Yeah, well, some of us aren’t willing to give up just yet. Some of us are willing to reach for that slim chance that there is a way out. Some of us are trying to make things better, but like all political activism that has to follow some strategic approach.

I didn’t hear many people complain about “both sides endorse genocide” until this election. Up to the primaries, pressuring your party to be anti-genocide is good and reasonable, and after the election is done, when the new government is being formed, pressuring it to be anti-genocide is critical, but right now, the strategic thing is to focus on things this election can change.

That sudden upsurge of “both sides” rhetoric particularly in leftist spaces is concerning. Whether out of ignorance of how funding works, defeatism like yours or genuinely bad actors seeking to manipulate the election, it sabotages that pragmatic effort to keep the fascist out of office and buy time for more direct measures like protests, petitions, whatever else you want.

“Both sides bad” may be true, but right now, it’s not helpful for leftist efforts.

Will anything make a difference to Israel being allowed to continue state terrorism and war against civilians?

Only one way to find out: Trying. But mathematically, drawing votes away from the non-Trump candidate increases the risk of another Trump presidency, and that carries the risk of further curtailing options.

The killing of innocents is not less important just because of political convenience.

…and which innocents do you actually have a chance to protect?

On a pragmatic level, what is your suggested course of action?

Yes, saying that killing innocents is wrong is ‘vapid’.

No. Refusing to vote or voting third party is. At best, it will make no difference.

Protesting against the Genocide is right and important, but I’m railing against the people intent on dragging this topic to the public right before an election. The only people it will affect are left-leaning voters, and drawing them away from the non-Trump option sabotages that option.

Save the protest until the election is done, then hold the government (not just Harris; allocation of funding is a parliamentary decision and the President’s veto can’t do much but delay it and lock up government) accountable.

To be clear, Genocide is bad, what’s happening in Gaza is Genocide, the US regime is complicit and all of this is fucked up. But the immediate priority should be unity to keep things from escalating beyond democratic control.

I’m not telling anyone to not vote for whoever they think has the highest chance of minimizing harm

And anyone who explicitly decides voting for Harris/Walz explicitly decides they are fine with genocide irrespective of Trump.

Was that not your comment? Equating “you vote for Harris” with “you don’t care about genocide” does sound like you’re trying to influence people away from voting Harris.

My argument is that harm reduction ≠ endorsement of genocide. Voting for a block of policies doesn’t mean you’re fine with all the policies, just that you think it’s the most strategic option for your convictions. Not voting leaves the choice up to everyone.

Unless you think voting will make no difference at all for anything, even the chance of slowing catastrophe and buying time for other measures is valuable.

Because on this point we agree:

voting blue is a just a short term strategy to prevent orange man from getting in and fucking shit up

This election isn’t the only measure to take, and it requires no waiting. You can still protest and riot and everything else - none of that conflicts with also voting. It’s not either or.

What MLK complains about are the people that only vote to stall and never do. I’m pretty sure he’d have been in favour of voting and taking action.

What else do you propose? What do you think would be the strategic choice?

Israel doesn’t currently have sanctions pending against them that the Finnish government has a vested interest to enforce.

They should, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t believe Linus’ decision is rooted in politics - they’d have to vet each contribution anyway.

The willingness to be responsible for consequences does factor in. If you round the corner and crash into someone, you probably didn’t intend to, but whether you’ll be an ass about it and yell at the other person or whether you’ll apologise and check they’re alright makes a difference.

In a perfect-information-setting, intent equals result: If I know what my actions will cause and continue to carry them out, the difference between “primary objective” and “accepted side-effect” becomes academic. But in most cases, we don’t have perfect information.

I feel like the intent-approach better accounts for the blind spots and unknowns. I’ll try to construct two examples to illustrate my reeasoning. Consider them moral dilemmas, as in: arguing around them “out of the box” misses the point.

Ex. 1:
A person is trying to dislodge a stone from their shoe, and in doing so leans on a transformator box to shake it out. You see them leaning on a trafo and shaking and suspect that they might be under electric shock, so you try to save them by grabbing a nearby piece of wood and knocking them away from the box. They lose balance, fall over and get a concussion.
Are you to blame for their concussion, because you knocked them over without need, despite your (misplaced) intention to save them?

Ex. 2:
You try to kill someone by shooting them with a handgun. The bullet misses all critical organs, they’re rushed to a hospital and in the process of scanning for bullet fragments to remove, a cancer in the earliest stages is discovered and subsequently removed. The rest of the treatment goes without complications and they make a speedy and full recovery.
Does that make you their saviour, despite your intent to kill them?

In both cases, missing information and unpredictable variables are at play. In the first, you didn’t know they weren’t actually in danger and couldn’t predict they’d get hurt so badly. In the second, you probably didn’t know about the tumor and couldn’t predict that your shot would fail to kill them. In both cases, I’d argue that it’s your intent that matters for moral judgement, while the outcome is due to (bad) “luck” in the sense of “circumstances beyond human control coinciding”. You aren’t responsible for the concussion, nor are you to credit with saving that life.

And anyone who explicitly decides voting for Harris/Walz explicitly decides they are fine with genocide irrespective of Trump.

No. They decide that they prioritise the other issues over a vapid gesture of protest.

For direct democratic votes, you directly vote on a specific issue. But in a representative democracy, you vote for the candidate best representing your preferred policies. If there is no candidate that ticks all your boxes, you prioritise and decide on a tradeoff.

That tradeoff takes into account the strategic realities of the voting system. If I have to choose between “Genocide”, “Genocide, but worse” and “I’ll let the rest decide”, abstaining or voting 3rd party is no noble gesture, it’s complacency.

In a fantasy world where he would actually do it, yes?

You’d let an out and open fascist take the reigns, if he’d stop one particular genocide?

So you’re saying you are okay with max libertarianism in your own county even if that means ethnically cleansing an innocent population in another?

So much wrong with this sentence. First, no, I’m not a libertarian. If you mean liberty, check your translator. Second, we’re very far away from “max liberty”. Third, that’s a false equivalency: To refuse one extreme doesn’t equal embracing the opposite. There is a lot of space between them.

Fourth, if it’s about the defense of civil rights, I need to look to my own freedom first. I can’t help anyone else when I’m chained down myself. Particular if I can’t help the others this way anyway, it’s a lot smarter to prioritise things I can actually change than try to set a sign and hope it stays up long enough to matter.

Also saying “that one issue” when we’re talking about a literal genocide is super rich. Would you have said the same thing about the Holocaust? “I know this Hitler guy really hates minorities but look at how much he loves doggos and what amazing things he’s doing for the German economy!”

Brilliant! Your example for “that one issue” is the exact guy Trump would love to buddy uo with! The exact guy whom I hate with a passion because of so many issues, not just one. Would Hitler have been a good person if he hadn’t killed the Jews (just enslaved them, deported the gypsies and generally still been an all around racist cunt)?

You see voting for a party that has vowed unwavering support for an oppressor to exterminate a native population as a move to the left?

That says a lot about where the window is, yes. Because both major parties fit that description, except one of them is even worse. Hence, the less bad one is a left, relative to contemporary political center.

You’d rather vote for Librofascists than Christofascists and that’s your choice - I’d rather not vote for fascists at all.

So you’d rather have the rest of the people decide? You don’t care about gay rights or all that shit, you have no horse in that race, doesn’t matter to you whether the winner starts rounding up political enemies (you know, lefties like you and me)?

Because I fucking care. And I’m not going to throw a tantrum and quit the field because one issue I care about isn’t even on the board.

Just don’t blame voters that draw a hard line at genocide if the Dems lose, rather ask why they are willing to throw an election by not taking a hard stance against the literal worst crime against humanity.

I don’t understand why people are so sure that a hard pro-Palestine stance would help them. It would make them the prime target of propaganda designed to alienate the superficial moderates. It would make them a clear enemy of the AIPAC and other pro-Israel PACs that together hold a non-negligible amount of sway. I don’t think that the voters they’d gain by that outnumber the white moderates that hear “They’re antisemitic moslems” and believe it.

If you believe that using the ballot to protest an issue not being on the agenda is more important than the other issues that are on the agenda, you’re very narrow-minded.

So if YouTube provided an RSS feed for its channels, all videos would be podcasts because they can be processed as audio-only and are distributed via RSS?

I was responding to the “Look, they’re all nice people” defense you quoted, not contradicting you. I agree with you in principle.

I don’t consider “misguided” a valid defence.

My view of morality is largely centered on intent, so “I thought it would be a good thing” is a valid defence (though there is also a degree of responsibility to check assumptions; if you never made any effort to check if it actually is a good thing, that’s negligence)

So it’s hard to be good when your salary depends on you being bad.

…and by extension, when your livelihood depends on you being bad, yes. Not everyone’s livelihood depends on their salary, but for many people it does. If it’s hard to find a job that can pay the bills, I don’t fault people for the human reflex of justifying bad things to yourself in the name of survival.

(But if they do have a choice and choose to enrich themselves at the expense of others, they’re obviously pricks - just saying this might not apply to all the devs involved here).

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You can be a great person and still write garbage software. Whether you’re just doing it because you need money or whether you’re misguided and think it’s actually good, that doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person (and remember: It’s hard to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on not understanding it).

Doesn’t make the software less garbage.

What exactly makes a podcast then?

…

wat

I understand that you’re quoting. This is no criticism of your comment. I consider myself fairly adept at imitating the mental gymnastics. But here, I’m at a loss.

I’m only a chapter in, but found the section on conventionalism curious. It may explain why they take such issue with being called “weird”: If they value their perception of being “normal”, “weird” isn’t just an insult used against people you don’t like, it’s an attack on a principal personality trait.

wat

why

How would you even frame that as a favour?

Probably because there are no sanctions against them that his government is cracking down on? I don’t think he wants to get involved in politics so much as stay out of prison.

I mean, your counterexample is already the epitome of exploitation, so I’m not sure citing it would exonerate Paradox here :D

I mean, your counterexample is already the epitome of exploitation, so I’m not sure citing it would exonerate Paradox here :D

I do think that we should continue to encourage developers to create native builds when they can

Yes

My problem is calling people who want Linux native games misguided or wrong. I really don’t think that’s helpful.

I’d prefer games to be compatible natively too, so I definitely count myself among them. I think it’s an issue of visibility, the usual “loud and visible minority”. A thousand calm “I would prefer games were natively compatible” just don’t stick out as much as one aggressive “Fuck every company that doesn’t make their games natively compatible, and fuck you for supporting them by buying their game”.

I just don’t think Proton is the worst thing to happen to Linux Gaming because it allows developers to target alternative platforms without having to actually support them. This is where my personal impression of “misguided” (again, probably a loud minority) native game advocates comes from: Platform Inertia works because people stick with the platforms holding things they like, and the things on those platforms stay there because their prime audience is there. If the extra effort (=cost) of supporting Linux doesn’t match a sufficient uptake (=revenue), profit-controlled companies won’t do it (as they can’t justify it to their shareholders).

This isn’t just an issue with the evil corpos, but with the whole system itself. Screaming at consumers to change their habits won’t make much of a dent either there. Compelling people to change rarely has lasting results, if any. Better to invite them over and make the switch attractive enough to break that inertia. Only then can we meaningfully challenge the status quo.

It comes down to strategy accounting for ideological passion, an understanding of social and economic dynamics and patience. By and large, I think many understand this. Proton may not be what we want, but it’s an ally in achieving our goal. When we get to the point where it’s no longer “Underdog Linux against the near monopoly of Windows”, we can push harder (and honestly, I don’t think Valve would be terribly upset if Proton became obsolete and saved them resources).

We shouldn’t stop asking for native builds, so long as we do it mindfully and respectfully.