gwap posted:

btw france gets something like 80% of it's electricity from nuclear power, recent politicians have been trying to lower that for some reason (hollande for example), but, afaik, it's like more than any other country on earth.

i just dont want people to think france has no nuclear reactors or something from what that guy said lol

hey isnt that the place where like tens of thousands of old people die every time the temp spikes above 80 in the summer?lol

c_man posted:

you can go on about how stuff like green parties and whatever aren't "really" part of the left but not matter how true it is in an ideological sense, in a practical sense they form a part of the competition for "real" leftist parties and policies so you ought to have as much issue with people who are promoting some sort of "return to nature" at the expense of actual socialism as anyone.

people who aren't leftists but promote a "return to nature" at rather than engaging in socialism: green parties, liberals, libertarians, fascists, social darwinists, conservative christians, anarchists, primitivists, and a whole bunch of other groups to the extent that i don't know why this is being presented as a problem for "the left." like duh there are groups who have ideas that aren't socialist, that's what you're saying but you're framing it as some problem that's special to leftists and making it out like leftists have to do some autocritique to root out nuclear power critics or something rather than just continue making the argument for real socialism and engaging political opponents, including hippie liberals, like any others

as several other people have said, even if you attribute crystals and naturalistic fallacies and shit to the actual "left," there are more and worse things in other parts of the political spectrum. like is believing in astrology and practicing homeopathy somehow inherently worse than denying global warming outright or believing in social darwinism? which of those things have had / are going to have a bigger death toll in real life?

i'd pretty gladly fight for socialism alongside somebody who happens to believe stupid/wrong shit that doesn't have anything to do with socialism, that's called "valuing your life and planet over being right," because the end of capitalism and emergence of socialism is a life or death issue for this planet and whether or not astrology is real is not one

plus I don't even agree with any kind of dumb techno-utopian faith in science or the ability of capitalist nations to not screw up nuclear power somehow so it's not like i think people should have the same absolute horror of possibly believing a wrong thing as you seem to have. anti-nuclear people are way more on the right path than people who think nuclear power will solve all our problems and lead us to star trek. primitivists and scientist-utopians are both the enemy, equally, but the apocalyptic prepare-for-collapse type primitivists are fooling themselves way less

Edited by acephalousuniverse (Nov. 12, 2013 07:00:34)

Squalid posted:

c_man what makes these weirdos more important in the left than say religious dorks in the right. Rather than the left being especially susceptible to magical thinking isn't it more likely the same processes are at work in all people and ideologies? See as evidence: this thread.

Basically I want you to offer evidence you aren't just suffering confirmation bias, which is what it looks like to me.

yeah i dont think there's something about the left that draws more crazy people than usual, but that doesnt mean i have to want the crazy people. obv the right doesn't give a shit about technical improvements beyond what it takes to keep the money machine running and i dont give a shit about their motivations or whatever nonsense they spout. on the other hand if someone is promoting policies that are actually sensible but supporting them with magic then i worry that the people they are mobilizing are going to be more worried about following the magic and campaigning for alternative medicine than a progressive income tax. i can certainly believe that some of the less insane people on the right have a similar problem but i really dont care.

Scrree posted:

roseweird posted:

gyrofry posted:
the Left, such as it is, merely rejects undialectical so-called "science" which has been so savagely twisted and reified in the service of Capital


ok ... but all the communist states that have ever existed, especially the ones you like to vocally admire and whose leaders you like to quote, have employed mechanized agriculture, developed nuclear reactors (and weapons), invested extensively in medical research ... it seems that communist regimes produce things that capital finds valuable, while capital produces knowledge and infrastructure that communism can inhabit or repurpose. hmmm what does it all mean

to quote crow (i think): "competition breeds homogeneity "

thats right i did say that. i wrote that