>Focusing not on what happened, but on why it happened
You might want to check out Karl Popper's The Poverty of Historicism, and just Popper's other works in general.
238 karma · joined September 23, 2023
You might want to check out Karl Popper's The Poverty of Historicism, and just Popper's other works in general.
You're speaking of Canada, the same country where the (Canadian) Bill of Rights can be suspended (which to begin with, this document is not taken very seriously) along with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which is present in your constitution, and free speech with it, for the "good of the people" of course... Yep, you're right, you don't have meaningful free speech, nor do you have that many rights compared to the US.
Oh, and, you're Prime Minister is also basically an absolute monarch compared to the US President, given how few meaningful checks there are limiting his power.
I admit, a few years ago I was naive about just how free Canada is, but once I started reading your statutes a lot of things started surprising me, in a not-so-good way.
(Now, don't take this the wrong way, you're still a freer country than fricking North Korea, but relatively speaking, for a Western democracy, you just ain't that free, bud.)
>Can you convince me of this? Because it's not my impression.
In my country (Macedonia), our then-Prime Minister a few years ago during the height of the pandemic, spoke (broken) English and funnily pronounced vaccines, something like "vac-signs" (or "vaksajns" in Macedonian). A guy made a website called vaksajns.com or .mk (can't remember the exact details) and if you visited it, it automatically redirected you to the Ministry of Health covid watch page. Police showed up at his door and he was taken to the police station to be questioned. This would never happen in a true free speech country like the United States.
Free speech in principle is enshrined in the Macedonian constitution as a fundamental right (I studied law), but there are many hate speech laws (we have a complex ethnic structure and wars based on ethnic sides), making it so that free speech isn't a thing (I studies law, if I need to clarify once more.)
If you criticize someone based on their religion, ethnicity, or whatever else that they can't control, you will be fined, or worse (although this does get selectively applied, mainly based on how much political power the group has which the offended member is a part of. Roma people have no political power in this country, so this very rarely happens when they do get offended(I don't think it has ever happened to be honet))- this does not happen in the US where free speech rains supreme (to clarify, i don't think we should go around criticizing people based on things they cant control, *but once you start limiting things the people can and cannot say, you don't have free speech* in your nationstate, Period.)
And what's funny, nobody talks about freedom of speech. Ever. Every political party and politicians of opposing political parties, and even their supporters have seemed to implicitly agree that it's somehow not an issue at all that the all-good state can tell you what's right and what's wrong, and what can be said and what can not be said.
Another funny story. At around the same time when the previous story takes place, the government made an official dictionary of the Macedonian language, supposed to contain all of the known words, BUT excluded all of the offensive words. Talk about state censorship...
What I described, more or less applies to the entire EU. Hate speech laws reign supreme in Europe. Asian countries do not have a good track record of freedom of speech, to say the least, either. I'm not sure about Africa, though I'm sure, that in the countries that do have a stable government, things aren't dissimilar when compared to European and Asian countries.
I've also lived in the US, and I've observed that it's the only place in the world where free speech is, actually, free.
Anybody who disagrees hasn't lived in a country other than the US *and* experienced life there. No, going to a country for 3 months back in '98 when you were in college and only going to parties does not, alas, constitute experiencing life in that country - at best you experienced party life (if you were not blackout drunk), which is a very tiny subset of life.
And to the Europeans and other people except those who live in the US, trust me, you do not know, what free speech feels like, not until you can experience the true freedom to express yourself like you can in the US. If you've done extensive research on this topic, you may actually know what it is, but not the actual indescribable feeling.
Also, have you ever heard of what happened in Tiananmen square, in Hong Kong a few years ago, in Prague a few centuries ago, in Kent State in the US (mind you, one of these was taken much, much, inexplainably much more seriously than the other events.) But I guess you haven't, considering you're asking people to convince you that free speech is not valued that much in countries outside the US.
I recommend giving Who Voted for Hitler? by Richard F. Hamilton a read. The world is infinitely much more complex than our story-making minds would have us believe
I saw the article, and it does indeed show this, however, I'm not sold that education is the only criterion when it comes to how someone votes... or does anything else, for that matter
It's far too simple of a cause-and-effect type of deal for this to be the only factor, or even, for this to be a factor at all, perhaps. The world is a bit more complex than chucking everything up to how someone does something based solely on their administered level of institutional education
I've been just a tiny bit more skeptical of all of these cause-and-effect type stories ever since I read Nassim Taleb
This smells like a half-baked conspiracy theory. It's not like the overwhelming majority of people want to get smarter in their free time. I'm not sure how it is in the rest of the world, but in American and all (individual) European cultures, most people don't pursue self-education. I would not be surprised if this applies to most other cultures as well
You might say that's how a lot of people on this website got their knowledge, but this website is statistically insignificant compared to the world population. Plus, it's not like every single member here pursues self-education. I'm willing to wager most people come on here just to be entertained
What kind of forum would tiktok be categorized as?[2] Nonpublic forum? In which case, it's legal for the government to ban it?
"in a nonpublic forum, the Government may restrict contents of a speech, as long as the restriction is reasonable and the restriction does not discriminate based on speakers’ viewpoints."
[1]https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment [2]https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/forums
I can't imagine myself holding a kindle or any other tablet-like reading device and reading books that way, unless a book I want to read is somehow prohibitively expensive (which again comes down to what I said in my first comment, money.)
Plus, I can't build a nice, physical library with a bunch of pdf and epub files. You might say that having a physical library is stroking one's ego a bit, which I agree with, but hey, it's an ability that's exclusive to physical books and not electronic files stored in some drive. And so is using books to prop stuff up, but that's mostly used with books one thinks are not of good quality and don't deserve to be read/read again.
Anyway, I've heard calibre is good. I've never used it though
There were a few popes of African descent, though; don't know if their skin color happened to be black
Still, I don't get why it would matter to any Catholic (I'm not Catholic), except to (some) Catholics in the US of A maybe, since race seems to reign supreme over there, even more than God Himself to (some, supposed) believers
>*Google Books is indexing low quality, AI-generated books that will turn up in search results*
This was never about articles, it is about books, though. You can't retroactively publish a book in 2021 if we're not in 2021.
It's bewildering to see how people here are so confident in their tone while arguing about things they think are said in the linked post, but don't know for sure because they never even opened it to read it.
>While the bill is still a draft and has not yet passed the German Parliament, there is reason to celebrate: For once politicians want to strengthen encryption, not undermine it.
Again, it's just a bill. Is there even any realistic support from German MPs for this bill to get passed? Isn't the German parliament composed of two chambers? Can it pass in both chambers?
Also, even if it does get passed, is there some catch? I looked at the bill[1], but I don't understand German, hoping that someone who does can answer that
[1]https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2024/02/2024-02-07_BMD...
You sound overly confident with your statement about a topic that has eluded thinkers for millennia and (probably) millennia to come
That's not true though. I can name at least two other people on whom he has a high opinion (a.k.a he's praised them in his books): Karl Popper and George Soros. There are others as well, but most people here will recognize these people (I assume) so that's why I mentioned them, and admittedly they were the first to pop into my head lol
It's true that he's an asshole on X and in his books, while in real life he seems very nice and non-confrontational. He's talked about this in an interview he did with the Guardian I think a few years ago (maybe a decade ago), and if my memory serves me right, he said something to the tune of it being easier to get lost when you're not speaking directly to someone's face and become more rude than usual
https://edition.cnn.com/us/live-news/baltimore-bridge-collap...
Too early to tell
Still, the captain should make sure the ship is operational to make a trip before starting any trip
But, still, yes, I admit I should have been at least a tiny bit more clear-headed when I made my initial comment
Because not every country has widespread consumer-grade 5G and fiber-optic infrastructure set up? I swear some of you here live in a bubble and don't consider that there's an entire world much bigger than just your <insert place of residence>.
I live in that kind of a country in the Balkan, and the overwhelming majority of people here get way less than 100mbs download speed in their homes, no matter how much they're willing to pay for better internet, because at the end of the day, there is no infrastructure, and the monopoly (*technically* a duopoly) of isps don't see any reason whatsoever to broaden their infrastructure
I would say this is an appeal to majority logical fallacy, but can we even quantify how many people actually believe in this, who have heard of this relatively obscure war in the first place?
Even at-the-time US Deputy Secretary of State called this a conspiracy theory.
Plus, I doubt you could bring about so many people who would be willing to blow up their countrymen so that they can fake an attack by some enemy and consolidate power for some up-and-coming politician. You would have to collect dozens of pure psychopaths to do that and all of them to remain quiet in the aftermath of the incident. With all that being said, it just doesn't seem very likely. That, or I'm being very naive, but I like to believe the former - not likely.
Still, I am not too familiar with this incident and the wars themselves. You seem to know more about this, so do you perhaps have some book recommendations?
And this result is somehow supposed to be a good thing? Every country that has this result, no matter how we theorize that it got there in the first place, is now facing a demographic crisis
Alright
> It's literally a showcase of all the mental tics and obfuscations involved in the construction of artificial national histories as I described in my earlier comment.
I agree, all nations are artificial creations. I'd recommend Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson. And never did I claim that a unified Macedonian nation has existed for longer than 144 years (since 1880), so not sure what the "artificial national histories" part is alluding to(?)
>Self-definition based on 'we are W because we're not U and definitely not V.'
What's wrong with this? Americans are American because they defied the British Empire. What are you going to claim next - that Americans don't exist? If so, good luck!
And isn't that how all nations are? The French are French because they're neither German, nor English, nor Spanish, nor Italian. Nations are essentially just in-group vs out-group behaviors and dynamics manifested in relatively large landscapes.
Serbs are Serbs because they're not Croats or Bulgarians or Macedonians or Albanians. Macedonians are Macedonians because they're not Serbs or Greeks or Bulgarians or Albanians.
All nations (groups) have traits that are different enough from another nation (group), which is why they become a group (nation) in the first place.
>The denial that it's possible to force the construction of a cultural, linguistic or ethnic group, despite numerous examples of exactly this happening.
I suppose I worded that part terribly, so it's my fault. I tried to say that all (yes, all) top-down nation-building projects don't work. I know you're going to provide examples of something like the middle eastern arab states, but that would be a terrible example, as no one, and I mean no one, from, say, as an example, from Saudi Arabia views himself as Saudi Arabian first, instead they view themselves as Arabs; same goes for people from other projects like Qatar, QAE, Bahrain and the other "nation"-states in that region. The people living in those "nation"-states didn't organically decide to create their state based on their nation, instead their "nation"-state borders were created by some interventionists in a faraway land, unsuccessfully because nobody there thinks that his "nation"-state is much different from his neighboring "nation"-state.
Macedonia, conversely, is not a top-down nation created by bureaucrats - people here, like people all over the world who belong to bottom-up nations, came to their own conclusion that they're different from those around them, hence they became a separate group (nation). And yes, if we got back far enough, at one point people here did consider them Bulgarians, and at another time Serbs, and at a third time, much further back, Greeks (I am not arguing against this fact, if you think I am then we are arguing bout different topics), but if we go back far enough, most people in Europe alone came from one group, which does not invalidate their national affiliations today.
>Appeal to biased histories written by true believers.
Where did I mention this? True believers?
>Appeal to linguistic treatises only available in the language in question.
Haha
https://www.amazon.com/Macedonian-Matters-Krste-Petkov-Misir...
And if you don't want to buy it, you can translate it yourself part by part:
http://damj.manu.edu.mk/pdf/0005%20Za%20makedonckite%20rabot... https://www.deepl.com/translator https://translate.google.com/
And btw, it's available in Bulgarian too, it was published in Sofia in 1903 after all; and most copies were confiscated or destroyed by the Bulgarian police, wonder why that happened?
I also wonder why Bulgaria occupied Macedonia in WWII - it wouldn't make sense to occupy one's own people, no? Unless... :)
>Appeal to the time-honored authority of ... the 1880s, a (not very distant) era when every single group of people in Europe was trying to become a nation.
And when did I say that the Macedonian nation has existed since time immemorial? Starting to look like you didn't read my comment. And what's wrong with the 1880s specifically? Would it have been better if it happened in the 1980s? What about the 1780s? Does America not exist because the revolution happened to be in 1776 - a random year as any?
>Alexander the Great did not live in Skopje.
Never said he did. He probably never stepped foot in what was Skopje at the time. Still, Macedonia is not Skopje, contrary to what most foreigners think (along with our politicians, unfortunately.)
>He did not speak Macedonian
Of course not, and I never said he did. The modern Macedonian language is a Slavic language, it would be absurd if he spoke a Slavic language some ~1000 years before the Slavs came to the Balkan with their language.
There is a chance that he spoke some version of Aincent Macedonian, likely a dialect of Greek, which is very likely not related to the modern Slavic language which bears the same name, along with Greek, the prestige language of the time.
> 'a language closer to Bulgarian than to Serbian'.
Yes, what's wrong with that? It's in the South Slavic branch of languages, in the eastern group with Bulgarian and Old Church Slavonic. All languages in the South Slavic group form a dialectic continuum, meaning that we can all more or less understand each other (except, I would add, Slovene). Does that mean that no nation whatsoever exists in the Balkan? Or that we are all just one nation, even though we don't think we are, which is what nations are based around in the first place - thinking we belong to one group and not the other?
>There are at least 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe which have closer cultural, political or ethnic connections with Alexander the Great than Macedonia does.
And when did I say otherwise?
Seems to me that more than half the time here you're just arguing with yourself. And a couple of lines of yours read like they've been copy-pasted from some ready-made document full of zingers