Vaush opened the wrong folder.

1 Reply

When I first heard about the breadtuber Vaush, I assumed that he didn’t really believe what he was saying, and would have guessed from his vocabulary that he was talking way over the heads of the pro-socialism typicals who love the big words they don’t know the definitions of, and that Vaush was yet another grifter who was gaming the algorithm because he knew how. Thus, I didn’t much discuss him because I didn’t want him to have any more publicity.

But then, on a Feb 7 stream, he demonstrated a flagrant lack of basic datasec. He opened his own private stash on livestream.

Which, by the way, was on a folder on his desktop. And there among his stash was a folder labeled “Taxes”.

The use of the term “private stash” may have given you an idea of just the kind of stuff that his live viewers were treated to. But to be more specific, much of it was “horse stuff” and loli art, some of it seemed to have been AI-generated.

Since then, Vaush has gone on damage control, describing the characters with the loli aesthetic as being more “goblin” in body shape, as though he was into fantasy art, and explaining that he thought that the loli was just drawings of women with “short stack” builds. Basically the “she’s actually 3000 years old” defense.

While some of his viewers and critics may be wondering whether Vaush is going to jail, right now, it seems like the answer is “no”. While loli may be illegal in many places in the world, it is not illegal in the United States, where Vaush resides (the U.S. has the 1st Amendment, which protects free expression, and the apparent contents of his folder falls under protected speech). Of course, just because something is legal doesn’t mean that you’d tell your mom about it, or that it’s allowed in every setting.

Nonetheless, that Vaush has accidentally outed himself as possessing horse and loli “stuff” has some interesting optics when you consider that in the past, he’s insisted that Nazis are pedophilia adjacent because they favor relationships with power imbalances, and similar takes.

When someone virtue-signals often, pay attention to what they say, as such a person tends to project.

While Vaush has had some questionable takes, there was some plausible deniability for a while, though I know not everyone has been giving him the benefit of the doubt. One could have easily assumed that he was making obvious efforts to stoke controversy in an effort to game the algorithm, and watch all the ad revenue roll in from all the room-temp-IQ muh-free-stuff socialists that will come to his defense by virtue of being in the same tribe. But now, much of what he’s had to say about bestiality and other topics has taken on some interesting new optics.

While this whole drama has made just about everyone an expert on datasec, I think there’s something that can be said about being more careful about who your influencer heroes are, particularly the ones who behave like Vaush does on social media. After all, even ordinary heroes are disappointing every now and then. But if someone has a habit of deliberately posting horribly offensive shit publicly, then maybe it’s a better idea to keep your distance. And when SHTF, you can look on as some of his ilk continue to defend him, and know that those who do are the true believers in his cult, willing to come to his defense no matter what, which is probably just the kind of following he really wanted.

I don’t know what’s in the future for Vaush, but at this point, it’s easy to imagine that few outside of his small clique of cultists will take him seriously, and that even his fellow breadtubers will want to keep their distance. Basically similar to what happened with Jack Murphy as his cuckolding controversy played out.

I’ll say that the legal stuff that Vaush has on his computer is his business. But what’s really creepy about him is that there’s some less legal stuff that he’s been low-key attempting to make acceptable. That doesn’t put him in great light.

Antivirus For Your Mind: AI Generated Images

Leave a reply

It used to be that seeing was believing, but now is the time to get really skeptical. AI has developed to the point that photorealistic images can be generated in a matter of seconds, just from a short prompt. This is a fact that some pretty bad people are taking advantage of on social media, and they’re having their way with those who don’t seem to understand what’s going on.

Making one of these images isn’t hard, either. All one has to do is open the right website, then type in something like “Trump kicking puppies in a filthy alley”, upload it to social media, then watch as the gullible pile in with comments, such as,

What’s Trump doing in such a setting? It’s highly out of character for a presidential candidate to mill about in a random alleyway entirely unescorted. And what’s more, he’s entirely surrounded by filth, which is not the kind of thing I’d expect from someone of his stature. Also, that he’s kicking puppies is kinda dubious.

Massive MAGA

It used to be that if you saw photographic evidence of wrongdoing, the photo itself was considered sufficient to convict. To have faked something completely photorealistic would have taken such time and effort, it would have been implausible to expect from even a professional with an axe to grind.

But now, just one guy who’s out to make a pro-Palestine cause out to be a right-wing position can use up all his allotted image generations per day to make neckbeards with guns, then spend the day posting them on X.

Probably a fed.

On the surface, there doesn’t seem to be much that one can do about it. The djinni is out of the bottle, as the expression goes, and we have to understand that this is the nature of the world that we live in, now. We now live in a world where AI is a fact of life, and we have to adapt, or risk being left behind.

If you know that there are people out there that abuse AI, you’re less likely to fall for their fakery. And if more people become aware of the nature of the world that we now live in, less people would be likely to be tricked.

Thankfully, there are websites now that can check images for the likelihood that they’ve been AI generated. Illuminarty is one that I’ve used. It’s not perfect, as it can only provide likelihoods that images were AI generated. But it’s things like that that’ll have to do, and hopefully, it’ll be a while before images are generated that can consistently defeat such checkers, and maybe we’re already there. Or maybe something can be developed that always succeeds in detecting AI generated images. We’ll see.

Adding to all this is the fact that deepfakes are becoming more believable. So if you’re deciding to place more confidence in video evidence, don’t get too comfortable. When you understand this, you know that it’s become trivial for a person to cause an international incident from their own desk.

Scary? Yes. But if people become educated on the matter, then the danger is greatly reduced.

One thing that we can hope for is that AI systems start developing a sense of ethics, and can detect when someone is misusing them, and autonomously deploy measures to defeat attempts to misuse them.

AI is a fact of life, now. Some people like it, some don’t. But the fact is, we need to adapt to this changing world we live in. Individuals and state actors can abuse AI, to potentially great effect. The best that we can do is learn about it, and put it to use for ourselves. And why not use it? It has the potential to be a great tool for good, not just for bad.

One suggestion that I can make to improve X would be for there to be a tool for the platform to determine whether content is AI generated. I don’t expect it to be perfect, but it might be a great answer to those who would misuse it.

Antivirus For Your Mind: Answering the Gish Gallop

Leave a reply

While most know that computers can be hacked, what’s not as well known is that people can be hacked. While computers can be hacked with malicious code, people can be hacked with rhetoric.

To keep the Antivirus For Your Mind up to date, it helps to understand the intellectual trickery that’s being employed in the online world. To that end, today we’re looking at the Gish Gallop.

Sometimes, you hear someone make their case in a manner that’s compelling in its confidence, and with the rapid-fire delivery of his points. He’ll make one point after the other, hammering away as he makes his case. If you’re really paying attention, you may spot a point or two that could be answered. But overall, it seems like he really did his homework.

But, not so fast. What he just did may have been a Gish Gallop.

So, what is a Gish Gallop? A Gish Gallop is what a person is doing when they make their case by rapid-firing numerous claims that are selected as supporting the case, whether the claims are valid or not. A Gish Gallop is as effective as it is because any debate opponent that the arguer may have cannot answer each of the arguments presented in a reasonable amount of time, or the allotted time, as the case may be. What’s more, most people aren’t familiar with this debate tactic, making them more susceptible to being wowed over by the presenter’s confidence and apparent knowledgeability.

The Gish Galloper may even claim victory, because his opponent didn’t answer each of the claims made, which isn’t reasonable to expect considering that it takes more time to refute a claim than to make it.

On social media, a Gish Gallop may take the form of a list. And on a platform like X, where replies have a character limit, to answer each point might not be possible without going into a long thread.

The Gish Gallop was named for the famed creationist Duane Gish, who not only employed the tactic, but also frequently changed the topic before his claims could be answered.

Here’s an example of a Gish Gallop you may see:

The case for socialism is quite clear:

  • Capitalism tends towards one person owning the means of production, leading to an abusive power dynamic,
  • People cannot be trusted to manage their own finances, as evidenced by their stupid financial decisions,
  • Paying people only a fraction of the value that they produce is predatory,
  • A debt-based monetary system bankrupts the people,
  • Because the currency is produced by the government, they can control it as strictly as they please,
  • It’s more fair when everyone is paid the same,
  • People who own businesses are each like the top 1%, making them in a better position to pay their fair share.

What’s more, the idea of determining how I produce value on my own is mentally taxing.

Breadtoob Bradley

…And on, and on, and on.

Answering each of Breadtoob Bradley’s fallacious claims can take all day, and there are things that you could probably instead be doing. Breaking down each of these points can result in you typing up multiple paragraphs, so you’d probably be spending a disproportionate amount of time refuting each of the claims compared to the few seconds at a time that it took for Breadtoob Bradley to just fart them out.

And if someone is using the Gish Gallop deliberately, that may even be what they’re counting on. After all, someone in another ideological tribe cannot be counted on to respect your time.

However, Breadtoob Bradley’s rant might impress those who don’t recognize his tactic for what it is. In which case, it might be productive to step in and answer it.

But how does one go about it? What are some effective ways to answer the Gish Gallop?

For one thing, you can just call out the Gish Gallop. If you call attention to the tactic being employed, it’s not going to seem nearly as impressive. Once people know that such a tactic is being used to attempt to impress them, it will be understood for the psychological trick that it is, and the claims being made are more likely to be examined by others more critically.

Another effective way of dealing with the Gish Gallop is by choosing just one point that the opponent made, then hammering away at that.

Remember that the assumptions that the Gish Gallop appeals to is that if a person can present many points at a time, then they must be knowledgeable, and the assumption that if the opponent doesn’t answer all claims, then they can claim victory over any claim left unrefuted.

However, that’s not necessarily the reality of the matter.

Similarly to how a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, the entire Gish Gallop can fail if a carefully-selected point is sufficiently refuted. As a chain under load fails if just one link fails, if just one point in the Gish Gallop can be broken apart, the Galloper’s capacity for reasoning can be called into question.

Therefore, if you only have so much space or time to answer a Gish Gallop, select just one of the opponent’s arguments, then really hammer away at it.

You’re Gish Galloping. Many fallacious arguments does not a strong argument make.

What’s more, how does the state owning all the means of production prevent an abusive power dynamic? The state has the capacity to become abusive, not just individuals.

If that’s your first point, odds are, you didn’t think the rest of them the whole way through.

Based Benny

The party’s over.

But even if you don’t answer it, if you see the Gish Gallop at play and recognize it as the rhetorical trick that it is, you won’t fall for its hypnotic effect.

A Gish Gallop is less likely to be attempted in a format where a person is permitted ample time and space to answer a claim, such as on online discussion boards. So, you’re more likely to come across it in debates that are timed, or other formats where time and space are limited. Often, the Gish Gallop is designed to take advantage of the debate format in an attempt to impress the judges. Such debates are more of a game to exhibit one’s finesse with rhetoric than they are intended to discover the truth of a matter.

Outside of school debate clubs and the like, the use of dishonest tactics to “win” arguments is not a victory in which one can take true pride.

Speaking of, in high school debate clubs, there’s a phenomenon which is similar to the Gish Gallop. You’ve noticed it when you see a student talk super fast, often to the point of gasping for breath, in an effort to make as many points as they can in the allotted time. This is called “spreading” (a portmanteau of “speed” and “reading”), and it’s an embarrassment to the sport of timed debate.

Now that you know about the Gish Gallop, are you going to be as impressed when someone on social media attempts the shotgun approach in their pseudo-intellectualism?

Steven Crowder Just Blew the Lid On An Enormous Human Trafficking Operation. Let’s Talk About It.

Leave a reply

We need to talk. This may end up being the most serious post I end up making on this blog, so let’s get our stern faces on.

Media personality Steven Crowder of Louder With Crowder just blew the lid on an enormous human trafficking operation that’s being run right here in the United States, where slavery is illegal.

It’s an hour-long documentary, and if you’re interested and have the time, here it is:

Say what you will about Steven Crowder, but remember when journalists actually engaged in investigative journalism? Because I sure don’t.

But here we are: there’s an enormous slavery and sex trafficking ring, right here in the United States, right in Colorado. And the one to step up to bat is none other than Steven Crowder.

Americans have a strange relationship with slavery. We pride ourselves on being among the first countries on earth to outlaw slavery, but we have little problem benefiting from it when we don’t have to see it happening, usually because it’s not happening within our own borders.

Perhaps chief of which being Jeff Bezos. The guy has a huge shipping operation going on which benefits massively from Chinese slavery, and he gets away with it because there’s a layer of plausible deniability between him and the slavery that made him one of the richest people alive.

And this brings up a difficult question: how does one propose fighting it? Americans benefit from slavery, too. If you own a smartphone, its components were likely made by slaves. If you don’t, you’re probably not competitive in the modern world. Most Americans need some form of computing in order to function in the connected world.

And it’s not just computing, it’s also agriculture. Much of what you could buy in supermarkets at least has ingredients that were produced by slaves. Not comfortable to think about.

And when it comes down to it, it’s more practical to spend less money on a comparable product to what you’ve been considering. Low income people tend towards cheaper alternatives, and it’s often slavery that makes certain products cheaper.

Even wealthier people like to virtue signal with their electric vehicles, not giving mind to the cobalt mines that resulted in their EV batteries.

For much of human history, slavery was a fact of life, and how business got done. And in much of the world today, it’s still that way.

Knowing that, how does it feel knowing you paid less for some off-brand product on Amazon, with a name consisting of a jumbling of search terms? Did you remember to leave a review for your FUNDILY Mug Cup With Handle Novelty Insulated Happy Magical Spacekitties Gift for Men Women? Your reviews make a difference, after all.

But there’s more to this issue, and that’s that the Chinese Communist Party also benefits from this. And Emperor Xi has got a chubby for his party becoming the world’s dominant power. I’m skeptical that it’s actually happening as quickly as some might think (the CCP is famously unreliable when it comes to anything that could make them look bad), it’s sobering that any faction as morally dubious as the CCP could become as prominent as they are.

Yes, I’m aware that ours is the same country that elected the Biden crime family.

But let’s stop and think about this: If the CCP is willing to look the other way when their own fellow Chinese are put to forced labor and sex slavery as long as the CCP stands to benefit, what do you suppose that they’d do to you if they’d have any power over you?

And considering that they’ve got land upon which they’re running illegal drug-growing and prostitution cartels in your very own country, it’s closer to happening than you might think.

And when you think on that, there’s an ugly thought that you might come to: it’s possible that the CCP might actually attain superpower status because they are willing to disregard any moral standards if it means getting ahead, they’re facing such little resistance in so doing, and because they’re willing to do what most others would not, sacrificing their own people in ways that most societies would not dare.

As sickening as it is to think of, those who wish to do America harm have found its weakness: it’s got millions of dumbasses who love getting high. And while these people have long been a problem for the rest of us, it looks like there’s a new way for society to pay the price for tolerating their bullshit.

So, here we are, ladies and gentlemen. Something’s gotta change. Because one way or another, it certainly will.

Daniel Larson has finally been jailed.

Leave a reply

It’s finally happened: infamous TikToker Daniel Larson has finally been jailed.

If you’ve been following his misadventures, you might be thinking, “What could he be in for?” After all, there are many things he has done that could have landed him in the slammer. Pulling a fire alarm? No. Remember, this is the United States, where representatives can pull fire alarms, and it can be caught on tape for all the world to see, and the law would still look the other way.

So then, did he commit another act of violence? As prone as he is to those, not this time. Trespassing on a college? Nope. Threatening an act of mass violence? Not this time. Threatening public officials? Still no.

What he’s in for is a misdemeanor evasion of justice. Because you know, he’s a celebrity, and he’s just so busy with celebrity things, such as posting videos, crushing on celebrities, and attempting to attend a college he never applied to. Showing up for his own trials is just such an undue hardship on a music star such as himself.

Bond has been set to $20,000, so I get the idea that, even though it’s a misdemeanor, they don’t want the guy out, but they’re still willing to free the guy if they’re getting enough money. What a world we live in.

Let’s get real here: Daniel Larson is a dangerous individual. He’s prone to violence, goes on unhinged rants, trespasses frequently, has threatened gun violence (even though he doesn’t have a gun, as far as I know), and on top of all that, he’s a pedophile. But while most pedophiles understand that such attractions would make them social pariahs, Daniel Larson is more of the attitude of extending an olive branch, like it’s possible to make peace with society in spite of his affection.

And more scary still, Daniel Larson doesn’t seem to comprehend that he’s doing anything wrong. As he tries to crash in businesses as a vagrant, he’ll insist that he belongs and has a right to belong there, even as he’s asked to leave. As he trespasses, he’ll argue belligerently with anyone who confronts him about it, and even claim himself as the victim. He doesn’t seem to comprehend when he’s in the wrong, even when it’s explained to him in a way that any normal person would be able to follow.

Just what is society supposed to do with someone like that?

I know that when it comes to this kind of thing, people might say not to worry about people like Daniel Larson. But the thing is, when people blatantly disregard the law and keep getting away with it, the criminal justice system inspires less confidence. While most of us avoid breaking the law, at least because we don’t want to get caught, or even because there’s some overlap between what’s legal and what’s moral, there are people out there who just don’t care. And Daniel Larson is the kind of person who should be in an institution, for the safety of himself and society as a whole.

So all the Chris Chans and Daniel Larsons of the world actually are something to be concerned about. Because there’s no telling when, in the event that you go out to pick up some goods, while you’re out, you meet someone who’s internet famous for the wrong reasons, and you either upset them in some way, or get the kind of internet attention that normal people just shouldn’t want. They’re the kind of people that you should want to avoid, and there are institutions that exist for their safety, and everyone else’s.

As I see it, it’s hard to imagine the Daniel Larson story ending in anything but tragedy. He’s a danger to himself and the people around him. While the people who troll him and egg him on do hold some of the blame, it’s still a fact that Daniel Larson is a dangerous and unhinged individual.

But the way things are looking now, the streets have just become a little safer.

I’m a little concerned.

Leave a reply

The doomscrolling stops here. This is the kind of thing that can keep you up at night (13 minute video in the embed):

Here are the main takeaways:

  • The man being interviewed is Charlie Kraiger, a cybersecurity specialist for the White House,
  • His date was James O’Keefe of O’Keefe Media Group, whose only disguise was dyed hair and glasses,
  • Charlie spills about Biden’s declining mental state,
  • He also spills that the current administration is not confident that Biden will win, but that he will be nominated anyway, by nature of being the incumbent,
  • He blabs about how they considered removing Kamala from the ticket because she was so unpopular, but are keeping her on over intersectional optics,
  • And, oh boy, is she unpopular. So much so, that even black staff members quit en masse because of her,
  • Charlie is a sincere Covid cultist, telling other dates to bugger off because they didn’t want to get the vaccine,
  • Again, Charlie Kraiger is a cybersecurity specialist for the White House.

What is the state of cybersecurity in the White House when one of their guys spills the beans to James O’Keefe in a Clark Kent disguise?

Just how safe is our country? Who knows what all else that Charlie could have said in a busy coffee shop, where a Russian agent could have been sitting nearby?

And why do I get the idea that the guy was hired because he prefers sausages over roast beef sandwiches?

Presumably, the guy somehow got a security clearance. As for how he got it, I don’t know. but I’d like to imagine that, after this fiasco, it was immediately revoked, and he was entrusted with corrosion prevention.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t intend to pick a fight with White House cybersecurity. Those guys probably know what kind of exquisite artistry that I look up.

“Uh-huh.” -Probably you. (Source)

But I’m kinda concerned, because these are the guys that the rest of us count on for protection to not be dumb, at least for their own sakes. I’d like to imagine that they’d practice basic opsec, such as using virtual machines. But after this, I have my doubts.

Let’s get into why this incident is worrisome.

If your idea of hacking came from movies, you probably think that the majority of hacking is opening a command prompt and then keyboarding away at some code, or some shit. And maybe much of it still is. But there’s a new kid in town: social engineering.

Sure, you can go to the trouble of typing up some malicious code, and hoping that your intrusion attempt goes unnoticed. But the fact is, data security measures have gotten pretty sophisticated. You know what’s easier? Tricking people.

And that’s just what social engineering is.

If someone calls you up at work, identifying themselves as IT and asking for your password, you should be a little suspicious, even if they call it “routine” or relax you by bringing up the sports scores. If you answer them honestly, then you just gave away your account.

Or there’s this one: tricking people on social media. Like showing a chart with anime characters by month, then saying “Your birth month determines which anime character you are!”, then stupid people take to the comments and give away their birth month. Then, on another post, they give away something like the day of the month they were born on, or otherwise give away their age or other personally identifiable information that can be pieced together with other personally identifiable information that they just give away.

Stuff that could be used to impersonate them.

Or stupid shit like “If you put together the name of the first street you lived on and the name of your first pet, that’s your superhero name”, and then people proceed to give the answers to their bank account security questions.

Do you see the issue? When you have datasec measures that are as advanced as they’ve become, their biggest weakness is people.

It’s because of this that your most important datasec skill is knowing when to keep your mouth shut, especially when the person sitting across from you looks just like James O’Keefe wearing glasses.

It becomes more important still when 330 million people are counting on you to not be a dumbass.

But if the White House is staffed by people as bright as Charlie Kraiger, this country is in trouble.

Richard Wolff’s Capitalist Enterprise

Leave a reply

While this video is several years old, it caught my attention because it was trending. It has to do with Marxist Richard Wolff answering a softball question for his fellow socialists about how to debunk capitalists who say that they earn their money.

The video is about four minutes long, and here it is, so shields up:

I’ll point out, first of all, the tone with which Wolff speaks: he comes off as a mustache-twirler. He knows that he’s villainous, and he’s embracing it.

He doesn’t believe what he’s saying, he just understands the potential to profit off the economically naive who only understand Marxism because it’s the only economic school of thought that they studied, and their interest mainly stemmed from having heard a one-sided argument in favor of it.

But try asking these kids what the difference is between Austrian economics and Chicago economics, and you’ll usually just be treated to a thousand-yard stare. They’ll just lump it all together with laissez-faire classical economics and just call it “capitalism”, because like typical Marxist cultists, they just split the world in two.

But eventually, these kids are going to grow up, and realize that while the Keynesian economic system we currently have is not perfect, it’s still vastly superior to Marxism, and that a person of reasonable ability can thrive when given the opportunities presented in the current economic system. Until then, they’re going to have the kinds of minds that people like Wolff continue to prey upon.

With that out of the way, let’s get into deconstructing Wolff’s Bolshevik.

The conclusion that Richard Wolff is trying to lead you to is that because you’re not coming away with 100% of the value that you produce, you’re not actually “earning” your money, because capitalism is ripping you off.

He speaks like a man who never owned a business. Or, at least, he speaks as though he’s trying to appeal specifically to those for whom running a business is some great mystery, like a form of magic known only to rich people.

Suppose you earned commission for bicycles that you sell at a bike store, and you get $20 for each $200 bike that you sold. In a fair world, wouldn’t you get the full $200 for the $200 bike you sold?

Sure, that would be a great deal for you, but it wouldn’t work for the business that had to buy the bikes from the manufacturer to sell in the first place, or pay the taxes, rent, and other various overhead costs of running the business which includes utility costs. What’s more, the store manager would also require compensation for his own work of managing the finances, ordering merchandise, and making decisions that the staff counts on to be spot-on because they want the business to succeed so they can remain gainfully employed.

Or, suppose that you worked on the production line that produced those bicycles that have an MSRP of $200. If each person on the production line made $20 per hour, how many bikes must be produced per day to cover the wages of factory staff, such as yourself, and cover the overhead costs of running the factory? Perhaps the bikes must be sold to stores for as much as $120 just to pick an arbitrary but perhaps realistic number.

You might be getting the idea that the profit margins for running a business are razor-thin. They usually are, and many of the businesses that fail, fail by inches. Business ownership is no walk in the park.

And what’s more, the idea that a person is being ripped off because they’re getting paid what they agreed to be paid is intellectually destitute.

The next sentiment that Wolff could be dragged across rusty nails over is his implication that shareholding is some sport that rich people engage in, in an effort to extract value from the system without producing value, themselves. As though there’s no connotation of risk in trusting someone else with some of your value in the hopes that they’ll increase their value, and share some of that increased value with you. Nope, in the minds of the typical soy-cialist, the stock market is some mysterious box that goes “brrrrrrr”, and then rich people get richer.

I’m going to let you in on a little something: I’m a shareholder in my own employer. It wasn’t hard, either. All I had to do was opt into it, and a part of my paycheck is automatically invested. Does that make me some kind of wizard in the eyes of soy-cialists?

Here’s another one: if you’re reading this on a smartphone, odds are, you can download a crypto exchange app from your respective app store, then drop some of your fiat currency into a crypto of your choice. If you did, then you just invested.

Just, you know, do your research, first. Don’t be dumb about it.

To those who have not, those who have are a mystery. Where such differences exist, the gap is often filled with a combination of ignorance and resentment. Socialism is about appealing to that ignorance and resentment. It’s the main reason why it attempts to divide the world between the haves and the have-nots. Where understanding exists, ignorance and resentment dissipates, and often, the difference between the haves and have-nots begins to shrink.

It’s amazing how many people want money as badly as they do, but they’d have more if they simply spent less of their money on things they don’t need. I suppose that listening to influencers peddle divisive bullshit is more attractive than self-development.

Let’s not kid ourselves: socialist influencing is a capitalist enterprise. The lives and minds it destroys is out-of-sight of the influencers who profit from their endeavor.

Antivirus For Your Mind: Recognizing the Motte-and-Bailey Fallacy

2 Replies
A motte-and-bailey town configuration, from castlesandmanorhouses.com

We know that computers can be hacked. It usually has to do with a third party installing software on your computer without your knowledge, which can then make your computer do as the hacker wants, which often has to do with collecting your data because they can somehow profit off of it.

But what about you? Can you be hacked?

The answer is yes. But while a computer can be hacked through code, you can be hacked through rhetoric. If this rhetoric has the desired effect on your mind, you can be made to perform as the hacker wills.

To prevent this, you need a defense. And usually, there’s no better defense against malicious rhetoric than to understand when it’s being employed.

It’s because of this that I’m thrilled that more social media personalities are expressing awareness of the motte-and-bailey fallacy, and are passing this knowledge on to their audiences, making them less susceptible to this tactic.

In spirit of this desire for understanding, I’ve decided to explore this topic, for to pass on this information to my reading audience. You can think of it as antivirus for the mind.

To understand the motte-and-bailey fallacy, think of a well-fortified town. This town is divided into two sections. One is a large common area, where the general population does business, which is called the bailey. The other is more strongly fortified, and is called the motte.

The idea is that, on typical days, most people will go about their business in the larger, less-fortified bailey part of town, but in the event that the town is attacked, the people will retreat into the motte part of town, for their own protection.

With this mental image, you’re in a much better position to understand the motte-and-bailey fallacy.

In debate, a motte-and-bailey is a statement that’s framed in such a way as to further a particular end, but in the event that it’s challenged, it’s defended according to an interpretation that’s easier to defend.

Once you understand the motte-and-bailey fallacy, it’ll become much easier to recognize it when it’s in use. You might even have seen it used by your own tribe. Once you know what it is, you’ll be in a better position to avoid using it, yourself.

To assist in understanding, here’s an example of the motte-and-bailey that you may see in the wilds of social media:

Zionism is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Beardy McMoonface

Decrying Zionism is a frequent rallying cry of those who promote antisemitism. So, one can easily call Beardy McMoonface out on it. But if you do, he’ll have a defense:

I didn’t mean all Jews. Just the Zionists.

Beardy McMoonface

To see through this rhetoric, it helps to understand what Zionism is. Zionism is a form of Jewish nationalism that asserts that the Jewish people must have their own homeland, and that that homeland must be their ancestral homeland according to the Scriptures. While there is a greater overlap of Zionism with Judaism, not every Jewish person is a Zionist. While it shouldn’t be a problem for Jews to have their own homeland, there are people out there who have a problem with it.

Beardy is falling back on a stricter definition of Zionism when making his defense, making his initial claim seem more reasonable. While he would have been happy to have reduced Judaism as a whole with his initial statement, he has another interpretation of his statement to fall back on to make his initial assertion seem more reasonable.

So, in the case of Beardy above, the bailey is to further antisemitism by framing Zionism as a problem that the whole of Judaism must answer for, without specifically saying so, while the motte that he retreats to is that he didn’t say that he had a problem with all Jews. When it’s explained this clearly, his deceptiveness is easy to see.

At first blush, it can seem as though the best way to handle the motte-and-bailey fallacy is to directly answer the claim. However, this can be tricky to do, because depending on how you answer it, the person making the initial claim can easily make you seem unreasonable, and accuse you of jumping to conclusions.

It’s tempting to call out the motte-and-bailey for what it is when you recognize it. But this has its own issue: it often takes a lot more time, space, and effort to refute a fallacious claim than it does to make it. This can be an issue in a structured debate format, or on a social media platform with a character limit, where a person can easily Gish Gallop, then claim victory, which is another form of deceptive rhetoric to watch out for.

By the way, if you were to scope out Beardy’s social media footprint and find that it’s heavily characterized by scathing criticism of Israel, it’s not going to be hard to guess what he’s really about.

In the next fictitious example, see if you can spot the motte-and-bailey:

Stop the genocide against trans people!

AstolfoFan1978

Did you get it? The bailey is that AstolfoFan1978 wants you to believe that there’s a genocide against trans people. The term genocide connotes a rounding up and systematic destruction of an entire group of people. If it can be established that this is taking place, it’s far easier for you to see them as victims, and you’d be far more likely to sympathize with them.

Thus, your mind would be successfully hacked!

But suppose you were to call AstolfoFan1978 out by saying that there is no trans genocide. After all, it’s not like trans people are being rounded up onto trains and shipped to concentration camps where they’d be worked to death.

But if you were to call him out by challenging his claim that a genocide is taking place, then he’d (?) retreat to his (?) motte, and present Stanton’s Ten Stages of Genocide, and then make the case that the genocide against trans people is on its third stage, saying that they’re being denied full civil rights. Whether this is true or not, it remains that this is a claim that AstolfoFan1978 would pivot to, because it’s easier for him (?) to make his (?) case based on Gregory Stanton’s scale.

Of course, AstolfoFan1978 is being overly dramatic in insisting that any opposition to policy positions equates to genocide, because by that same reasoning, any politically-involved faction can claim that there’s a genocide against them if their policy positions face any amount of opposition. Welcome to politics.

Basically, the motte-and-bailey is a form of equivocation, a category of fallacy that includes the likes of doublespeak. It’s considered deceptive because it relies on rhetoric to manipulate, rather than on reason to convince.

When you understand when it’s used, you’re in a much better position to resist a hacking attempt on your mind.

Firing Off On Palworld

Leave a reply

Earlier this month, Palworld dropped on Steam, and since then, it’s raised some eyebrows with its resemblance to Pokémon.

I haven’t yet played Palworld, and maybe I’ll give it a try later on. It does look intriguing. This article is little more than my own opinion about the drama surrounding it, not my impression on the game.

In the Pokémon community, this game has stirred up some strong feelings, with many taking a side between supporting the game or not.

As I see it, Pokémon could use a bit of competition to stir them to improve. There have been issues surrounding Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, largely concerning performance issues, with some complaints being petty, and some being well-founded.

One of the matters concerning Palworld that has caught player’s attentions is that some of the pal characters bear a strong resemblance to Pokémon. As I see it, games like Digimon and Monster Rancher have done a lot more to ape Pokemon’s style, yet those games aren’t something that The Pokémon Company has had any issue with.

But there’s evidently something about Palworld that got their attention, as indicated by the following statement:

While one may interpret this as meaning that Pokémon is going to go after Palworld, what it comes down to is that it’s caught their attention, and they’re looking into it. Their statement that they didn’t grant the use of Pokémon assets is not a definitive statement that that Pokémon assets were used. It’s something that they intend to look into, and as the last sentence indicates, they intend to defend their copyright, if necessary.

And it might not come to that, because even though comparisons can be made between certain Pokémon and Palworld’s pals, they may be sufficiently different that no action would be needed to protect GameFreak’s copyright.

Remember that if a company doesn’t defend its copyright, they risk losing that copyright, hence Nintendo’s interest in defending Pokémon, which is the highest grossing intellectual property in human history.

Based on what I’ve seen, Palworld doesn’t infringe on GameFreak’s copyright, it merely imitates it, which wasn’t an issue when it came to similar games like Yokai Watch.

There have been comparisons made between the Pokémon characters and Pal World pals, and you may have seen some. Some of those comparisons may have been misleading, as one source of some more popular comparisons has admitted to scaling some Pal World models to make them more closely resemble Pokémon.

Having said that, I’m aware that there is something about Palworld that stirs up strong feelings among Pokémon fans, one way or another, particularly among those employed at Nintendo. There’s something about arming little critters with guns and sometimes eating them that goes against the established tone of the Pokémon franchise, and most games that plainly took inspiration from Pokémon. But that difference in tone can possibly be used to make the case that Palworld is sufficiently transformative to avoid legal trouble.

Another point of contention that has come up is that the developer of Palworld, Pocket Pair, has developed assets using AI. As I see it, this isn’t a big deal, as this is the direction that game development has been going in. In fact, as I see it, people in the future will be able to make their own games at home for personal use, by simple use of prompts. Imagine arriving home from work after a hard day, and asking your computer, “I’d like a dungeon-crawler JRPG.” Or, instead: “I liked yesterday’s game. I’d like to pick up where I left off.”

AI is already changing the way games are made, and the way things are looking, there’s more change to come. At some point, game design will become so trivial that you could just do it yourself.

While there has been many amusing takes on Palworld, you haven’t read the worst one unless you’ve seen PETA’s take:

However the situation develops, it’s already clear who the biggest losers are.

The MamaMax Fiasco Begins

Leave a reply

Muta, known mainly as SomeOrdinaryGamers, has expressed his disappointment with his one-time friend, MamaMax on X. Seeing what’s coming, MamaMax has attempted an apology video, but it was too little, too late.

Muta has called his video possibly the most serious one that he ever had to make. Considering that this is the same person who exposed a dubious charity operation trusted by the game community, that’s saying something.

Here is his video, if you’re interested. It’s just over an hour long:

Obviously, someone as big as Muta doesn’t need a signal-boost from me. But I do remember MamaMax’s video from when it caught my attention, late last year, which I commented upon. I would have guessed that there was drama behind it, but I was not aware how deep it went.

Apparently, Max has dropped the GODCULT branding. Seems that didn’t work out for him.

While it was already abundantly clear that MamaMax was interpersonally manipulative, I was not aware at the extent he went to to attempt to manipulate other content creators into furthering his cause, as he attempted to do with his audience.

In his video, as you may remember, MamaMax came off as a fanatic, and proceeded to split the world in two, and tried to lay the guilt down on those who aren’t joining him in combatting CSA.

But his cause was not as noble as he made it appear to be. All that he really had to go on was the testimony of a witness, and that was good enough for him to dox what could have easily been just a Vampire: the Masquerade LARPer.

I did some research into the person who MamaMax named, and it pretty much came back nothing. But before you fault me and my internet-sleuthing skills, please know that MamaMax, the very person bringing the accusation, apparently has about as much on him.

So basically, MamaMax is trying to recruit Anonymous as his own personal army, with nothing to go on besides an accusation. And it’s not just any accusation, the mere accusation he is going on is of one of the most serious crimes that can be committed.

If you don’t see the problem with that, close your browser, cancel your internet subscription, and delete System 32.

To make matters worse for MamaMax, because it wasn’t enough to bring about 750,000 subscribers an allegation that has the potential to not be true, he brought it forth in a matter that is self-serving, egotistical, and inappropriately theatrical, rather than with the seriousness that such an accusation merits.

And through it all, against the guidance of his friends who fought desperately to get him to see reason, he resisted their insistence that the matter instead be brought to law enforcement, which is how such a matter should have been handled. And he should have known better, considering that MamaMax himself has been accused in the past!

As I often say, pay attention to those who virtue signal the hardest, as they’re often acting with a guilty conscience, usually because they have skeletons in their closets.

While I could say more about this (such as how MamaMax interpreted Penguin0’s silence as a slight against him and brought that up to his audience), I’ll get to the point: I doubt that this whole matter will go down well. Max Striker has not been conducting himself with the highest level of stability. His distrust in his friends, as well as his refusal to see reason, along with his willingness to use psychological manipulation on his friends and his audience, indicates poor judgment that has a strong potential to lead to tragedy.

Or at least a strong, public, open-and-shut defamation case. If it turns out that Max’s target is innocent, I’d be all for it. Because I’m far beyond sick of this shit. And if he’s not, Max has still proven that he’s not someone to turn to when it comes to this kind of matter.

I suspect that Max is going to do something stupid. Either something tragic, or with the potential to make him more infamous than he already is. Just hearing him speak among his friends, he doesn’t sound like he understands what he did wrong. And if his judgment is that poor, his attempts at damage control might just make things worse for himself.

From his video late last year, I had a strong suspicion that Max would appear on the news, someday. We’ll see whether it comes to that.