"My uncle is starving while defence projects get lots of money" and "Some defence projects have led to good outcomes for society".
Without aiming to insult here¹, is it interesting to anyone that the same things we say when we're 14-15 years old are the same things we say decades later? I remember having had this argument when I was a kid (and very space-obsessed) and it was almost exactly like this. I remember my classroom, even, and it was between Physics and English and the teacher hadn't come in yet.
It's like some number of people have to be thrown into the war of the ideas periodically to preserve the battle lines exactly as they are. Stop and you lose ground.
¹ like not saying I'm better than you guys, I could just as well do what you're doing.
> It's like some number of people have to be thrown into the war of the ideas periodically to preserve the battle lines exactly as they are. Stop and you lose ground.
Well, yes. Overton window and all that. Similar discussions on USENET 20 years ago. Although I think in some ways they've moved on, and in some ways regressed - the openness of troll conservativism, for example.
I sometimes think of these ideological fault lines as behaving like the geological ones; pressure maintained for years in equilibrium, then there is a crisis and a huge slip all at once. With a lot of stuff getting demolished along the way.
Without aiming to insult here¹, is it interesting to anyone that the same things we say when we're 14-15 years old are the same things we say decades later? I remember having had this argument when I was a kid (and very space-obsessed) and it was almost exactly like this. I remember my classroom, even, and it was between Physics and English and the teacher hadn't come in yet.
It's like some number of people have to be thrown into the war of the ideas periodically to preserve the battle lines exactly as they are. Stop and you lose ground.
¹ like not saying I'm better than you guys, I could just as well do what you're doing.
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