FtttG
User ID: 1175
FtttG
10hr ago
If the decline is in part caused by schools being too willing to indulge blatantly unwarranted requests for "accommodations" for students who clearly do not suffer from any disabilities which would have a meaningful impact on their academic performance, at whose feet should we lay the blame for this state of affairs? The administrators? Legislators? Assorted departments of education?
I'm reading Cryptonomicon and came across this line:
Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be — or to be indistinguishable from — self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.
Uhh — something you guys want to tell me?
FtttG
12hr ago
I never claimed that the average Arab Israeli is an enthusiastic supporter of the Zionist project, or that the majority of that group are, merely that it's misleading to claim that all of them are opposed.
A survey from a year ago found that 58% of Arab Israelis believe the most recent conflict has "fostered a sense of shared destiny between Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis". An earlier survey found that 55% consider themselves "proud citizens of Israel".
That's not exactly unreasonable, the Israeli Arabs aren't enthusiastic participants in the Zionist project.
Some and some. There's at least one sitting Knesset member who's part of Bibi's Likud party, for example. Likewise, many Israeli Arabs have served in the IDF.
FtttG
15hr ago
“Insecure narcissists demand omnipotence from others and detest omniscience” is vacuous. It’s a fully general argument. Any time you want me to do something, you’re demanding omnipotence, and any time I dare to disagree with you, I’m just mad about your omniscience.
I understand if you find TLP's writing style and personal vocabulary frustrating in a Continental philosophy sort of way (hell, I agree with you: Sadly, Porn was probably the single most impenetrable book I've ever read, bar none). But this is really just a flowery way of saying "insecure narcissists demand that the world bend over backwards to validate their preferred image of themselves, and become extremely hostile and defensive when the world refuses to do so, seeing the narcissist as he is rather than as he would like to be seen." Maybe you disagree with @gog's application of the concept in this context, but the concept in itself seems sound – pretty close to a dictionary definition of what an insecure narcissist is, really.
Echoing @gog below, I agree that gaming the system isn't necessarily indicative of TLP-style narcissism, if you're fully aware that that's what you're doing and have no illusions about it.
Think back to the Varsity Blues scandal, in which various wealthy parents (including your woman from Desperate Housewives) were found to have bribed elite universities to get their children places.
Now, if these parents were thinking "I know Little Jimmy isn't too bright, but I really want him to go to Harvard, and if that means I have to pay some apparatchik under the table, so be it", that's not narcissism.
But if, on the other hand, they were thinking "Little Jimmy is a genius, but he has a special kind of intelligence that can't be captured by a blunt instrument like the SAT. I know that once he gets to Harvard he'll flourish, and if I need to pay someone off to get him in, so be it" - well, yeah. You see where I'm going with this.
In real life, I imagine there are some parents who have no illusions about how smart or capable their children are, and are just using every exploit they can think of to get their kids into top universities they never could on their own merit, including specious requests for accommodations for disabilities their children don't have. Nothing narcissistic about that – dishonest, yes; selfish, yes; burning the commons, yes; making it harder for the legitimately disabled to be taken seriously, yes – but not narcissistic.
But I agree with @gog that there are a nonzero amount of parents who really think their children are exceptionally intelligent in a way which, for some reason, never manifests in an SAT-legible form, and for which special accommodations are required so that it can express itself. That is narcissism.
FtttG
16hr ago
Exactly, it's blank-slate thinking all the way down.
One might have thought that even progressives would be willing to concede that a non-verbal child who is physically unable to feed himself or use the toilet is not as intelligent as Albert Einstein – but apparently not, according to Lutz.
I recall reading an article a few years ago (I'll see if I can dig it out*) that claimed that the absolute number of black Americans with engineering degrees actually declined in the years after affirmative action in university admissions was introduced.
The reasoning was elegantly simple. Like it or not, everyone in a classroom setting is acutely aware of where they sit in the hierarchy of their peers when it comes to how effectively they are understanding the material: people at the top of the class know they are, people who are struggling know it, people who are getting by know it. If you're a mediocre student in a mediocre school, you'll be doing okay: if you move that mediocre student into an elite school, he will be struggling, almost by definition. Ask yourself who's more likely to drop out of an elite school: someone getting straight As with ease, or someone barely scraping by with Ds?
This article argued that affirmative action in university admissions essentially migrated a huge number of mediocre students out of mid-tier colleges (in which their skill level would have matched the content they were expected to master, at the pace they were expected to master it) and into elite Ivy League colleges (in which they were bound to be near the bottom of the classroom distribution: if they wouldn't be, they wouldn't have needed affirmative action to get in). Faced with the demoralising prospect of always being near the bottom of the class, far more of these students dropped out before completing their degree, when compared to an earlier cohort of black students who attended mid-tier colleges. I don't know about you, but I think going to a mid-tier college and getting a degree is more impressive than going to Yale and dropping out after a year because you can't hack it.
It wouldn't surprise me if we end up observing a similar trend here. No genuinely smart student actually needs "accommodations" to get into an elite college, so the only ones who try to game the disability system to do so will be mediocre students. Like the black students in the paragraph above, they will find themselves near the bottom of the classroom hierarchy, constantly struggling to grasp material their classmates master with ease. Consequently, they will be far more likely to drop out with receiving a degree.
You're correct that getting the skills and the credentials is only one reason people go to college, end networking opportunities and so on are also a big part of it. But if you're doing a four-year degree and you drop out one year in, you'll have max one-quarter the networking opportunities that someone who completes their degree will have, so it may end up being a waste of your time anyway.
*I'm not sure if this is the article I was thinking of, but it makes the same general argument.
FtttG
23hr ago
Performance-enhancing drugs can also fuck up your judgement when abused. See DOGE, FTX among many others.
FtttG
23hr ago
How is failure to “fight the decline” cowardly?
That almost sounds like a tautological statement. If something is getting worse over time, you're in a position where you could do something to arrest that decline, and you choose not to – well, maybe not "cowardly" by definition, but do we have any positive adjectives for the person who makes that choice? Selfish? Lazy? Shiftless? More-than-me-job's-worth? Above my pay grade? Head in the sand?
FtttG
1d ago
Not that I'm aware of. I've been meaning to watch it for a long time. Have you seen it? Is it any good?
It honestly feels like the ceasefire in Gaza has only incensed widespread Irish antisemitism* even further. Two stories from this week:
For the Americans, the Eurovision Song Contest is a musical competition held every year, hosted by the European Broadcasting Union, in which musical acts representing various nations get up on stage and perform gloriously garish and tacky pop songs. Despite the name and the majority of the competitors being European, countries from outside of Europe are eligible to compete, and Australia and Azerbaijan have taken part at various points over the years. Israel's participation has always been controversial, but it kicked into overdrive since the start of the war in Gaza two years ago. Israel placed second in this year's popular vote, an announcement which was immediately met by accusations of vote-rigging (not sure how that's supposed to work but whatever). Ireland has now joined Spain and the Netherlands in boycotting next year's contest in protest over Israel being allowed to participate.
As I mentioned many months ago, there's a small park in Dublin named after Chaim Herzog, who was born in Belfast, grew up in Dublin and went on to serve as Israel's sixth president. Some time ago there was a social media campaign to rename the park after Hind Rajab. After much discussion, this motion has been officially vetoed by Dublin City Council.
I no longer find it credible that these campaigns and demands are motivated solely by sympathy with the people of Palestine and horror at the war in Gaza. The level of ambient hostility towards anything with the most tangential connection to Israel just seems wholly disproportionate to me. As Eamonn Mac Donnchadha notes in the second article linked above, no other nationality is subjected to this treatment: Pakistanis and Chinese people in Ireland are not habitually called upon to denounce the behaviour of the governments of their home countries. The ongoing Uyghur genocide did not prevent Dublin City Council from observing Chinese New Year.
It's starting to make me really uncomfortable. We should have left these attitudes in the 1940s, and yet eighty years later we're still falling back on the same familiar tropes of cunning, conniving Juden Zionists manipulating public opinion from behind the curtain. My own mother (generally a very sensible woman) recently saw a movie about the Israeli hostage situation in 1972 and immediately jumped to the conclusion that those monstrous Jews Zionists had financed the movie's production in order to curry favour for their genocide in Gaza. A cursory Google quickly showed that the movie went into production months prior to the October 7th attacks – but then, I suppose those were staged by Shin Bet and Mossad as a false flag, weren't they? It never bottoms out.
More than anything I'm just struck by how petty all of this is. "Israel is singing in the contest, so we're not going to sing in the contest" is just embarrassing, fucking Mean Girls "you can't sit with us" energy.
*I'd have been hesitant to label this behaviour as such two years ago, but honestly, at this point it's become so deranged that no other word seems appropriate.
FtttG
1d ago
Because I wanted to avoid people saying I was begging the question by simply saying "better" and taking it for granted that kinder laws are better.
That's exactly how your original comment came off to me.
Also you seem to have an unorthodox definition of "kind".
Interesting. Imagine four people who call themselves Catholic:
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Alice goes to Mass every day, observes the Sabbath, and follows every papal edict to the letter.
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Bob professes to believe every papal edict and tenet of his faith – but in practice, he never goes to Mass, doesn't observe the Sabbath, eats meat on Fridays, doesn't give up anything for Lent etc.
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Carol goes to Mass every day, observes the Sabbath, gives something up for Lent etc. – but her actual worldview is functionally indistinguishable from any of her woke friends, which entails major doctrinal disagreements with the Church on abortion, homosexuality, pre-marital sex, divorce etc. She also doesn't believe in transubstantiation.
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Like Bob, David is non-observant, and like Carol he has major doctrinal disagreements with the Church, including disbelieving transubstantiation (I think this accurately describes an absolute majority of nominal Irish Catholics).
I'm sure most people would say that Alice is the "most" Catholic, or most "authentically" Catholic, or a "central example" of what we call Catholic. Equally, most people would say that David is only nominally Catholic, neither walking the walk nor talking the talk.
I'm torn on whether Bob is "more" Catholic than Carol, or vice versa. On the one hand, Carol "walks the walk" in making at least some of the sacrifices her faith demands of her, including getting up early on Sundays. On the other hand, if Catholicism is a belief system first and foremost, then holding the correct beliefs ought to be seen as far more important as following the rituals – observing the rituals when you don't believe in any of the beliefs underpinning them strikes me as sort of insincere and performative.
[Edit: by pure coincidence, the morning after writing this post I was re-reading an old post of Scott's which includes this gem of a quote from CS Lewis: "Going to church does not make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you a car."]
Authentic membership in a religion is a special case, as it's usually determined based on privately-held beliefs and active, observable behaviour. For a lot of the other categories I discussed above, authenticity is often based on only one or the other. While support for animal rights and opposition to factory farming are beliefs commonly held by vegetarians, they're not generally considered rule-in criteria: as far as I'm concerned, anyone who doesn't eat meat is a vegetarian, regardless of their worldview. Saying "I'm a vegetarian who doesn't eat meat, but I don't really have a problem with factory farming" doesn't sound incoherent to me in the way that "I'm Catholic and I go to Mass, but I don't believe in transubstantiation" does.
FtttG
1d ago
Accommodations that allow for disabled lawyers to work those jobs will lead to kinder, better laws where disability accommodations are concerned.
Your use of the word "kinder" is rather a transparent applause light. I don't doubt that disabled lawmakers would be more likely to pass laws or make legal judgements which will favour the interests of disabled people (at least in the short-term), but I'm not at all persuaded that this would be beneficial for society at large.
I mean, sure, if a country which passed a law which made it illegal for an employer to fire anyone with a disability, I guess this would be "kinder" to any currently gainfully employed disabled people. But I would have a hard time describing such a law as "better" legislation than what a reasonable person would come up with.
FtttG
1d ago
I agree that "street smarts" means more than that, traditionally referring to métis in the Seeing Like a State sense (in contrast to we "rationalist" mistake-theorist quokkas who can't quite believe people would go on the internet and tell lies, or try to take advantage of others).
But it's surprising how often the term gets used in a manner indistinguishable from the usage Malcolm outlined above. It sort of reminds me of those people who "discovered this cool life hack", which amounts to them lying and cheating other people and abusing the social contract. "I discovered this cool life hack: if you print off a fake handicapped parking permit, most people won't bother to check and you can park in the handicapped spaces." Hate to break it to you dude, but the reason we aren't doing that isn't because we didn't think of it.
FtttG
1d ago
This is my new favourite country song. For the full experience, read the lyrics.
FtttG
1d ago
Only half of self identified evangelicals attend church weekly.
On this topic in particular: a survey conducted in Ireland over a decade ago found that nearly two-thirds of self-identified Catholics don't believe that the communion wafer literally transforms into the body of Christ.
Never mind the fact that they're non-observant: from a theological perspective, most Irish Catholics are Protestant in all but name. And that's not even mentioning how many of them voted to legalise abortion and gay marriage.
FtttG
1d ago
It's funny: I know this isn't the first time I've heard of this concept, and yet every time I come across it, I immediately think "is this a Scientology thing?" I don't know why.
FtttG
1d ago
Yeah, that's fair enough. If no one likes you (even if it's not reciprocated), you have no business calling yourself charismatic.
You're right that a disproportionate number of examples in my post were left-coded, which was unfair of me. In my defense, at the time of writing I was sincerely thinking of "identifying as a good person even though you've never done anything good" as a bipartisan phenomenon. When we hear a term like "performative virtue signalling" our mind reflexively goes to AWFL women sharing black squares on Instagram, but it's equally applicable to boomer wine aunts who share posts on their Facebook pages about violent criminals coupled with demands that the UK "bring back hanging". When it comes to slave morality, the kinds of people described in Hillbilly Elegy are just as prone to self-destructive crabs-in-a-bucket begrudgery as the residents of any urban ghetto. And a lurid fixation on the nastiest crimes committed by others (as a means of downplaying one's own moral shortcomings) can and does afflict anyone regardless of tribal or political affiliation.
As for the self-examination piece: well, earlier this year I released a solo album on an actual legit indie record label, and completed an (as yet unpublished) novel — and yet I would still feel hesitant to describe myself as a "musician" or a "writer". (I'm not saying you can't call yourself one of these things until you make a living from it, but it has to be a major part of your lifestyle, not just a hobby.) I have no illusions about having enjoyed a privileged middle-class upbringing (attempting to pass oneself off as coming from a more underprivileged background than you really did — class-Dolezalism — is endemic in Ireland and the UK, and equally common regardless of political stripe), although with the qualification that I did earn a partial scholarship to my private secondary school. In the past I had a very bad habit of really "identifying" with the fact that I'd been diagnosed with depression as a convenient excuse for my various shortcomings (ethical and otherwise), but I don't do this anymore and can't honestly say I've suffered from depression for many years, if I ever did. Offhand, I truly can't think of any way I habitually describe myself without "walking the walk" or meeting the traditional criteria for such a designation.
As for the "identifying as a good person" bit: the main reason I abhor performative virtue signalling of all stripes is because it reduces the preconditions for being a "good person" to simply holding the "correct" opinions, making pro-social actions completely irrelevant to the moral calculus. To give a current example: over the past two years I've donated somewhere in the region of €1,700 to assistance for Gaza (via charitable foundations such as Médecins sans Frontières, Medical Aid for Palestine and Realign for Palestine) — not a vast sum, either in absolute terms or as a percentage of my income, and yet I can only assume it's a damn sight more than most of the people accusing Israel of genocide have donated over the same period, by either metric. (As I've mentioned before, there are few things that infuriate me more than being lectured and scolded about how I ought to do more to help the less fortunate — by a person who is doing a damn sight less to help the less fortunate than I am.) The belief seems to be that, because I'm not terribly sympathetic to the cause of Palestinian statehood and acknowledge Israel's right to exist, I am forever and always unclean, whereas a person who holds the "correct" opinions on this cause is therefore One of the Good Ones, regardless of what actions they undertake. My friends and family members won't actually come out and say that Alice (who has the "correct" opinions on the Jewish Israel Question, but who hasn't donated a penny to helping the people of Gaza) is morally superior to Bob (who's donated a decent chunk of cheddar to helping the people of Gaza, but who acknowledges Israel's right to exist, doesn't think they're committing a genocide [while acknowledging they've committed war crimes], has minimal sympathy for the cause of Palestinian statehood and zero sympathy for Hamas) — but it's abundantly clear that's what they believe, at least subconsciously. It seems at some point the idea that "well, he hasn't done much, but he means well: at least his heart's in the right place" was surreptitiously supplanted with "because his heart's in the right place, he has therefore discharged his moral responsibilities and no longer needs to lift a finger to help others — he is already One of the Good Ones".
To be a good person, you have to do good things: people's lives are saved with bandages and splints, not retweets and vibes.
Renaming a park because it's named after a Jew and some Jews decades later strikes me as the definition of petty.
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