effect, so I’ll just put one here for reference: A fun fact. Well, it would be a fun fact if it were true. But it’s not. “Ishtar” sounds like it looks like it would sound like. Those aren’t her symbols, either, nor is she the goddess of fertility. The… Continue reading
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“People can still kill without guns” is a stupid argument against gun control
Some people argue against gun control on the basis of other methods to kill existing. To put their argument in a valid form: We should control guns only if no other methods to kill people exist. Other methods to kill people exist. So, we should not control guns. They state 2, which is obviously true.… Continue reading
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Contradiction: Democracy and business
Another contradiction I noticed (five years ago, forgot, and was reminded of today): Some people say we should run the government like a business. They often say voting for a certain person for political office is good because the person has experience in business. At the same time, many of these people will express adoration… Continue reading
About Me
I write things, mostly about philosophy, psychology, and politics. I also make music and art.
nichiyes.com 