The Motte Modding Club - High Fleet (in Spaace)

32 comments - 1823 thread views 10mo ago by ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad (text post) Edited 10mo ago

After @urquan's recent post about participation on TheMotte not being as enjoyable anymore, I dropped a comment suggesting a group creative activity, to take our mind off the Culture War, and give people other reasons to come here. The idea to make a mod for Freespace 2 got fairly good feedback, so I'm making this post to give you my pitch, and to coordinate development.

High Fleet (in Spaaace)

Freespace is a space fighter sim that sends you to fight alongside massive capital ships duking it out with each other with giant beams, shells, and missiles. It does a very good job making you feel like you're a part of a bigger war machine, doing your part to fulfill a grander strategy... the problem is most of that is accomplished through good mission design, scripting, and storytelling. You might sometimes wonder if you could have turned the tide by knocking out a beam cannon, or disabling a ship's engines before it gets away... why yes, you could, and this is why these subsystems have been made indestructible during that particular mission. Such are the joys of story-driven games, so I'm not even mad, but this made me feel there's something missing in the game.

By contrast High Fleet is a part-strategy part-action-arcade roguelike, where you take your fleet behind enemy lines to strike at their heart. The combat mechanics are the least interesting part of the game in my opinion, but the strategic view in which you spend most of your time feels very compelling. You can split your fleet, and have your detachment clear up the area to prepare for the arrival of your flagship, gather intelligence, or look for allies. You do all of this while dodging patrolling enemy strike groups.

So why not combine them? FS2 had been open sourced, and now features an extensive Lua scripting API, and an optional libRocket based interface. It is possible to implement a High Fleet-like strategy game in libRocket, and dynamically generate a combat mission upon encounter. The lore of Freespace has a few things that lend themselves to this sort of strategy game:

FTL is done through subspace jumps. Throughout the vanilla campaign there are references to ships needing to power up their drive before they can make a jump, and while to my knowledge rules governing subspace drives have never been hashed out (and may in fact be contradictory, in service of the storyline), setting up something simple like “bigger ships need more time to charge their drives” will already create quite a bit of strategic depth. Maybe you have a destroyer that's more than enough to deal with a threat you detected, but if you use it, it'll be comitted to that battlefield for an extended period of time, what if they're just luring you away from their true objective? Do you scramble a few fighter wings, and send them instead, since they'll be easier to recall if necessary?
Inter-system jumps rely on “jump nodes”. This limits where you can travel to from the current system, and allows for blockades which you might need to break through (or set up yourself if you want to make sure your enemies won't escape).
Subsystem mechanics. Each ship has a bunch of subsystems, typically: weapons, engines, sensors, and navigation. You might not have enough firepower to destroy an enemy ship, but maybe it's worth it to sacrifice a few fighters to knock out a subsystem? Maybe you're want to raid a freighter convoy, but there's a patrolling anti-fighter cruiser nearby that will make mince meat out of you. If you knock out it's engines it will give you enough time to deal with the freighters. Maybe you're trying to lose a pursuit, and there's no way you can jump out of their sensor range - why not knock out their sensors then?
Ship specialization. It's hard to give justice how much room to play there is here, even with just the vanilla assets. Some capital ships are very good at taking out fighters, some are very good at taking out other capital ships. Bombers are a threat to even the biggest capital ships, but are vulnurable to fighters and interceptors, and need to get into point-blank range or there's a high chance their payload is intercepted. Reconessaince will be very important, and the player will need to adapt their strategy to what they have vs. what they're up against.

Hopefully, the result will be the best of both worlds - dynamic strategic gameplay, with a fun combat system.

What we have, and who/what do we need?

I'm a developer, and I'm happy to handle to coding side of things, although the more, the merrier
@FCfromSSC has offered to handle the 2D/3D art. I don't know if you can/wan't to handle this side in particular FC, but we'll need someone who can design a nice interface.
@netstack has provisionally offered to join in unknown capacity.
a writer would be nice to have. A strategy game could still be fun with no/minimal story, but if we're cloning High Fleet I think it would be nice to have a storyline. If nothing else, can someone please come up with a title for this project!

What's the plan?

I'd say step one would be the UI, and the intra-system strategic gameplay, and dynamic mission generation.
After that we have to decide about the inter-system/"high level" strategic gameplay. Do we indeed just copy High Fleet, or are we adding/changing something?
Do we use the Freespace universe or make our own? The former is easier, and we can reuse existing assets, but maybe our artists want to run wild?

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 25, 2023

152 comments - 3423 thread views 10mo ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

1966 comments - 34932 thread views 10mo ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

1966

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Wellness Wednesday for June 28, 2023

120 comments - 1991 thread views 10mo ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Your Book Review: Public Citizens

1 comments - 626 thread views 10mo ago by Soriek (astralcodexten.substack.com)

I've been enjoying this year's ACX book reviews a lot more than the previous round, with cool essays on the Icelandic Sagas and Jane Jacobs. I particularly liked last week's review of "Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism" by Paul Sabin. The book is about Ralph Nader's contribution to modern sclerosis in the American government, but the essay serves as an interesting history of the public interest movement in relation to the government in general. It's not long and definitely worth a read but a few sections I liked:

the New Deal relied heavily on a new model for delegating congressional powers: Congress would create a federal agency with broad latitude, then they, or the president, would staff that agency with outside experts. Freed from the grubby pressures of the political process, these agency men—and they were pretty much all men—would use their expertise to reshape the country...

In his 1952 book American Capitalism, John Kenneth Galbraith summed up this equilibrium via the concept of countervailing powers: big government, big business, and the big unions worked together to collaboratively manage the economy.

But by the 1960s, the cracks in this model were starting to show. A report prepared for President-elect Kennedy outlined the problem of regulatory capture, the process by which agencies intended to regulate private businesses got too close to their subjects and end up serving them instead. And a new class of liberal intellectuals rose to prominence by pointing out the ways in which the political establishment’s plans sometimes rode roughshod over the citizens they were supposed to serve.

The new intellectual class was deeply critical of government action, especially the ways it propped up big business, and they invested a ton of energy into criticizing, investigating, and suing the government. The non-profit wasn't really a thing before Nader, now it's some 10% of the private sector. Advocacy on behalf of Nader and associates dramatically expanded public comment periods on agency actions, "gave the agencies they created extremely detailed mandates, procedures, and timelines .... required judicial review of agency decisions, and explicitly empowered citizens to sue the agencies for not following the rules. (Previously, it wasn’t clear that a random individual American would have standing in such a case.)"

These ideas were intended to prevent bureaucrats from cravenly serving big business or from crushing the citizenry with their major projects, but of course they made it hard to implement major projects at all. Government slowed to a crawl, and of course money-flush big businesses found themselves better able to afford dealing with all the new regulations, and better able to make use of judicial review and comment periods. All this has led us to our kludgocracy where:

Across the country, NIMBYs and status-quo defenders exploit procedural rules to block new development, giving us a world where it takes longer to get approval for a single new building in San Francisco than it did to build the entire Empire State Building, where so-called “environmental review” is weaponized to block even obviously green initiatives like solar panels, and where new public works projects are completed years late and billions over budget—or, like California’s incredible shrinking high-speed rail, may never be completed at all.

There are strong shades of the kind of supply-side progressivism talked about by Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, and Noah Smith, that holds we have overcorrected from the era of Robert Moses running highways through helpless neighborhoods to a world where its impossible to do anything big at all or for the government to effectively serve its people. The problem is broader now, the liberal desire not just for lengthy review but expanding government without holding it to clear standards; the conservative impulse to cut budgets regardless of efficacy or to saddle troublesome agencies with oversight bodies that save no money but slow activity down to a crawl; the seemingly bipartisan willingness to allow technical skill to corrode in the government and contract everything out to dubiously useful and vastly more expensive consultants. But it's interesting to hear one version of the story of where this general anti-government movement began and really took traction. Interested to hear what other people thought of it.

What are the best textbooks for understanding American politics/contemporary public issues?

7 comments - 778 thread views 10mo ago by PerseusWizardry (text post)

Friday Fun Thread for June 30, 2023

89 comments - 2051 thread views 10mo ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Quality Contributions Report for June 2023

11 comments - 4256 thread views 10mo ago by naraburns nihil supernum (text post)

The Problem of The Problem Of Susan

117 comments - 3704 thread views 10mo ago by FarNearEverywhere (text post) Edited 10mo ago

Okay! So you may have heard of The Problem Of Susan, a literary critical view of what happened to Susan in “The Last Battle”, the final Narnia book. This has been quoted on Tumblr, I responded to that, and this is a development of my view of the reading.

A lot of people have done psycho-sexual readings of the line about “lipstick and nylons” and gone on about this being indicative of Susan maturing into a sexual being. Naturally, since C.S. Lewis is a famous Christian, this means that as a Christian he heartily disapproved of:

• Sex

• Women

• Women Being Sexual

• Children Growing Up

• Children Losing Innocence About The World

• Children Growing Up To Be Women Who Are Sexual

and probably a ton of other stuff too which I can’t be bothered to go search online for them to tell me he hated. Some people do not like Lewis, Narnia, or Christianity, and have a very dour view of The Problem Of Susan and like to tell us all how, why, and where Lewis is a horrid old Puritan sex-hater. Before we get into this, I want to say: if you don’t like Lewis, Narnia, Christianity or any combination of these, you’re free to do so and nobody can make you like them.

The problem I have with The Problem Of Susan is that it’s a very shallow reading.

First, there seems to be little to no reading of that part of the text as a whole:

"Sir," said Tirian, when he had greeted all these. "If I have read the chronicles aright, there should be another. Has not your Majesty two sisters? Where is Queen Susan?"

"My sister Susan," answered Peter shortly and gravely, "is no longer a friend of Narnia."

"Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'"

"Oh Susan!" said Jill, "she's interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up."

"Grown-up, indeed," said the Lady Polly. "I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can."

It gets quoted as “lipstick and nylons” and the part about “invitations” gets left out. And there’s latching on to “too keen on being grown-up”.

So what is Lewis saying here, or trying to say? “Growing up is icky, especially if you start liking boys”? To take the reading that he is saying ‘loss of innocence (especially sexual innocence) is bad, adulthood is bad, children should stay children as long as possible’?

I don’t think so. Polly is a grown-up herself, and yet a friend of Narnia. If Susan is now ‘grown-up’, then Peter - as her elder brother - is also a grown-up. But he’s here in Narnia. So if adulthood per se is not the problem, what is?

And here we get the view as expressed by someone in a response to my response:

Uuhh I’m PRETTY sure Susan got kicked out of the gang bc winklydinnkkkllllllllldl :/

Sex is the problem. But is this a plausible reading?

Well, sure. Sexual maturation, developing sexual interest and sexuality is all part of growing up. People have used “nylons and lipstick” as signifiers that Lewis means sex because, well, nylons: lingerie, fetish or at the very mildest sex fantasy fuel. And lipstick means reddening the lips, making them look like the labia, ready for sex.

(Look, if I’ve had to read these intepretations, so do you).

But is there a better reading? I think there is.

So here is the second part of what I think is going on.

Now, if the problem is that Susan is now sexually aware, what about Peter? (And Edmund, and Lucy?) On this reading, if they are still ‘friends of Narnia’ then they must have avoided Susan’s sexual awakening. Peter must be developmentally stunted and have remained a good, innocent, little boy mentally at least.

So for the proponents of The Problem Of Susan, the only mature adult is Susan, who is cast out of Narnia for that knowledge and that choice (Pullman wrote an entire trilogy of books in response about how sexual awakening is the means of becoming adults and independent).

However, I disagree. Let’s segue off for a moment about homosexuality (this was a joke comment in the original post to which I was replying). Lewis was writing in the 50s and was a Christian to boot, he must have had the same repressive social ideas as you imagine a 50s Christian would have, right?

Here’s where I recommend you read his memoir Surprised By Joy, particularly the parts about his early schooling.

Here's a fellow, you say, who used to come before us as a moral and religious writer, and now, if you please, he's written a whole chapter describing his old school as a very furnace of impure loves without one word on the heinousness of the sin. But there are two reasons. One you shall hear before this chapter ends. The other is that, as I have said, the sin in question is one of the two (gambling is the other) which I have never been tempted to commit. I will not indulge in futile philippics against enemies I never met in battle.

("This means, then, that all the other vices you have so largely written about..." Well, yes, it does, and more's the pity; but it's nothing to our purpose at the moment.)

Okay, looks like this is going to be a long ‘un, so breaking off here for Part One before getting into Part Two

I’ve criticised the take that the Problem of Susan is reducible to the simple (and simplicistic) answer of “Sex”, and here’s why I think that.

Let’s look at the full version of the much-quoted line about “lipstick and nylons”:

"Oh Susan!" said Jill, "she's interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up."

“and invitations”. To drag in another writer, “What’s invitations, precious? What’s invitations, eh?”

Well, they’re exactly what they sound like. “Oh, you mean boys asking her out on dates, maybe?” No. Being asked out, yes, but I mean “invitations to parties and social occasions and grown-up events”.

I’m hobbled by the fact that Lewis doesn’t give us any exact ages for his characters, particularly the Pevensie children (Tolkien would have told us the day and month, not alone year, they were born so we could have worked it out) but we can roughly take it that for “The Last Battle”, Susan is old enough to have left school but isn’t going on to college (that we know of, at least not yet).

So she’s about eighteen or so at a minimum, and looking around online there’s an estimation that she’s twenty-one.

Let’s go with twenty-one: legal age of adulthood, but still young and inexperienced. Polly is a little hard on Susan:

She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can.

Which of us has not wanted to be treated as a grown-up and chafed under “you can’t do that, you’re too young” when we’re in our teenage years, caught between no longer a child but not quite adult yet? And mostly we’ve had a simple view of what being grown-up means: nobody imagines “I’ll have to do my taxes and get a mortgage” when they’re contemplating what it will be like to be free and independent and nobody can tell us what to do or eat or wear.

So Susan was eager to be old enough to wear adult clothes and makeup and go to parties and have fun. That’s not a bad thing! The bad thing is if that’s all she wants to do, ever; if her reasons are based on vanity and selfishness. We all like to be admired, so if Susan wants the boys/young men to find her attractive and be interested in her, that’s only natural. But if she spends her time only going to parties, looking for flattery of attention, and trying to be ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ as she gets older, then she’s wasting her potential. I don’t think anybody imagines that Susan as an airhead is a good future for her.

Let me jump back into the memoir to show that Lewis knew about, because he had experienced, adolescent desire. He attended a preparatory school between the ages of thirteen and fifteen:

It is quite true that at this time I underwent a violent, and wholly successful, assault of sexual temptation. But this is amply accounted for by the age I had then reached and by my recent, in a sense my deliberate, withdrawal of myself from Divine protection. ...The mere facts of generation I had learned long ago, from another boy, when I was too young to feel much more than a scientific interest in them.

...Pogo's communications, however much they helped to vulgarise my mind, had no such electric effect on my senses as the dancing mistress, nor as Bekker's Charicles, which was given me for a prize. I never thought that dancing mistress as beautiful as my cousin G., but she was the first woman I ever "looked upon to lust after her"; assuredly through no fault of her own. A gesture, a tone of the voice, may in these matters have unpredictable results. When the schoolroom on the last night of the winter term was decorated for a dance, she paused, lifted a flag, and, remarking, "I love the smell of bunting," pressed it to her face -- and I was undone.

You must not suppose that this was a romantic passion. The passion of my life, as the next chapter will show, belonged to a wholly different region. What I felt for the dancing mistress was sheer appetite; the prose and not the poetry of the Flesh. I did not feel at all like a knight devoting himself to a lady; I was much more like a Turk looking at a Circassian whom he could not afford to buy. I knew quite well what I wanted. It is common, by the way, to assume that such an experience produces a feeling of guilt, but it did not do so in me. And I may as well say here that the feeling of guilt, save where a moral offence happened also to break the code of honour or had consequences which excited my pity, was a thing which at that time I hardly knew. It took me as long to acquire inhibitions as others (they say) have taken to get rid of them. That is why I often find myself at such cross-purposes with the modern world: I have been a converted Pagan living among apostate Puritans.

So Lewis is going to be the last person in the world to condemn Susan for natural part of growing up. What he does want to condemn her for - is going to be developed in Part Three.

Part Three, and if you’ve stuck with me this far, congratulations! “Jeez, will you ever get to the point?” I will, I promise!

So here’s where we have to get into theology (sorry, but it is relevant, I promise) and here is a handy definition:

In Christian theology, the world, the flesh, and the devil have been singled out "by sources from St Thomas Aquinas" to the Council of Trent, as "implacable enemies of the soul".

The three sources of temptation have been described as:

world -- "indifference and opposition to God’s design", "empty, passing values"

flesh -- "gluttony and sexual immorality, ... our corrupt inclinations, disordered passions"

the Devil -- "a real, personal enemy, a fallen angel, Father of Lies, who ... labours in relentless malice to twist us away from salvation".

What proponents of The Problem Of Susan think Lewis is preaching against is the second, the Flesh (lipstick and nylons = sexual maturity and awakening).

I maintain that what he is warning against, in the person of Susan as she has abandoned her family and Narnia, is The World.

“But what’s wrong with liking fun and parties and having a good time and meeting people and making new friends?”

Nothing! And everything, if it turns you into a liar, a traitor, a snob, a sell-out.

And that is what Susan is doing, in her quest to be a ‘proper’ grown-up:

(W)henever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'

She’s lying to herself as much as to the others. She knows Narnia and everything they say is real, but because it doesn’t fit in with the type of person she wants to be now, she’s doing her best to deny it and forget it. She’s convinced herself that it was all just a game and childish imagination, and she’s not a child now. Popular, cool people don’t believe in fairy stories, and she so desperately wants to be popular and cool and to fit in with the right sort of people, the people who throw those parties everyone wants to go to, the invitations she is so eager to receive.

And Lewis knew about that from the inside, too:

He was succeeded by a young gentleman just down from the University whom we may call Pogo. Pogo was a very minor edition of a Saki, perhaps even a Wodehouse, hero. Pogo was a wit, Pogo was a dressy man, Pogo was a man about town, Pogo was even a lad. After a week or so of hesitation (for his temper was uncertain) we fell at his feet and adored. Here was sophistication, glossy all over, and (dared one believe it?) ready to impart sophistication to us.

We became -- at least I became -- dressy. It was the age of the "knut": of "spread" ties with pins in them, of very low cut coats and trousers worn very high to show startling socks, and brogue shoes with immensely wide laces. Something of all this had already trickled to me from the College through my brother, who was now becoming sufficiently senior to aspire to knuttery. Pogo completed the process. A more pitiful ambition for a lout of an overgrown fourteen-year-old with a shilling a week pocket money could hardly be imagined; the more so since I am one of those on whom Nature has laid the doom that whatever they buy and whatever they wear they will always look as if they had come out of an old clothes shop. I cannot even now remember without embarrassment the concern that I then felt about pressing my trousers and (filthy habit) plastering my hair with oil. A new element had entered my life: Vulgarity. Up till now I had committed nearly every other sin and folly within my power, but I had not yet been flashy.

These hobble-de-hoy fineries were, however, only a small part of our new sophistication. Pogo was a great theatrical authority. We soon knew all the latest songs. We soon knew all about the famous actresses of that age -- Lily Elsie, Gertie Millar, Zena Dare. Pogo was a fund of information about their private lives. We learned from him all the latest jokes; where we did not understand he was ready to give us help. He explained many things. After a term of Pogo's society one had the feeling of being not twelve weeks but twelve years older.

…What attacked me through Pogo was not the Flesh (I had that of my own) but the World: the desire for glitter, swagger, distinction, the desire to be in the know. He gave little help, if any, in destroying my chastity, but he made sad work of certain humble and childlike and self-forgetful qualities which (I think) had remained with me till that moment. I began to labour very hard to make myself into a fop, a cad, and a snob.

I would be sorry if the reader passed too harsh a judgement on Pogo. As I now see it, he was not too old to have charge of boys but too young. He was only an adolescent himself, still immature enough to be delightedly "grown up" and naif enough to enjoy our greater naïveté. And there was a real friendliness in him. He was moved partly by that to tell us all he knew or thought he knew.

There’s no harm in Susan either, even as she is no longer a friend of Narnia. She can always come back. Unless she lets herself harden into a caricature of a silly, vain attention-seeker who follows and drops every social fad as it comes into and goes out of fashion, who is always taking the cue as to what to say and think from others instead of her own views and opinions, and who continues to deny reality.

Nobody locked her out or kicked her out. She walked out herself, or rather ran out, rushing to go to that party or function or event or gathering of the real adults.

Well, that’s my take on it, anyway. Take it or leave it as you like.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 2, 2023

178 comments - 3396 thread views 10mo ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

[META] A Whole Host of Minor Changes

281 comments - 4641 thread views 10mo ago by ZorbaTHut (text post) Edited 10mo ago

There's a pretty big set of changes coming down the pipe. These shouldn't have much impact on users - it's all internal bookkeeping - but there's a lot of it, and if there's bugs, it might cause issues. Let me know if anything weird happens! Weird, in this case, is probably "comments you can see that you think you shouldn't be able to", or "comments you can't see that you think you should be able to", or anything else strange that goes on. As an example, at one point in development reply notifications stopped working. So keep your eyes out for that. I'm probably pushing this in a day or two, I just wanted to warn people first.

EDIT: PUSH COMPLETE, let me know if anything goes wrong

Are you a software developer? Do you want to help? We can pretty much always use people who want to get their hands dirty with our ridiculous list of stuff to work on. The codebase is in Python, and while I'm not gonna claim it's the cleanest thing ever, it's also not the worst and we are absolutely up for refactoring and improvements. Hop over to our discord server and join in. (This is also a good place to report issues, especially if part of the issue is "I can't make comments anymore.")

Are you somewhat experienced in Python but have never worked on a big codebase? Come help anyway! We'll point you at some easy stuff.

Are you not experienced in Python whatsoever? We can always use testers, to be honest, and if you want to learn Python, go do a tutorial, once you know the basics, come join us and work on stuff.

(if you're experienced in, like, any other language, you'll have no trouble)

Alt Accounts: Let's talk about 'em. We are consistently having trouble with people making alt accounts to avoid bans, which is against the rules, or making alt accounts to respond to their own stuff, which isn't technically against the rules, and so forth. I'm considering a general note in the rules that alt accounts are strongly discouraged, but if you feel the need for an alt, contact us; we're probably okay with it if there's a good reason. (Example: We've had a few people ask to make effortposts that aren't associated with their main account for various reasons. We're fine with this.) If you want to avoid talking to us about it, it probably isn't a good reason.

Feedback wanted, though! Let me know what you think - this is not set in stone.

Single-Issue Posting: Similarly, we're having trouble with people who want to post about one specific topic. "But wait, Zorba, why is that a problem" well, check out the Foundation:

The purpose of this community is to be a working discussion ground for people who may hold dramatically different beliefs. It is to be a place for people to examine the beliefs of others as well as their own beliefs; it is to be a place where strange or abnormal opinions and ideas can be generated and discussed fairly, with consideration and insight instead of kneejerk responses.

If someone's posting about one subject, repeatedly, over and over, then it isn't really a discussion that's being had, it's prosletyzing. I acknowledge there's some value lost in removing this kind of behavior, but I think there's a lot of value lost in having it; letting the community be dominated by this behavior seems to lead to Bad Outcomes.

Feedback wanted, though! Let me know what you think - this is also not set in stone.

Private Profiles: When we picked up the codebase, it included functionality for private profiles, which prevents users from seeing your profile. I probably would have removed this if I'd had a lot more development time, but I didn't. So it exists.

I'm thinking of removing it anyway, though. I'm not sure if it provides significant benefit; I think there's a good argument that anything posted on the site is, in some sense, fair game to be looked over.

On the other hand . . . removing it certainly does encourage ad hominem arguments, doesn't it? Ad hominems are kind of useless and crappy and poison discourse. We don't want people to be arguing about the other person's previously-stated beliefs all the time, we want people to be responding to recent comments, in general.

But on the gripping hand . . .

. . . well, I just went to get a list of the ten most prolific users with hidden profiles. One of them has a few quality contributions! (Thanks!) Two of them are neutral. And seven of them have repeated antagonism, with many of those getting banned or permabanned.

If there's a tool mostly used by people who are fucking with the community, maybe that's a good argument for removing the tool.

On the, uh, other gripping hand, keep in mind that private profiles don't even work against the admins. We can see right through them (accompanied by a note that says "this profile is private"). So this feature change isn't for the sake of us, it's for the sake of you. Is that worth it? I dunno.

Feedback wanted! Again!

The Volunteer System is actually working and doing useful stuff at this point. It doesn't yet have write access, so to speak, all it's doing is providing info to the mods. But it's providing useful info. Fun fact: some of our absolute most reliable and trustworthy volunteers don't comment. In some cases "much", in some cases "at all". Keep it up, lurkers! This is useful! I seriously encourage everyone to click that banner once a day and spend a few minutes at it. Or even just bookmark the page and mash the bookmark once in a while - I've personally got it on my bookmark bar.

The big refactor mentioned at the top is actually for the sake of improving the volunteer system, this is part of what will let it turn into write access and let us solve stuff like filtered-comments-in-limbo, while taking a lot of load off the mods' backs and maybe even making our moderation more consistent. As a sort of ironic counterpart to this, it also means that the bar might show up less often.

At some point I want to set up better incentives for long-time volunteers, but that takes a lot of code effort. Asking people to volunteer more often doesn't, so that's what I'm doing.

(Feedback wanted on this also.)

I want your feedback on things, as if that wasn't clear. These threads basically behave like a big metadiscussion thread, so . . . what's your thoughts on this whole adventure? How's it going? Want some tweaks? Found a bug? Let me know! I don't promise to agree but I promise to listen.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

1556 comments - 30478 thread views 10mo ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

1556

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

Shaming.
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
Recruiting for a cause.
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

The Many Ways that Digital Minds Can Know

15 comments - 906 thread views 10mo ago by moultano (moultano.wordpress.com)

What is Critical Thought?

12 comments - 1172 thread views 10mo ago by gog (text post)

I struggle to imagine any educated person in North America admitting that they do not possess the power of critical thought. Few uneducated people would say "Oh yeah, I'm a total rube." I have heard doctors say that they would only trust other doctors to raise their children in case of an accident because medical training imbues critical thought. Complaints about "stupid people" being allowed to vote are widespread. I am a teacher, and literally every teacher I have ever met believes that it is their core mission to "teach kids to be critical thinkers." The fact that not one of those teachers shows any evidence of critical thought suggests either that I am the world's most arrogant man (possible) or that I do not understand what critical thought actually is.

So what is critical thought? This is an honest question. Some uncritical googling gives these definitions:

-the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment

-self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective habits of mind

-the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.

-Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe.

The problem with these is that pretty much everyone would say that their own thought meets the criteria in the definitions and few people would accept that their own thought is irrational, shallow, unclear, etc if you tried to point it out. Consequently, critical thought comes off as a sort of cool kids club, where we, the in-group, are right about important things because of our superior something-or-rather, and the erroneous out-group is deluded by their own biases and lack of discipline. The definitions are either so vague or so inclusive that they boil down to "I know it when I see it." I don't see it very much, though. Perhaps it is only me who lacks this understanding, since it is probably impossible to imagine anyone smarter than oneself (because if you'd imagine their thoughts and then you'd be that smart too). Maybe I just can't imagine anyone more critical(?) than me.

Below are some possibilities and the reasons why I don't think they work. Tell me why I'm wrong, and how to be right.

Formal logic: A sound deductive argument provides true conclusions, but even a little work with formal logic raises the question of GIGO. "All men are mortal" is pretty uncontroversial, so Socrates must be mortal. Beyond that, however, very few premises are solid enough to merit insertion into logical argument. Induction is famously self-defeating (Hume), enough to lead to hypotheses that we're just hard-wired to believe in it (Kant, Schopenhauer). Abduction (Sherlock Holmes-style reasoning) is a nice idea, but boils down to experience and breadth of knowledge.
Avoidance of fallacies: Fallacies are obviously bad, but day-to-day thought is just not very prone to fallacies of any consequence. Again the big danger is untrue or misunderstood premises. When someone brings up the Bible, for example, and says "The Bible says that the Bible is true, lol," they aren't really taking issue with the question-begging reasoning; if some Biblical council proved that that line was a later addition, the fedora guys wouldn't all become Christians- they just don't believe the Bible is true. The object-level debate over the facts is the root of the issue.

Furthermore, formal fallacies are of very limited applicability and informal fallacies are fallacies in limited enough circumstances that their fallaciousness is at very least debatable (the slippery slope, for example, happens all the time).

The stuff stupid teachers tell students: "If the website ends in .edu you can trust it," "If bad people funded the study it's not true," "Check the credentials of the author," etc. List of tips on how to spot fake news are full of this. If these tips are even true, they depend on you either blindly trusting that PhDs (or whoever) are right about everything, which even someone as confused as I am can tell is not critical thought, or they depend on you knowing which PhD's are trustworthy and which aren't, who the bad study-funders are and why, which parts of .edu are part of the replication crisis, and so on. This doesn't take a PhD, but it takes a ton of subject knowledge.
Fighting The Man: Big corporations are lying to you, Manufacturing Consent, AdBusters, cui bono, don't trust anyone over 30, and so on. This is all true enough, I guess, but the people who are the loudest about critical thinking are now The Man themselves (See the Disinformation Governance Board). Fighting The Man these days involves not getting vaccinated, driving your truck in a freedom convoy and rooting for Putin. If critical thought is the power of telling truth from falsehood, or Truth from Falsehood, then it doesn't shift as the culture shifts. And if it shifts as the culture shifts, then it would seem to be no more than a proclamation of tribal allegiance.
Avoidance of cognitive biases: You shouldn't embrace them, but are they even real? Did most of that stuff not come out of questionable psych research?
LessWrong-style rationalism: Even if Bayesianism is questionable, much of what is written in the Sequences is still true. That whole line of thinking, however, depends on knowledge of statistics, engineering, computer science; lots of knowledge of subject matter. Furthermore, it has severe blind-spots with regard to morality and metaphysical stuff because stats and programming don't lead that way. This is a sort of "I'm looking for my keys out front because the light is better" solution, where the meta-problem ("We don't have a solution") gets solved, but the actual problem ("How can we be right?") doesn't. That's why it's called LessWrong, and not just Right.
All of these put together: Maybe the task is so huge that you need all of this. It seems to me that that would compound the flaws in each approach and result in amalgamating everything good into "Just know tons of stuff about the world. Like, literally everything, if possible." And if that's the case then "critical thinking" just means "breadth and depth of knowledge." It would also correlate with knowledge, though, which plainly isn't the case. Lots of polymaths are very wrong about things outside their specific fields, and one hears of them being wrong even within their fields.
All of this plus intelligence: This seems like we're back to the cool kids club: "We just know more and we're smarter." This would, however, explain why some very knowledgeable people don't seem to fit the definition (?) vibe (?) aura (?) of critical thought- they just aren't smart enough. But it takes a certain intelligence to become very knowledgeable, so it would be surprising to find very many knowledgeable people without this power. This would also explain why many smart people don't fit the definition- they just don't know enough. It would suggest, though, that you could take smart people and have them read Wikipedia all day for 2 years and then everyone would agree that they were critical thinkers. I can't be sure that this isn't true, and I don't have an argument for why. But I really don't think it's true.
All of this, plus wisdom. Well, what is wisdom? And so we go back 3000 years and start the entire conversation over again and hope for a better result the second time. Let's not.
Emotion: When I consider the many defects I see in other people's thought and consider the ways I have avoided those exact defects (not all defects- you can't imagine anyone smarter than you, remember) I get:

-Intelligence

-Breadth of Knowledge of "facts."

-Familiarity with philosophy and religion (breadth of knowledge of "ideas," maybe?)

-Suspicion of consensus

-Love of conflict

-Hatred of error

-PROFOUND suspicion of any comforting thought/EXTREME fear of motivated reasoning. Like, crippling fear.

The last 4 are at best aesthetic preferences and at worst emotional tendencies. Is that what it takes? If so, is there any hope for someone without them?

TLDR:

-Is that what it takes?

-Is there any hope?

-What is critical thought?

-Are my objections flawed?

-Have I missed something?

-And I guess, is it possible to imagine anyone smarter than oneself?

Wellness Wednesday for July 5, 2023

119 comments - 2427 thread views 9mo ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Belief and the Truth

0 comments - 577 thread views 9mo ago by Sam_I_am (samschoenberg.substack.com)

I’ve been wanting to write down my thoughts on the subject of belief and truth for some while now. The distinction between the two is one of the cornerstones of how I see the world. A good theory of what the truth is, and what it means to have a belief has a profound impact on how we think about the world. It also has a profound impact on how we understand other peoples’ perception of the world.

The Truth:

The objective truth. The true truth. The truth is true even if you don’t believe it is true. It is true even if you don’t know it is true. It is true even if you can’t prove that it’s true.

Belief:

A person’s perception of the truth. We form our beliefs based on a combination of several things, including our personal obversations, our reasoning, and our prior beliefs. A belief might not be the objective truth, and it’s foolish to treat it as if it were. However, belief is how we experience the truth, so it’s the closest thing we have.

The role of evidence:

Many people equate evidence with truth. If you ask people to define objective truth, they will likely say something about evidence. Some people even treat an idea with no evidence in the same way they that they would treat an outright false idea, such as in the anectote described in this post by David J. Balan.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has put out his own theory of “Objective Truth”. And his theory is all about evidence.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=CxUWD6LRR20

According to Neil deGrasse Tyson, an idea becomes the Objective Truth only after it has been established by a substancial amount of evidence. This is a fine way to define objective truth, since if we want to be extremely sure that an idea is true, then we almost certainly need a strong body of evidence to prove it. However, I think it’s worthwhile to acknowledge that an idea can be true even if there is no evidence for it. If there’s no evidence, it can still be true, we just wouldn’t know it.

Newton produced the proof for how gravity worked in the 1600s However, the equations that Newton came up with would have still worked at any prior period in history. They would even have worked if nobody had proven them. The evidence for Newton’s equations isn’t the thing that made them true. What the evidence did was allow us to be certain that they were true. Essentially, evidence is just a tool that we use to make sure that our beliefs are close to the truth.

Likewise, a thing can be untrue, even if there actually is evidence. What looks like good evidence can often be flawed. There are many examples of this in the criminal justice system.

One good example of this is the case of Ronald Cotton where eyewitness Jennifer Thompson famously misidentified the perpetrator.

She had never been so sure of anything.

His name was Ronald Cotton and he was the same age as she. Local man, headed down the wrong road, had already been in trouble with the law. He had been arrested on first-degree burglary charges and had served 18 months in prison for attempted sexual assault. Cotton had insisted that the relationship resulting in the assault charge was consensual and that he was being unfairly targeted by police because he liked to date white women.

When Thompson picked him out of the lineup, everyone was sure they had the right man.

Cotton is tall and handsome, with baby-smooth chocolate skin and a warm, engaging smile. Confronted by Thompson, his normal calm failed him. He was petrified. But he said nothing, betrayed no emotion.

Cotton’s actions and past hadn’t helped his case. He was nervous. He got his dates mixed up. His alibis didn’t check out. A piece of foam was missing from his shoe, similar to a piece found at the crime scene.

Not only was Cotton identified by the primary eyewitness, but there was other evidence too. There was physical evidence regarding the foam on his shoe. He couldn’t keep his story straight. He had past convictions for sexual assault. There was a lot of evidence that suggested he did it, and it was pretty compelling.

However, DNA Evidence showed that Cotton couldn’t possibly have been the rapist.

Cotton was unsuccessful overturning his conviction in several appeals. But in the spring of 1995, his case was given a major break: the Burlington Police Department turned over all evidence, which included the assailant’s semen for DNA testing, to the defense.

The samples from one victim were tested and showed no match to Cotton. At the defense’s request, the results were sent to the State Bureau of Investigation’s DNA database and the database showed a match with the convict who had earlier confessed to the crime to a fellow inmate in prison.

Evidence is not synonymous with truth, and even if you have evidence for something, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true. There could be a mistake in the evidence, or there could even be a nuance that you haven’t thought of.

My Truth? Your Truth? His Truth? Her Truth?

One concept that occasionally comes up in online discourse is the idea of a person having their own truth. Most of the time when you see it, someone “telling their truth” is portrayed as a positive thing. But when a post is specifically about what a person’s truth actually means, it usually ends up saying somethint to the effect of “there is no her truth or his truth. There is only the truth”

Take the following comic for example:

https://imgur.com/gallery/pleGM

This is a widly circulated comic online, and it contains 2 people expressing different beliefs about what number is drawn on the ground. They state these beliefs as though they are the truth, and there is a caption below in black font that implies that both of their beliefs are valid.

Then apparently, someone altered the comic, crossed out the black text, and added their own text in red. This red text assumes that both of the characters are “uninformed” and that at least one of them is definitly wrong. It goes on to say that they should have checked the facts, that they don’t want to do any research, and that what they’re doing is ruining the world.

I think that the person who wrote the black text, knows best what that symbol is supposed to be. That person is presumably the original author of the comic, and the person who created the symbol in the first place. I can’t think of a way any other person can possibly know better what the symbol is supposed to be. Apparently, according to that person, both 6 and 9 are right, and if that’s true, then the red text seems very silly.

Furthermore, this the symbol in this comic is a metaphor for much more complicated questions in real life. With real-life versions of this dilemma you don’t always have an obvious alternative explanation for what the truth might be. You just see a 6 and already know about ‘9’. In real life, both sides might be incredibly informed, and the reason they disagree might be because the problem is so complex that each party doesn’t have all the information the other party has, or they might have made a mistake in their reasoning.

They may even have seen what appears to them to be 100% conclusive evidence. However, one or both of them might have misinterpreted something along the way. They can’t reasonably be expected to know about the mistake. If they did, then they would have already gone back and fixed their reasoning. To them, their side is the Objective Truth.

It could also be the case that all their facts are both totally true, and the reason they disagree is because they’re not seeing the bigger picture. They might not even know about a bigger picture. It’s not always obvious where one exists.

I prefer this other widly-circulated image. It covers some important nuance that the above comic (the original version) doesn’t.

The core problem is that belief is how a person experiences truth. You can’t tell the difference between a strongly-held, but false belief and the truth. If you could, then you wouldn’t have the false belief in the first place. You can’t expect other people to tell the difference either. To them, it is the truth! This is what “their truth” actually is. Humans don’t have some sort of mystical “truth-sence” that lets us know for sure what the truth is. It’s not so easy to just choose objective truth over your truth, when “your truth” is the very way that you experience truth.

Transnational Thursdays 7

30 comments - 1688 thread views 9mo ago by Soriek (text post)

Turning this into its own weekly thread. I’m hoping for this not to really be a thing I lead,, more like an open place each week where people can talk foreign policy/international relations. That could mean country updates, analysis of some dynamic (ie the Ukraine War), or even history or interesting books you’re reading.

The response on these have been positive but engagement has been pretty low, I think partially because a lot of the countries I find interesting just aren’t that interesting to other people. I’m trying to address that by finding a balance between the more obscure places I like with bigger name countries like Brazil, Italy, Korea, etc. As always others are strongly encouraged to add on coverage of any country you find interesting, or just anything else you want to talk about.

Guatemala

As mentioned last week, the electoral success of anti-corruption underdog Bernardo Arevalo, son of Guatemala’s first democratically elected leader, represented a major upset. Currently he’s supposed to go into a runoff election with Sandra Torres in August, but the latter has accused voting software of biasing Arevalo. The establishment has responded cheerfully and the courts have suspended the results of the first round of the election and called for a tribunal to review the voting tallies. The US, EU, and OAS election observers have criticized the court’s decision. Regardless of the Presidential results, the current conservative ruling party Vamos has surprised everyone by winning a majority, so there’s a limit to how much an isolated executive will accomplish.

Brazil

Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal has banned Bolsonaro from running for office again for eight years by the for fueling the January 8 uprising:

Brazil’s electoral court ruled that Mr. Bolsonaro had violated Brazil’s election laws when, less than three months ahead of last year’s vote, he called diplomats to the presidential palace and made baseless claims that the nation’s voting systems were likely to be rigged against him.

Five of the court's seven judges voted that Mr. Bolsonaro had abused his power as president when he convened the meeting with diplomats and broadcast it on state television.

He can appeal the ruling but hasn’t made a lot of friends in the high courts and as of now he has accepted the ruling.

Venezuela

While we’re on a roll with candidates being pushed out by their systems, María Corina Machado, the favorite to lead the opposition in the 2024 elections, has been banned from running for 15 years. The charges are based on her being a fifth column for the US, supporting American sanctions and former opposition leader Juan Guaidó. All true, but also nobody expects Maduro to allow a free and fair election under any circumstances:

“If you want free elections, we want sanctions-free elections. Therein lies the dilemma”

Speaking of sanctions, oil production has actually risen recently in spite of them, though much of the gains have gone up in smoke from corruption and crime, with everything from fuel theft to an audit finding that middle men have pocketed an astounding $21 billion in unpaid sales. Partially in light of these finding and PDVSA’s significant debt to its Russian partner, Roszarubezhneft, the European oil magnate has now requested the ability to take control of joint exports itself to avoid massive middle men losses.

At least negotiations over sanctions and the election have resumed, with Venezuela and America resuming direct communications in Qatar, a nation which has unexpectedly come to play the recent role of mediator between the two rival countries.

Italy

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right wing coalition has continued a year of electoral success with victories in the longtime center-left stronghold of Tuscany.

The Eurozone Stability Fund was created in 2012 to provide “eurozone states in difficulty with loans at below-market rates in return for reforms to public finances”. It’s been suspended since the pandemic but its latest iteration is near to passing. However, it requires the approval of every member and Italy remains the last stalwart not having voted for it yet. Italy would actually qualify to use it but Meloni has pledged not to, because she’s afraid of having austerity imposed upon Italy, although the Italian Treasury apparently thinks it might actually lower debt costs.

One way or the other Italy’s enormous 145% debt to GDP ration must be addressed. Bloomberg has an interesting article on Meloni’s turn towards a more industrial policy, increasingly intervening in the corporations the government has a stake in, or buying larger stakes. She’s betting on her pro-business policies getting the Italian economy back on its feet; in particular she cut corporate taxes, taxes on the self employed, and taxes on the rich by phasing in a flat tax on labor. She's partially offset the loss in revenue by cutting benefits, in particular an anti-poverty measure called the Citizen’s Income (remember southern Italy still has exceptionally high poverty for a European country). She also gave employers more flexibility in hiring short term contracts and has strictly opposed public sector unions demands for wage increases. Predictably, this hasn’t made her many friends in the unions, who have been consistently on and off strike (it should be said Italy has more strikes than a normal country in the best of times). Actually there’s another major strike happening tomorrow, a 24 hour nationwide strike tomorrow of all public transit workers, bus, metro, ferry, and even airline staff.

Kosovo

In April Kosovar Serbians boycotted municipal elections, which were then won by Albanian candidates who tried to install their candidates by force, leading to ethnic violence and dozens of injuries. By now 4000 NATO Peace Keepers have entered Kosovo to stave off the rising ethnic tensions. Serbia’s troops are currently mobilized on the border and they have now threatened to militarily intervene if ethnic Serbs aren’t protected from Albanian violence.

South Africa

Seven opposition parties, led by the Democratic Alliance and excluding the radical EFF, have formed a big tent coalition to challenge the African National Congress in the 2024 legislative elections. Popularity with the governing party is at (probably) an all time low with crime, a faltering economy, and mass electricity shortages.

Speaking of which, South Africa’s power grid has been wracked by mass corruption, and instability and load shedding has become a norm this past year. However, blackouts have been reducing recently and surprisingly, Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has said the period of electricity cuts will soon come to a close.

In a contentious case with shades of the America dreamer debate, South African high courts have ruled against the government’s attempt to end the special permitting exemptions for Zimbabweans who fled instability at home. This would require some 200,000 people to return to Zimbabwe if they can’t obtain normal work permits, even if they have had children in South Africa.

Thailand

Eyes are peeled on Thailand as the new parliament has come into session. The major victors of the election, the anti-military, anti-monarchical Move Forward and Pheu Thai, now have the unenviable task of creating a coalition big enough to form a government. This is harder than it might sound because a third of seats are automatically given to the military, and the two upsetters have campaigned on an anti-establishment platforms that made some of their more establishment potential allies understandably skeptical (ex they want to “abolish monopolies,” aka make enemies with every business interest).

For now the two parties have managed to at least work with each other; there was some tension over which party gets to pick the new Speaker of the House but ultimately they settled on a respected Pheu Thai ally from a third party. The real question is who would be the Prime Minister if they can form a coalition. The military’s motivation is to prevent Move Forward’s leader Pita Limjaroenrat from winning at all costs; they might even accept being pushed into the minority if they could avoid that situation. They’re already investigating him to see if he broke election laws and will likely pursue other tricks as well.

Korea

President Yoon Suk-Yeol ran on a comically anti-labor agenda, once quipping that they should replace the 52 hour work week with a 120 hour work week. Since coming to power he’s pushed for and backed away from a 69 hour work week (this is probably much closer to what South Koreans actually do) and has pursued the unions doggedly, attempting to standardize professional requirements, refusing to extend a minimum wage increase, and demanding that labor unions submit their records of spending. In response to his labor agenda the Korean Confederation of Teachers Union (KCTU) has gone on strike (and separately they’re mad about Japan discharging Fukushima waste water into the open ocean). It’s pretty massive in size, a two week strike of over half a million people; this last time a smaller strike happened it led to notable fuel shortages.

Separately (or related?) President Yoon’s popularity has hit a high of 42%, mostly to his restoration of trade ties with Japan and public posture against the “cartels” (Suk-Yeol pursued some of leading Chaebol businessman during his time as a prosecutor, but it remains unclear if he will actually oppose them significantly in office.)

Friday Fun Thread for July 7, 2023

167 comments - 2560 thread views 9mo ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 9, 2023

240 comments - 2912 thread views 9mo ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

1682 comments - 31425 thread views 9mo ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

1682

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

Shaming.
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
Recruiting for a cause.
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

Does the Culture War Thread still make sense?

17 comments - 1561 thread views 9mo ago by Maximum_Publius (text post)

Does the Culture War Thread still make sense as the primary place for Motte discussion now that the community has its own dedicated website?

I think the answer is probably "yes, we should stay with the Thread as-is," but only because of inertia. If we could have created a culture shift away from the thread and towards individual posts, I think there may have been some benefits, as I'll discuss below. However, this is a relatively small community, and so we probably want to avoid alienating the current members as much as possible with radical changes.

While I'm sure I'm missing things, or getting things completely wrong, here's some problems I see with the current Culture War Thread format. (I also want to note that none of this is meant as a criticism of the mods or anyone else who put in a ton of work to get this site going; I think it's great and I really enjoy having a censorship-free place to get my culture war fix and read interesting comments from intelligent people.)

Comments and the Thread receive differing amounts of engagement depending on the day of the week, with weekends disfavored

For me, this is probably my biggest gripe with the Culture War Thread. Because a new Thread gets posted every Monday, it seems to make little sense to post on a Sunday (or even Saturday) if you want to get a decent amount of engagement. This is unfortunate, because the weekend is one of the times when people probably have the most time to write up a post and engage with it. While it's true you could write something up over the weekend and wait till Monday to post, this adds a bit of friction, a bit of "I'll do it later," which, for me at least, reduces my desire to post at all. Moreover, even if you do wait till Monday to post, if you have a fulltime Monday - Friday job, you probably have less time to respond to comments, etc., during the day during the week than you would on the weekend, further weakening engagement.

High engagement posts dying out faster

The nature of the Culture War Thread, especially given that the default view setting here is "new" (a good thing!), is that older posts get less engagement as the week goes on and new posts push them out. Of course, this will be true of any post, including front-page posts, and maybe it would be equally true of front-page posts, rendering this point meaningless. But I don't think so. For one thing, a front-page post allows for more top-level comments on that post, which I think potentially allows for more wide ranging and extensive discussion and which (I believe) keeps a post farther up on the front page. This is partially due simply to the UI; the more nested a comment is, the more quickly it gets relegated to "click here to see rest of thread" oblivion, where far fewer people see them (see below). I also get the sense that the algorithm works a little different for front-page posts than for comments, and that it allows a well-engaged front page post to stay higher up on the page than a well-engaged comment, though I could be wrong about this.

By shifting to front-page posts, we would get a whole extra level of viewable comments!

Due to how a reddit-style UI works, relegating our major posts to the Culture War Thread means that we shift the entire discussion one step "over" (or "deeper"?), which in turn means that comments become unviewable without clicking "see more," which definitely decreases viewership and thus discussion. If people's responses to comments/posts were top-level, instead of second level, we could have more wide-ranging conversations and perhaps a little bit more engagement (which adds up) on interesting posts.

It may be confusing to new users

I'm not sure about this one, since I was lucky enough to find the Motte before the move, but intuitively it seems right to me. Imagine you have no idea what "the Motte" is, and have no idea about its history as a spin off of the Culture War Thread from the SSC subreddit, etc., etc. Assume also that like many visitors, you don't bother clicking on the FAQ on anything like that, but instead simply start scrolling through the site's posts. You'll notice that there aren't actually that many front-page posts, and that many of those posts don't get very much engagement at all. If you don't notice that the Culture War Threads get thousands of comments (especially likely if you come on a Monday or Tuesday, see above), you might then conclude that this is a relatively "dead" website, and move on. I'd like the site to keep getting new blood, so this worries me, although I have no idea how big a problem this might be in reality. (Also it seems possible that the kind of person who can't figure out about the Culture War Thread, etc., might be the kind of person we're not particularly interested in attracting in the first place, but I don't know that for sure.)

Any other thoughts on this? Reasons you like the Culture War Thread vs. a front-page post format? Ways the Culture War Thread could be improved? Other ways in which the current format creates problems?

Teach a Man to Revolt: Dreams of a Dark Bill of Rights

26 comments - 1462 thread views 9mo ago by KulakRevolt (anarchonomicon.substack.com)

Wellness Wednesday for July 12, 2023

81 comments - 1866 thread views 9mo ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Why Don't Normies Trust Cryptocurrency?

54 comments - 1838 thread views 9mo ago by FarNearEverywhere (text post)

I am goddamn well pissed-off because yet another one of these bloody spam blackmail emails hit a work account this morning, and thus the question posed above.

Why don't ordinary people accept that crypto is THE CURRENCY OF THE FUTURE? Why does it have a bad reputation? Don't they know something something blockchain contracts Satoshi Nakamoto computers something something means it's beans on toast all round?

Well, this is why. This is just another iteration of the kind of thing I see too frequently for my liking, and I'm quoting it in full because it'll be pertinent:

Hello there!

Unfortunately, there are some bad news for you.

Around several months ago I have obtained access to your devices that you were using to browse internet.

Subsequently, I have proceeded with tracking down internet activities of yours.

Below, is the sequence of past events:

In the past, I have bought access from hackers to numerous email accounts (today, that is a very straightforward task that can be done online).

Clearly, I have effortlessly logged in to email account of yours [deleted].

A week after that, I have managed to install Trojan virus to Operating Systems of all your devices that are used for email access.

Actually, that was quite simple (because you were clicking the links in inbox emails).

All smart things are quite straightforward. (>_<)

The software of mine allows me to access to all controllers in your devices, such as video camera, microphone and keyboard.

I have managed to download all your personal data, as well as web browsing history and photos to my servers.

I can access all messengers of yours, as well as emails, social networks, contacts list and even chat history.

My virus unceasingly refreshes its signatures (since it is driver-based), and hereby stays invisible for your antivirus.

So, by now you should already understand the reason why I remained unnoticed until this very moment...

While collecting your information, I have found out that you are also a huge fan of websites for adults.

You truly enjoy checking out porn websites and watching dirty videos, while having a lot of kinky fun.

I have recorded several kinky scenes of yours and montaged some videos, where you reach orgasms while passionately masturbating.

If you still doubt my serious intentions, it only takes couple mouse clicks to share your videos with your friends, relatives and even colleagues.

It is also not a problem for me to allow those vids for access of public as well.

I truly believe, you would not want this to occur, understanding how special are the videos you love watching, (you are clearly aware of that) all that stuff can result in a real disaster for you.

Let's resolve it like this:

All you need is $1450 USD transfer to my account (bitcoin equivalent based on exchange rate during your transfer), and after the transaction is successful, I will proceed to delete all that kinky stuff without delay.

Afterwards, we can pretend that we have never met before. In addition, I assure you that all the harmful software will be deleted from all your devices. Be sure, I keep my promises.

That is quite a fair deal with a low price, bearing in mind that I have spent a lot of effort to go through your profile and traffic for a long period.

If you are unaware how to buy and send bitcoins - it can be easily fixed by searching all related information online.

Below is bitcoin wallet of mine: 1Nx353jT8zZYaqmoMdMr2PRtdixStrDoZE

You are given not more than 48 hours after you have opened this email (2 days to be precise).

Below is the list of actions that you should not attempt doing:

Do not attempt to reply my email (the email in your inbox was created by me together with return address).

Do not attempt to call police or any other security services. Moreover, don't even think to share this with friends of yours. Once I find that out (make no doubt about it, I can do that effortlessly, bearing in mind that I have full control over all your systems) - the video of yours will become available to public immediately.

Do not attempt to search for me - there is completely no point in that. All cryptocurrency transactions remain anonymous at all times.

Do not attempt reinstalling the OS on devices of yours or get rid of them. It is meaningless too, because all your videos are already available at remote servers.

Below is the list of things you don't need to be concerned about:

That I will not receive the money you transferred.

Don't you worry, I can still track it, after the transaction is successfully completed, because I still monitor all your activities (trojan virus of mine includes a remote-control option, just like TeamViewer).

That I still will make your videos available to public after your money transfer is complete.

Believe me, it is meaningless for me to keep on making your life complicated. If I indeed wanted to make it happen, it would happen long time ago!

Everything will be carried out based on fairness!

Before I forget...moving forward try not to get involved in this kind of situations anymore!

An advice from me - regularly change all the passwords to your accounts.

Forget all the guff about "I saw you jerking off to kinky porn", this is an old work account that we only keep around because a few sites won't let us change to the new email address. There isn't any camera, mike, etc. set up and do I really need to say nobody here is jerking off to kinky porn during work hours?

Yes, they're trying to reel in people who are panicked and ignorant of what goes on with computers and just have vague ideas they've picked up from news headlines about large corporations getting hacked (such as happened in my own country to the national health service). I know it's trash and I regularly delete these and the more sophisticated invoice scam ones.

But.

This is the experience most ordinary people will have about bitcoin/cryptocurrency, and mostly what it says is true: I haven't the faintest idea how to start tracking these bozos down if I wanted to. They do have secure and untraceable anonymous transactions. Hackers do steal and sell on information.

So long as cryptocurrency is associated with criminals and fraud, nobody is going to trust it or touch it with a ten-foot barge pole. You don't want goverment interference and regulation? Then do something about these guys who are scamming and making money off scams.

Transnational Thursdays 8

6 comments - 1369 thread views 9mo ago by Soriek (text post) Edited 9mo ago

This is a general catch all thread for people who want to talk about international relations or foreign policy. Pretty much anything is welcome, whether people want to give updates from other countries, talk about the Ukraine War or some other current event that’s grabbed your attention, or even just share any interesting books or articles you’ve been reading lately. I like to get the ball rolling with some general coverage of a bunch of countries, including some I think people here will be generally interested in and some people might not already follow too closely.

Spain

Following the ruling Socialist party’s poor May performance in municipal elections, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez dissolved parliament and called new snap elections. Spain will now be heading to the polls on the 23rd amidst a month of heatwaves and flooding.

The center right Popular Party (PP) is currently in the lead, trailed by the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). A PP victory raises the spectre of a coalition with Vox, one of Europe’s newest far right parties, who are currently polling similarly with the far left Sumar, the most likely ally for the PSOE. A conservative victory seems like the most likely outcome but it’s still too soon to say.

Ghana

Ghana recently split its four administrative regions into six. This might not sound like a big deal but the border lines split several ethnic enclaves apart. Despite the fact that these regions don’t actually have self-governance or anything, the divisions ended up being extremely contentious and the security forces had to deployed in the Volta region to deal with growing ethnic unrest.

Senegal

The last few months have been stressful in Senegal, with a high profile sexual assault case disbarring the main opposition leader from running for their upcoming election. All eyes were on current President Macky Sall, to see if he planned on running for an illegal third term. Amid mounting deadly protests he has finally announced that he will actually retire at the end of his term, leaving the field wide open.

Zimbabwe

The ZANU-PF party in Zimbabwe has held power since independence in 1980, with the current President taking power right after Mugabe via a coup and then a fraudulent election. New elections are next month featuring the same opposition candidate as the last one. Unfortunately there are already worrying signs that they won’t be free and fair, with the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change having members arrested and rallies banned.

Various growth reports for Zimbabwe have actually been decent, though inflation is still gonzo high at 175% YoY and Zimbabwe’s government health insurer for federal employees seems to be collapsing due to mismanagement.

Japan

Following Japan reestablishing trade relationships with Korea the previous week, Europe has finally lifted their 2011 post Fukushima restrictions on Japanese food imports. Japan and Ukraine also held a summit in Lithuania Wednesday where Zelensky is expected to further request Kishida’s assistance in rebuilding Ukrainian infrastructure. This is a normal role for Japan to fill as they are the second largest aid donor in the world and have quite a bit of infrastructure experience.

CW: sexual violence

There has been a fair amount of public uproar over Japan’s outdated laws on sexual harassment and violence, which has led to a flurry of reforms. They raised penalties for taking nonconsensual sexual photos of someone to up to three years in prison, expanded the definition of assault to require consent (as opposed to physical resistance) and expanded the statute of limitations, and raised the age of consent to 16 from 13, where it has stood since 1907 (it was often higher at the individual prefecture level).

This continues in Abe’s footsteps of making Japan a generally better country for women and is newsworthy on its own, but I also bring it up to show how Japan’s continuously dominant party, the Liberal Democratic Party, has remained in power so long. They’re a big tent party that’s held together by cliques based on personality rather than policy, which allows them to practice a fair amount of policy flexibility to the advantage of draining away popular wedge issues. Basically whenever they hear the opposition find an issue that’s popular with the public they say “actually we’re totally into this idea.” Then they take the lead on passing it to strip away any momentum the opposition would have gotten off of it. Or, if they don’t actually want to pass it, they just say it’s in committee for a while and release various bulletins about their plans. This has the downside of keeping one party entrenched in power (plus some other electoral shenanigans, like if the LDP calls elections only they will know in advance and have been preparing), but has the advantage of keeping the party actually decently responsive to democratic public sentiment.

Turkey

In recent months, Sweden has made efforts to meet Turkey’s demands, amending its Constitution, passing new counterterrorism legislation and agreeing to extradite several Turks who stand accused of crimes in Turkey. But Swedish courts have blocked other extraditions, and Swedish officials have said that they cannot override their country’s free-speech protections.

Turkey was in rare form this week, throwing another wrench in the Swedish NATO ascension process by bringing up a new demand to greenlight Sweden: that Turkey be allowed to join the EU. Turkey having made almost no progress on their EU ascension goals meant this could only happen if the EU waived nearly all of their normal requirements. The US replied that it supported Turkey’s “aspirations”.

Turkey has finally relented, seemingly, after negotiations that are not yet fully clear, and Sweden will be joining NATO.

Erdogan will also meet soon with Putin over the grain deal from last year, which is set to expire next week. Russia has expressed unwillingness to extend the deal, which could throw another crisis situation wide open if the world loses access to Ukraine’s grain exports (“the U.N. argues that it has benefited those [developing world] states by helping lower food prices by more than 20% globally”).

Due to Turkey’s negotiating leverage here and with Sweden they’ve gained themselves quite a bit of influence, if not much in the way of good will. Erdogan will be visiting the Gulf later this month, where he has also been building alliances, particularly with Qatar.

Colombia

The recently concluded ceasefire between the government and the rebel group ELN has finally come into effect, with both the rebels and the armed forces halting attacks. Ideally it is supposed to last six months, which would be the longest period of peace since the 60s. This is a major victory for Colombia and for President Gustavo Petro, whose administration thus far has been wracked by corruption scandals and stillwater reforms. They are now separately entering into negotiations with the much smaller conflict with a faction of FARC that rejected the last peace agreement.

A new legislative session will start soon and he plans to re-submit his pension and labor reforms laws. The Finance Ministry has also released their new budget with some ambitious spending raises which critics say might exceed budgetary rules Colombia has in place to reduce their deficits. The Central Bank has held steady on interest rates this month and is anticipated to begin to cut them soon as inflation recovers.

Brazil

Lula looks to be on his way to pass a major consumption tax reform that previous administrations have failed on. It remains to be seen if it can pass the Senate but even a surprising amount of conservative law makers voted in favor. Lula has successfully continued his campaign to replace the Central Bank governors with his allies in hopes of driving them towards interest rate cuts, and also successfully elevated his personal lawyer to the Supreme Court.

At the recent Mercosur summit he pushed for Bolivia’s ascension and for “the Mercosur trade bloc to advance in talks for deals with Canada, South Korea and Singapore, while aiming to increase commerce with other countries in Latin America and Asia…In addition to those three nations, Lula said, Mercosur could also "explore new negotiation fronts" with China, Indonesia, Vietnam and countries in Central America and the Caribbean. The Brazilian leader reaffirmed he is committed to completing the trade agreement struck in 2019 between the bloc and the European Union, but again called some addenda proposed by EU 'unacceptable'."

Guatemala

In excellent headlines today we have “Top tribunal certifies Guatemala’s election result minutes after another court suspends party”.

Guatemala’s Supreme Court has given the thumbs up to the first round of elections but the Attorney General has now suspended the anti-corruption underdog Bernardo Arévalo. As best as I can tell, their constitution forbids suspending a candidate mid-election.

Thailand

Thanks to @cake for the breaking news update, Thailand's underdog progressive candidate, Pita Limjaroenrat, has been blocked from the office of the Prime Minister by the military-appointed senate.

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