this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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Pleasant Politics
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Politics without the jerks.
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Highlighting bad faith and sloppy argument is more important than addressing nonsense on its face.
You're in here insisting that private prisons can't be so bad, because we're not executing jaywalkers or whatever. That's not worth taking seriously. Politely refuting that as if it's asked out of innocence or informed sincerity would be a mistake. You should fucking know better. The same way you should be able to figure out, all on your lonesome, how potential medical uses for a drug don't somehow make it "more potent" than anything that'll fuck you up over-the-counter.
Benedryl's effects get buck-wild if you take a handful. We let kids buy it. You know alcohol does harm, in basically any quantity, but we still leave it unregulated, except for production standards and age requirements. So the idea that marijuana could only possibly be worse, just because it's restricted, is a childlike insistence on a just and rational world.
Have you looked outside and seen that, lately? Does everything work the way you expect it must? Not one injustice or absurdity, as far as the eye can see?
Are you happier to be called-out at this length?
Guy. Relax.
He's sharing his viewpoint. You might not agree with it. You have no call to be escalating into "bad faith" "sloppy" "childlike" "weak trolling" and so on.
I'm leaving this up, I don't see a reason to censor you from speaking to people this way if you want to, but you need to chill.
Bad faith is a real problem, moreso than someone identifying it. When a commenter cannot stand by what they write, projects emotion as a dismissal, and repeatedly jukes to even less reasonable claims - either mods deal with that, or users have to. Playing along is not dealing with it.
Sometimes a user's viewpoint is badly-constructed and badly-defended. Sincerity doesn't make it better. Unless you think escalation is somehow never appropriate - having a conversation derailed by nonsense is plainly an appropriate time to escalate into pointing out it's nonsense.
The thing your robot's supposed to do turns out to be really hard to automate. Bad actors don't always show up numerically even when scored by human votes. People are capable of expressing infuriating contradictory garbage in seemingly polite terms. Or: simply by making cogent and polite rebuttals to something nobody said. These are violations of civility, far more than anyone saying, cut that shit out.
I could express that frustration in seemingly polite terms. I choose to be blunt. I want to convey that the social contract has already weakened. Disagreement isn't even relevant. This is a problem of behavior and reasoning, not where some winding nonsense ends up.
There's a big difference between nonsense, bad faith, and something coherent that you just don't agree with.
Being unable to make sense of something that isn't what you believe, pretending that the person saying it must be horrible or stupid, is a hallmark of intellectual weakness. That's your option, but I would recommend that you grow out of it at some point.
The robot has nothing to do with this. No one involved is going to get banned or moderated, because everyone involved is interested at least on some level in real conversation and debate. I'm just weighing in to tell you interpersonally that I think you're being a jerk in this instance. I think it would be to your benefit to back up and realize that the person may have a point about self-medicating with weed being a bad idea after a certain point, irrespective of any legal issues. Whether or not you wind up ultimately being convinced by any of it, that's a more mature way to do it than immediately going on the warpath against them.
But calling me too intellectually weak to understand it is totally different somehow.
Again, being deliberately blunt, I have no respect for 'just because you disagree.' It's effortless all-purpose denial. Mere disagreement isn't what I'm excoriating. Reasons matter. Behavior matters. When someone clutches their pearls about the opposite of what I wrote, that is not a me problem. It derails any conversation.
This user failed at their own debate. They bitched about a one-sentence rebuttal of their one-sentence claim. They lied about a more detailed explanation for how that hypocritical bitching was also incorrect. Their "viewpoint" on marijuana's classification is a tangle of fallacies. The only point which you think they're making is so wishy-washy that it's nearly meaningless, and it's about zero percent of what's gone wrong.
You aren't calling out, you are gaslighting, and hopping on arguments made by others.
First, by trying to miscontextualize my reply to a comment suggesting it was a conspiracy by the private prison system. Please try not to answer for other people for an argument you couldn't bother to make.
Second, where am I denying the negative consequences of other drugs? Or also not criticizing alcohol? Your argument here seems to basically be there are things that are as bad or worse. It's whataboutism 101, it fails the basic logic check that I also don't criticize other drug abuse in my comments.
My concern is with marijuana because we are dealing with a post about marijuana. I also consider it more potent than alcohol in terms of its psychological affects, but it clearly affects the body differently and in many other ways can be considered less potent - but not in the way I'm concerned about.
The risks for marijuana usage are well known, and it is addictive, but we aren't talking about retaining the same medical controls as we apply to other drugs, we are talking about legalized recreational use. I have those same concerns regarding alcohol abuse, a problem that still exists no matter how legal it is even without adding cannabis into the mix. And they are quite complementary, even affecting the same risk groups.
Your comment is swinging rapidly through moods as it is in logic. If there's a cause on your side for it, I'd recommend you tone it down. I'm only stating my concerns.
Condemning a pattern of sloppy argument is what I told you I'm doing and I plainly am doing. All your comments here are relevant. That's what makes it a pattern.
You're saying marijuana must be worse than alcohol. You don't have to make up that I've accused you of calling alcohol harmless or whatever. Your reasons for declaring marijuana "more potent" are nonsense. The context of your reasons - like saying verbatim "the private prison system is abusive, but if it were as bad as you say they would be arresting people from jaywalking" - is just plain horseshit. 'Things can't be this bad unless they're worse' is not an argument. There was in fact a deliberate effort by assholes in power, to make marijuana illegal, despite a lack of any scientific or medical evidence. Insisting it cannot be so, because surely the government has good reasons, and we're just waiting on "an objective perspective" to finally undo this injustice - is several fallacies at once. You can't or won't deal with the possibility the status quo is simply wrong, and has been since before you were born. Like the fact it's not already legal must mean its criminalization remains legitimate and rational... because we live in the best of all possible worlds.
Even glibly using the word "addictive" is misleading bordering dishonest. Pot has no withdrawal symptoms. It's less physiologically addictive than caffeine or sugar, and yes, I saw where you already mentioned caffeine. I note that you're not hemming and hawing about whether caffeine should be illegal. Just whether you, personally, might perchance consider cessation. I also note that all your chin-stroking about known risks does not include the psychological impacts of going to prison. Because whatever the hell you imagine the somehow-still-ambiguous impact is, for this recreational drug that's already omnifuckingpresent, it seems flatly impossible to argue that what we're doing is better for users and for society.
Which is why you haven't.
You've only mused about vague negatives, and spread uncertainty, and accused everyone else of being quite rude for pointing out that's shite behavior. 'But what if you're supposed to feel bad right now? And if you're feeling good, that's also bad, because you might use it when you don't! It'll surely be more potent than alcohol, a drug that can kill you if you do too much, or stop doing too much.'
You underline this shite behavior by reading my aura through the screen and projecting wild mood swings. I have negative respect for tone policing. It's an abuse tactic. Be better or stop talking.
Sorry, my fault for trying to engage with you.
Weak trolling.