but this is what I’m saying. perhaps it’s possible to have life from other elements, but carbon-based life simply dominates it to a degree that it doesn’t survive
Despite your plethora of deeply hypocritical accusations, I’m going to cut this down to the central tenet
Who are you accusing?
What are you accusing them of?
Why do you think they’re being dishonest?
Next time you say something, remember to be confident it makes sense, or you’ll have to go through your politician’s poor-faith smugly-avoiding-the-question-manual all over again when someone asks you to—shock of all preposterously unhinged shocks—actually explain yourself when you make a controversial claim
whether or not your accusation directly refers to GP is irrelevant
if you read your own quote, it says “lying or lied to”. I included the “lied to” because I knew you would try and sneak out of it like this, and yet you did it anyway because you appear to emotionally struggle with light criticism and questions, never mind justifying your thoughts
normal people, people who aren’t embarrassed and afraid to defend their thoughts, don’t get angry and bluster and start on about unhingedness and ‘I’ve written so many articles’ and all these quite amusing attempts at condescension and outrage. they just defend their thoughts. they say what agenda they’re referring to. they say who is lying. they don’t get angry that a person asking them questions didn’t accept their pre-emptive excuse
you’re still accusing people who disagree with you of dishonestly pushing an agenda. you’re still accusing people of lying. and you still refuse to justify those accusations. just because you made who you were accusing slightly fuzzy doesn’t mean you automatically get away with anything
my friend, anyone can come to these conclusions by reading your literal words:
>capitalism is not the simple proposition that profit justifies anything, even if some people sometimes suggest that it is
>in order to advance their agenda
>in a rather deceitful manner
so by very clear implication:
>capitalism doesn’t prioritise profit over everything else
>people say otherwise because they have an agenda
>those same people push their agenda with lies (deceit)
just a stab in the dark, but is all this very dramatic bluster and outrage simply because you levelled your accusation at people GP agrees with rather than at GP directly? did you expect a level of plausible deniability because of that? is that why you’re so angry?
if you’re so unable to say what that deceit or agenda is, why did you say it at all? were you trying to sound “in the know” or smart?
some people learn to justify their opinions. some people learn to bluster and accuse and talk about how many articles they’ve written
are you denying that you claimed this form of capitalism doesn’t prioritise profit above all else?
are you denying that you made the accusation that some people who disagree with that are lying? you’re aware of what the word deceitful means, I’m sure
are you denying you claimed those people are lying to serve some agenda?
if you want to check your answers, those are all things you said in your comment
you don’t have to justify your assertions to me or anyone else, but make sure you can justify them to yourself. have a think about what you said and see how deeply you can support it. you don’t have to reply. you don’t even have to bluster and make accusations. just try and think about it slowly and unemotionally in your own head.
what agenda were you referring to?
who is being deceitful?
what are they trying to hide?
what were the primary tenets of Friedman’s capitalist philosophy?
don’t answer to me, just make sure you have solid answers for yourself
do you have a counter-argument? because what I’m reading here is “you’re wrong and lying or lied to because of an ‘agenda’” and that’s it
what do you think GP or someone who has lied to GP really thinks?
why are they lying?
what’s their agenda?
do you agree that we (in the West) currently broadly live under Friedman’s version of capitalism, and, if so, do you agree that it broadly follows the mantra of “profit/shareholder value above all else”?
if you don’t think we live under that system, what system do you think we live under, and what differs it from the mantra of “profit/shareholder value above all else”?
this is all true, but what is the better system? Communism has its merits, but it’s extremely reliant on competent, benevolent leadership and struggles to be economically viable in an American-dominated world.
I think that a Keynesian, well-unionised economy with strong regulation is the solution. I’m sure they exist, but I struggle to think of many examples in history of over-regulation leading to a fault, but I can think of many, many examples of under-regulation managing it, and yet largely due to the capitalist-controlled media, over-regulation is the more feared of the two. This isn’t to say that over-regulation isn’t possible, of course it is, but I don’t think it is in tech.
To go on a tangent, I personally don’t believe in the untrammelled progress of tech. I can understand why people are so vehemently against that idea, of course it’s frustrating to restrict human ingenuity, and there’s a lot of money to be made, but tech is quantifiably making people’s lives worse. Smartphones are a fucking travesty. IQ scores are down something like 10% from the 90s. The internet isn’t great, but at least when you had to be at home logged into a desktop there was some friction. Now an entire generation is plugged into it permanently. An entire generation that doesn’t really read books, rarely thinks alone and in many ways hasn’t had to learn organisational or navigational skills.
AI doesn’t look like it’s going to make any of this much better. Even if we don’t achieve AGI, which I hope, neural networks are only going to get better and better, the best and most powerful ones in the hands of the richest people, who will simply use them to worsen inequality even more.
What else is next? Neuralink? Human genetic engineering? You would hope regulation would stand up to them, especially aesthetic genetic engineering, but who knows?
What we need is a nice big solar flare EMP. Something like the Carrington event
besides the fact that you’re essentially running on a platform of “make crime illegal”, you run into the obvious problem of who decides what a lie is? who decides whether a lie has taken place?
here’s your argument: “the BBC doesn’t focus on my genre enough therefore the entire thing is bad, but it’s especially bad because I’m convinced that I’m required to pay it to watch any relevant TV (also I think they’re politically biased but that has nothing to do with any of this)”
if you think I’m somehow avoiding your argument, or finding technicalities, I’ll address each part
>the BBC doesn’t focus on sci-fi enough. (or sci-fi and fantasy when it suits your argument).
I’ve already linked to the BBC’s large selection of sci-fi and fantasy programming, which you ignored. I also pointed out three major, popular sci-fi shows, two of which you dismissed, despite both being wildly popular with adults, and one you ignored. one of which is possibly the biggest sci-fi show ever, and has just made a £100m deal with Disney+ to be broadcast internationally, which really does indicate executives’ lack of interest
also, do any of the other British channels have consistent sci-fi output? no, except publicly-owned and license-fee funded channel 4. how strange.
>I’m required to pay the license fee, therefore this perceived lack of sci-fi media content for me to consume is a quasi-communistic authoritarian impingement upon my freedom
if streaming - the primary form of TV watching for most people these days - is allowed without a license, then it’s not really required, is it?
so is streaming allowed?
you first argued that streaming just isn’t allowed explicitly by the rules, then when it was pointed out that this is unsupported by the article you linked with, you either tried to redefine what streaming is to fit your original claim, or illustrated your quite incorrect conception of what streaming actually is
no streaming service is “a live broadcast” or a “channel” that you tune into. they’re apps, on your TV, or on a set-top box, or yes, on a laptop, that you use over wi-fi. in short, streaming is watching video over the internet, which is mostly how people watch TV these days. and it’s not covered. how do you mostly watch TV?
approaching your position more broadly, there’s this possible implication that you would be okay with the BBC, if it just had a Star Trek or a Black Mirror, or Altered Carbon or whatever your standard for sci-fi is. this seems really odd. would the BBC be bad for not having one person’s desired selection of horror shows? they have a big audience too. or what about basketball coverage? plenty of viewers for that. is this true? if the BBC did fit your ideas for what it made, would you be okay with it? or are you politically against the entire idea of its existence in the first place, and this sci-fi thing is just a proxy argument?
besides all this,
the “strawman” accusation is often the resort of someone who has been found to be wrong about something key and is trying to cut their losses. it’s only a strawman if it’s not central to the entire thing we’re talking about. if it were really a strawman, you wouldn’t continue to try and argue the point for another two paragraphs. it’s either a strawman, or something you’re going to viscerally argue, but clearly not both.
and accusing you of choosing to misunderstand is not accusing you of lying, but accusing you of being subconsciously compromised by your political position. lying to yourself but not me. I suspect that if you gave the BBC a fair go, you would find a lot to like
I pointed out that you (probably accidentally) accused me of lying, if that’s what you’re confused by? or do you mean that I accused you of being confidently wrong? being wrong isn’t lying
does the fact that you were completely misinformed about the main substance of the previous comment not make you question the grounding of your opinions on this? where did you get the idea that you needed a TV license to stream, or do anything other than watch live TV?