Scott Adams endorses Trump, becomes respected pundit

Oh, no, you see, South Park goes after both sides, so it’s therefore always satire. Haha!

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Funny how for all the douche and turd sandwiches, they only go after the “carelords” and sincere. Ha ha what losers!

Still looking after that manbearpig of climate change? Stupid listening to scientists, Stone and Parker’s friends at the Cato Institute told them all they need to know.

I still like Book Of Mormon :frowning:

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No, if you read what I had to say any differently you must be stupid because I’m very bad at expressing myself and you’re the dummy! Which is something someone good at communication says and my mom told me I’m a good speaker in primary school and I won an award so eat it up.

Sigh. I need a break from the internet whenever I am inclined to countersnark.

But why is it that every internet smart person has to tell you that they’re “smart”? Shouldn’t someone not need to self-ascribe? Shouldn’t it be obvious?

I can grok someone’s intelligence through their communication, which includes the ability to explain ones own concepts and ideas to others outside any bubble of thought, I dont know why anyone would take a person’s own words for it.

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I always say the smart people look at the things they know vs. the universe and are aware of all the things they don’t know and say “I don’t know anything” - the unsmart people look at the things they know and say “look at how smart I am”.

I am infinitely more interested in talking with and knowing the former.

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I wish I had the courage to ask someone I haven’t seen in years “What happened to your face?”

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I require humor. At the least.

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It’s not that we can’t accept troublesome artists on some level (and in our cases with a consciousness and without handwaving excuses), it’s that he can’t understand ever disliking a media because the creator is a fucking piece of shit, and defends the creator no matter how milquetoast the creation.

If I’m going to enjoy good art from a bad dude, make the art really amazing.

If the art isn’t, all you’re doing is defending a conservative for his values under the pretense that you laughed at a Sunday funny strip a dozen years ago.

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Quite the strawman you’ve got there. Care to tell me what else I and my skeptic friends believe? Because it seems like you haven’t met many skeptics.

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Well, it’s pretty dumb on the surface, but if you assume a somewhat more nuanced interpretation, we do know that many behaviors that may be enabled by the presence of certain conditions go in and out of fashion for reasons that are entirely cultural and thus can be influenced by many factors that I would put under the rubric of “advertising”.

Suicide bombing was not always as “mainstream” as it is now, even though the conditions that make it culturally viable have been present for decades. The “advertising” done by some high visibility applications of the technique have made is culturally acceptable in a way that wasn’t before. Could there exist “advertising” that might help discourage the trend? Perhaps.

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But I think it assumes that people who are doing suicide bombings are one-dimensional and lacking cognitive reasoning and are somehow particularly suspectible to propaganda like advertising. Suicide bombing is a “weapon of the weak.” I think understanding why people turn to that is much more complicated an issue that they are being fooled into it (which is the implication of saying “just throw advertising at them” is, I think). The narrative around these acts (in the mainstream discourse), I think are pretty skewed and uninformed, I think (we’re all underserved in understanding what’s actually happening and our only source tends to be the seriously problematic media).

To think that we can solve a problem by just advertising an alternative is just missing the realities of the facts on the ground, I’d argue.

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Interviews with failed suicide bombers that I’ve read (which may well have a selection bias) doesn’t seem to indicate a huge depth of analysis. I’ll admit to being surprised by how non-ideological the reasons for doing so were. I supposed I should have guessed from the diaries of Japanese kami-kazi bombers who died believing that their superiors were utter idiots and their contribution was completely pointless. However, cultural forces made certain they did their best nonetheless.

The question is what has changed from 25 years ago when the injustices were just as great and suicide bombing almost unknown?

And yes, no single TV advertisement is going to make a difference. Still, I harken to my youth when drunk driving was considered socially acceptable, and people who wanted harsher penalties where seen in the same light as people who want the death penalty for drug possession are now.

There were several factors that that made a difference over the next few decades, but a lot of it was careful social engineering (aka advertising) by the government. On the other hand, they have come up empty in trying to reduce drug/alcohol abuse, so you can’t advertise your way out of everything.

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I think that’s the point I was trying to make, actually. I think the popular perception is that suicide bombers are all ideologically-driven individuals, rather than those who might actually have more mundane concerns about the lives of their families.

Well, in that case, much of the work was done at the local level by groups like MAD (who probably got some grants or something from the state as well as rhetorical buy-in.

Exactly. We all KNOW that drinking and driving is “bad” but so many people do it anyway. I think that indicates that human nature might be persuaded by things like advertising, but especially when it comes to moralizing, it can miss the mark by miles and only drive people to do what they want anyhow…

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I like how your post has few words in it. It’s important to be concise. But still, it contains no information or ideas at all. If you want responses from people, you have to say something.

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That’s one faction of the online skeptic crowd, yes.

OTOH, there’s an equally large faction of left-skeptics opposing them. Rebecca Watson, PZ Myers, etc.

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There you go!

This is how to post one’s disagreement.

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_the opposite game_. Something I am well versed in due to a verbally dexterous six year old. It’s still cute when they’re six.

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Truth. Statistically speaking we know nothing. Even if we round up, barely a thing!

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Snow’s Law?

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not familiar with it. At least not by that name. Tell me more?

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