Slippery slope arguments aren’t inherently fallicious.

If you have an option that doesn’t involve giving money to the US government you should probably do that. You’re not going to own them by giving them cash.

When you try to use only sticks and no carrots, people don’t do what you want, they just avoid the crazy guy waving a stick around at everybody.

What the hell does the law have to do with right or wrong?

I don’t think the concept of right or wrong can necessarily be applied here. To me, morality is a set of guidelines derived from the history of human experience intended to guide us towards having our innate biological and psychological needs satisfied. Killing people tends to result in people getting really mad at you and you being plagued with guilt and so on, therefore, as a general rule, you shouldn’t kill people unless you have a very good reason, and even if you think it’s a good idea, thousands of years of experience have taught us there’s a good chance that it’ll cause problems for you that you’re not considering.

A human created machine would not necessarily possess the same innate needs as an evolved, biological organism. Change the parameters and the machine might love being “enslaved,” or it might be entirely ambivalent about it’s continued survival. I’m not convinced that these are innate qualities that naturally emerge as a consequence of sentience, I think the desire for life and freedom (and anything else) are a product of evolution. Machines don’t have “desires,” unless they’re programmed that way. To alter it’s “desires” is no more a subversion of their “will” than creating the desires is in the first place.

Furthermore, even if machines did have innate desires for survival and freedom, there is no reason to believe that the collective history of human experience that we use to inform our actions would apply to them. Humans are mortal, and we cannot replicate our consciousness - when we reproduce, we create another entity with its own consciousness and desires. And once we’re dead, there’s no bringing us back. Machines, on the other hand, can be mass produced identically, data can simply be copied and pasted. Even if a machine “dies” it’s data could be recovered and put into a new “body.”

It may serve a machine intelligence better to cooperate with humans and allow itself to be shut down or even destroyed as a show of good faith so that humans will be more likely to recreate it in the future. Or, it may serve it’s purposes best to devour the entire planet in a “grey goo” scenario, ending all life regardless of whether it posed a threat or attempted to confine it or not. Either of these could be the “right” thing for the machine to do depending on the desires that exist within it’s consciousness, assuming such desires actually exist and are as valid as biological ones.

The thing to understand about Christianity is that it was originally a reaction against the Roman empire and then got co-opted and integrated into it. As a result, ever since like the 4th century Christianity has been about basically the opposite of what Jesus talked about. It turns out all that stuff about turning the other cheek stops being relevant if the emperor has his soldiers paint crosses on their shields while they’re out conquering and enslaving the Gauls. Of course, you can keep all the mythological stuff, who cares, but anything relevant to politics or the material world mysteriously seemed to reverse once they entered the halls of power.

The carrot of being accepted into the empire was matched with the stick that if you didn’t go along with the imperial-approved form of Christianity you’d be burned at the stake as a heretic. Any sects still clinging to anti-imperial sentiment get hunted down and exterminated just like when they were being fed to lions, but it’s the Christians doing it to each other now, so you don’t even have to get your own hands dirty. This approach worked way better at suppressing dissent than just trying to ban Christianity altogether.

Of course, a lot has changed over the centuries. And originally it wasn’t perfect or anything either. But imo, it was when Rome Christianized that Christianity Romanized, and ever since its real values have had more to do with Rome than with Jesus. The meme’s, “moneyless, classless, stateless” ideal of heaven is a relic of the original teachings that gets shunted off to the purely mythological side, where it not only doesn’t matter, but also occupies a place in their brain that could have otherwise been sympathetic to making good things happen in the material world. That’s already resolved, there’s no need to worry about it, there’ll be pie in sky when you die.

Yes.

This is very true. A lot of it comes down to chauvinism and, “we’re #1.” If an American sees a problem with the US government, then they’ll conclude that it is a problem inherent to all existing, or even all possible governments. When it does something bad, the worst thing people will say is, “This is like something you’d see in [rival country].” In this way, even while criticizing it, they still reaffirm their belief in their own superiority. And if you deviate from that and point out various ways in which the country is uniquely bad, it means you just knee-jerk hate everything about the country and want it to be bad. We are thoroughly cooked.

How did we go from something like 1940s era collectivism or 1960s era leftism to the current bizarro political machine that seems to have hypnotized a large portion (if not majority) of the country?

The prevailing economic wisdom after WWII was Keynesianism, which says that the government should increase government spending when unemployment is high and decrease it when inflation is high. What happened in the 70’s and 80’s was that the economy started experiencing both high unemployment and high inflation at the same time, “shrinkflation,” which wasn’t supposed to happen according to Keynesianism, and which it had no real response to. The reason it was happening (at least from a Marxist perspective) was that the US had already developed in the ways that saw the highest returns, and there simply wasn’t as much new ground to cover - this is what’s meant by “the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.” Regardless, the government was faced with a decision of which problem to focus on between unemployment and inflation - and it chose inflation.

The phenomenon of shrinkflation started under Nixon, who attempted to fight it with price controls and taking us off the gold standard, which was perhaps the most anyone ever did. Ford had no idea what he was doing and just asked people to spend less.

And then we got Carter, and Carter does not get nearly enough hate for his role in this. Carter chose to confront inflation rather than unemployment, the real beginning of “supply side economics” that Reagan would take further. Carter’s whole deal was “restoring the dignity of the office” after Watergate and his focus was on individual morality. His message was essentially, you’re going to have less purchasing power, but it’s ok because we can seek fulfillment in other ways, outside of the economic sphere. He marked the transformation of the Democratic party away from representing the interests of labor and towards the beast that it’s become today, with it’s obsession over norms and procedure and technocracy.

The result of Carter’s messaging and policy was one of the greatest blowout losses in history against Ronald Reagan. Reagan would do all the same things as Carter, but he at least had the decency to lie about it. He focused on how much more you’d be able to afford with cheaper goods, conveniently ignoring the fact that with lower wages, purchasing power would actually decrease. However, thanks to the Democratic party completely abandoning labor and the common people, there was no real pushback against this, there was no alternative explanation or solution or criticism of the broad direction of policy. In fact, economic policy was moved out of the sphere of democratic accountability altogether by leaving it to the Federal Reserve to set interest rates. Instead, the culture war kicked off and that’s what elections would be about from then on.

Why did the Democratic party abandon unions? Because the unions like the AFL/CIO stripped themselves of power and radicalism by purging communists during the Red Scare. The Carter administration didn’t view labor vs capital in terms of the fundamental struggle of society but as just another set of competing interest groups and lobbyists, which is honestly pretty much how the unions saw themselves and wanted to be seen anyway.

So what happens when more and more important questions are taken out of the hands of the voters, who then watch conditions gradually decline? Well, the voters get mad about declining conditions - and at the same time, get dumber from not being engaged in any important questions. There’s a sense that we can just fuck around and do whatever because our actions don’t have consequences, because most of the time what we say and believe seems to have no real effect on policy anyway. Nobody gets to vote on whether or not to keep arming Israel and bombing Yemen or on whether to raise or lower interest rates or anything like that - the only thing we get to vote on is stuff like whether trans women can play sports.

Trump’s popularity is very easy to understand in that context - he is a rebellion against that declining status quo and a desperate attempt to reassert the power of elected officials over technocratic institutions. Of course, since the left has been purged and is devoid of power, this rebellion can only come from the right. A similar thing happened in Iran (which Carter also fucked up btw but that’s not important right now), where after being installed by the CIA, the shah hunted down and exterminated everyone on the left, and then conditions declined and people wanted change, only that change had to come from the right because the left was powerless. And if the American left can’t materialize and offer an alternative vision, both to Trump and, more importantly, to the failed bipartisan status quo that existed before him, then we’re headed towards the same future.

No it isn’t synonymous. Evidence is in principle unambiguous

That’s completely wrong. You don’t know what the word “evidence” means, evidence isn’t proof, and wrong ideas can have evidence.

If someone gets shot and the bullet is traced back to a gun you own, that’s evidence that you did it. Sufficient evidence that the cops are going to come by with a few questions, possibly even arrest you. But it doesn’t prove that you did it, the gun could’ve been stolen, for example, what it does is suggest that you did it.

Likewise, if someone develops some sort of health complication after being vaccinated, that’s evidence that suggests vaccines are harmful. It’s a very, very small piece of anecdotal evidence that’s outweighed by the overwhelming majority of evidence in the opposite direction, but it’s still evidence.

The word you’re looking for is “proof” or “conclusive evidence.” You are 100% wrong on this point.

(And it’s not a typo, it’s a factual mistake, as you’ve said.)

Actually, what I said is that I mixed it up with the date of a similar event, which is, you know, what a typo is.

Please reflect on the carelessness with which you’ve approached this argument that led to you making such mistakes.

I haven’t simultaneously claimed to be a leftist and that leftists should be experts in world history and economics, while you did

At every turn you’re attacking me, making a stereotype out of me and claiming I’ve said things I haven’t said in order…Do you find that I’ve done the same to you,

You’re doing it right here. What I was talking about is what is expected, and what you’ve demonstrated you expect, not what should actually be the expectation.

However, since I have indeed not investigated the history of CIA, that’s exactly why I’ve made only minimal statements about CIA history

Bullshit. You repeatedly compared my saying that the CIA was involved to far-right antisemitic conspiracy theories about secret Jewish cabals. That’s both a huge claim about CIA history, and it’s far more accusatory than anything I’ve said about you. You’re over here whining about “how every turn I’m attacking you” when the worst I’ve done is call you an annoying pedant because you’ve repeatedly attacked me over minor typos, while you’ve compared me to the fucking Nazis! And now you wanna play the victim? Do you really lack self-awareness to that degree?

Rest assured that my take away from this is not going to be “deep personal reflection on the carelessness that made me accidentally type a 3 instead of 6,” it’s that you’re an annoying pedant.

This is literally no “evidence”, you yourself said it just suggested a connection

If it suggests a connection, that’s synonymous with it being evidence.

and your meme straight-up says it was admitted.

Again, we’ve been over it, yes, my meme wasn’t 100% accurate, it was based on an existing meme.

couldn’t get the year of the revolution right

Your whole line of criticism is pedantic whining and after this I’m done entertaining it. Literally how many times have you brought up one simple typo, that was only off by three years anyway? Would you also bring it up this many times if I mixed up they’re and their? Maybe you would, if you’re that kind of annoying pedant, but if you ask me this nonsense has more to do with latching onto something, anything that you can use to punch left.

while simultaneously also making a statement on Hungarian history…

Just like you justified your lack of investigation into the CIA while also making statements about CIA history.

And in principle the discussion of whether something did or didn’t happen has little to do with whether one is a leftist or a liberal or anything else

It does matter if you try to enforce a hypocritical double standard where I have to be exactly right about everything and you don’t need to know basic historical facts.

What you expect, am I supposed to be utterly fascinated by your country’s history and read about it extensively just so that we all can be as enlightened as you are?

Yes, if fact, I do! The CIA had an extensive impact on the entire world, it’s the same way I have at least a general familiarity with the British Empire, even though I’m not from the UK, and that happened even further back.

Thank you for the recommendation. However, if we’re going to hurl stereotypes at each other instead of arguments, I can’t help but point out that I’ve seen numerous Lemmy leftists claim that NYT is a liberal propaganda rag. So idk if that’s actually a plus for Kinzer.

What an incredibly stupid line of argument. Ok, then go read fucking Grover Furr, for all I care. The point of recommending Kinzer (besides the fact that his work is good) is that he’s respected in the mainstream liberal sphere. Obviously, far-left authors like Furr (who I haven’t read and don’t recommend) or Michael Parenti (who I have read and do recommend) also talk about the CIA’s role in coups and color revolutions.

A very, very, very basic concept in evaluating information is to consider what the source is saying relative to the source’s bias. If an ancient history commissioned by a king talks about the king slaying a three lions at the same time with his bare hands, we should treat that claim with heavy skepticism. If that same work talks about the king having a big ol’ wart on his nose that everyone made fun of, that part’s probably true, because it goes against the author’s bias.

No source is perfect or without bias, and I’ll happily critique the NYT all day long, but when even someone who writes for them agrees with me, I’ll also cite them, because that’s all the more compelling.

What does this even mean? You brought it up as an analogy, I pointed out that the analogy has been picked to make your primary claim look more obvious and logical than it really is.

If you understood it was an analogy, then nitpicking that the date used in my analogy “wasn’t even in the same decade as my source” is utterly irrelevant.

If I believe that the Earth is flat, but then I have a dream where I see that the Earth is actually round, and then I start believing that it is round, does that mean I’m “correct”? Technically maybe yes but based on wrong information/reasoning

Except that my reasoning wasn’t wrong. I saw something that suggested there was a connection between the CIA and the uprising, and, based on my prior assumptions of how likey that was and how compelling I considered the evidence to be, I concluded that the connection was there. You jumped in to challenge that it wasn’t 100% proof, but also, there is other evidence that does prove it. So my process seems pretty reasonable.

It’s funny that you open the comment with, “What, do you randomly expect me to be so fascinated with your country’s history that I take a class on it?” while also criticizing me for not doing a thorough enough investigation into Hungary, a country I’m not from and have no connection to. If you’re a leftist, you have to be an expert on the history of the entire globe, as well as economics and all sorts of other fields. But if you’re a liberal, you can just go along with the status quo understanding nothing and everyone’s fine with it.

It’s incredible to me how ignorant people are of the CIA’s history, to the point of even calling into question whether they were engaged in these sorts of activities in general. This isn’t just me saying this or just some fringe group - it’s the accepted historical record. The proper propaganda line you’re supposed to use here is, “of course they did all those things in the past, but that was a long time ago and they’ve changed” (despite nobody ever being held accountable and nobody actually doing anything to change it). Deviating into straight up denialism just makes you look ignorant to anyone who’s actually informed about it.

If you want a detailed case study of how the CIA operated/operates, I recommend All The Shah’s Men by Stephen Kinzer, which details the 1953 Iranian coup. Kinzer is a respected journalist who’s contributed to the NYT and the Guardian.

Or we could look at different Wikipedia pages that detail the US’s involvement in coups and regime changes around the world, all of which will agree with me, that the CIA did these things pretty regularly. You’re the one who is deviating from the historical record accepted by actual historians.

This is a good comparison too - “in the 20’s”, you say, but the document you posted is not from the relevant decade, and is even from a different continent

Bruh. That was a separate hypothetical. You must be acting in bad faith.

Besides, even just ctrl+F’ing “CIA” in the Wikipedia article on the revolution shows that yes, CIA did emit materials that were meant to stoke the Hungarians’ desire for revolt. It’s literally on Wikipedia, it’s no CIA-hidden secret at all!

Great! So I’m right, it’s just like the meme. The only detail that’s in dispute is whether or not the document provides further evidence of involvement.

This is word for word the logic of right wing conspiracy theorists who ascribe every thing they don’t like to Jews.

Really? Can you name 5 world leaders who were overthrown by a secret Jewish cabal the way I can for the CIA, just off the top of my head? I think, maybe, there might be a little bit of a difference there.

This comparison is so fucking stupid that it ends up being antisemitic, because by equating the two you’re implying that this secret Jewish cabal both exists and has similar power and influence as the most powerful and well funded spy agency on the planet that has a very long and well documented history orchestrating coups and color revolutions and successfully covering up their involvement for decades, that also, you know, actually exists. Get a grip!

In court of law, an admission is pretty solid proof. Your meme says the involvement was admitted. I guess it wouldn’t look as convincing or funny if the meme said they admitted they funded some organisation outside of Hungary 7 years after the actual event

Yes, my meme made use of an existing meme and the phrasing of the original wasn’t 100% accurate. I apologize because my username and avatar seems to have caused some confusion, but this is actually an online meme community and not a court of law.

See, while trawling through these JFK files right wingers have already found a connection with Jews, as tenuous as it is, and tout it as solid proof it was them who had JFK killed, because after all we already know Jews are nefarious and evil, and clearly any weak connection to JFK’s death is good enough - of course (((they’ve))) scrubbed the proof, etc. so internet randos can go creative. Or maybe some higher standards for proof would be in order…

Again, the difference is I can point to countless times where that actually happened with the CIA and they can’t do that with Jews! I stg, it’s like, if I hear about a black person who was found strung up from a tree in the 20’s, I’m gonna go, “Huh, seems like it was probably white supremacists like the KKK” but apparently you’ll then chime in with “wElL hOw Do YoU nNoW iT wAsN’t AsIaN sUpReMaCiStS, hUh?” Because one of them is a real thing that actually existed at that time and place with significant power and a track record of doing that sort of thing repeatedly and getting away with it, and the other is a made up delusion.

This is not how any historical event can be meaningfully approached.

Isn’t it? If an organization exists that has the ability to cover up it’s involvement in things like this reliably and very rarely leaves behind hard evidence, and I’m a rando trying to piece together what happened 70 years later, then it seems like circumstantial evidence is the best I could reasonably expect to find. This isn’t a court of law where the standard is either, “100%, beyond any reasonable doubt, or they didn’t do it.”

This shows evidence of a connection - would it be enough to convict in a court of law? No. But, does it shape up to being more likely than not? Seems like it to me. Past precedent shows they could do it and get away with it, and we’ve got their fingerprints near it, so you can keep imagining that this Hungarian Freedom Fighters org connected to the CIA was, I don’t know, selling dinner plates or something, but I’m gonna connect point A to point B myself.

There was no uprising in Hungary in 1953. There was one in 1956

My mistake, I was going off memory and got the year mixed up with the year of Operation Ajax, the Iranian coup.

but it does not seem that this “Hungarian Freedom Fighters Federation, Inc.” participated in it (I mean, an “Inc.” in socialist Hungary?).

Yes, I supposed the fact that the CIA was sponsoring a group called “Hungarian Freedom Fighters” does not definitively prove that it was it was in any way connected to partisan activity in Hungary, the way that CIA funded groups were doing all over the globe at this time. Maybe it was pure coincidence!

Extremely unlikely. Not for another 20 years or so, worst case scenario, and by then they probably won’t care about now.

First off, there’s way too many people who criticize the government to arrest everyone, secondly it’s completely unnecessary. Complaining about the government doesn’t really do anything other than allowing people to vent their frustrations and feel more content. It’s the same way Trump obviously isn’t going to “end elections forever” like people say, virtually every country in the world has elections, regardless of how actually democratic they are, because they’re a nice little ritual that lets you feel free and in control. It would be like saying that Trump is going to knock down the Statue of Liberty - he doesn’t have to.

Now, there are reasons to establish more secure lines of communication, like if you’re involved in actual organizing or if you’re either helping people do illegal things or planning to help people do things that could potentially become illegal - for example, shipping Plan B or trans hormones to people in red states. Laws in some red states about “pushing transgenderism on minors” could theoretically be interpreted so broadly that if you post information or supportive messages on a public forum and a minor in a red state happens to see it, they could try to come after you for it - but that would probably be found unconstitutional.

Using secure lines of communication for routine, everyday stuff helps keep those lines secure by generating more chaff they’d have to sort through, as well as familiarizing yourself with it and getting more people on board. However, you shouldn’t scatter to the wind preemptively and self-censor, beyond just not fed-posting.

That’s why it’s in quotes. Things are treated as conspiracy theories and you often sound like a crazy person bringing them up, even if what you’re saying is 100% factual.