battlewraith

Starting a thread about something you're not going to watch, tone policing the discussion, and then mocking feedback from someone who did watch on the grounds that it did not meet your critical standards--LOL. I can't see any hard distinction between this and trolling. It's bizarre.

So in other words, you've glazed over almost every point I've made in this thread. I'm going to try that "agree to disagree thing." I don't want to have to summarize arguments related to a property you're not going to watch anyways. Till we meet again mon frere.

I don't think I can agree. I'm a monster. I'm giving people the third degree, I'm tying them down and beating them with hoses. I'm wreaking havoc all over the place up in here.

Nobody is forcing anyone to spend a day doing anything. Nobody should be cuffed to a chair and beat with a rubber hose--what? Is that what's happening? And how does you posting white knight memes and calling people paid shills fit in with this? You're really calling out other people for their behavior?

Well I think the expectation in a forum is that things can be argued. And I think it's clear based on how others behave in these threads--someone goes to the trouble of making an argument why some plot point is bad writing. That reasoning can be criticized. If it's not something that can be debated, there would be no case to made for something having been done poorly. Excraft made two arguments about the show that I think are weak. I explained why I think they're weak, He countered. He asked questions. He brought up more examples. He's trying to make a case. I responded. Back and forth. Welcome to the internet. Welcome to the activity that we have all engaged in now for years in this subforum alone. But as usual, when people can't actually resolve the debate, someone shows up and says this to the person they disagree with: "What might look better is you actually saying "I disagree with you, but can respect your opinion" Instead of something like: "What might look better is if we all actually said "I disagree with you but I can respect your opinion."

I don't think that is how these forums work generally speaking. If I go to suggestions or even general discussion there will be an abundance of people who will gleefully inform me that I'm wrong if I make a suggestion about the game that they don't agree with.

They read like opportunities for people who don't like the MCU to vent (generally the same people). 1. The thread is started by someone who has no intention of watching it. 2. Many of the replies are from people who think it looks bad and have no intention of watching it (or congratulate themselves for dodging a bullet because their favorite influencer said it was bad). 3. Some people will claim that it was ok, but will nonetheless relentlessly hammer some point that they think is unacceptable. 4. Obligatory complaining about "we're not allowed to say anything bad." I'm not sure what better looks like under these conditions.

These "writers" lol. The scorn over this show runs deep. You keep repeating the bit about how she's supposed to be smarter than Stark. You sound offended by the character whether she's making bad decisions or not. Riri is 20 years old. Stark was born wealthy. Pym was a professional biochemist. Gates was able to borrow money from his parents to buy DOS and license it to IBM when he was 25. Tesla I already talked about. It's not that Riri can't make money, it's that you are miffed that she hasn't done it now, when none of the other people mentioned had accomplished anything of that significance when they were just out of their teens (although Stark graduated from MIT at 17). That's good. It was a dumb question. And you didn't like the answers.

Nothing. It just sounds worse than what they're doing and we already had that with Tony. Maybe she'll end up rich. Starting off at twenty, it seems better to not have her flush with cash. If Tesla's your model of a genius inventor, he was not that successful starting out. He would end up making a lot of money, but also lose patents and suffer professional and financial setbacks. He ended his career with limited resources and was evicted multiple times. And this was the late 1800s/ early 1900s. My bad, I thought you were asking something relevant to this conversation here on the forums. If this is some philosophical reflection on what people are allowed to do, maybe look to Buddha, Jesus, Nietzsche, Aristotle, modern neuroscience, etc. for the answers you seek. It's a bit above my paygrade.

I love it. Well done! I don't want to be wasting my time with people who don't want actual discussion of something. Keep posting your memes and doing your emojis. It's all good man.

Can you point me to some examples of intelligent people approaching corporations or universities and negotiating the funding of their own tech project by delivering some other tech gadget that the financial entity is supposed to...pay up front for? Or Riri's going to work some other tech job in order to gradually finance her own project? Just wanna get an idea what that looks like since it's what intelligent people do. I literally gave you the most straightforward answer to the question. These are not my forums, I do not allow things. If you're asking something else, reframe the question.

This has already been commented on. Corporations, governments, institutions, etc. don't fund you to do what you want. They fund you to serve their own interests. You would get a paycheck and access to a lab. There would be layers of oversight and supervision and she would not own the technology she was making. I don't know why this point isn't sticking with people. You could have some eccentric billionaire show up and throw money at her for some vague reason but I don't think that would be an improvement. People are irritated that she gets involved in crime--at least it's not cliche. If your university throws you out, you don't just show up at another one. You have to go through the admission process somewhere else, which could be difficult if you got thrown out of a prestigious program. You're going to go home unless you're wealthy and can afford to live elsewhere. What people are allowed to say is up to the mods. If you don't want people pushing back on your ideas, stop quoting them. Or say something like "this is just how I feel don't argue with me about it." Something like that. 🙂

That's the whole point. These movies are inherently ridiculous. To see people fixate on one specific aspect of a plot as some sort of defeater is amusing, particularly in light of what has occurred in the other films. Laws reflect societal interests, cultural mores, etc. at a point in time. Laws have permitted all kinds of atrocities over the course of human history. Treating the law as some sort of moral arbiter of behavior leads to all sorts of silliness. You can root for people who were arms dealers, thieves, assassins, walking rage machines that are environmental hazards, etc. because they aren't breaking the law (which is doubtful). At the same time you can pinch your nose at some character that steals money in order to get their superpower going.

The "why doesn't Riri have funding" objection reminds me of the people who didn't like the first Matrix movie and complained "Why didn't they just use cows?"

Note that you didn't answer the question. If what he did was legal--why did he stop selling arms? Why did they make such a big deal about it? The answer is simple: the writers saw his arms deals as incompatible with virtuous heroic behavior. His arc in the first film was to go from "Pa always did right for 'Murica" to "I need to take responsibility for my tech and keep it out of other people's hands." Legality is not synonymous with morality. Is Riri ethical or right in her criming? No, but I don't see her as an irredeemable character. Particularly in regards to the mayhem to which Tony would've contributed. If illegality is a dealbreaker for you and characters simply can't recover from that, I would like to introduce you to a character named Batman. Batman routinely violates laws that get in his way and has no intention of ever changing in that regard.

Then why did he stop? Why was it a major plot point in the series that he chose to shut down his arms division? The point is not that he couldn't legally do it. The point was that he recognized it was unethical. He could not guarantee that his weapons would not be used on innocent people and there was already a death toll associated with his business. That's the key word: business. That's the thing you're not getting. Someone like Justin Hammer is villainous in large part because they have no concern with the damage that they enable and encourage in the world as long as they can make profits and legally get away with it. Meanwhile Riri would be irredeemable for stealing a candy bar. Stark continues to make weapons in the series, but it's no longer a business. That means he no longer has an implicit interest in seeing those weapons used to make the enterprise profitable. He also doesn't use political influence to direct governments towards military interventionism. If anything he's trying to undermine the justification for nations investing in defense contracting, with mixed results. The arguments that arms dealing is fine are basically this: The arguments against amount to this: Duvall's character thinks he's in the right. As an individual he even helps the woman and her child. But anyone who puts any thought into this scene, or that pointless war, understands that this guy probably had cooked hundreds of such women and children the same way. Dow certainly understood this and didn't care. And the use of napalm was eventually restricted when people ethically objected to it.

I think you lost the point of the discussion. There are people here saying Riri is a bad character because she makes bad choices and gets involved in crime. Tony was brought up as a counterpoint to show a double standard. The consequences of his arms deals are far worse than the crimes Riri is involved in. But he is redeemed (after almost getting yeeted by his own weapons) and becomes a beloved figure in the MCU. You pointing out that Tony, even after his redemption, continues to make bad decisions that have almost world ending consequences makes that double standard even more apparent. Yes, because that's what sane people do. You look at the consequences of what something is meant to do, how it will be used, what the effect on the public will be, etc. That's what public policy is: picking and choosing. We allow people to go into a store and buy Tylenol. We imprison people selling heroin on the street. Why? They're both selling a drug that can be misused. The reason is that societies generally aren't governed by cartoonishly simple comparisons.

No, you're actually still in the fantasy world. Wars are generally fought for control of resources and political dominance. If you want to reduce the number of very bad, very evil people in the world stop behaving in a very bad very evil manner. Stop blasting innocent people to smithereens and expecting their relatives to not hold grudges. Stop propping up psychotic dictators that commit atrocities because it keeps the oil flowing or is politically expedient in some way. Keep war profiteers and lobbyists away from politicians so that the government isn't incentivized to manufacture and perpetuate armed conflicts in the world. There are a lot of options.

You're trying to absolve arms dealers of moral responsibility by shifting the blame solely on misuse by the customer. Thus placing firms that make things like nukes and mines on the same level as Home Depot or Lowes. The difference is that Home Depot's business model is predicated on selling tools for construction projects. They encourage people to do home renovations, DIY projects, etc. Someone using a hammer as a weapon of opportunity does not advance their business model. Arms dealers sell equipment that is generally intended to blow shit up. That is the intent. That is the proper purpose. The business model entails selling as many of these weapons as possible. The proliferation of weapons increases the likelihood of warfare, which is a desirable outcome for the arms dealer because it boosts demand for the product. Death and destruction of property--often inflicted on innocent noncombatants-- is baked into this model. It is not some aberration like when someone gets killed with a hammer or a kitchen knife. Even in the sanitized version of Tony Stark in Iron Man 1, there is a recognition of this. He says there is "no accountability" and then shuts down his weapon division. He doesn't fire bad employees or have Jarvis run the operation. He stops it completely. Because there can be no accountability--selling the arms entails bad consequences the same way tobacco companies promote cancer.

Absolutely not true. Natasha, depending on the circumstances of her kills, is probably has committed war crimes according to international law. Which is why they found American pillows and hammers all over the Middle East after the Gulf war, right? The mental gymnastics going on here is off the hook.

You clearly don't understand the story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_great_power_comes_great_responsibility

Peter Parker was ethically obligated to help. That was the message of the story. There is a difference between ethical obligations and legal requirements. You're conflating the two. Arms dealers are one of the most evil and destructive forces on the planet. If your business is selling weapons you have an interest in seeing them used in order to make profit. Arms manufacturers will lobby and back politicians who will support the continued production and use of these weapons. Eisenhower warned of this trend back in the 1960s. I don't think people here are arguing that 20 year old student Riri is making good choices. It's just hilarious to see that as a dealbreaker when born to wealth and privilege Tony Stark, continues in the family arms business and then in his late 30s realizes that innocent people are being slaughtered by his goods. Oooops!

Aside from the issue of how Riri is characterized in this series, the expectation that genius level intellects make good decisions across the board is just wrong. Some of the most clueless people I've met in life were class valedictorians. Peter Parker did something wrong. The whole point of Spiderman is "with great power comes great responsibility" and he suffered because he didn't act when he should've. The idea that something isn't wrong because it's legal or because a government sanctions it is incoherent. Your moral compass would be spinning simply from landing in different parts of the world. And you would have no basis for saying that a particular government is correct without appealing to some moral standard external to that government.

I won't get to it right away. We typically sub one streaming service at a time and my wife is finishing up some shows on another service.

Nope. Several orders of magnitude worse. But still able to come back from it and become this beloved heroic character.