07mk
3d ago
What penalties do you observe for being a calculating tribalist who makes decisions based on tribal allegiance rather than principles? Do you observe these consequences to be uniformly applied? If I argue that being such a calculating tribalist is the correct response to the current situation, what would your counter-argument be?
The big ones in recent memory that I see are the reduced credibility of most mainstream journalism outlets due to their obviously and blatantly tribal behavior with respect to Trump starting over a decade ago, and also the 2024 election, where I believe plenty of marginal Democrats and would-be Democrats seemed to tear away from the party due in part to the blatant tribal hypocrisy in that same period of time. I don't know, but I heavily doubt that it's uniformly applied. If you were to argue that, I would respond that, based on your writing, you likely have very good, very strong reasons for believing that, and unfortunately there's no real way to adjudicate which one of us is correct.
How did this chink in the armor manifest, in your view? Obviously not only did a single activist do this, but it was the default response for Blue Tribe as a whole, with any dissent being exceedingly marginal and fringe.
I think it lowered the rate at which white people (and white-tolerant people) were won over by the ideology in question, especially among young people who were just awakening politically and just gaining the right to vote.
People talk (foolishly, in my opinion) about Woke being dead. It is obvious to me that Woke did not "die" because principled moderates put it back in a box, but because Red Tribe burned many of its principles to go all-in on tribal warfare, and turned out to have better terrain for it than the Blues.
That's not my perception. Principled moderates didn't put it back in the box, and principled moderates largely can't (I think, most likely, no one can, just like no one can put things like Nazism or Communism (by many people's lights, wokeness is the latest iteration of this) "back in the box" - they'll always be with us, and that's why we'll always need to keep developing new antibodies against them, because god knows that they aren't stopping their continual evolution). What I think happened is that people who actually do care about principles got turned off from the Democratic party, and due to how the 2 parties are, at a baseline, around 50/50, there didn't need much of a shift to change the election results, which had downstream effects with respect to Common Knowledge about how much other people liked wokeness. Which was never popular organically, but rather popular like Kim Jong Un is in North Korea.
And, indeed, it ain't dead. It's not even hibernating. It's going just as hard in full force, in the many little and large fiefdoms that it still owns. Again, I doubt it's possible to kill it, and I don't even have much of an idea on how to reduce it further.
Trump will not last forever. A large portion of the Republican elite very clearly want to wash their hands of him and go back to the way things used to be. That is not an acceptable solution to Red Tribe, though, and every success we have had at securing our values has come from refusing to accept this exact sort of "moderation".
I mean, to whatever extent that the Red Tribe wants to crush wokeness, I'll root for them and even help them along, in the same way that I would root for a surgeon to cut out a malignant tumor. But I'm not sure what sort of "moderation" you're talking about that would be the right-wing equivalent of a blue-haired leftist deciding that progressive leftist critical race theory/third-wave-feminist-informed principles find it perfectly okay that white people feel okay being white.
07mk
3d ago
The press and political opponents can always twist whatever they want however they want. But by responding straightforwardly and honestly, one can at least claim to hold principles instead of having to admit that they're calculating tribalists who make decisions based on tribal allegiances rather than principles.
And moving up a level, a tribe that accepts or even encourages its leaders to submit to such tribalism has to admit that it's a tribe that is merely trying to beat the Enemy because they're the Enemy, rather than following principles that they believe the government and society at large should follow. This was one of the many small mistakes of the progressive left, in the "It's okay to be white" or "Islam is RIGHT about women" things. My perception is that the fact that there was even a single random blue-haired leftist who, when confronted with such a slogan, hemmed and hawed about dog whistles instead of straightforwardly and honestly answering, "OF COURSE it's okay to be white! I want white people to feel perfectly okay being white, and the principles and policies that I am (we are) pushing doesn't conflict with that in any way, so much so that if you or anyone else believes - incorrectly - that such a conflict exists, I will actively help you resolve that conflict, by crushing whatever might be making white people suspect that such a phrase is wrong" placed another chink in the armor that tribe was wearing.
Trump didn't go from laughing stock political outsider to 2 term POTUS by giving the straightforward, compliant answer to this kind of question, he got there by doubling down on "that's bait, fuck you" every time.
Trump has been noted to be not only an unusual, but a downright unique figure in US politics. Given that, I think it's reasonable to believe that copying his techniques and tactics isn't a good way for accomplishing the copying of his political success.
07mk
3d ago
Reminds me of that ad about female homelessness ("1 in 4 homeless are women" — presumably the others are sexless automatons).
I mean, yes, to the target audience of such an ad, very likely, that other 3 in 4 are indeed quite sexless and barely count as automatons, if that.
07mk
4d ago
I feel like, if a term were to exist for this, it should allude to Greek tragedies. It's one of those cases where everyone, including the baited, can tell that it's bait and that the winning move is to just simply answer in the most straingforward, simple and honest way possible, but their pride prevents them from doing so because that would be giving their enemies a "win." So they respond with something like "that's bait, fuck you," which is precisely the response that most benefits the baiter.
Unfortunately, what's likely the most famous Greek example of something like this already has very strong connotations of motherfucking, so something else would need to be found for the term.
I wasn't ever into hockey and still am not, but I do recall the controversy vaguely from that time. As a non-fan, it seemed silly to me to complain about seeing the puck, even if it was some bright color that distracted from the athletes, but since I wasn't a fan anyway, I figured if the fans didn't like it, then removing it is fine.
What's exciting is the idea of AI-based smart TVs in the (hopefully near-) future where you could just tell it to add on the glowing dot to the hockey puck in real-time while you're watching any random broadcast (or even VHS recording of a game from the 90s or earlier). So watchers who want the UI element could get it, and those who don't could avoid it.
I imagine that such tech could be applied to other professional sports in similar contexts. Or, to get back to women's hockey, what if the tech could, in real-time, depict the athletes as if not wearing padding but just their form-fitting sweat-wicking tights, and also with the helmet off so we could see their faces well? The Smart TV would probably need to have internet access to cross-reference official photos of players with their jersey numbers, for generating video of their faces, but it doesn't seem impossible, and it could be greatly beneficial for individual stars in the league to build their popularity.
07mk
9d ago
I played Nioh back in the day when it first came out, the 2nd Soulslike I've played after Bloodborne. Definitely a steal at that price, though I didn't get 700 or even 70 hours out of it. I only beat it once, probably because I hated the RNG loot system (which I hate in every game). The 3-stance combat system felt really complicated at first, especially coming from Bloodborne, but it took very little time for it to feel intuitive for me. I think it reflects Team Ninja's experience in making intuitive fluid combat in Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden games.
Also, like Assassin's Creed Shadows, it features a gaijin samurai protagonist, but it caused no controversy back then, partly because of the times, partly because Tecmo is a Japanese company, and partly because the character wasn't obviously a pawn for waging the culture war.
07mk
9d ago
Or just make them into more disciplined, less addictive, and more smelly versions of themselves.
07mk
10d ago
That isn't particularly difficult for progressives to square. It's simple to say that marriage itself isn't good, but that our oppressive capitalist heteronormative patriarchy deems it as good* and, as such, confers many advantages to married couples. And, for as long as these advantages exist, gay couples should have just as much access to them as straight couples.
* This is merely one specific form of the fully general argument that anything that is considered "good" by conservatives/traditionalists/people I don't like is actually something that has been arbitrarily declared "good" by the fully uncoordinated emergent conspiracy-like behavior by people in power, and we could just as easily declare it "bad" and the reverse "good" and run society just as well, as long as everyone agreed to play along. Other examples include fat acceptance/health-at-any-size and also the denigration of logic and rationality in themselves (distinct from and antithetical to the common criticisms against rationalists and their ilk for failing to live up to their title of rationality).
My main objection to the people in your example is the obesity and the festering sores. But, that's what poverty looks like in the US today. If you want to avoid it, shop at better grocery stores than the bargain market.
I recall a few weeks ago, the Trump administration announced some sort of drug price discount website, which included some GLP-1 drugs, and people were joking that Trump just solved the American obesity epidemic. Likely untrue, since, AFAIK, the prescription gate for these drugs still exist. But if he were to run roughshod over the Constitution and just declare such drugs as over-the-counter and fully subsidized (and/or nullifying all associated patents) and enforced it with the US military, over the objections of the other branches of government, then I'd seriously have to consider if the fascism and authoritarianism (the actual ones that exist in this hypothetical) was a worthy price to pay.
Of course, these aren't magic drugs, and I know that plenty of people have negative side-effects, including one of my friends who became super-gassy. So the improvement in attractiveness in senses of sight and touch (perhaps even sound - fat rolls rubbing or slapping against each other isn't that attractive) could be offset by the worsening in attractiveness in smell.
07mk
10d ago
Gym bros wear completely different clothing that doesn’t show off so I don’t think tight lulus etc are for comfort. It’s what they are socially allowed to wear to be hot and get attention and I think they like it.
I haven't been to the gym in a while, but I don't think gym bros tend to wear completely different clothing than women; they do tend to wear tights like women do. Because tights allow for less friction and more mobility while doing exercises, especially if sweat is involved. It's just that, due in part to anatomical differences, wearing only tights for the bottom is considered inappropriate for men while it isn't for women, and so the gym bros also usually wear a regular pair of athletic shorts over them. Even then, this isn't universal, and outside the gym, cyclists get an exception, probably because their junk is flush against a bike seat most of the time and so not noticeable regardless.
I certainly do think that the reason many young women are drawn to go to the gym is because of the costume rather than the health and more than the long-term attractiveness benefits. And I think that's a reflection of the reality of how sexy and practical converge in female clothing for gym purposes (and, in general, many/most athletic purposes).
07mk
10d ago
I think all of the comments get at the one correct answer: it's not wrong to look at anyone anywhere, because pointing your eyeballs in a specific direction and adjusting the shape of your lens to focus on a specific thing doesn't actually impact anyone else, but it is wrong to be noticed looking at girls in the gym*. So do it without being noticed. If you do, you might begin to notice that this principle applies to many avenues in life.
* Unless you're attractive, in which case, neither of those things is wrong. But if you're posting on TheMotte, you almost definitely don't have to worry about this case.
07mk
10d ago
Huh, I had always been taught about government cheese primarily as a dairy price control program, and I was only vaguely aware that it was given out to people sometimes, though I never thought about it enough to figure out the details. I always assumed the government just threw them away when they went bad.
07mk
10d ago
As I understand it, AI security has a lot of "kick the black box until it looks secure" kind of thing going on, and I am almost sure that's a weaker security model than what we previously had, and thus will have more exploits.
This seems like a sort of "security through empiricism" versus "security through principles" dichotomy, (or perhaps "science" versus "engineering") and it'll be interesting to see empirically which one will be better in the next few years. Intuitively, I agree with you, but also, there's no way to tell until it actually plays out in the real world with real AI-aided/AI-agent-based crackers trying to break into systems. And there will likely never be any truly good apples-to-apples points of comparison between these methods.
In the far future (in AI timescales, that's least 2 years away), I expect just telling the AI "make this system secure from X, Y, Z, and also anything else you think I might want based on the list I already gave you" will be far more secure than engineering a system where you know each and every if-then clause and for loop and etc. and how they work together. At the very least, an AI managing the system seems more likely to be able to adapt to new and newly invented exploits as they come up, since it'd be available 24/7 and not be limited by physical limitations of the bandwidth that a human has to instruct a computer. Though once Neuralink and similar devices become as cheap, common, and non-invasive as a laptop, that advantage could go away.
07mk
10d ago
Funnily enough, Giancarlo Esposito himself apparently doesn't speak Spanish, and his Spanish lines in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul had to be memorized phonetically. I've heard that Spanish speakers found his pronunciation comically bad for the most part.
07mk
11d ago
Claims that skepticism isn't hard to learn seem pretty common, but I'm skeptical of this. My own anecdotal observations have convinced me that it's a slightly harder thing to learn than rocket science and quantum physics combined.
07mk
11d ago
Part of me - a large part - most of me, really - hopes that the processing of that question by that instance of that LLM released more GHG to the atmosphere through marginal power usage than a typical car releases from a round trip to some place 50 meters away.
07mk
3mo ago
What's kinda scary to think about is that there are likely a lot of people looking at the state of Rapture at the start of BioShock and think, rationally and disturbingly likely correctly, that living there would be preferable to them than living here now. And that number seems likely to be growing for the foreseeable future.
07mk
3mo ago
I thought usually vets are people who've served in the military and then moved on to civilian life, and, as civilians, they get casual nepotism from fellow vets and non-vets who have high regard for military service, but otherwise are hired based on their merits. Akin to, say, a company that's run by a mother or a non-mother who has high regards for mothers who might give casual nepotism towards a mother in terms of hiring, but otherwise judges potential employees on their merits.
But where I'm not sure how the comparison works is where vets generally aren't expected to take time off to go back to their military service, possibly multiple times and unexpectedly (well, with around 9 months of lead time, anyway). I think that, once they return to civilian life, vets are generally expected to keep working like a regular civilian. This can't be said for any given woman in a certain age range with respect to motherhood. A vet's ability to perform the job can be assessed before hiring and then, if they get hired, the employer can generally rely on them to behave like any other employee; in the case of potential mothers, that's not the case. Mothers who have aged out of birthing more children and have already spent their time raising them before they apply to the job, perhaps, is a better analogue. But those aren't the mothers that are under discussion.
There's also the issue that, as best as I can tell, there's very little empirical reason to believe that extra maternity leave would have any meaningfully positive impact on fertility. It certainly could, and we could try it out, but if the predictable happens and it has no positive impact, then it becomes an arbitrary handout that's basically impossible to revert, leading to high costs for no gain. Of course, there's the gain of mothers having more time with their babies as they grow up, which is a positive in its own right, but it's also a different issue than fertility and one that needs to be argued on its own merits separately.
07mk
3mo ago
I think you're right. Back then, I stupidly believed that the left, as the side that represents actually getting things correct rather than getting things according to our preferences, would properly moderate the ideology of the Democratic party, in order to actually get things correct (which necessarily means giving more leeway and charity to one's ideological opponents than to one's allies) and thus keep holding onto power. What I stupidly didn't notice was that the left half of the left half were actually at least as religiously and arbitrary-preference-motivated as the right half of the right half, and they had spent decades from well before my birth laying down the groundwork to manipulate people like me to believing that there was any there there. When you're naive and looking from the top, turtles all the way down can be confused for a really tall tower of turtles.
07mk
3mo ago
The fact that it's continuing means at the very least some of the people were under 16 when the relevant events happened.
I don't think that follows. I think the fact that it's continuing means that, at the very least, the people who are continuing this believe that they can create a public impression that some of the people were under 16 when the relevant events happened. Hard to say if the people who are continuing this also believe that some of the people were under 16 when the relevant events happened, but their belief regarding this doesn't matter, it's the belief of the voting populace that matters.
07mk
3mo ago
I don't know that this is a great analogue, but I'm reminded of around 2008-2012 when all the people with basic human decency - like me, at the time - were excited about the prospect of a permanent Democratic majority in the USA due to demographics and such. It's hard to parse out the causal factors, but one possible effect was that the most extreme factions saw this as an opportunity to push their ideology to the top, and one of the more extreme factions - what is generally known as CRT/identity politics/social justice/woke-ism/postmodern neo-Marxism/the ideology that shall refuse to be named/basic human decency - had positioned itself over the course of half a century to be in that sweet spot of being extreme enough to make partisans feel like they're righteous freedom fighters but not so extreme or personally costly as to turn them off.
I'm not alone as a Democrat who thinks this has been disastrous for the world, for America, for American society, and also for Democrats specifically. But there's potentially some good that did come out of it, such as catching predators like Cosby & Weinstein during the #METOO fervor of the late 2010s, or bodycams becoming far more common in police. Arguably, these would have happened anyway, but also arguably, this ideology helped make these happen more quickly, which matters. Which makes me think of what good could come out if, say, the Groypers were to prove to be the successful right-wing analog to the successful left-wing "woke-ism?" The first thought that comes to mind is widespread knowledge and acceptance of HBD could be a positive consequence, for helping us to build better policies, because a more accurate model of the world should allow us to better design policies for accomplishing the goals they are ostensibly meant to accomplish.
07mk
3mo ago
Maybe that doesn't matter; I don't know why it should be better to understand how to hunt a rabbit, skin, cook and eat it, or grow barley from scratch, than to know a bunch of 2000s-era Disney Channel theme songs and how to achieve a middling Fortnite score. One does feel viscerally more freeing than the other, though.
The only way out is through. Good case scenario, we invent Matrix-level VR tech sometime within the next 1000 years, allowing us all to viscerally experience these complex physical daily life tasks in entirely safe virtual environments, including the fear that one feels in true survival situations like our ancestors had to feel.
This is how I feel about high level ultimate Frisbee. The nature of the sport is that good offense beats good defense, and the men at the top levels are so good that many games have only a handful of turnovers and even fewer breaks (on the order of 5-10 in a game where sum total score is usually around 20-30), which can make it rather boring to watch. "Oh, offense scored again on a full field throw, yawn."
Women at the top levels, are so much worse than the men in not just strength and speed but also finesse and technique, that their games end up having lots more messy points with lots of turnovers, which raises the overall excitement level. Even at the top levels, not many women can throw full field, whereas basically the weakest man in a top team could do it regularly. But I find the women more fun to watch because of that volatility.
Unfortunately, women's ultimate is also less mature than men's, so there are fewer truly elite teams, which means fewer competitive games due to more and greater disparity in team quality.
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