Closet survey #1

What do you believe that most people on this site don't?

I'm especially looking for things that you wouldn't even mention if someone wasn't explicitly asking for them. Stuff you're not even comfortable writing under your own name. Making a one-shot account here is very easy, go ahead and do that if you don't want to tarnish your image.

I think a big problem with a "community" dedicated to being less wrong is that it will make people more concerned about APPEARING less wrong. The biggest part of my intellectual journey so far has been the acquisition of new and startling knowledge, and that knowledge doesn't seem likely to turn up here in the conditions that currently exist.

So please, tell me the crazy things you're otherwise afraid to say. I want to know them, because they might be true.

What do you believe that most people on this site don't?

So please, tell me the crazy things you're otherwise afraid to say. I want to know them, because they might be true.

Well, if we're going into history... I believe (despite being a northern democrat) that the Civil War was fundamentally unjust. It makes a mockery of the principles of the Declaration of Independence if secessionary states will be outright invaded.

(If slavery was an issue, then the North should've just bought out the South - likely would've been much cheaper than the actual war.)

I believe that neither side had the foggiest idea of how costly in lives and money the Civil War would turn out to be.

5wnoise16y

The North (well, congress) tried to buy out the South (well, slaveowners). The South rejected it. There were actually multiple attempts at this, some before the war, some during the war. The thing is, the War between the States really truly was about slavery, nothing else. The dodge that it was about states' rights comes down to exactly one right -- the right to keep slaves. Compare with such travesties as the fugitive slave acts, which they pushed through congress, which actually did greatly infringe the rights of the northern states. The southern states, despite some of their propaganda, did not generally support the right of secession. Their Constititution explicitly forbade it. Every single article of secession passed by their state legislatures explicitly called out slavery as the reason for secession. The odd thing is that slavery was not in any immediate danger. But with the election of Lincoln the southern states saw that their grip on the country was not as absolute as they desired, and they threw a tantrum, because they demanded not only the right to have slaves, but that the rest of the country not judge them for it.

3CronoDAS17y

Nitpick: The South shot first. Just a nitpick, though ;)

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Closet survey #1

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