Pitting Max_S

[ParallelLines]

Okay, I’m pretty much done with this thread, as literally every single point has made Max move from a disagreeable individual, to unspoken monster, to outspoken monster, but I’ll just summarize the points.

@Max_S

I recognize the historical right of conquest, at least through WWII.

You previously were talking about the primacy about the narrow reading of the Constitution, and following the law of the land as written (explicitly not just the US), but then through that out the window with an arbitrarily picked date for when might-makes-right was indeed the proper answer. I was blow away, but was considering reasoned argument until you made another point which removed the need, see (much) further below.

@Max_S

Interesting. I don’t know what Belkar is but I wonder what the other options entail. The first paragraph I quoted, which I disagree with, would seem to put me in Chaotic Evil as I previously understood the categories.

And at this point, you’re saying you accept and embrace the understanding that by western standings, you are evil. You aren’t defending it, you aren’t arguing the assumptions, you accept it with near-Luciferean pride (although without an iota of the charisma).

@TroutMan

I appreciate what you’re doing here, but what outcome are you expecting? Is Max going to see the light and suddenly find a moral compass? He has shown us clearly who he is.

And this was the point that I realized this is what I had been doing as well. A ways back, I did a similar appeal to Max to examine what he was saying and posting, and that confused by his demeanor, I was willing to believe that he was working from a point of reason.

@Max_S

I think you misunderstand me. I’m not bound by the agreeableness of a shitty agreement, but by the force that backs it up.

And this is the end. You probably didn’t intend it to be this way, but this is really it. Might makes right. You seem to imply you respect the law because you’re afraid of being punished. But you also said that given your way, you’d enforce your POV on everyone, regardless of the social contract you high-handedly mentioned earlier. This is beyond bigotry, racism, or any of the other innumerable failings of otherwise intelligent humans, this is actual, honest to goodness prideful evil.

And you see nothing wrong with it.

Your opinions on other subjects are no longer worth the knowledge that I’m dealing with a Putin-wannabe, who wants to define the world in specific terms entirely subject to his definitions, and be-damned to anyone else. A person whose only values are in the use of force, or protection from the use of force on him.

A well earned ignore for you, and I suggest everyone else do the same - you may or may not be a troll, but I see no value of interacting with evil.

[octopus]

The hysteria over a conjecture is typical for this board and yet again belies the claim of intellectualness that the members of this board so desperately wish to think of themselves.

Look, Max seems to be coming about the question from a legalistic and perhaps self interested point of view of someone who grew up in that time and place. Not necessarily someone magically transported from 2020 and out of their mom’s basement ready to battle the fascists of history and right all the cosmic injustices on Earth.

The octopus of now, would of course risk a paltry fine to save a life. But how far one would go to save a life is a perfectly reasonable question. We all could be flying to Ukraine to save lives by putting ourselves at risk vs Russia. Or flying to China to rescue the Uighurs. Perhaps rescuing folks from Syria or North Korea. All of these actions put ones fortune and life at risk and are actions practically no one is taking even if the risk is within an order of magnitude of assisting the fugitive.

That said, I’m not sure why the discussion of what constitutes a moral act is so controversial even if the topic is one that is easy to exploit in order to paint another in an unfavorable light. Ultimately all morality has to be deduced from axioms in a logical fashion. People don’t share these axioms and they sure as hell aren’t consistently logical. Why would anyone be surprised that moral conclusions are divergent?

Now, if you could agree on a set a givens you could all argue about what logically follows but you all can’t even do that because it’s a concept beyond most of you.

Personally, I believe might makes right is the truth of the universe. However, I find it awfully useful to agree with and advocate the age of enlightenment ideals of intrinsic human rights. Slavery be it chattel or raiding a neighboring tribe is a violation of intrinsic human rights and I think it’s worth some cost to help eradicate it. Where on the spectrum of no cost to the cost of the torture of self and family one is willing to pay is obviously a personal decision.

[Riemann]

@JKellyMap

maybe Riemann was only referring to eye color, hair color, and melanoma? If so, they should have said so

I did elaborate on what kind of thing I was talking about:

@Riemann

Whereas some factual claims about physical characterstics that are correlated with skin color or ethnicity do not carry this baggage, such as the incidence of the sickle cell trait, or why East Africans are overrepresented among distance runners.

So then…

@MrDibble

No, they’re not. People whose ancestors lived in a certain geographic area are.

Obviously I understand that the causal connection is with geographic ancestry, which should have been clear from my follow-up comment (that you ignored) above. But since skin color is correlated with ancestry, skin color is correlated with sickle cell. Most of us haven’t had our genomes sequenced and don’t know our exact geographic ancestry. Absent perfect information about ancestry, would it be a moral failing for a doctor to take account of skin color as a risk factor for anemia?

In any event, you ignored the substance of my post, which was not to assert that there are many innate physical differences that correlate with skin color, but to note that some such “factual claims” are both false and have significant historical racist baggage, whereas other factual claims may be true or false but do not carry the same baggage.

[Max_S]

@ParallelLines

an arbitrarily picked date for when might-makes-right was indeed the proper answer.

I don’t see the date as arbitrary, because the U.S. and to my knowledge every other country in the world gave up the right of conquest explicitly when by signing the United Nations charter. And in interpersonal relations, you give up said right when you become part of a society of people - the threat of might-makes-right (i.e. anarchy) is the basis for the entire concept of a social compact.

Hence the weighing between what I personally think is right and wrong, and what I think are my obligations under a social compact.

@ParallelLines

And at this point, you’re saying you accept and embrace the understanding that by western standings, you are evil. You aren’t defending it, you aren’t arguing the assumptions, you accept it with near-Luciferean pride (although without an iota of the charisma).

There are some things in there I disagree with - like having no compassion or mercy at all. But a lot of it applied to me.

@ParallelLines

you also said that given your way, you’d enforce your POV on everyone, regardless of the social contract you high-handedly mentioned earlier.

Maybe I am contradicting myself, because I don’t agree with this statement. It would be nice if everyone agreed with me but it would be deeply wrong to force them to do so.

~Max

[octopus]

You seem to be a law type of guy but would you concede that not all law and not all sets of processes that led to a particular law are equal? That some methods of organizing a society have advantages or disadvantages when compared with others? When faced with conflicting sets of law for example, how would you determine which one to follow or which one is more just?

[Martin_Hyde]

@Riemann

Obviously I understand that the causal connection is with geographic ancestry, which should have been clear from my follow-up comment (that you ignored) above. But since skin color is correlated with ancestry, skin color is correlated with sickle cell. Most of us haven’t had our genomes sequenced and don’t know our exact geographic ancestry. Absent perfect information about ancestry, would it be a moral failing for a doctor to take account of skin color as a risk factor for anemia?

The sickle-cell–>black person relationship is significantly overblown and has been known to be for years, to the point there’s even American doctors who have bought into it leading to them exaggerating the likelihood of it. There is no relationship between sickle-cell anemia and darker skin, biologically. There is some genetic ancestry in a specific part of Africa–which is huge with a crazy amount of genetic ancestries, that has inherited sickle-cell at a higher rate.

[MrDibble]

@Riemann

since skin color is correlated with ancestry, skin color is correlated with sickle cell

Not in a way that means you can say “Blacks…” anything. Zulus don’t have a prevalence of it, Arabs do. Are Zulus not Black? Are Arabs Black?

@Riemann

Absent perfect information about ancestry, would it be a moral failing for a doctor to take account of skin color as a risk factor for anemia?

Better to take more specific ethnicity. By all means, consider African-Americans at higher risk for it, West Africans even higher still.

Neither of those groups is the same as “Black”. That’s the thrust of my point.

@Riemann

other factual claims may be true or false but do not carry the same baggage.

Sickle cell prevalence is one that does carry that baggage.

[Riemann]

@Martin_Hyde

The sickle-cell–>black person relationship is significantly overblown…
There is no relationship between sickle-cell anemia and darker skin, biologically.

Is that true? From here
https://www.hematology.org/education/patients/anemia/sickle-cell-disease

Sickle cell disease is more common in certain ethnic groups, including:

• People of African descent, including African-Americans (among whom 1 in 12 carries a sickle cell gene)
• Hispanic-Americans from Central and South America
• People of Middle Eastern, Asian, Indian, and Mediterranean descent

I have a background in genetics, but no experise in this. In any event, I hope we can agree that this qualifies as a reasonable matter for civilized discussion; whereas the question of whether POC can float is not.

[What_Exit]

@Babale made this easy for you. He chose Vermont.
I see you looked up the fine. But I think you got that wrong also. $500.
Do you know how many people of Vermont got convicted of aiding a fugitive slave? Close to zero. Those in theory caught all convinced the judge they weren’t aware the person was a fugitive slave. Part of this was Vermont made it nearly impossible to enforce the terrible terrible Federal Law anyway.

But even if you were right, and even if I was living in a more likely to get caught place like New Jersey, I would never consider turning them in. I might chicken out, give them some food and money and remind them I was just helping a stranger, and I have no knowledge of anything else.

You disgust me with your glib answer.

[MrDibble]

And to return to the actual subject of this thread - of course Max is trolling, I thought we all realized that months ago, in this very thread.

[Martin_Hyde]

@Martin_Hyde

The sickle-cell–>black person relationship is significantly overblown and has been known to be for years, to the point there’s even American doctors who have bought into it leading to them exaggerating the likelihood of it. There is no relationship between sickle-cell anemia and darker skin, biologically. There is some genetic ancestry in a specific part of Africa–which is huge with a crazy amount of genetic ancestries, that has inherited sickle-cell at a higher rate.

AFAIK sickle cell is hypothesized to have become more common in areas with high rates of endemic malaria. This correlates somewhat with areas of darker skin color but not perfectly, and there is not a direct correlation between the genes that cause your skin to have a certain amount of melanin and the haplotype(s) that cause sickle-cell. Essentially the haplotypes are known from an area of sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) through into parts of the Arabian peninsula and into central India.

There is also an occurrence in and around the Bosporus region of Anatolia.

It is not evenly distributed in this range, there are two areas of very high concentration in the West of Africa and it is lesser throughout the rest of its range, and then there is an area of high concentration in India.

Many areas that have people with very dark skin (as MrD mentions for example the Zulu people), that have no real presence of these haplotypes. Southern Indian, Andaman Islands, Australia etc have very dark skinned indigenous peoples who have no genetic pre-disposition to sickle cell, because it is not related to skin color.

[Max_S]

@octopus

You seem to be a law type of guy but would you concede that not all law and not all sets of processes that led to a particular law are equal? That some methods of organizing a society have advantages or disadvantages when compared with others? When faced with conflicting sets of law for example, how would you determine which one to follow or which one is more just?

Not all laws are equal, and not all sets of processes that led to a particular law are equal. All methods of organizing a society have their own advantages and disadvantages.

For an example of resolving conflicting laws, in the case of a federal versus state law, the federal law is supreme because the states consented to federal supremacy in the Constitution. If two state laws conflict, you go to a judge and ask for assistance; maybe the newer one takes precedence or maybe the newer one is ruled invalid.

~Max

[Atamasama]

@MrDibble

Max is trolling

Whether he is or not, he’s saying reprehensible things, and this is the forum to call people out for it.

His trolling clearly isn’t obvious enough for moderator action. Either that, or his obvious posts aren’t being flagged.

[Riemann]

@MrDibble

Sickle cell prevalence is one that does carry that baggage.

Can you elaborate?

[octopus]

So, if law could be subjectively good or bad and the process of enacting a law could be subjectively good or bad then what is the subjective moral imperative to following it?

[flurb]

I really wish people would stop serving up more and more morally-outrageous-but-legal situations for him to justify. You realize he’s responding with just one hand on the keyboard, right?

[MrDibble]

It’s a falsehood that originated within and is associated with a racist culture.

[Martin_Hyde]

FWIW I don’t think Max is intentionally trolling. I think this is what the situation is:

1. He has an interest in the law, and found interpretations he agreed with, he is not open to exploring the assumptions of these interpretations, to the point that he casually just believes entire Amendments to the Constitution do not exist, and ignores very basic constitutional law premises because of this.

2. He has essentially no empathy, this is a pathology, and not uncommon. Lack of empathy often means you have a lack of a good sense of self as well, which leads to poor outcomes in many areas of interpersonal relationship, communication etc.

3. He really likes getting attention, even negative attention, and he knows the things he says often get that.

I guess #3 could be construed as trolling, and maybe it is I guess, I don’t think it is deliberate though, but as mentioned that’s why I disengaged with him. There is no real discussing the law with someone who simply believes parts of it don’t exist, and there is no discussing morality with someone lacking empathy–empathy is a core trait that is required to exist in human society and has been necessary back to the hunter gatherer times. Lacking that trait is a defect, and people with that lack are generally best not engaged with.

[octopus]

No one is compelled to participate in a thread or read a particular post. It’s called agency.

[Max_S]

The general moral obligation to follow the laws of society is independent from the subjective morality of any particular law, and in case I find any particular law to be immoral, the obligation must be weighed against it.

~Max