That’s true. It also doesn’t invalidate it if I do waste it though. OK, bye

You are making a good example of a person who maybe thinks they can argue in good faith but very clearly doesn’t, with emotional pressure and such.

Well, this comment of yours doesn’t look like a good faith argument.

What I meant is that it takes two sides for one. And when two people are ready to argue in good faith, one may downgrade the level of contention from “argue” to “discuss” without any loss.

(For me and my sister it would still be “argue”, but we are just rude to each other.)

That would be try to attract people outside of social media, not try to divert them inside social media where you’ll waste energy

it necessarily widens the debate-space from an unopposed confident statement to a dialogue that the onlooker can take into consideration while making their own decision.

That part would be right if we weren’t talking about social media, which are designed to neuter this effect.

So who debates in good faith and how often?

he goal isn’t to sway the fanatics, it’s to publicly quash their arguments. To sway curious onlookers away from fanaticism before they become fanatics themselves.

Friendly reminder that the above is what I answered first.

Sorry, but this is a load of bollocks. It’s you putting yourself above some “gullible people” and still using debate skills to deceive them, just in some “good” direction. Maybe you are really right, but they believe you for the wrong reasons, and the process itself doesn’t reinforce that you are right in any way.

Personally, I don’t get why people don’t mind doing a search to find where windows hid some particular setting 3 submenus deep, but lose their fucking mind over the thought of doing a search to double check which command they need.

Because they like to believe that the former is how smart computer users do things.

And even Slackware was straightforward 20 year ago

Still is.

and one of the first things Zalensky did was crack down on that.

Rather replace Russia-dependent corruption with more generalized corruption.

for freedom and democracy. Supposedly what the alliance exists for.

What? It’s been founded by a bunch of colonial nations (not ex-colonial at that point) still from time to time fighting colonial wars with war crimes and such. It has Turkey of all genocidal bastards as an important member.

The only reason for its existence was accumulating power. Well, as with all alliances.

Of course, kinda motivated by USSR redesigning its ground forces for capturing large parts of the world after they’ve been nuked. I’m not joking, that’s the reason ex-Soviet militaries so terribly suck at actually fighting - they are sort of a different mechanism, more like huge mobile garrisons to deploy in wastelands. Their analog of western ground forces was, say, VDV in Russia ; which is why despite nominally having the narrow function of paradropped assault troops, they’ve been used for every kind of thing important.

But corruption is present in all countries, including the NATO members, so that’d be a bit hypocritical,

Yes, and also weird.

I don’t think the decision was ever on the table.

Yes, when after 2 years of war and hundreds of thousands dead they meet and sign something about “discussing help to Ukraine” in case fighting gets more intensive by not clear which criterion - it means Ukraine is not becoming a member.

About “irreversible path” - they’ve said such things about Georgia too. Ivanishvili’s party is not good, but there’s been plenty of time before they started acting like now.

For my argument it’s sufficient that they are very much not the same.

This is similar to saying that a big company leading in some area can be benevolent and do good things. Yes, it can, like DEC, Sun, at some point even IBM. Doesn’t prove the statement that every social institution and mechanism out there must be replaced by markets.

As I’ve just said in two other comments, “changing someone’s mind” is just a return to barbarism and Middle Ages. When a few literate theology doctors would publicly “defeat” their opponents, the barely literate mass of their audience (monks, nobles and such) would watch and approve, and the illiterate mass would kinda get that those pesky heretics\infidels got totally owned by facts and logic.

So any person arguing with that emotion and visible goal should just be left to eat other such ignorami. Nobody worth arguing with has those.

The goal isn’t to sway the fanatics, it’s to publicly quash their arguments. To sway curious onlookers away from fanaticism before they become fanatics themselves.

As I’ve said in another comment, this is return to Middle Ages. Debating skills have not much in common with reasoning skills.

But - debates don’t better yourself. Only your debating skills in particular get better. It’s a return to Middle Ages with theologists publicly “defeating” heretic and Jewish and Muslim philosophy.

And “turn” is an interesting word, making the association even stronger.

That or a viral snuff video soon.

Mexico is where around 40 candidates have been murdered recently?

What happens when you frighten French with Marine.

TBF to fight a government that went rogue in our time you’ll need a whole lot more than knowing how to shoot a rifle.

Field medicine. Chemistry. How to build underground shelters against airstrikes. How to make mortars and mortar shots in garage with commonly available tooling. Using FPV drones, of course. Using (and possibly making) AT shots. Maybe simple (Katyusha-level) artillery manufacturing. Making mines.

That’s just some of the manufacturing knowledge you’ll need, it’s much more.

Communications - something easy to get wrong.

Then - tactics and teamwork, of course. It’s a lot to learn and requires lots of training.

Logistics. Something which doesn’t seem as hard as the rest, while in fact the hardest.

And I’m just mentioning things, one can write a book for every one of them.

They are free to interpret it this way just as you are your way.

It would be weird for a new polity, result of a winning rebellion against lawful government, and definitely against its laws (some people think one can rebel not breaking any laws, apparently, claiming there are legal and illegal rebellions), to not have this in mind frankly.

And from the context of the second amendment we know that back then it was interpreted exactly as a militia that can fight against federal military.

One can argue in theory that this doesn’t mean individual gun rights, just that states should have their own armies (national guard). One can’t argue that it’s not intended for rebellion, because it very openly was.