/lit/ - Literature

>>16642534
A preface on terms and intentions.

I must ask one favor of the reader here. One favor which is absolutely crucial if we are to make any sort of progress in understanding both Vaush and Sowell's ideas here. We must define two terms clearly and not confuse the two. If we cannot do this, both my time in writing this and your time in reading this will be completely wasted. At best, without it, we will have only produced a shallow boost to our own ego, heightened by how unintelligent, unfeeling, or nonsensical we allow ourselves to be misled about one another. We must each have a vested interest in understanding each other, something I will attempt with as much sincerity and integrity as I can for both Vaush and Sowell. It is incredibly easy, as Vaush has demonstrated, to ignore what another individual actually believes and to create a strawman of him or what we subconsciously wish he was. It is even easier to do this in written format, and I have put much time and thought into each quote by Vaush which I will analyze here so as to not intentionally or unintentionally misinterpret Vaush. The goal here is not to prove Vaush wrong or to prove Sowell correct, but to convey clearly what each actually believes and how they differ in their visions of the world. They do undoubtedly conflict, just not in any way that is conveyed in this video.

2/27

>>16642538
Freedom and Justice.

If there are two terms which are conflated most often in this video, it is Freedom and Justice.
Freedom is the most confused of the two. Even if for the duration of just this discussion and this essay, we must differentiate the two clearly, as they are used to mean two very different things by both Vaush and Sowell.

For Vaush, Freedom and Justice coincide, they are inherent in each other. Thus, by limiting an individual's ability to discriminate by race, sex, or other such categories, we have, in fact, increased Freedom for those who would have been subject to this discrimination. Critical, however, in this view, is a presumption of Justice for those subject to the other individual's former ability to discriminate. In order for this type of act to be viewed as an enhancement of freedom, it must also be categorized as a Just act. We would not, for instance, label the ability to murder as an enhancement of Freedom, since it would subject what we would deem as an Unjust act, murder, upon another individual. Our society would have less Freedom if such acts were permitted. Similarly, things which we very strongly believe all human beings should have also become a form of Freedom. These are called rights. I have a right to not be murdered, I have a right to not be discriminated against by race or sex. I have a right to free speech, a right to vote, a right to bear arms. Some of these are guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, as is the case of many founding papers for governments around the world. New ideas about rights have come about since the writing of the Constitution: a right to free health care, a right to housing, a right to food, etc. These are morally Just things which we label as Freedoms under Vaush's definition. Enhanced Justice leads to enhanced Freedom, and diminished Freedom leads to diminished Justice if we take the vision which I have so far outlined.

3/27

>>16642542
For Sowell, Freedom and Justice are entirely separate concepts.

Firstly, in Sowell's view, man fundamentally has nothing. Man has no inherent right to property, man has no right to not be murdered. Man has universal Freedom in a world with no law. Man has the Freedom to murder, to discriminate, and to steal. This is the default state of man, as Sowell defines (NOT that man is Unjust, only that with no law, man is universally Free). It is through law (what are fundamentally restrictions on certain acts we collectively deem as Unjust), that certain rights can be granted. Therefore, laws inherently are a restriction on certain Freedoms that we choose to restrict in order to create Justice, they do not inherently elevate Freedom. Despite how we may be able to structurally form the sentence "I am Free to not die, because there is law prohibiting murder," we must remember that the default state of man has no law. Therefore such a thing as the "Freedom to not die" does not actually exist in Sowell's definition. It is only by mutual agreements on which particular Freedoms we wish to restrict that we can come to a state of possessing rights from law. Man, in Sowell's view, has no fundamental rights, rights are established upon mutual agreements, which we call law. Freedom, in this view, is not Justice. Justice is what comes when we agree on how to restrict Freedoms towards what we deem beneficial outcomes. This view, that Freedom can in fact lead to Unjust outcomes, is not restrained to Unjust outcomes, they are just separated by definition. In a lawless world, we all have Freedom of speech. We have the Freedom to bear arms, the Freedom to pursue happiness. In a lawless world, however, we have no Freedom to things such as healthcare, food, or housing, since these are fundamentally products of men, not of the natural world. They must be provided for us by another human being, they do not exist unless somebody else creates them. Thus, while we may view a society in which housing is provided for all as a Just society, it cannot be said to have improved Freedom, as housing fundamentally is a product of man, and in order to granted by law, some amount of men must be, by law, obligated to create this product in the event that nobody would choose to do so.

4/27

>>16642544
Regardless of our own philosophical beliefs on where man ought to be, or what he ought to have, for the sake of this discussion, we are required to adopt Sowell's definition of the separation of Justice and Freedom. This is not because it is the better definition, the correct definition, or the smarter definition, but because it differentiates the two concepts of Freedom and Justice. It allows for clearer explanations and understandings of the fundamental sources of certain agreements or decisions which humans have chosen to adopt throughout the development of civilization. What Vaush and Sowell may be describing at the same time may be exactly the same sentiment, however Sowell's distinction of Freedom and Justice allow us to more accurately apply this framework to both Vaush and Sowell's statements. If we were to do the inverse, to approach the conversation with Vaush's sameness of Freedom and Justice, we would fundamentally misinterpret what Sowell is literally talking about at a given time (which partly contributes to Vaush's own misconceptions as we will see).

This does not mean we have to agree on what we deem Just, as many have already differed this matter throughout and across generations in history. This also does not mean any individual, Vaush or a reader of this essay, must alter their own political or philosophical views. The realities both Vaush and Sowell describe will remain as they intended initially, just under clearer labels. For the duration of this discussion, Freedom is not inherently Justice, and Justice is not inherently Freedom, no matter how strongly we feel certain Justices should be present within our society. There must be a distinction conceptually if we intend to understand both Sowell and Vaush simultaneously.

5/27

>>16642546
00:15
"apparently he's one of the foundational thinkers of right"
Firstly, it is important to clarify that this label has very little to do with Thomas Sowell and his work. Very little, if any, of Sowell's books focus on conservatism or rightwing-politics specifically. Presidential politics even less so. These attributions are largely made by viewers or readers who may attribute some of Sowell's views with these alignments. It is important to understand that Sowell does not explicitly identify with any political label, as he has said so himself.

"I prefer not to have labels, but I suspect that "libertarian" would suit me better than many others, although I disagree with the libertarian movement on a number of things -- military preparedness, for instance." - Sowell

The reason this is important is that I believe this attribution undermines many of Vaush's own attempts at interpreting Sowell in this video. Much of Vaush's critiques miss anything Sowell has ever said by a large margin, though they may be on the spot for contemporary right-wing politics (I am not at authority to decide this, I do not know. I only know Sowell specifically.). If Vaush had not entered this video with these preconceptions, he may have not made as many mistakes as he does.

Sowell is also by no means a foundational thinker of the things he often writes about. Much of Sowell's books are not original concepts but are clarifications on contemporary misconceptions on economics, race, and history. Where Sowell might be said to be filling a niche is in his clarity of writing and his massive amounts of research on historical issues, not in the invention of original concepts.

6/27

This is bait.

>>16642551
01:41

(Vaush)"okay, so there are two types of equality, equality of outcome and equality of [opportunity]"
"equality of opportunity is kind of a misnomer, because nobody has the same opportunities in life"

Vaush here has described two different approaches to a definition of equality, which Sowell himself defines with different labels in his book "The Quest for Cosmic Justice." Equality of opportunity, which Vaush rejects as a misnomer, where every individual functions under the same rules and standards, is what Sowell describes as "Traditional Justice." Equality of outcome (by Sowell's definition, not Vaush's, as we will soon learn), where government policies are implemented to seek corrections to what they view as Unjust outcomes, is what Sowell describes as "Cosmic Justice." This is effectively just another label for social justice, but Sowell chooses to use the word "Cosmic" because this type of Justice has been sought for individuals whose circumstances cannot be attributed to any effects of society, such as individuals born under birth complications or those who suffer mental disabilities. It is extremely important that we all understand the difference between Sowell's definitions of Cosmic and Traditional Justice as we continue. We may disagree on how to organize a society/government with each, but we must not confuse the two concepts for the sake of a cohesive discussion.

7/27

>>16642553
02:53
(Vaush mocking)"the left claims to want equality, what do they mean by that? Do they mean equality of outcome where we're all exactly the same? Well that's impossible"
"nobody talks about equality of outcome, nobody does. The concept of equality of outcome is this nebulous dystopic concept that nobody seriously advocates for in politics."
"when people are talking about equality, people are talking about equality of opportunity, equality of access, equality of process."
"very simply, if you are born in this world it is best that everyone have basically the same shot at being able to succeed. Does that mean everyone will succeed? No, of course not, obviously. There will still be differences in people's performance, there will still be differences in people's outcomes."

Vaush then proceeds to talk about the beauty of diversity, which is wholly irrelevant to the implications of specific government decisions/policies and therefore entirely irrelevant to what Sowell is talking about. Nowhere has Sowell ever said, explicitly or implicitly, that intellectuals seek or would seek to make everybody the same and that in doing so, they would create a dystopia. He has never said that intellectuals seek complete equity, and nowhere has he said that diversity in outcomes is beautiful. It is highly tangential if not just a complete misinterpretation of the things Sowell was specifically talking about in this prior clip. Again, what Vaush said here about diversity is not inherently wrong, stupid, or dim-witted, it just has literally nothing to do with what Sowell just said or has ever said about intellectuals' visions of equality or the pursuit of equality.

What Sowell is arguing in this clip, prior to the pause at 01:41, is that those who seek his definition of equality of outcome, what he describes as a Cosmic Justice, must do so at the cost of Traditional Justice. Now, as Vaush has completely muddied the label of equality of outcome as a standard by which "everybody is equal," I have to jump ahead to a point very briefly where he makes a statement implicit that he does indeed subscribe to Sowell's conception of equality of outcome, as Sowell defines it, in order to make this essay cohesive. To reiterate, Sowell is NOT saying that equity between human beings is dystopic, nor that intellectuals seek absolute equity or that their short-sided pursuit for equality will eventually make us all the same. He is saying government policies set in place to seek Cosmic Justice MUST infringe on existing rules supporting Traditional Justice, which I will explain in a bit.

8/27

>>16642557
Jump ahead to 12:32
"black people literally fought in the civil rights movement to not be able to be discriminated against with employment, which includes pay disparity."

We are jumping here to readdress our definition of equality of outcome. Pay disparities, as mentioned by Vaush here and in later parts of this video, represent disparities in a form of outcome, pay in this case. Advocating for equal pay is therefore synonymous with advocating for an equality of outcome, as Sowell's definition of equality of outcome describes(NOT Vaush's). Pay disparities are unfortunately not brought up in the video, otherwise Vaush may have realized that what he and Sowell were using as definitions for equality of outcome were very different. We must, in order to understand each other for one moment at the very least, forget Vaush's prior definition of equality of outcome as the dystopian scenario where everybody is literally the same. It may be what some right-wing people have implied, but it has literally nothing to do with Sowell. We must also reject the notion that nobody subscribes to Sowell's definition of equality of outcome (as, again, it is not even somewhat related to what Vaush described). Very simply, if you see pay disparities as a product of inequity which should be corrected by government, you subscribe to Sowell's definition as an advocate of equality of outcome (equal pay IS equal outcome, as pay is one form of outcome). As defined earlier, an advocate of equality of outcome then logically seeks Cosmic (social) Justice as opposed to Traditional Justice.

What Sowell is arguing in this video prior to 01:41, is that Cosmic and Traditional Justice are incompatible concepts. One must be sacrificed in favor of pursuing another. This concept is extremely easy to grasp and non-ideological as I will try to explain plainly here. If you subscribe to Cosmic Justice, you believe that government policy should seek to correct inequities or distributions which it decides are Unjust within society (such as affirmative action). This must logically come at the expense of Traditional Justice,(as defined earlier as a system in which law treats citizens equally regardless of their personal predispositions or differences in sex, race, religion, etc.), in that in seeking Cosmic Justice, the government now is reorganizing demographics within a society. Therefore, Traditional Justice is infringed in favor of Cosmic Justice. This would work inversely also. For example, if the government chose to ignore inequities in things such as pay or academic acceptance rates and do nothing to try to alter them, this would be a rejection of Cosmic Justice in favor of Traditional Justice.

We will elaborate on some of Sowell's statements about the relationship between Traditional Justice and Cosmic Justice in a bit, but for now we will return to the earlier part of Vaush's video so that we can continue at least somewhat chronologically.

9/27

>>16642560
Jump back to 04:40
(Sowell now) "Any process, to ascribe any status to any group of people: equality, inferiority, superiority, must necessarily reduce freedom. Because whatever the government wishes to ascribe to any group- whatever place- to use the phrase that was very common in the South- that blacks should have their place- whatever place government is going assign to people, that place will not coincide either with what all those people are doing or with how others perceive all those people because there's too much diversity among human beings."

We will begin our analysis here, just pausing after Sowell's quote, so that I can explain what this statement means, and you, as a viewer/reader, can then see firsthand how wide of a miss Vaush's interpretation of these words are in his next pause.

In the antebellum South, decades preceding the Civil War, it was illegal in many states to educate enslaved blacks, and in some Southern states even freed blacks. One of the public justifications for this law was that blacks could not be educated. Implicit in the passing of this law, however, was a belief that blacks could, in fact, be educated. Otherwise, no such law would be necessary, as there is no such law banning the education of farm animals, for example. The passing of this law implies two things about the South at this time: One, the government believed blacks were capable of being educated. Two, there were people who wanted to educate Southern blacks. If both or just one of these statements were untrue, such a law would be completely irrational and would have had no effect. While this law also had the effect of restricting blacks in rising to affluence, the fundamental process by which a government seeks to correct what it views as an Unjust organization of human beings is most important in our discussion. Jim Crow era laws and other postbellum restrictions against blacks could fall under this same umbrella of morally abhorrent examples of local governments seeking to re-orient society to fit their own form of Justice. Laws restricting the literacy and education of blacks in the antebellum South should not be news to most people, but it is part of what Sowell is referring to when he refers to the formerly common statement that "blacks should have their place" in the South.

10/27

>>16642563
The observable differences between these old laws and affirmative action (the topic which Sowell and the woman in the video are debating) are threefold: One, the laws prohibiting education in the South had a much greater and more drastic effect on those subject to the restrictions placed by those laws, rationally far more-so than effects of affirmative action. Two, the illegality of educating blacks in the South was established by laws passed in state legislatures in Southern states, whereas the legality of affirmative action has been decided by supreme court justices. Three, the laws prohibiting black education in the South are viewed as Unjust by modern conceptions of Justice, whereas affirmative action is popularly viewed as Just by the intelligentsia today.

What Sowell is trying to convey here is that any time in which government steps in to rearrange groups or demographics within a society, it inherently seeks to alter or reject how that society would have operated without such government restrictions, thus restricting Freedom of individuals or groups in exchange for the government's own view of Justice. It is very easy for us today to understand why Jim Crow era laws were unjust by modern standards of Justice, but the underlying ideas about of the role of governments as dispensers of a vision of Justice is less obvious (though more important in this discussion of the relationship between government and Justice). Sowell's point is that certain legal presumptions, that the government should have the power to restrict the free decisions of human beings in a society, in the name of Justice, have been used to far more nefarious ends in previous generations. We may deem the terms of Justice by those who came in generations before us as morally abhorrent, but the presumptions about the role of government as dispensers of Justice beyond those outlined within the Constitution is still present in modern intellectual movements. As Sowell argues, this is fundamentally a presumption that free human beings should be subject to the visions of Justice held by the anointed few in positions of political power.

11/27

>>16642565
05:14
(Vaush in response to the previous Sowell quote)
"This point is actually so stupid it's actually unfathomable to me that he would attempt to make this.
So what he's essentially arguing right now is that anytime any sort of differentiated status is given to a certain group of people, it's dumb because there's diversity amongst people"
(Words about conservatives and corporations)
"What he's arguing for here is that any sort of privileged position established by the government in any sense is actually an attempt to enforce equality of outcome, and that it's unequitable and it reduces human freedoms because there are so many differences between individuals that to try to enforce a categorization like that upon them is to bring about bad outcomes"
"Here's the problem. First of all, the government is not the only institution that puts people into categories, advertisers do that, corporations do that, insurance agencies do that, and also the circumstances of your birth do that."

In another universe, one in which Vaush did not improvise his content and instead presented his thoughts and responses in prewritten scripts or essays, I would have hoped that the unfathomability of this imaginary argument Vaush is interpreting would have prompted him to reinvestigate what Sowell actually meant in his statement. If I have done my job correctly so far, Vaush's response here should be as perplexing to anybody reading this essay as it was to me the first time I watched this video.

This is a really large set of misconceptions to address, and even though I sincerely hope I have done well enough to pre-empt the reader of this essay in his/her knowledge of Sowell's statement prior to this, I will address each of these points individually as well as the ones which follow this set.

12/27

>>16642567
"So what he's essentially arguing right now is that anytime any sort of differentiated status is given to a certain group of people, it's dumb because there's diversity amongst people"

No. Sowell is arguing that in order for government to specify any result of free arrangement of human beings within a society as being "Unjust," that government must inherently restrict the "Freedoms" by which the "Unjust" outcome came to be. This is almost as simple as arithmetic. Remember that Freedom and Justice are NOT the same thing to Sowell. This has virtually nothing to do with the nature of labeling or categorizing groups or individuals. To anybody who has read anything by Sowell, the notion that Sowell would philosophically reject categorization or ranking of groups of individuals/cultures/societies is completely ludicrous. Sowell describes, in virtually every book he has ever written, that this is a natural tendency in many aspects of human life, regardless of whether certain people find it ideologically repugnant. Vaush is almost in some way defending Sowell in this aspect, obviously unknowingly.

"What he's arguing for here is that any sort of privileged position established by the government in any sense is actually an attempt to enforce equality of outcome-"

No. To reiterate, he is stating that a government which views a freely organized society as Unjust must inherently restrict the Freedoms which have made it Unjust in order to attempt to make it Just in their Vision. Privilege has virtually nothing to do with this specifically, as Sowell himself stated in the video, this may apply whether or not a demographic requires favorable or unfavorable legal treatment to achieve the government's Vision of Justice. Similarly, this has virtually nothing to do in principle with equality of outcome, it is just that equality of outcome is a contemporary mode of Justice among the intelligentsia. If equality of outcome were literally the concern, he would never have used the example of "blacks have their own place" in the South, which very clearly is a form of Justice completely divorced from the notion of equality of outcome.

13/27

>>16642574
"- and also the circumstances of your birth do that. The idea that people are on a completely level playing field from ground-set and then the government is the one that fucks with the scales is a complete libertarian lie."

I have zero fucking clue how accurate this is to a modern libertarian stance, but again, Sowell does not identify as a libertarian, nor does he advocate libertarian politics explicitly. The reality which Vaush describes, one of inherent constraints in human life and inherent inequities in human beings, is in fact extremely paramount if not the most important factor to the entire body of Sowell's work covering sociology and history. We would not hardly get through any single page of any book Sowell has written on sociology or history if we functioned with the presumption that human beings have fair or equal starts in life and that government intervention is the thing which produces disparities. Government intervention may increase or reduce disparities in outcomes (depending on that government's vision of Justice), but only by altering the inherently different ways in which different groups of people freely organize, thus limiting those freedoms. This view entirely rejects the notion that humans begin or are ever on a level playing field in reality. It, in fact, requires this notion to be false. There is a difference here in understanding the profound nonsense of this vision of the world and understanding whether or not another human being actually believes this, however.

"It's not true, people are not born to equal positions. People are born to poor and wealthy families, to good and bad school districts in neighborhoods which may or may not have good job opportunities, to parents who may or may not, by the way, be good parents. There are forms of inequality that aren't even products of racism or sexism or of economic differentiation, sometimes it can be as simple as my parents were good to me and yours were not. Sometimes it's that simple, there is no level playing field, the idea of there being some sort of state of man where everybody exists on a flat plane and then it's the government that fucks with that- is a completely lie, it's not true. It's never been true."

14/27

>>16642574
"-and that it's unequitable and it reduces human freedoms because there are so many differences between individuals that to try to enforce a categorization like that upon them is to bring about bad outcomes"

No. The cost of the pursuit of Cosmic Justice, as Sowell describes, is not 'unequitable because of the fact that humans are categorized'. It is a rejection by government of the way in which a free society would otherwise organize. Similarly, what Sowell was referring to when he said "people are different" in his previous quote, has nothing to do with individuals as Vaush assumes it does. It is extremely obvious that individuals differ(it is also irrelevant when we understand what Sowell is actually arguing), what is less obvious is the notion that GROUPS of people differ. This again practically reinforces the statement I made earlier in which much of Sowell's analyses across all of his work asserts that groups of people are not the same, and that they can be and are categorized in the same ways in which Vaush is assuming Sowell is denying. Sowell, again, is not saying categorization is bad, or that it is dehumanizing, he would in fact say that this is inherent in how societies and economies function, as Vaush describes later. The link here, between equality of outcome and the notion that (groups of) people are different, is that in recent decades, the intelligentsia has interpreted certain indicators of outcome such as pay and demographic representation as explicit proof of discrimination. Sowell argues most fundamentally that outcomes do not explicitly prove discrimination, but that such a notion is, in fact, a hypothesis which can be tested empirically against evidence, which he does in many, many books. Once again, however, virtually none of what Vaush has said actually refutes any of these concepts or even acknowledges that Vaush understands what Sowell is talking about.

"Here's the problem. First of all, the government is not the only institutions that put people into categories, advertisers do that, corporations do that, insurance agencies do that-"

Again, implicit and often explicit in virtually all of Sowell's writing is the assertion that the processes which Vaush describes here are inherent in the functioning of a society, but this still has nothing to do with what Sowell was actually talking about with regards to the role of government as a dispenser of Justice. Again, Sowell and Vaush here are practically in complete agreement of Vaush's point, though Vaush is unaware of this.

14/27

>>16642583
"- and also the circumstances of your birth do that. The idea that people are on a completely level playing field from ground-set and then the government is the one that fucks with the scales is a complete libertarian lie."

I have zero fucking clue how accurate this is to a modern libertarian stance, but again, Sowell does not identify as a libertarian, nor does he advocate libertarian politics explicitly. The reality which Vaush describes, one of inherent constraints in human life and inherent inequities in human beings, is in fact extremely paramount if not the most important factor to the entire body of Sowell's work covering sociology and history. We would not hardly get through any single page of any book Sowell has written on sociology or history if we functioned with the presumption that human beings have fair or equal starts in life and that government intervention is the thing which produces disparities. Government intervention may increase or reduce disparities in outcomes (depending on that government's vision of Justice), but only by altering the inherently different ways in which different groups of people freely organize, thus limiting those freedoms. This view entirely rejects the notion that humans begin or are ever on a level playing field in reality. It, in fact, requires this notion to be false. There is a difference here in understanding the profound nonsense of this vision of the world and understanding whether or not another human being actually believes this, however.

"It's not true, people are not born to equal positions. People are born to poor and wealthy families, to good and bad school districts in neighborhoods which may or may not have good job opportunities, to parents who may or may not, by the way, be good parents. There are forms of inequality that aren't even products of racism or sexism or of economic differentiation, sometimes it can be as simple as my parents were good to me and yours were not. Sometimes it's that simple, there is no level playing field, the idea of there being some sort of state of man where everybody exists on a flat plane and then it's the government that fucks with that- is a completely lie, it's not true. It's never been true."

15/27

>>16642588
Much of this is a repeat of previous points, but again, to reiterate, these are a number of reasons why one would expect societies, operating freely, to produce natural disparities in things such as pay or demographic representation in things such as school, politics, or various professions. Again, I hope I've convinced the reader at this point that what Vaush asserts is Sowell's view is, in fact, almost the opposite.

"And even if that was true corporations also do that, so do cultural forces, when a cultural institution like racism deprivileges black people and privileges white people, that is an imposition that has lessened human freedom. If the government has the opportunity to bring those back into line, human freedom goes back to being enhanced."

Here is the first big instance of a conflation between these differing terms. I am not saying Vaush's statement here is incorrect, but by Sowell's definitions, what Vaush is describing is a trade-off of Freedoms for an outcome of Justice. I will reword Vaush's statement with the same logic, but with our agreed upon definitions.

"When a cultural institution like racism deprivileges black people and privileges white people, that is an imposition that has lessened Justice. If the government chooses to restrict Freedom's by individuals to commit Injustices, Justice goes back to being enhanced."

It is extremely critical here to understand that fundamentally none of what Vaush is describing in either of these quotes is any different, we have now just separated the concepts by Sowell's labels. This does not inherently make the ideas any less valid or logical, it just paints a clearer picture of what we are literally talking about.

When we understand the types of policies that a government with this goal may enact, such as hiring quotas, pay mandates, and other such attempts to improve outsets by measure of various outcomes, which would not be present in a free society, we have now come full circle to the trade-offs of Cosmic Justice at the expense of Traditional Justice. Once again, a free society is not synonymous with a just society when we define these terms as separate concepts.

16/27

>>16642594
"There's this implication here, that any bias or restriction which is imposed by a non-government entity actually enriches human freedom and any which is imposed by the government reduces human freedom. Now don't get me wrong, the government can reduce human freedom just fine, obviously-"

Here is that sentence relabeled under the terms which we have agreed upon:
"There's this implication here, that any bias or restriction which is imposed by a non-government entity actually enriches Justice, and any which is imposed by the government reduces Justice. Now don't get me wrong, the government can reduce Justice just fine, obviously."

Again, the literal concepts we have talked about are exactly the same, we just now have a better understanding of what both Sowell and Vaush are talking about.

On the matter of non-government entities and their relationship with Justice and Freedom as opposed to government: Firstly, the critical question here is of which two forces have the ability to commit greater infringements of Freedom by their own unique vision of Justice: forces controlled by the market or by government? This is a historical question, if not an outright empirical one. Sowell has argued that history largely shows forces control by markets universally pay prices for things such as racial and sex discrimination. Employers indulging racial prejudice receive returns in reduced profits when those qualified workers they do not hire are hired cheaper elsewhere. Non-profit entities, ones fundamentally not driven by profit such as governments or universities, have been much larger offenders of restrictions on Freedom by their own unique vision of Justice throughout history due to the fact that they pay no immediate price for chasing their own visions of Justice (though to us these would be Injustices, but obviously not to those enacting them. That's kind of the point of the issue, though). One such popular example Sowell often cites when comparing these two concepts were the hiring practices of construction firms in apartheid era South Africa. Here, there were government mandates prohibiting the hiring of blacks in certain percentages throughout the economy. Many industrial businesses, however, engaged in widespread illegal hiring of blacks during this time and often paid fines when they were caught. This was not at all a humanitarian venture by those business owners. The costs saved by hiring blacks versus whites were so great that business owners not only chose to ignore their own racial prejudice to hire those blacks, but also risked being caught by the government and incurring legal fees. The government, of course, paid no prices on these racial restrictions and quotas, as have various governments and non-profit institutions throughout history.

17/27

>>16642598
If Vaush or anybody who shares his views would like to provide a counter-argument, they are welcome to do so. But it is important to understand that this dichotomy of the tyranny of corporations versus governments is a hypothesis which can be tested by empirical evidence and a broad look at history. It is not a by-gone conclusion subject to our preconceptions of whatever outcomes we rationalize beforehand about whether a government or corporation would have our better interests in mind. What ultimately matters is how these forces and policies affect flesh and blood human beings, not what they say (or we think) they intend to do.

"-but there are ways in which the government can impose power to actually enhance freedom, like for example, welfare. Countries with higher welfare have higher wealth mobility. Did you guys know that? America's shit. You go over to the Scandinavian countries, these countries have way better wealth mobility and better welfare. Wealth mobility is almost a direct indicator of economic freedom, and it's not perfect over there, but it's better than it is over here, do you know why? Because if you're born poor in America, you're likely to stay poor. Welfare is a mechanism that enhances human freedom, because it means the circumstances of one's birth are less capable of preventing them from living an enriching, fulfilling life with equal opportunity"

Again, here I will be adjusting this statement to mean the exact same thing under the definitions we've agreed upon.
"-but there are ways in which the government can impose power to actually enhance Justice, like for example, welfare. Countries with higher welfare have higher wealth mobility. Did you guys know that? America's shit. You go over to the Scandinavian countries, these countries have way better wealth mobility and better welfare. Wealth mobility is almost a direct indicator of economic Justice, and it's not perfect over there, but it's better than it is over here, do you know why? Because if you're born poor in America, you're likely to stay poor. Welfare is a mechanism that enhances Justice, because it means the circumstances of one's birth are less capable of preventing them from living an enriching, fulfilling life with equal opportunity"

18/27

>>16642605
In these statements, as with previous ones, we have hypotheses which can be tested, not by-gone conclusions. The fact that Scandinavian countries with welfare have better wealth mobility than the United States does not logically conclude that welfare results in increased wealth mobility. This does not function as proof under the basis that countries vary in factors such as wealth mobility for more reasons than just welfare. What would narrow our criteria to JUST welfare would be to look at wealth mobility rates both before and after the implementation of welfare in the same country. If we observed a pattern of this broadly, over multiple countries, observing similar trends upon the establishment of welfare, then we would be able to come to a conclusion about whether welfare has a positive factor on wealth mobility. Simply showing that wealth mobility in Scandinavian countries is higher than in the United States does not prove anything other than wealth mobility is higher in Scandinavian countries compared to the United States. What Vaush is literally talking about is a trend. Trends require some interval of time. In this case, we would need a both before and after picture of wealth mobility in countries which implemented welfare. If anybody would like to do such research and provide these figures, we might be able to come to a conclusion about whether welfare enhances wealth mobility. Until then, in the context of this discussion, even if Vaush is completely correct in his account of this data, which he probably is, this does not logically lead us to the conclusion which he implies, that welfare results in better wealth mobility. This may well be the intended effect of welfare, but as I have stated, this is a hypothesis subject to testing by empirical evidence, not a conclusion which we can prove simply by repeating simply how we think it SHOULD work.

19/27

>>16642612
"If you're born poor in America, you're likely to stay poor."
I will cite directly from Sowell here:
"Behind many of those numbers and the accompanying alarmist rhetoric is a very mundane fact: Most people begin their working careers at the bottom, earning entry-level salaries. Over time, as they acquire more skills and experience, their rising productivity leads to rising pay, putting them in successively higher income brackets. These are not rare, Horatio Alger stories. These are common patterns among millions of people in the United States and in some other countries. A University of Michigan study which followed the same working individuals over time found a pattern very similar to that in the Internal Revenue Service data. More than three-quarters of those working Americans whose incomes were in the bottom 20 percent in 1975 were also in the top 40 percent of income earners at some point by 1991. Only 5 percent of those who were initially in the bottom quintile were still there in 1991, while 29 percent of those who were initially at the bottom quintile had risen to the top quintile." (Intellectuals and Society 2nd Ed)

5% likelihoods for income stagnation is hardly a "likely" estimate, and unfortunately I do not know what studies Vaush is referencing. If any reader wishes to contribute evidence which would support Vaush, they're welcome to. Citing one study cannot make something true in the context of one argument (especially when an opponent clearly is referencing contrary evidence he has read elsewhere), but unless we have statistics with comparable criteria by which to compare these, we have little to go off. I am making an assumption with this, but there is an extremely big difference between 5% and "likely," so I would personally be surprised if Vaush knows something Sowell doesn't in this instance. This is ultimately up to the reader to decide, however, based on his/her scrutiny of this evidence. Keep in mind, even though Vaush has made an unsubstantiated claim which I have refuted in the context of this essay, this does not mean he would not be able to provide contrary evidence which we could compare had he the opportunity. It cannot be an all out refutation unless we directly refute whatever data he is referencing.

20/27

>>16642616
One thing I would like to quickly clarify to avoid confusion, the 5 percent figure Sowell is describing is not 5 of the bottom 20 percent, it is 5% of the bottom 20%. Putting this into plain numbers, if the bottom quintile had 100 people, 5 would remain in the bottom quintile by the end of this study. A misreading would imply that 25 people would remain in the bottom (this is the difference between 5 percent of 20 percent and 5 of 20 percent, 5 of 20 percent would come out to 25% of that 100 in the bottom quintile, as 5 is 25% of 20. This latter method of sorting percentages is sometimes used to confuse readers to manipulate what statistics actually show about human beings. Again, analyze evidence before coming to conclusions.)

(Vaush referring to welfare, same thread of quotes)
"That's a government imposition. Now, that doesn't mean all welfare is good, it still has to be done "well," and it will never be done perfectly. The argument will always continue. But the idea that, like, any kind of government imposition is inherently bad is fucking ridiculous. And by the way, info like this is explicitly designed to serve the political interests of corporations. There's a reason why they go for this sort of thing."

Sowell has worked in the public sector for the majority of his life. His books have had very little to do with existing corporations or in promoting specific political movements backed by corporations. Thomas Sowell is not Ben Shapiro, he is not a talk-person or a news buzz. This assumption about corporations is so unfair and ill-intentioned, I genuinely have no idea how to logically refute it. It seems irrefutable. If we can assert that our opponents are puppets, or that their arguments are "designed" by forces conspiring against us, with virtually no evidence, not even a single hint of such a thing, I cannot understand why we would even pretend to act like our own views can stand up to any form of serious scrutiny. I have read thousands of pages of Sowell, and not once have I caught him falter in any of his argument forming processes. He is one of the most logically rigorous and consistent people I have ever read or listened to, regardless of whether or not I agree with him on specific things.

21/27

>>16642621
09:06
Here, Sowell's opponent is explaining how the reality of various inequities within society produced a need for equality of outcome to be held as a standard by which it is linked causally with inequalities of outsets inherent within society. Reiterating, Sowell is very aware that human beings are not born into equal circumstances. He is also aware that a child born into poverty would need to persevere to far greater heights in merit to become a doctor as compared to an affluent child born to a family of doctors, this is one such example he provides in his book on Cosmic Justice. What he is arguing is that the pursuit of correcting these inequities present in a freely organized society must inherently seek to reorganize that society in a way in which the free organization of human beings is restricted by the hands of government who seek to mold it in whichever way they deem Just. In Sowell's view, the question is not "are these people equal in their outset," Sowell knows that they are not equal just as well as you and I do. It is not a question of "is this unequal outset unfair" Sowell understands the unfairness of the circumstances of the natural world, his stance on this issue does not indicate that he does not care or that he thinks they are unimportant, he has explicitly stated and acknowledged that these observations about inequities in the circumstances of unequal birth are logical observations. The question to Sowell is "At what costs to pre-existing limitations on government to organize human being in ways it sees as Just will we incur to attempt to achieve that Justice." It is fundamentally a question of trade-offs between Traditional Justice and Cosmic Justice.

22/27

>>16642626
In Sowell's view, Traditional Justice is the power of Law, and from Law, the power of People and Democracy. Cosmic Justice, in Sowell's view, is derived from the power of Men, not of Law. In our quest for Cosmic Justice, we also seek to grant the power to alter a society as subject to the scrutiny of a separate higher power, who will organize society to whatever they deem to be Cosmically Just. The loss in Freedom, as Sowell is arguing, stems from the fact that in order to seek equity in things like pay, demographic representation, and other such outcomes, we must reject how a society chooses to organize itself without government involvement. This would, logically, include the effects of race, sex, and other forms of discrimination conducted by human beings free to make such morally abhorrent choices. This is not, however, the same as saying Sowell is sympathetic with racial discrimination or that he believes it does not exist, because he is not saying this. It is important here to understand that Sowell does not write in how he believes society ought to be, but about how the effects of policies and decisions effect flesh and blood human beings. You, Sowell, and myself may be in complete agreement that race and sex discrimination are morally and intellectually abhorrent, but this does not axiomatically coincide with us coming to the same conclusion on what to do about it.

23/27

>>16642629
Sowell has argued in his book on Cosmic Justice, that what set the United States revolution apart from other revolutions of that time, such as the French revolution, was not about a particular set of Just ideas, but of a fundamental shift in how human beings understood power to be organized within a government. Governments typically consisted of Men. Monarchy, feudalism, these are governments of Men above Law, not of Law above Men. The people who wrote the US Constitution sought to place power NOT into the hands of Men with Just ideas, but into Law, ultimately controlled by the People. The French revolution, for instance, was a revolution in which such transitions of the power of Men to Law were not sought by those revolutionaries. What they sought was a transition of power from Unjust Men to Just Men. Such a reckless trust in the Men of today to do Justice laid the path for Unjust Men to later commit Injustice. This limit on the power of Men, the power of the few to impose their special views of Justice on the many, the People, is being eroded in the Quest for Cosmic Justice, as Sowell describes.

What Sowell is saying most fundamentally, is that the Quest for Cosmic Justice is not a question of moral principle, but of a trade off in an erosion of existing checks and balances between Men and Law.

>>16642629
Sowell has argued in his book on Cosmic Justice, that what set the United States revolution apart from other revolutions of that time, such as the French revolution, was not about a particular set of Just ideas, but of a fundamental shift in how human beings understood power to be organized within a government. Governments typically consisted of Men. Monarchy, feudalism, these are governments of Men above Law, not of Law above Men. The people who wrote the US Constitution sought to place power NOT into the hands of Men with Just ideas, but into Law, ultimately controlled by the People. The French revolution, for instance, was a revolution in which such transitions of the power of Men to Law were not sought by those revolutionaries. What they sought was a transition of power from Unjust Men to Just Men. Such a reckless trust in the Men of today to do Justice laid the path for Unjust Men to later commit Injustice. This limit on the power of Men, the power of the few to impose their special views of Justice on the many, the People, is being eroded in the Quest for Cosmic Justice, as Sowell describes.

What Sowell is saying most fundamentally, is that the Quest for Cosmic Justice is not a question of moral principle, but of a trade off in an erosion of existing checks and balances between Men and Law.

24/27

>>16642534
>>>/v/
slit your throat then go back e-celeb retard

>>16642641
10:10
(reading a message from stream chat) "Just fyi this guy studied at the Chicago school under Friedman, the same school and people that supported Pinochet in Chile that's the world he wants google Chicago Boys"
"Oh yea yea yea just to be clear, when people of these political ambitions actually get hold of governments fascism is what results, just to be perfectly clear. It's not some sort of beautiful egalitarian society where all live in freedom, it's the crushing of democratically elected socialists and the elevation of fascists who slaughter people for their political opinions. Thomas Sowell's priority here is not freedom of humans, it is freedom of capital."

Sowell was a Marxist when he studied under Friedman. If we are going to turn the discussion into a biography of Sowell, I would argue that we should at least be accurate in our depictions of his ideological developments. He switched views after working in the US department of labor. He asserts that that experience convinced him more than anything he had studied in school about the merit of government institutions to function in the best interests of the public, in that he largely believes they do not. According to Sowell, they are comprised of individuals who have their own self interests in keeping and maintaining their own forms of livelihoods, just as corporations do, though without the types of risks corporations face in failing. He has a interpretive book on Marxism which I have read, my main thoughts on which are that it was too short.

Unfortunately, I know little to nothing about Pinochet or the Chicago Boys. If there existed some links between economic disasters which have occured as results from certain free market policies that Sowell has advocated, those effects should be analyzed and the policies subsequently criticized, but this is wholly different from implying that the Chicago School of Economics and its alumni body are conspiring, one, to elect national socialists, or two, to elevate fascists who slaughter people for their political opinion. This assertion is about as unfalsifiable as the last one about Sowell being a puppet for corporations. The discussion at this point has become so presumptuous that I really hardly have any corrections which I could provide for Vaush given how uncritically he makes these assertions.

25/27

>>16642643
The last point, what Sowell wants. This is an interesting question. Sowell has stated that what he wants at the moment is to continue his hobby of photography with his friends. In one recent interview, he spoke about how he received a mail offer while working in the US department of labor for a photography gig which he chose not to take at the time. He said in this interview that he now regrets not taking it.

If I had to personally guess what I believed Sowell wanted, in a broader sense, based on his large body of work, it would be that I think he would like to see people seek to understand History more clearly. One theme Sowell emphasizes in much of his writing is the process by which we form Visions of the world. When human beings have a preconception about how the world operates, they seek things which validate those preconceptions and ignore or dismiss information which might contradict that established Vision. History, as Sowell argues, is not a matter of perspective. There exists another form analysis. One where, rather than using History as a tool to justify our own Vision, we use History as the starting point by which we then form our Vision of humanity. I personally enjoy this approach to History and the logical clarity it provides, and I believe Sowell likely feels the same.

I encourage those who might relate with this Vision to actually sit down and read Sowell. I believe his writing has helped me come to understand parts of the world more sanely.

The rest of this video gets progressively less and less about Sowell as it goes on, and I feel I've made as good a case I can demonstrating how little effort Vaush has made in interpreting Sowell in this video. One last thing, though at 15:55, the thing which Friedman is saying here is not actually tautological. What Friedman says amounts to "outcomes are more equal when individuals are free to achieve unequal results." When we assume that Justice and Freedom are the same concept, however, I guess I can see why this might be tautological. It's actually funny how what Friedman is basically describing as an avenue for future government tyranny to control pre-established human rights is verbally changed to an increase in Freedom, because those ideals which we view as Just today must increase Freedom overall.

26/27

>>16642645
Concluding thoughts.

My relationship with politics comes from a world of mostly of books. I don't watch any politics youtube channels like this. What strikes me most about this exercise was how little effort Vaush put into trying to understand what Sowell or Friedman were trying to say in this video. I put a lot of effort into understanding Vaush in this essay, not because I want to prove him wrong, or even to prove that Sowell is correct, but because I wanted to compare Sowell's ideas against his. Plotting out how both of their logics have collided with each other in the map of my brain has been genuinely entertaining for me in writing this essay. It is one of the longest things which I have written. This type of video format makes me think that things like presidential debates might not be as odd to many people as they are to me: people talking past each other on differing issues, the straw men, the immediate, virtually baseless and therefore irrefutable presumptions of ill-will. I don't at all think Vaush is unintelligent, but I don't think this video really had anything to do with comprehension.

Lastly, I'd encourage anybody who encounters this essay to share it with other people who watch Vaush. I would hope that following along and reading my explanations would be as much enjoyable to a reader of this essay as I had writing it. Thanks for reading.

- Anon That Reads Books

27/27

Everyone here knows vaush is mentally retarded tho, you should take it to his youtube comments section or something

>>16642652
https://files.catbox.moe/yard4a.txt

>>16642657
This. Sage

>>16642642
>>16642663
>slit your throat then go back e-celeb retard
>This. Sage

>>16642657
I think he'd probably reach the character limit

>>16642534
why?

>>16642534
>comparing an e celeb to someone that has written multiple books

nice shit nigga
i aint gonna read all that

This is a BTFO of historical proportions.

>>16642727
Or comments would just disappear for using words their shitty algorithm doesn't like, like "black people".

>>16642750
because people latch onto these commie faggots and use their bullshit as putdowns to stop you from reading Sowell.
Much like people do with Evola or anyone verboten to the lefties. You hear some dishonest interpretation of their work, then use that dishonest interpretation as gospel.
Same with Marx on the other side actually. And no one condones that here, but it gets a pass when it's about "right wing" authors

>>16642753
if he's arrogant enough to do the critique he can be corrected

>only a couple of minutes into the video
>vaush is confused by so-well's distinction between theory and practice
Sowell correctly predicates ow affirmative action detracts from merit in one simple sentence and Vaush just hears woosh.
Hats off to you OP, more stamina than I.

>>16642534
If mods delete this they’re confirmed gay
I’m gonna read this later, hats off OP

>>16642534
he's a fucking leftist, just call him a racist

I don't care about vaush or whoever this house nigger is

>>16642612
When I was a honors student at NTU(Singapore), we did a group "research" on social mobility. From our "research" the only two things that definitely affected social mobility were cheap high quality education and protection of human rights. All other things seemed to have no significant effect. My group actually focused on proving that high cost of living also has negative effect on social mobility. Initial logic was that if low-middle class can not save up money, they won't move up. So, we looked at countries with long periods of inflation and tried to see how it affected social mobility. We made our point, though in the end it was not so clear cut.

Btw, thanks for this essay anon that reads books. I read it all and saved it at my computer. I will send it to my friends too. God bless you anon.

>>16642534
Based. You actually keep your promise.

Pretty good, screenshot it and send it to his subreddit or something. Maybe someone join vaush his discord and paste this link there. Poke the beehive.

>>16642534
>>16642538
>>16642542
>>16642544
>>16642546
>>16642551
>>16642553
>>16642557
>>16642560
>>16642563
>>16642565
>>16642567
>>16642574
>>16642583
>>16642588
>>16642594
>>16642598
>>16642605
>>16642612
>>16642616
>>16642621
>>16642626
>>16642629
>>16642641
>>16642643
>>16642645
>>16642652
Was it autism

>>16643374
>putting effort into something is autism

>>16642534
Good thread

>>16643302
I posted in his discord

>>16643461
Putting effort into this, specifically, is autism

>>16642642

Chill

>>16642643
Just to address Vaush's claim that people like Friedman supported Pinochet's dictatorship in brief:

Milton Friedman, being the top economist of his time, was asked by Pinochet for advice on how to improve the economic standards of his country. Back then their economy wasn't doing so good. Look at this from Friedman's perspective: the leader of a third-world country is asking for your advice, a country that's relatively impoverished and has many of its citizens living in bad conditions. Friedman travelled there for only a few days, gave his advice, and left. This has nothing to do with supporting Pinochet's dictatorship; obviously Friedman would never want such a thing, and to say that he would is plain dishonest. And to somehow link this to Sowell is equally ridiculous.

Based Sowell, and based OP.

>>16643548
To append, economist Greg Mankiw explains this in a bit more detail: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/09/on-ethics-of-advising.html

Based OP. Will read it later.
To all the phoneposters accusing OP of autism just because he put effort into his post: go suck a dick!

>>16643523
t. autist

>>16643596

>>16643523
4chan was much better when it had more autists.

>>16643596
At least I sperg out about things more interesting than retarded youtube e-celebs

>>16642534
You're a king OP. We need more people who refute bullshit, not to mention keep their word

>>16643622
>retarded youtube e-celebs
with a huge following. Your autistic brain might not find it interesting, but it's still more relevant than obsessing over trains.

>>16643563
>Based OP. Will read it later.
aka never

>>16643374
Would it matter? The post is high quality regardless, unlike your post.
Was it insecurity?

Posting in a blessed thread.
Regardless if I agree with OP's take, he delivered.

>>16643661
What the fuck do you think arguing about youtubers is relevant to, exactly? Literature?
We need a fucking containment board for all discussion of e-celebs, like /soc/

>>16643721
Your autism is leaking badly anon.

>>16643730
I hope it leaks all over you and opens your eyes to how much of a complete fucking faggot you are

>>16643667
I always keep my promise. I might not read it all, but I will at least give it a try.

>>16642534
That retarded landwhale Vaush was just BTFO. No idea why people listen to that retarded grifter

>>16643793
>No idea why people listen to that retarded grifter
He expresses himself well and has a friendly disposition which makes him attractive to lonely people.

All these Vaush e-celeb worshipping faggots are al buttblasted by OP lmaoo

Holy shit who fucking cares you stupid idiot. No one with an inkling of a soul cares for or listens to the irrelevant cave ogre that is Vaush. Keep your degenerate e-celeb debauchery and gossip in the universal containment board >>>/pol/

>>16643797
I hope any retarded e-celeb who has a pre-written script would be able to articulate themselves well. Still a retarded a grifter.

>>16643797
>friendly disposition
he casually talks about violence, murder, and cleansing people in the future
there's nothing friendly about that psychopath he's entirely just as edgy as people like Hasan and Destiny

>>16643820
>can't refute a single word
>"good who cares!"
>links to /pol/

Do you think any of this is going to stop by being equally as dumb and divisive as Vaush?
OP read the man Vaush is trying to refute, and is explaining how his reading refutes Vaush. It's the only kind of discussion this board should allow.

>>16643757
Being an autist and being so easily enraged is a recipe for disaster, I hope your family is safe around you

>>16642534
>Wasting time on Vaush
So how is unemployment going?

>>16643877
What is it about the internet that infects people with some kind of Ben Shapiro mind virus where they want everything on earth to be debates and refutations and ebin btfoings?
/lit/ is a place to talk about books, /pol/ is an excellent place for you to bloviate for hours about how some obese greasy twitch streamer misunderstands the concept of justice

>>16643912
It's just human nature, but the internet drags everything to its lowest common denominator which is my team vs your team

>>16643874
Watch the ends of his treats when he interacts with commenters directly. He’s very warm towards them. I think everything about his persona is constructed to be reminiscent of Mr. Rogers, so he can Both develop a parasocial relationship with his audience and radicalize them without it seeming radical at all.

>>16643912
No, /pol/ has and always will be about current events - this is in reference to a political theory - Vaush is using his position - supposedly based on leftist literature to refute the position of economist/political writer.
It's the subject matter of the books that are the platform for the video - Vaush is not news, an old video from Sowel is not news. It has nothing to do with politics in the pragmatic sense.
Literature can be and often is political. You don't get to dictate what which books can and can not be the basis for discussion here. OP is contributing in reference to a BOOK.

>>16643912
Are you a moron or just disingenuous? /lit/ has threads everyday of people debating philosophy or the relative merits of written works. This no different except one of the subjects is an e-celeb's arguments. Thus is higher brow than many of the threads that populate this pathetic board everyday. Stop shitting on someone for actually putting effort. Effort posting should be welcomed.

>>16643912
I think this is slightly more valuable than fucking stack threads

Good thread, OP. Post this on Vaush's subreddit. I want to see his fans seethe.

>>16643990
Poorfag puts himself again. Topkek

Why would put this much effort into engaging honestly with someone like Vaush?

>>16643999
I think people are misinterpreting this as engagement with Vaush. Consider it instead as honest engagement with Sowell's ideas and how they are misrepresented by faggot e-celebs.

>>16644049
If fags like op never brought up said faggot e-celebs, I would never have to hear about their stupid fucking interpretations in the first place

>>16643999
It's not about him but the retards who might take him seriously, and the was a thread on Thomas Sowell earlier where people were genuinely referring to Vaush. If people can see how dishonest Vaush is in this maybe they'll start thinking about other things. Even if nobody is reached by this it should still be done because the truth matters.

>>16644073
It is regrettable but you might understand why from the examination of this thread >>16628147
OP simply wanted to see if there was any credible opposition to Sowell's ideas.
It did not go well if all that can be produced in evidence contrary to Sowell is a bad faith interpretation by the likes of faggot e-celebs.

>>16644049
Good take
Sowell is now on my radar to maybe read in the future.

>>16643996
The projection of the consoomer

>>16643999
Because retards like Butters like to link his vid to REFUTE Sowell instead of using their own brain.

>>16644166
i hate 'her' so much
but it pleases me to know she'll never feel the joy of reading someone like Sowell and feeling their mind expand

>>16642645
"One theme Sowell emphasizes in much of his writing is the process by which we form Visions of the world. When human beings have a preconception about how the world operates, they seek things which validate those preconceptions and ignore or dismiss information which might contradict that established Vision. History, as Sowell argues, is not a matter of perspective. There exists another form analysis. One where, rather than using History as a tool to justify our own Vision,
WE USE HISTORY as the starting point by which we then form our Vision of humanity."

Thank you for this: even before I discovered Sowell I thought this was the best way to understand people, and that the first danger was asserting my own assumptions onto history. Reading sowell has only helped me understand history, and thus humanity, and thus politics. I'm very happy that you were able to write it so well.
Even if I disagree with Sowell on many of his policy recommendations reading and understanding him has been excellent regardless.

you can take one look at this 'Vaush' fellow to assert his ineptitude in all things intellectual.

>>16643302
I don't have a reddit, but if somebody else does here is a full screenshot.

https://files.catbox.moe/c2lzt7.png

File size is fine but the image is too tall to post directly.

>>16644265

>>16642534

Thanks, enjoyed your analysis.

>>16644265
I posted it on reddit already, i don't think anyone cares though

>>16643990
>other people make shitty threads which makes my garbage e-celeb thread fine
>>>/v/

>>16643944
> the subjects is an e-celeb's arguments. Thus is higher brow than many of the threads that populate this pathetic board everyday.
e-celebs threads are the bottom of the barrel. Any shitpost is better than this.

>>16643828
Vaush in this case no prewritten script, though. He would be better off if he did, as OP points out.

this is good OP
thank you

>>16642534
Oh no Vaushbros, we got too cocky.

Only response needed

who cares what this fat retard says

what the fuck

henlo

>>16643874
The worst thing is that he gets away with it because he advocates for violence towards people who are acceptable targets to advocate violence towards (the vague mish-mash of a category that is "fascists/racists/sexists/etc.")

>>16644323
So, did you get banned?

>>16642546
>Regardless of our own philosophical beliefs on where man ought to be, or what he ought to have, for the sake of this discussion, we are required to adopt Sowell's definition of the separation of Justice and Freedom. This is not because it is the better definition, the correct definition, or the smarter definition, but because it differentiates the two concepts of Freedom and Justice.
Inteligence is a sword that cuts and separetes concepts. I'd argue that Sowell's definition is inherently better.

>>16643912
>What is it about the internet that infects people with some kind of Ben Shapiro mind virus where they want everything on earth to be debates and refutations and ebin btfoings?
I think one of the influences would be Destiny, at least on twitch, I've noticed that the less popular and newer center-left political twitch streamers all talk in a similar fashion to him, they may not completely share his opinions but they often use the same language, rhetoric, (sometimes) mannerisms, and tone of voice as him. But to be fair I'm basing this off of the little I've seen of them, they may copy Destiny to a certain degree but that imitation didn't make them interesting or entertaining to watch.

Nobody cares, retard

>>16645095
But do you really think a Vaush viewer would agree with that sentiment?

>>16645201
He likes to play with words to his purposes instead of understanding them, so no.
.

Vaush is the person who made me stop to think about any of this stuff through youtube or the internet cold turkey.
Pulling out any one of his videos and only seeing the same autistic tribal calls, he's placed inside the washing machine of worthless internet fame like the rest of them.

>>16645048
No, why would I get banned posting some anon's essay?

Found the reddit post
https://www.reddit.com/r/VaushV/comments/jhbd9y/anon_on_lit_writes_essay_on_vaushs_sowell_video/

>>16645366
It's Reddit. I got banned from the NFL subreddit for calling BLM anti-white.

>>16645451
Somebody should really refute the top reply to this. The argument/correction it provides has virtually nothing to do with the intention of the passage it cites, in that BookAnon is attempting to apply logic to the way both Justice and Freedom are used by Vaush and Sowell. It is not a refutation of any of Vaush's moral presumptions. It almost explicitly tries to avoid this.

>>16642534
1/27
TL;DR

dude Sowell is an retard just accept it,
he did the grift was successful on it no need to suck him off.

>>16645534
Proof?

>>16645514
Seeing as how Vaush misinterpreted Sowell repeatedly, I shouldn't be surprised that his fans would misinterpret the essay refuting Vaush by claiming it's making a case for deontology when it's clearly not - and right at the beginning, too - all so they have an excuse not to engage with it seriously. Reddit is so full of intellectual dishonesty that it's hardly worth getting into.

>>16642892
Based and redpilled comment.

>>16645514
To the extent that: If corrections to premises underlying an concept do not actually connect with an adjustment of the conclusions derived from that concept, then the "correction" in premises have not actually refuted any conclusions, in that the logical process by which those conclusions have been reached has not been altered.

In layman's terms, even if we took the correction as true it doesn't change and virtually anything else in the whole essay.

>>16642534
>On Vaush and Sowell
Kys immediately

>>16645451
>That replies
Redditors are truly dishonest and cringe.

>>16645451
How is every single reply so fucking stupid

>>16645451
downvoted

>>16645451
>fundamental disagreement
>Deontological framework
>more buzzwords
>This is one of those “holy shit, go outside” moments
holy fuck these people are so close minded and completely disconnected from the real world
their commie god vaush is always correct

>>16645709
Because the vast majority of people eho follow e-celebs do so because they can't formulate their own arguments for why they like or dislike things, so they follow people who can do it for them. Vaush has complained about his community's lack of ability to think positions or arguments through, and Destiny has come to realize that most of his community often agrees with his arguements because of him as opposed to agreeing with him because of his arguements. He learned this when he started to use Autism as an insult again that his community immediately began to do so as well, despite all the years he put in on arguing against doing so.

econ is astrology for pseuds
ai will fully automate the small amount of work that econ majors are still tasked with

>>16645853
Why do you know this

>>16645887
An e-celeb told him (he's not like the others though)

>>16645837
You forgot the worst one:
>good faith
If you ever get your hands on a time machine, just remember that killing baby Sartre would do more good for the world than killing baby Hitler.

>>16645887
I use to watch a lot of Destiny's videos and streams, I also use to watch Vaush's stuff from the beginning but my interest for both of them has waned, I've been trying to get into books more.
>>16645897
Nope.

>>16642534
Why on Earth does any take these two seriously? Vaush is not a good representative for the left, and his arguments are generally the weakest the left has to offer.

>>16645927
Sowell is great when he's not talking about economics

>>16645927
>y-yeah he wasn't a real leftist guys!!
kys he's the best "breadtuber" the leftoids have to offer and that says a lot

>>16642534
he didn't even reply to what sowell was saying, god vaush is so cringe

>>16645837
>>16645927
This is what I mean. Vaush is not a "Commie god", he's even admitted and is proud of the fact he refuses to read Marx or any communist theorist beyond Chomsky, who isn't a Communist.

>>16645933
Well he isn't really in any meaningful capacity.

>>16645925
>I've been trying to get into books more.
Read this.

>>16645887
You can honestly tell by how he has changed. He used to be a happy little hyperactive midget. Now he seems like an abusive alcoholic set to 1.5 times speed.

>>16645938
>He didn't even read marx
>Still calls himself a commie
Does anybody take this retard seriously?

>>16646056
He's tries to justify it by saying he's not polluted by "dogmatic" theory therefore he's pragmatic. But if he'd read anything, he'd know that's pragmatic, its just being a philistine.

>>16646092
So Vaush is just another pseud who doesn't understand what Pragmatism is.

>>16645938
>This is what I mean. Vaush is not a "Commie god", he's even admitted and is proud of the fact he refuses to read Marx or any communist theorist beyond Chomsky, who isn't a Communist.
From what I've seen, he seems to make a lot of Marxist style arguments, but he's also very moralistic, so you might be right.

Nigga wrote a full fucking book about a shitty leftist grifter's uninformed opinion.
Gotta admire the autism.

>>16646164
He doesn't make Marxist style arguments at all. Both him and Destiny are philistines and suffer a lot from the same kind of thinking Sargon and the alt-right do: namely that "facts and logic" exist to win debates or that debates (especially unmoderated internet ones) are even necessarily a correct way to determine what's right or wrong. They can be, but no unprincipled bad faith debates that are about "winning" internet arguments. "Facts" and "logic" taken by themselves are not scientific, they are fragments of a larger picture that can be hidden or revealed in parts to support really anyone's agenda.

>>16645938
He said that he has read theory on stream I think
Something he often says "unlike most people I can actually make such and such claim because I have actually read theory/marx"

>>16643721
They're more relevent than a lot of msm outlets

>>16646222
Well, he said he'd read the Communist Manifesto. In reality, he googled snippets of it that seemed to support the idea Marx agreed with electoralism within capitalism, but when put into their proper context, they don't all. This is what I mean about this style of internet debate where you use "facts and logic" without considering that facts and logic can be partially revealed without their full context.

>>16646256
>he googled snippets of it that seemed to support the idea Marx agreed with electoralism within capitalism
Like voting for Biden?

>>16646271
Yes, which he is berating communists and anarchists for not doing.

He’s a privileged upper-middle class White leftist criticizing a Black man who was raised in poverty during segregation.
That’s all that needs to be said, really.

>>16646285
Stop strengthening their moral framework

>>16646283
Oh I didn't realise there was a video and multiple response videos on this
Before I watch them, why are there any arguments against "pulling the lever" for biden? Chomsky has been constantly talking about the doomsday clock since early this year in all of his interviews and explains just how damaging it would be if Trump is reelected

Surely voting for Biden is the best possible way to prevent this from happening no? Is it mainly the idea of accelerationism?

>>16646211
>He doesn't make Marxist style arguments at all.
He does. His take on fascism is pretty much the standard Marxist take on it.

>>16646372
literally nothing bad or good would happen if trump or biden is reelected
there will be salt for both, but ultimately (like 2 month after) everything will be normal

>>16646344
I’m not. I’m just pointing out that they don’t come close to living up to their own moral framework.

>>16646372
Not really. If Trump really is the anti-christ hyper fascist they say he is he's not going to accept the election results and launch a coup anyway.

The point for Communists and anarchists isn't that voting this or that will "x" effect such as accelerationism, its that voting within a capitalist dictatorship is only ever going to have the effect capitalists want. It doesn't matter who gets elected, especially since Biden has proven he's as much as a reactionary as Trump with his imperialist drum-beating about China, Russia and the DPRK.

>>16646374
There is no "standard" Marxist take on fascism, its still something Marxists are fiercely debating about to this day.

>>16646372
Don't vote for the Democrats to punish them for backstabbing the socialist is the argument. Also that Biden ain't much different from Trump

There is a strange absence of one particular insect in this thread...

>>16646245
I don't want the front page to be CNN articles about politics either, nigger, holy shit

>>16646446
yeah...

>>16646410
>There is no "standard" Marxist take on fascism, its still something Marxists are fiercely debating about to this day.
Fascism as the system's reaction to capitalism in decline seems to be the prevailing one.

>>16646490
lol
if that's the prevailing one then... yikes. just yikes.

>>16646490
Prevailing sure. But not the only one, and in my opinion, not even the necessarily true one.

>>16642642
This is the most high-effort post I've seen on /lit/ in ages. I'd rather read this than some bullshit political bait thread, even if it means having vaush on the board.

>>16646410
>There is no "standard" Marxist take on fascism, its still something Marxists are fiercely debating about to this day.
This is legit retarded just like you. The leftcoms have the best critique of fascism. Anything deviating from that is just from retards who don't read nor study history.

>>16646486
Hmm, not a thing in flight in this thread...

>>16646537
Well, it's about what I expected from said insect

>>16642534
>1/27

>>16646446
She saw that she would have to read more than a few sentences to form a snarky, dismissive reply to OP and that scared her off

>>16642534
mega based

>>16646620
>the /lit/ denizen hates reading

https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanPeterson/comments/jhds9o/leftwing_youtuber_vaush_made_a_video_on_thomas/

Why are you posting this here?

>>16642534
>>16642538
>>16642542
>>16642544
>>16642546
>>16642551
>>16642553
>>16642557
>>16642560
>>16642563
>>16642565
>>16642567
>>16642574
>>16642583
>>16642588
>>16642594
>>16642598
>>16642605
>>16642612
>>16642616
>>16642621
>>16642626
>>16642629
>>16642641
>>16642643
>>16642645
>>16642652
A picture is worth a thousand words.

>>16646933
Wrong.

>>16646896
>even in a subreddit where it gets upvoted not a single replies implies anybody actually read it
im so fuckign glad 4chan exists sometimes

>>16646896
Like we need more fucking redditors or peterson posters coming here

>>16646896
My gott, you idiot!

>>16646933
Because he promised it in another thread, and people had asked it of him.

Isn't that the guy that imitates destiny?

>>16647068
gtfo you disgusting weeb

>>16647235
I do know Destiny had his way with him not that long ago. So, it must not be a very good emulation.

>>16646896
How the fuck does that post have 600+ updoots???
Why are people still taking absolute hacks like JP seriously?
He already had to take more than a year recovering from the debate with Zizek, and he pussied out debating Wolff.

>>16647259
>Why are people still taking absolute hacks like JP seriously?
dude half the people here are JP fans who´re getting their news now from Tim Pool.

imagine wasting your life on doing this.

>>16646896
>posts it on JP, gets 95 comments and 650 likes
>posts on Vaush, 22 likes, 21 comments
I need to get better at reddit posting, my title was shit

>>16647365
>t. 4chan user

>>16647396
you need to leave, that's what you need to do

topped reading after I saw OP's first few mistakes

>Equality of opportunity, which Vaush rejects as a misnomer, where every individual functions under the same rules and standards, is what Sowell describes as "Traditional Justice." Equality of outcome (by Sowell's definition, not Vaush's, as we will soon learn), where government policies are implemented to seek corrections to what they view as Unjust outcomes

1. Even though the rules are there, their implementation can be incorrectly applied, this can be due to many societal factors.

2. Hence, if there are laws and rules and they don't get implemented in a fair way, then the so called regulations aren't always blindly aiming at the outcome to be equal, as you later on lay out in a false dichotomy whereany regulation not applied equally to all individuals is immediately deemed to be with the purpose of achieving equality of outcome. This is false.

3. The outcomes can be unjust because the implementation of the rules set forth in the so called traditional justice were not implemented fairly and equally themselves. Thus leading to less outcome of opportunity.

4. Hence rules may be adjusted on a non equal way among individuals to account for the incorrect implementation of tjat Traditional Justice, actual leading to a more equal just and fair opportunity, without necessarily aiming at making the outcome more equal

>>16643908

LOL'd loudly.

>>16647464
You're not really backing up any of your arguments
>IT CAN BE, IT COULD BE
Aight lol

>>16642534
>1/27
This was a way higher effort reply than V**sh deserves. Bumping to read.

>>16647464
>his writing style is a borderline incomprehensible puddle of bile
>its stolen directly from reddit
Have my (you) for your effort

>>16642563
> there is no such law banning the education of farm animals, for example

kek

>>16646896
Are we still going to pretend peterson is wrong?

>>16647464

Each of your points is a reasonable assertion. But what’s missing is the bit where you explain how they contradict or refute anything OP wrote.

>>16648472
Go back to réddit.

sowell is based
vaush guy really isn't worth the time anon put into him

>>16645534
27 post essay, and the best response you got is an ad hominem attack? Without any proof or any substantiating argument?

Who's the real retard here?

>>16648613
The person posting 27 part essays on lit instead of submitting to a small magazine of the appropriate politics.

Duh. Pissing your gold away.

Watching Vaush debates made me realize how degenerate most online reactionaries are

>>16642563
that's not true, smarter slaves were taught to read so that they could read the bible. frederick douglass was already literate when he escaped to the north, for instance. but the idea that you need to ban education for slaves specifically is ludicrous given that there's so much effort required anyone who isn't absolutely committed to doing so won't do it to begin with. and the south was devoted to slavery, why would slave states need to pass a law banning an action that their populations weren't interested in in the first place?

>>16648776
Dude, stop trying to rationalize things and be like Sowell: just look at the evidence.

>During the era of slavery in the United States, the education of enslaved African Americans, except for religious instruction, was discouraged, and eventually made illegal in most of the Southern states. After 1831 (the revolt of Nat Turner), the prohibition was extended in some states to free Blacks as well.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_during_the_slave_period_in_the_United_States

>During the antebellum period in the United States, anti-literacy laws were a major strategy used by southern plantation owners to dehumanize and control the enslaved black population. Anti-literacy laws were an extension of the infamous slave codes, which governed a plethora of activities, including slaves' interactions with non-slave-owning citizens.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/literacy-and-anti-literacy-laws

>>16642616
>evidence which would support Vaush
It's not an American statistic but this one shows that there certainly is income stagnation in Germany compared to the general wealth increase, unfortunately this statistic doesn't factor in the cost of living as far as I'm aware, which would make this even worse.
Also, I suggest that when looking at the U. S. to look at more recent data as well

>>16648803
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.sozialpolitik-aktuell.de/tl_files/sozialpolitik-aktuell/_Politikfelder/Einkommen-Armut/Datensammlung/PDF-Dateien/abbIII1.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi4luHeos_sAhUNjqQKHQZaCasQFjACegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw2EamLtcnp0eWn_AqElycsJ&cshid=1603613288919
Forgot the link

>>16644187
Odd Nerdrum is a great painter.

>>16646446
Indeed, very strange...

>>16642534
FUCK YOU MODS. SAGE FAGGOTS FUCK YOURSELVES

>>16648990
What?

>>16647316
where?

>>16642534
This is great. Where can I find more writing like this?

>>16649158
https://wrongplanet.net

>>16649158
Probably read Sowell.

>>16646056
as long as you understand the concepts you shouldn't have to force yourself through that painful fucking book.

pretty good essay anon, but his talent is wasted imo. He'd be better off writing about something else.

>5th flag- I skipped a lot here to delay the aneurysm, but they refer to a potential reader as "his/her"... (sniff) mmm do I smell a transphobe? Eh, maybe it's a stretch but I'm a little sus about them not just using 3rd person plural here.

>>16649366
But you have at least read an interpretive analysis of it, right?

>>16642534
Vaush is a intellectually lazy twat who can keep up the pretense of being informed to those tho are even lazier. Even if you put this in video form and tweet it to him, he'll never go through the trouble of listening to it. At the very best, he might take a single sentence out of context and talk about it for 20 minutes.

>>16642652
Great post, but the central issue remains, why should we prefer "traditional" over "cosmic" justice? Empirical arguments like "government power is more likely to be abused" can easily be countered by biting the bullet if the opponent thinks pursuing cosmic justice is a lofty enough approach to justify the risk. Alternatively, one could give a moral argument, attempting to show that traditional justice is a superior ethical system. But this would require a defence of moral realism, which in my view is definitely false. So at the end there seems to be no way to persuade those who value a different kind of justice to change their view. These different approaches result from different visions of how society should work, and people with different desires will inevitably be drawn to different political positions with no way of rationally reconciling them.

>>16642534
Anon, great effortpost, just take a bit of constructive criticism if you please. Your style could really benefit from being simplified. Leave the flowery embellishments to those who have to hide the fact that they have no substance. Substance deserves to be served unobstructed.

>>16649909
That’s actually a good idea. Can someone put this essay into video format so as to be more accessible for people? I’d do it myself but I’m retarded.

>>16649999
Quads of truth deem it so, but some voice-anon would have to answer the call.

>>16650074
https://voca.ro/1hbTYePsNa7W
I do have a bit of a stutter, but I did the first part quite well, I think. Give feedback, please.

>>16645451
>5th flag- I skipped a lot here to delay the aneurysm, but they refer to a potential reader as "his/her"... (sniff) mmm do I smell a transphobe? Eh, maybe it's a stretch but I'm a little sus about them not just using 3rd person plural here.
I'm dying

this essay conveniently ignores that the conflating of Freedom and Justice by Vaurgh is rooted in the assumption that certain demographics in US have had their Freedoms infringed upon historically (both by government and social factors), and that these are the cause of the state of comparatively lower Justice they have today

>>16650716
I think you sound good
not sure if its worth doing it though desu

>>16642552
>anyone who disagrees with me and isnt a far left, antiwhite sjw is either a Russian troll or a neonazi

Take your meds. Op is not baiting or trolling. Hes effortposting, which is pretty based, although to some extent a waste of time anywhere on 4chan

>>16646896
fucking disgusting subhumans

>>16650947
This argument, anon, is a hypothesis which Sowell argues does not stand up against any scrutiny of evidence. Many social issues for blacks in particular, which many attribute to the legacy of slavery, were in fact better in previous generations closer to the era of slavery, and have been worsened only after implementations of specific social policies enacted in the 60s. The book which holds his massive amount of research on this subject is "Black Rednecks and White Liberals." If you would like to refute this view, you may read the book and provide counter points. Simply stating, however, that social injustices in generations past are the causes of today's issue "because it seems plausible" does not actually prove anything. This is a vision of the world which has been made "true" only by its verbal repetition, not by any analyses of empirical evidence on these issues, according to Sowell.

>>16651016
all of that is irrelevant to my point, my point is that the essay is incomplete because it doesn't address any of it. you might want to revise it in order to give a fair presentation of Vaurgh's views

>>16651049
You are legit retarded.

>>16650716
Your accent is nice, just try to avoid slurring and make sure you don't skip consonants. If you decide to do it, don't do it all in one take obv to avoid things like stuttering. Exaggerating your mouth movements may help this, since it sounds like your mouth is half closed at times, like when you say "chronological."

Ultimately it's up to you whether or not you think you sound comprehendible if you choose to put this into video format, if somebody could understand what you're saying without subtitles then you've succeeded.

>>16651058
cheers, I'll have a go with that in mind

>>16651049
Firstly, I am not BookAnon, and I'm not going to revise his essay for him. Secondly, even if we did include this in the essay, it would not change any of the ways in which these two inviduals differ on their fundamental views of governments as dispensers of justice, as that is the premise of the whole video and thus this essay.
The topic which you are describing, anon, is on historical revisionism. If you want BookAnon to cover Vaush and Sowell's differences on approaches to historical analyses, you would need to point to a video in which Vaush butchers Sowell's views on the subject of historical revisionism, as that is what prompted him to write this essay on Vaush's butchering of Sowell's views on governments role in dispensing justice.
At best, we could say you are upset BookAnon did not providing supporting arguments for Vaush's standpoint. BookAnon stated explicitly that he was not trying to prove either of their views as correct or to make a case for either, only to correct the misconceptions Vaush makes in his video. His choice to maintain their views to this specific subject, government as a dispenser of justice, does not actually make his depiction less accurate, regardless of whether you think either side could use other instances of supporting arguments to inform each respective's vision.

>>16651049
vaush didnt mention it let alone reference it in the video so what the fuck makes you think he would include it in his essay?

>>16648522

I didn't include the whole quote of OP because it would clutter the place as it was pretty long. You can read the whole part where he defines Sowell's and Vaush's Traditional Justice, Cosmic Justice, Equality of Opportunity, Equality of Outcome.

Let me illustrate what OP misrepresented, with a theoretical example:

1. Let's suppose laws are made in a country, where everyone is supposed to get $1 each week if they win a chess game against a government worker who will visit their homes personally each week

2. After a few months, they look at the statistics. Fat people are getting half the money compared to slimmer people. This is for two reasons: they lose more games on average and the people visiting homes disproportionally ignore fat people, maybe after the first delivery they unconsciously remember the fat person and feel they need the dollar less, and they may even think they are doing them a favor.

3. So far we have what OP says Sowell calls "Traditional Justice" where there are rules meant to be applied equally for everyone and no rules or laws meant to apply to one group more than another.

4. However, the government decides to create a new rule where fat people are supposed to get visited twice weekly instead of once (but still only play one game weekly not two) to address this disparity in visits.

5. Now we have what Sowell calls "Cosmic Justice" where a rule was created for a specific subset of individuals not applied equally for everyone.

If we examine why the rule was made it was to create a greater equality of opportunity, not to create a greater equality of outcome even though the outcome became more equal through this but not equal as fat people still lose more frequently and make less money

On the other hand, a rule that would be aimed to create an equality of outcome would be to double the money fat people get so they would end up with the same amount as slimmer people, but this would not be fair to slimmer people as they would have to win twice the games as fat people to make the same money, Thomas Sowell (and OP as well based on how he defined Vaush's position) seem to think all rules applied unevenly are aiming at Equality of Outcome in this way and believe they can't be aiming at Equality of Opportunity.


(Also, I made a mistake in the original comment, in 3 it's meant to read "equality of opportunity" not "outcome of opportunity" )

>>16651165
One implicit assumption in your view, anon, is that you, #1 can prove that people visiting homes to administer this reward are ignoring fat people because of bias. This is an empirical question, one which you cannot prove by simply conveying it's plausibility. In the real world, one in which groups and cultures differ in more ways than just chess skills and weight, those differences do in fact correspond to differences in outcomes such as academic enrollment, professional interests, and productivity levels. The assertion that differences in these types of outcomes are due to employer "bias," is a hypothesis which can be tested, not a conclusion which you can prove just by stating plausibility. In nations around the world and throughout history, virtually no groups of any culture or race can be found proportionally present in various populations of output such as economic status, prevalence in the sciences, prevalence in politics, prevalence in military, or in virtually any other category which may describe as an output, even when the differences between these groups or cultures were not visible in physical factors such as race. To assume that disparities must coincide with bias is to jump immediately from a plausible hypothesis to proven fact with having conducted none of the necessary research of evidence which would logically be required to prove such a hypothesis. If you want to read more about this subject, I recommend reading Discrimination and Disparities by Sowell, as he outlines these presumptions and facts clearly there.

>>16646446
>239 posts in
>the insect still nowhere to be seen

>>16651232


>One implicit assumption in your view, anon, is that you, #1 can prove that people visiting homes to administer this reward are ignoring fat people because of bias.

That part was added as extra, the *reason* for the bias doesn't affect the argument in any way. Read the whole thing again.

>>16651232

Read it again and omit that part, the reason for why they visited the homes left doesn't affect the argument in any way.

visited the homes less*

Jesus christ i fucking hate that these cunts rake in money for this low effort shit when people like the guys at prolekult are putting out 40 minute- 3 hour well researched docs in their free time and get a fraction of the views.

>>16651471
Charlatans always get the biggest audience. See ancient Athens.

>>16642544
That nice and all, but that just mean that the justice that Sowell proposes is not actually aligns with supposed values of society (egalitarianism, social mobility etc.)
>>16642560
>Advocating for equal pay is therefore synonymous with advocating for an equality of outcome, as Sowell's definition of equality of outcome describes
Well then, I guess Sowell has misleading definition of "equality of outcome". Why should a person through no fault of their own, working the same job, with same productivity receive less? That sounds to me like that person was denied opportunity because of some cosmetic factor.

>>16651481
I haven't seen anyone talk about what they have in their latest vid, about the British government intentionally funneling the virus into care facilities. They even provide a timeline of sources to make their case.

>>16651232

Read it again and omit that part, the reason for why they visited the homes less doesn't affect the argument in any way.

Also, the tangent on race and culture bias you went on is actually an argument against Equality of Outcome, NOT against Equality of Opportunity. You are indeed making the same mistake by assuming all rules applied unevenly must be to make the Outcome Equal and proportionate. This is not so.

>>16651321
>>16651334

>>16651165
>the people visiting homes disproportionally ignore fat people, maybe after the first delivery they unconsciously remember the fat person and feel they need the dollar less, and they may even think they are doing them a favor.

So we are to omit this entire segment? If we omitted this, why would we even assert that increasing the amount of times fat people are visited would improve their chances of receiving their reward? That would not even result in an increase in equality of opportunity even by Vaush's definition, since they would go there twice a week, just as they did once a week on the prior rules to find that fat people win less than others at the exact same rate they did when they went once a week. There is not even a rational explanation as to why fat people would need to be visited more often than thin people. This doesn't even remotely improve fat people's chances of succeeding or getting their reward, since if we omit what you described to be a bias, then they would be visited just as much as fit people and their outcomes would be true to their real productivity, i.e. the amount of games they win.

This same principle, if we decide that government should be in the role of increasing opportunities for people, could very easily imply in the inverse, as it has in the case of affirmative action in public universities and hiring quotas for private businesses. What is critical is that these legal decisions function under the presumption that racial demographics would be more even if it were not for bias. That is the whole opportunity argument behind the fact that these legal restrictions would increase minority opportunity, that they were held back from where they would have been if not for some sort of bias or restriction in society which does not allow them to exercise their full productivity.

If fat people in your scenario are functioning at their full productivity, and the government has no bias which would undermine how much of that productivity is utilized in chess and the collection of their reward, then why the fuck is there even a presumption that increasing the rate at which we visit fat people's homes change anything. It would be completely irrational, like the exact law OP describes with the law prohibiting education of blacks. To use his methodology, your new rule requiring fat people to be visited twice must logically assume two things: 1, fat people are not receiving as much as they would get if we visited them twice a week, and 2, this only applies to fat people, therefore increasing the rate for thin people also would not change anything for them. If both of these facts were untrue, then the twice a week rule only to fat people would be irrational and have no effect. In asserting that the visiting fat people twice a week would increase equality of opportunity overall, you MUST be functioning under these two assumptions.

>>16643548
>Friedman travelled there for only a few days, gave his advice, and left.
So, he supported him.

>>16651539
If such a rule were actually enacted, after a month the government would say "okay, visiting fat people twice a week has not produced literally any difference in their output, thus we will return to once a week since this decision to provide preferential terms to fat people does nothing and we are wasting resources visiting them more often than before with no change in output to defend this increase in resources." As I said, if we omit that part of your statement this sort of rule would never even be thought up by anybody, let alone enacted, in the first place.

>>16651598
Even in my mock narration of the government guy here, his statement implies they thought there would be a tangible difference in output in the first place, hence that is the only reason such a rule would ever even be considered.

>>16651539

> So we are to omit this entire segment? If we omitted this, why would we even assert that increasing the amount of times fat people are visited would improve their chances of receiving their reward?

Nobody is asserting this, they just want them to have equal chances at trying to get the reward.

>This doesn't even remotely improve fat people's chances of succeeding or getting their reward, since if we omit what you described to be a bias, then they would be visited just as much as fit people and their outcomes would be true to their real productivity, i.e. the amount of games they win.

That's the point Einstein, making it reflect their real productivity by giving them more equal opportunity, jfc

What you keep saying won't happen is what's called Equality of Outcome, try and get the concepts straight before going on your race and culture rants.

>>16651598
> If such a rule were actually enacted, after a month the government would say "okay, visiting fat people twice a week has not produced literally any difference in their output, thus we will return to once a week since this decision to provide preferential terms to fat people does nothing and we are wasting resources visiting them more often than before with no change in output to defend this increase in resources." As I said, if we omit that part of your statement this sort of rule would never even be thought up by anybody, let alone enacted, in the first place.

You don't seem to be able to follow simple step by step explanations or suffer from some reading comprehension disorder. You are assuming that the outcome would not change, for this happen, the fat people would need to lose all the new games they start playing as a consequence of the new rule. Temember the outcome was half of the slim people for 2 reasons one being more related to ability, the other to being visited less. Not once in the dtatement does it imply the outcome would not change at all.

>First, dont fucking tell your reader that your goal isnt to convince them that a particular view on something is wrong, and then spend your entire essay writing from the assumption that one party in a disagreement is wrong, and the other is right. Doing that is a little thing called gaslighting. Stop being a scum-fuck and just announce your perspective and intentions from the start. Definitely dont waste my fucking time laying out just how impartial you're going to be for a whole paragraph before jumping in to your entirely one sided analysis.
>Secondly, if your goal has anything to do with advocating for a particular side in an issue, maybe DON'T DISMISS ONE SIDE'S DEFINITIONS AND PERSPECTIVE BEFORE YOU EVEN GET INTO YOUR ANALYSIS.
>It would be a little like trying to evaluate an argument between a Christian and an atheist over theism, and the FIRST THING YOU DO in your evaluation is assume that only explanations of the world that contain a divine entity are sufficient to explain our existence.
>Essentially, this essay is a titanic example of, "Begging the question"- actually, that's probably what I should have written as a response- I should have just linked the wiki for the, "begging the question" fallacy. Could also include, "non sequitur", "appeal to ignorance" and, "equivocation" fallacies to boot.
>Jesus, I'm glad I was buzzed while I read this. At least it gave me a good laugh.
>Sincere, no-bullshit, good faith recommendation for the writer-
>Read up on logical fallacies. If your sincere goal is to be persuasive, and honestly advocate for your ideals, you'll want to touch up on fallacies, otherwise all you're doing is wasting you, and your readers', time.

>>16651655
>the other to being visited less.
Why were they being visited less?

>>16648757
>degenerate
Why? What do you understand as "Degeneracy"?

>>16651668
reminder that orwell predicted this

>>16651727
Orwell can go fuck himself.

>>16651614

If they were playing 30 games a year before and after the rule they started playing 40 games a year then they would have to lose all the10 games that they are now playing that they weren't playing before for the outcome to not change, this is unlikely if the ability of all of them doesn't magically diminish

>If I say that red is blue and blue is green my argument is correct
Op is a fag.

>>16651670

the why isn't relevant

>>16651772
No, it actually is, because the existence of a bias is the only reason anybody would ever claim that they were in fact being visited less. Unless we have some sort of bias, like racism, prejudice in some form, we would never come to the conclusion that they were being visited less. We would only assume that they were in fact being treated equally to thin people, and that they would be visited just as much as thin people. I go into detail into this presumption of a bias here
>>16651232
What I am arguing anon, is that in the real world, we could not actually prove that fat people were being visited less. You have skipped this real life question in your omniscient explanation of this scenario. This is how deeply this presumption is engrained in your brain as a fact, when it is in truth, a hypothesis. The hypothesis is: fat people are being visited less because of some reason, doesn't matter the flavor or reason. It is not a fact that fat people are being visited less, for any reason. We have no reason to assert that government workers would not treat fat people different from thin people unless they had some sort of bias, whatever that bias may be. The testable hypothesis is not what flavor of bias they have, it is whether or not fat people are being underutilized for their productivity because of some bias. This is not a fact which we can assert by explaining plausibility (contrary to how you have done so in your scenario multiple times now) as I have stated.

If we want to come to some sort of understanding on this, we need to scrap your scenario where you've presumed to know all of the unknowns in the system.

If Sears management workforce is 99% white, we would assume that some sort of bias is present. Obviously, some sort of bias on the part of their promotion process is favoring white people. Regardless of what that bias might be, the fact is there must be some sort of bias, right? This is wrong, this is a hypothesis. It is a hypothesis that Sears is discriminating by race, regardless of how plausibility an accusation of discrimination from statistics is.

Similarly, if we were regular citizens in your scenario, we would see statistical disparities in the earning of fat and thin people in these chess earnings. "Ah, there must logically be some form of discrimination here on the part of their reward dispensers, even if they did reward them less, the disparity should never be this large, therefore they must obviously be visiting fat people less." Wrong, this is a hypothesis we have formed from looking at earning statistics, the end result of this production/output.

If you want to see what Sowell has done to assess this hypothesis, I recommend reading Discrimination and Disparities, as I mentioned earlier.

>>16651913

in the examples, the statistics showed they were being visited less, the why does not matter for this, it was factual reality, they were not getting the chance to play the same amount of games

>>16651913

oh now I see your mistake, you think they only saw the statistics of how much money they recieved and not the statistics of how many were visitied and offered to play the game to earn the money, not so, that was weird assumption on your part

>>16651942
>in the examples, the statistics showed they were being visited less
So if they have no unjust bias, why is this a problem? We do the same sort of sorting when banks administer loans.

In order for this to be valued as a beneficial government rule, the bias would have to be seen as unjust. We would not say, for example, they everybody should have a right to get an A in class. We have to sort by performance, risks in some form. You're saying the reason for the bias doesn't matter, but it literally has to be viewed as an unfair bias in order for it to be corrected. We would similarly not view chess as an unfair bias, even though it is clearly disparaging towards fat people since they cannot succeed as well at it as thin people. Why is chess then not corrected? Why is the collection process the thing which should be corrected? Because we must inherently view the latter as a result of unjust bias, when these are in fact individuals freely choosing to commit this injustice.

>>16642538
>The goal here is not to prove Vaush wrong or to prove Sowell correct, but to convey clearly what each actually believes
Right.

>>16651913
>we could not actually prove that fat people were being visited less.
Record government workers when they are on duty. Check the relative percentage of visits to slim and fat people.

>>16651999
Wave to the commie-daddy tourists. NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER TWO GENDERS NIGGER

>>16651979
>We do the same sort of sorting when banks administer loans.
Isn't there history of racial bias in banking?

>>16651979

You cannot say there was no bias, you are making false cognitive leaps where if there is proof of bias then there must be none.

Loans are a different thing altogether, you don't seem to understand the basic concepts.

Getting the chance to play the game with fair rules, would be akin to getting the chance to apply for a loan and the rules be applied equally.

Losing or winning can be said to be akin to getting rejected or accepted in the loan based on the individuals execution. Notice that nowhere in my example the rules of the game itself are somehow altered to soemhow benefit one side.

Notice also how you also seem to imply loans are inherently just and unbiased, but I'll let this one slide as it's beside the point.

You keep providing and extrapolating with examples that aren't being argued. I assume you have some bias yourself at stake here as I never mentioned race or culture yet 3 comments argue with this.

You guys keep arguing against Equality of Outcome which is a strawman, as I have never once advocated for that. Also very strange the tangents and examples you provide against it related to race and culture, when no one has argued any of these things here. I feel there is some
personal bias bubbling up that does not let you understand the concepts clearly in order to have honest intellectual discorse.

>>16652037
There is a history of accusations of racial bias, yes. Again, read Discrimination and Disparities if you would like to view Sowell's research on the subject. I cannot supply his whole research on that subject here, but what studies have critically found is that widespread rates of default do not vary between races. If we were to see racial preferences or bias as a factor here, the rate of default amongst less attractive races would be lower (i.e. less attractive races would have less people who don't pay), since the lenders would be too cautious when lending to individuals of that race. The reality this data conveys is that banks are not functioning under unfair prejudice.

>>16646446
I don't think it will ever show up.

Sad to see how posters derail the intellectual discourse into topics of race and culture every single time, things that were never expoused or argued in the original argument. Seems to be a symptom of the times, each side must expound their victim mentality narrative. I miss the days of honest intellectual discourse.

>>16652037
>>16652119
>>16652130

Niggers are stinky, stupid, and ugly and should be discriminated against wherever possible.

>>16652119
>You cannot say there was no bias, you are making false cognitive leaps where if there is proof of bias then there must be none.
No, I mean that whatever bias they have must be viewed as unjust in order for it to be corrected by government. The rules of chess, for instance, would not be viewed as unjust in your scenario. Both the govt employees and chess disparage fat people in this scenario, yet you want to change the rules of employees, not of chess. You must, then, view the way in which employees sort fat people as unjust, and the way in which chess sorts people is just. What you describe as "fair rules" could also be applied to the way these employees do not visit fat people, you are not saying that, though. Chess's sorting methods is fair rules, it is a just sorting mechanism. Govt employees sorting methods are not fair rules, therefore they are unjust and we must correct this sorting mechanism in order to make it just. I am trying to explain that from a philosophical perspective your separation of chess and employee bias as fair and unfair sorting methods is arbitrary to whichever you perceive to be just.

>Getting the chance to play the game with fair rules, would be akin to getting the chance to apply for a loan and the rules be applied equally.
I think this makes sense, though I would say inherent in loan application is the need to assign value in a way that is unequitable and has been accused of Injustice before, that's part of why I used it as an example.

>Losing or winning can be said to be akin to getting rejected or accepted in the loan based on the individuals execution. Notice that nowhere in my example the rules of the game itself are somehow altered to soemhow benefit one side.
Yep, I gotcha, but again, both of these sorting methods do in fact affect people unequally, we just are not repulsed by this sorting method since we more clearly understand that they are geared towards productivity or risk mitigation.

>Notice also how you also seem to imply loans are inherently just and unbiased, but I'll let this one slide as it's beside the point.
I didn't mean to imply this. Unlike OP, I unashamedly take Sowell's view. Loans are absolutely biased and geared towards sorting human beings. Government should have no hand in deciding how banks should administer loans, it would and has been disastrous. I don't believe any sorting method within a free society should be subject to a anointed few's vision of justice, so it is irrelevant whether or not banks are just or unjust in my eyes, I would never impose my vision of justice over their methods in the first place.

>You keep providing and extrapolating with examples that aren't being argued. I assume you have some bias yourself at stake here as I never mentioned race or culture yet 3 comments argue with this.
Those are with the intention of trying to clarify, though I appreciate you following along. I'm not trying to convince you of anything anon.

>>16652171

Extremely questionable methodology to use the outcome alone to reach conclusions on the equality or fairness of opportunity, this can lead to troubling conclusions and policies. Thanks for informing us anon.

>>16652034
Tickle me emo.

>>16652239

I get your view now, well with than type of language, in my example, they wanted to leave the "discrimination related to skill" intact but reduce the "discrimination associated to the trait of being fat that was not related to skill". So notice that in the example, I said there were to reasons for fat people having less money, one being that they lost more games anyway, and this aspect was not remedied in any way only the aspect pertaining to the visits was remedied.

So fat people in my example, would lose more games anyway, that discrimination was not remedied.

With this language. Equality of Opportunity would seek to make the Opportunity more Equal in the sense of trying to limit the discrimination to factors which society correlates to be more in control of the *individual* person. All with the goal that the indivual gets "discriminated" on those factors which society believes he has more personal responsibility for, rather than those outside his grasp.

My original argument is that not all rules applied unevenly among individuals are made to reach an Equality of Outcome, some aim to get closer to an Equality of Opportunity in the sense described above.

>>16646937
Oh no no no; honestly I agreed and disagreed with this dude, like he’s a respectable pragmatist for a lefty but insufferably party line on the woke shit.

The relationship he describes in his streams always rubbed me wrong and now I know why oh dear god.

He’s either twisted beyond what I thought or a far, FAR, better person than I am.

>>16652428
I respect your focus on comprehension, and I'm glad you have come to understand what I truly mean, despite our confusions midway through. Though I believe the arbitrary nature of justice, as a philosophical concept, will lead to inevitable ruin if power to enforce it is given to the hands of an anointed few, rather than remaining amongst the people. This is the biggest distinction I think between the vision Sowell and I share and the one you and Vaush share.

>>16642534
If I were to make an authoritarian white ethnostate, I'd make Sowell chief economist and adjunct party philosophy while having Vaush executed.

>>16651544
Go back

>>16653101
American blacks are either hoodrats, 'white' or traditional. The hoodrats are the main issue, really.

>>16643548
Friedman was a liberal, what else is new. Democracy is always a sham and only serves to inevitably bring bad dictators into power. Wake me up when monarchism is implemented in America

The fat e-celeb really thinks he take on a fellow at the Hoover institution.

>>16649999
The Quads demand it

>>16653721
Soon...

>>16646446
that butterfly, there's something wrong with that butterfly...

>>16646896
I was playing Halo listening to music on youtube and this guy's stream autoplayed as the next video
He was talking to some guy while streaming about "cops needing to get new jobs" and that he doesn't "mind that innocent cops' livelihood would be at risk when police is abolished"
I try to be open minded and listen to what he has to say but the smug yuppy delusion of this pale social vampire just rubbed me the wrong way and ruined my score. may this bastard burn in hell

>>16652239
>Loans are absolutely biased and geared towards sorting human beings. Government should have no hand in deciding how banks should administer loans, it would and has been disastrous.
So, you advocating that letting banks discriminate based on racial characteristics is lesser evil compared to government ensuring that this won't happen?

>>16642538
>2/27
stop

>>16653721
>our water is poisoned, let's drink mercury instead.

>>16643661
fuck off and die
t. /n/

>>16642945
why would using his own insults against him work?

>>16654571
You've not proven banks have committed any unfair discrimination, as I explained here
>>16652130
And even if they were, I resent the notion that economic instability is a cost we should be willing to incur just to please some pretentious elite minority's idea about how the world should be organized. There should be a limit to the destruction you people are willing to cause in your vain attempts to shape the world to your whim.

>>16642534

Give me TLDR or fuck off

>>16645451
what the fuck LMAO

You're a complete fucking dork for doing this

>>16642534
I laud the effort.

>>16654617
> you people
>vain attempts
>shape the world to your whim

>>16651668
Finally some fucking reason here. Vaush is personally a retard but that doesn't make this take less retarded.

>>16655206
Are you being serious?

>>16654587
>I don't like the current system, let's get an advanced form of it!

>>16642538
This is raw autism and so badly written

>>16651668
There must be a name for the type of person who thinks that listing off fallacies is a replacement for proper argumentation.

OP is a retard that spouts long debunked randroid bullshit that has been refuted again and again, not in the form of arguments, but in the form of the only way that matters, reality. That’s the one thing that neither Sowell, nor Vaush get. The validity of ideas are not settled by debates, but by reality, and its test of time

>>16655582
That's a good impression of the sort of pseuds you'll find on Reddit.

>>16655485
Somebody who is entrenched in many layers of political propaganda, as are those who are obsessed with the exterior appearances of arguments, such as intentions or labels.

>>16655582
>The validity of ideas are not settled by debates, but by reality, and its test of time
This is, in fact, the very thing Sowell advocates, anon. The only reason you might think this is because you have, in fact, never read anything written by Sowell.

>>16655608
Why is he a fucking teacher than, and not the CEO of a hardcore superdupercapitalist business then? Those who can’t do teach

>>16655635
Taleb is a multimillionaire and he likes Sowell.

>>16655635
I do not know, but if he did, it would come at the cost of what he has sought to do with that academic career, to compile vasts amount of research into books on the very history of empirical realities which you so proudly expressed to be the sole determinant of our policy decisions.

>>16655655
So? I’m not talking about Taleb, I’m talking about Sowell and other ‘objective professors’ who spout this neoliberal bullshit. Why don’t they actually apply their utopian version of capitalism in the real world? I tell you why, because capitalism is not some magic, perfect system, but just another tool to get things done. It’s not the destiny that lolbertarians make it out to be, but another option, that can be changed if necessary, and can even be discarded if it mutates into a failed system. People like Sowell don’t like this and want to hold on to their utopian fantasy, making him exactly the type of ivory tower professor that righttards despise whenever a lefttard sociology professor goes on and on about white privilege

>>16655679
>socialist calling capitalism fantasy

>>16655659
>research = reality

>>16655679
Simply google the phrase "There are no solutions; only trade offs," and see who comes up, you immensely gargantuan faggot.

>>16655688
History is what happened. If what happened is reality, then history is reality, at least when it is not malformed and used as propraganda. The fact that you cannot understand how research in history could lead to conclusions about how humans operate only indicates your exceptional ignorance on the subject.

>>16655679
>I tell you why, because capitalism is not some magic, perfect system, but just another tool to get things done. It’s not the destiny that lolbertarians make it out to be, but another option, that can be changed if necessary, and can even be discarded if it mutates into a failed system.

You have never read a single book by Sowell, cover to cover, in your entire life. I know you haven't, even if you tell me you did. I know you haven't.

And the reason I mentioned Taleb is that he is one of the biggest critics of neoclassical economics, yet he still admires Sowell. He once called him "great guy" when someone asked his opinion of him on Twitter, even though I am sure he disagrees with some of Sowell's views.
In fact, I disagree with some of them myself, but I still respect Thomas Sowell a lot. He is everything but superficial (though people who mistake verbose writing for profundity are sometimes unable to see this) and uses empirical data very, very, very frequently.

>>16655485
Why should one consider arguments of someone when they have been build on a fallacy?

>>16655485
Deboonker

>>16655686
What a blatant misrepresentation of my post, holy shit

>>16655485
Fallacies fallacy.

>>16655726
>He once called him "great guy" when someone asked his opinion of him on Twitter, even though I am sure he disagrees with some of Sowell's views.
And Taleb is not the pope of economics, whose word is not to be doubted in any way, shape or form

>>16655797
Explaining the observed fallacy would be a good starting point in verifying the validity of such an accusation.
Take the "begging the question" fallacy for example.
BookAnon actually deconstructs one such instance in Vaush's video rather than simply calling it a fallacy and leaving it at that. I am referring to when he deconstructed Vaush's welfare argument, in that what Vaush structurally said was "Welfare produces x outcome because of y hypothesis(the intention of welfare)."
Unfortunately, our Vaush fan has not provided an example of where this essay actually commits such a fallacy, only that it has committed it. This is a hypothesis, but I would guess that this human being is unfamiliar with the idea that their ideological opponents are capable of having structured, compelling views, and thus is conflicted on how exactly their own views would contradict it. I believe the people who watch Vaush are likely unfamiliar with viewing their enemies as sane human beings, thus such things a begging the question fallacies can be asserted when one simply makes a compelling argument for himself. All anybody would need to debunk this hypothesis of mine is to cite where in that essay BookAnon actually commits the begging the question fallacy.

>>16655892
I thought that was Friedman actually?

Lmao at the people who think Sowell holds some utopian vision of capitalism. He literally thinks that human beings are inherently flawed and irrational, and that there are no solutions to anything, only trade offs where you have to pick the least bad option. Sowell is a pessimist in a lot of ways.

>>16655912
>He literally thinks that human beings are inherently flawed
Yes.
>and irrational
No.
>that there are no solutions to anything, only trade offs where you have to pick the least bad option. Sowell is a pessimist in a lot of ways.
Most definitely.

>>16655896
I think the "begging the question" he's critcising is when anon decides to privilege Sowell's definitions over Vaush's, kind of as a matter of faith and not because they are "better". Although Sowell's definitions are more intellectually coherent, it does essentially just hand him a free pass to treat his worldview as the "default". Anon would've been better off if he just pointed out Vaush's misconceptions about Sowell's beliefs instead of making Sowell's worldview axiomatic to his argument. It's the weakest part of the argument (and unfortunately the part on which a lot of the mini-essay continges). Completely unnecessary.

>>16655896
>Stratagem XXII

>If your opponent requires you to admit something from which the point in dispute will immediately follow, you must refuse to do so, declaring that it is apetitio principii. For he and the audience will regard a proposition which is near akin to the point in dispute as identical with it, and in this way you deprive him of his best argument.

>>16655923
>Although Sowell's definitions are more intellectually coherent
That was BookAnon's literal stated premise for using it, was it not?
>it does essentially just hand him a free pass to treat his worldview as the "default".
The reason why that this comes off as a "free pass" to you and not "critical for comprehension" (paraphrasing BookAnon) is unknown to me.
>Anon would've been better off if he just pointed out Vaush's misconceptions about Sowell's beliefs instead of making Sowell's worldview axiomatic to his argument.
And yet Vaush himself could not understand what Friedman was saying at the very end was not actually a tautology.
Similarly, you say that the essay continges on the distinction of terms, but then you say it unnecessary. Which is it? Also, the fact that you understand it is contingent should itself convey to you why BookAnon literally stated that he was required to use it. Sowell's premise would be incomprehensible, thus the essay never would have been written otherwise. Why does the impossibility of such a scenario not immediately convey to you that you are mistaken on your view of the role of these terms?

These terms are not just imperative to understand how Sowell's argument might be compelling, they are imperative to understanding what Sowell's argument is literally, as BookAnon asserts. If the only the former were true and the latter false, I would agree with you, but as Vaush demonstrates with his Friedman "tautology", this is not the case.

>>16655992
What I mean is he could've framed it as if he was merely describing Sowell's POV because Vaush failed to understand it - which he was in fact doing - not that he was choosing Sowell over Vaush.

>>16655921
Sowell does think people are irrational. https://mobile.twitter.com/ThomasSowell/status/1263837611795382279

>>16656101
This contradicts much of what I have read of him. In many of his books, he emphasizes the great lengths human beings will go in misleading rhetoric to rationalize, for instance. He also emphasizes, specifically, that things such as wars are often assumed by the public to be caused irrational, heated, or spontaneous whims of emotion, rather than logical, pre-planned seizures of political power and conquest. You have genuinely stumped me here, I cannot accept this quote (not from you, but from Sowell) with how directly it contradicts many points he has made in his books. My only possible cope for this is that it was written once in a random thoughts article. You must trust me when I say this contradicts the premise of many of his books on history. I would need him to elaborate on what the fuck he means by this.

I cannot say that I believe he is being disingenuous with this quote, but I cannot reconcile this with his broad collection of books. You have convinced me of absolutely nothing other than Sowell has a quote here which makes zero sense, which is a first, and is still annoying. I don't know why the fuck he would say this. Maybe he meant 'well-intentioned' or 'wise'? The use of the word rationale does not coincide with anything he has ever written on the concept of 'rationalization' before.

>>16656025
I see what you mean, but I unlike OP I believe Vaush's terms are a product of propaganda meant to obfuscate terminology with emotionally charged rhetoric. It is literal doublespeak. I do not think it is a matter of choosing one's perspective in place of another. One is objectively misleading and should never be used unless the goal is, again, to obfuscate what somebody is literally talking about. From this perspective I see no issue with what OP said or did, though I do not know if he agrees or would view it this way.

>>16656180
Yeah, although I wouldn't put it in such strong terms, I do think Sowell's basic premises - at least the way OP describes it - are the stronger and more coherent of the two, it's just that OP's neutral rhetoric is deceptive if he's going to give Sowell centre stage "just because". I think the redditors are looking for a reason to dismiss his essay, but are not exactly wrong to point that out. Thoroughness is important. We can't overlook weak arguments just because they're arguments we like or agree with.

>>16656144
Rationalization has little to do with being rational.

>>16656211
That would explain my confusion, I think.

>>16656198
> I think the redditors are looking for a reason to dismiss his essay
I think if OP had done what you suggested it would have given them a much larger window to do this. What do you think?

>>16656231
I think he could have avoided the whole "picking" disclaimer and just described Sowell's POV and where it differs from Vaush's and how Vaush misinterpreted it because of a confusion of definitions - which, again, is basically all he did.

>>16652984

I understand. Even though I am a leftist, I understand your beliefs that any system that puts people in power over others can be ultimately corrupted if those in power do not have the adequate skills or intentions. Just like I also understand a Facist system may be successful if those in power have the skills and are well intentioned.

>>16656247
Maybe my difference in regard to this approach differs from the fact that I do not think Vaush's perspective is an actual valid perspective by its doublemeaning terms. If anything I would say he corrected Vaush's own perspective in this sense.

>>16655635
Sowell has a great deal of personal wealth. He has amassed that wealth studying what he loves and then sharing his findings with a receptive audience. That's not a bad life.

>>16655892
>And Taleb is not the pope of economics
You just held up personal wealth as the ultimate arbiter of success, you weasel.

>>16656144
I think Sowell is referring to Hume’s “reason comes from passion” comment, where people will seek to rationalize whatever they want to believe (i.e. flat earthers) which isn’t rational at all, even if they have the exact same information as any scientist. He just said that people aren’t always rational. And like the other anon said, there’s a difference between being rational and rationalizing. I get the confusion because the two words sound almost exactly the same. Blame the English language.

>>16655896
>complains about fallacies
>immediately launches into an ad hominum attack
pottery

>>16655679
>Why don’t they actually apply their utopian version of capitalism in the real world
they actually did and you're living in it

>>16654966
My sides

>>16655582
>Hasn't read Sowell
You've literally just assumed this, because that fat cunt Vaush does this. Sowell doesn't.

>>16655659
This

It will be an unfortunate day when this thread dies

>>16656658
I'm surprised it wasn't deleted.