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4bpp

Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs

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joined 2022 September 05 01:50:31 UTC

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4bpp


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs

				
				
				

				

					3 followers  

					follows 2 users  

					joined 2022 September 05 01:50:31 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, that's the speculative part of the proposal. Nobody doubts government childcare facilities are garbage right now, but I would like to see how far we could go with a moonshot to make it not so. It's not hard to justify considering we are essentially looking at an epidemic of people unwilling to put up with the work of childrearing in the form that is expected.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, the set of people who don't mind using it would be drawn from both people who otherwise would raise their own children and those who would otherwise go childless. The latter will compete with you on those terms regardless (modulo the one-time competitive advantage from the cash injection), and you shouldn't forget the downside of letting  birthrate decline continue as usual, which is that the entire pyramid scheme of big society may collapse. Surely you can't be completely indifferent towards the prospect of being left to your own devices in old age with no medical insurance or pension (any savings might at that point be confiscated or devalued by inflation, and for good measure they might also legally restrict the right of any children you raised personally to preferentially support you rather than slaving away for the entire cohort of geriatric millennials). Reducing the probability of this scenario at least a little winds up on the other side of the scale.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Surely singles are not the category we are talking about? Like many I know, I'm in the category of "long-term partner, no children". Either way, why do you think it doesn't pass the smell test? I think electronic entertainment is the most obvious reason why the idea that people in the 60s/80s had at least as much fun is the one that doesn't pass the smell test: when given the choice, people overwhelmingly choose games, modern videos and slop over just about any [activity that was available in the '80s].


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It occurs to me that to Americans this might still not read as upper-middle class. They would be looking for something like villas with large gardens and 3m tall hedgerows blocking outside views in a car-only neighbourhood, and certainly no parks, stations, big roads or hospitals anywhere in ear- or eyeshot. Perhaps more similar to a nouveau riche dacha settlement, in Russian terms.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it's borderline, but insofar as the idea is to signal to the Russian upper brass that they are not even safe in their apartment blocks, it meets dictionary definitions such as Merriam-Webster's "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sir, this is a Wendy's culture war forum. You are not talking to people who are rejecting you from quant jobs, though if I were the hiring manager for one, I would reject you just on the basis of these posts. Not being so thin-skinned that you would fly off the handle over a tortured  misinterpretation of a word is also a job requirement.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Cool, the answer to that is the usual one: if your competitors are leaving money on the ground by acting suboptimally, prove them wrong by outperforming them. Polymarket and several cryptocurrency trading platforms have open APIs, you can go and write code to  fleece the foreign swots with your superior ability right away if HFT is your thing.


(Honestly, though, to me it just sounds like you farmed good scores on easy tests and are very good at finding excuses for avoiding the hard ones that satisfy yourself.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If the person who shot him had no experience with firearms, it's entirely plausible. Hit a non-lethal spot the first time because you are nervous, and two more times because you underestimated recoil and now your hands are hurt and shaking.


What do you figure was the point in the 2024 case? I think I gave a reasonable enough list of benefits. High-ranking military being scared to leave their house without a bodyguard degrades military performance: people make worse decisions under stress, and more competent candidates may not want such a job.


But maybe it was actually done by a Japanese high schooler with a magic notebook - I've been reading a lot of manga lately...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
At least as of right now, the official-line-adjacent Telegram channels I know about (anna_news, sashakots, rybar) are not really giving this any priority over their daily war reporting noise, and I'm not seeing any traces of an "IRL action movie hero" framing. They are just talking about how those perpetrators that were caught admitted to being paid money by the Ukrainian secret services and the like.


Even if you think a false flag is conceivable, why would it be more likely than that the Ukrainians indeed did it? This wouldn't be the first time, unless you claim that all the assassinations of prominent Russian figures until now, including the ones that they openly took credit for, were actually false flags, and the benefits for their side are obvious without mental gymnastics (eliminating useful individuals, encumbering Russian processes with friction and fear, signalling Russian weakness to internal doubters and external supporters). It seems like you want this to be a false flag, contra LW principles.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The most realistic path is mass cloning and artificial wombs, I think.




If my understanding that the real obstacle to people having children is the hedonistic opportunity cost of raising children is correct, I think there is room for a lower-tech solution: state-run nurseries/orphanages that are actually optimised for quality rather than to dump undesirables without making everyone feel too guilty about it, and a flat cash benefit on the order of 4 of the mother's yearly salaries for delivering a child to them. You could even give the biological parents dibs on adoption in the event they later change their mind.


(By not paying the same amount of upfront cash to parents who raise their own children, you (1) save money and (2) implicitly brainwash people into thinking children are valuable. Someone is willing to pay you 200k for one! Will you take the money like a poor person, or have one and keep it to broadcast to the world that you are so well-off that you don't need it?)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What sense would that make? Russians (the ones that can be reached by staged terrorist attacks on a general, at least) don't seem to need further motivation to continue prosecuting the war; fence-sitters will surely not become more inclined to stay on the fence with further evidence that internal control is weak; everyone who is against them, meanwhile, will be cheering on the attempt and consider it absolutely justified and further proof of Ukrainian pluck and skill. Any general norms against dirty tricks played on enemy leadership were long kicked to the curb by Americans and Israelis.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In my eyes there is a simple explanation for dropping birth rates, which all these reports fastidiously ignore: adult life without children has continuously gotten more fun, while adult life with children has at best remained about the same, and the millennial generation is the one for which the enjoyableness of the former has finally conclusively overtaken the latter. We are in fact the first generation in the West to have completely shed the taboo on adults engaging in frivolous play outside of a handful of sanctioned categories that can be seen as healthy or the like, which I am occasionally reminded of when my mother asks me on the phone what I have been up to and I slip up and mention some game I tried whereupon she inevitably switches to a tone of anger and disgust and reminds me of my age.


If you want people to have children again, you either need to find a way to feed adults with children comparable amounts of dopamine to what is available to those without, or ban the whole spectrum of international pleasure travel (outside of boring package holidays priced so you can afford them once a year), escape rooms, hip restaurants, Tiktok trends and Steam accounts for the over-25.


I do think that there are small things that could be done on the margin that are related to the above while not being quite as drastic, but these still would require sacrifices from a people very used to having its cake and eating it too: most significantly, removing most of the relatively novel legislation that is purported to enhance the safety of children but gets in the way of the parents' dopamine acquisition, such as mandatory child seats in cars, legally required supervision, or liability for harm done to or by unsupervised children. It should be permissible once again to put five year olds on the laps of their 12 year old siblings in the back of your car, and let them roam the streets freely when the parents want a break from them, as was the case for me growing up; and if they climb a tree and fall down, or get injured in a car crash, that ought to be considered tragic but not intrinsically treated as someone's legal fault.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My sense is that Bulgarian Gypsies comprise a very strange genetic and cultural soup, and having multiple fake names with some of them being Turkic is not at all out of the ordinary. Consult Wikipedia for the language, and maybe one of the two sources of Skibidi Toilet for vibes.


Wikipedia does not mention Albanian, but in reality they have a quite significant presence there too (some estimates say up to 5%?), so it would not be surprising to see some vocabulary backwash. In a way, there is some curious convergence between their ways and those of another famous class of rootless cosmopolitans, though of course they wind up on different ends of the social hierarchy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My point is just that "mandatory medical procedure" does not code "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State" to a greater degree than other things which are very common, so unless all these other things are also signs of fascist dictatorship, to whatever extent "mandatory medical procedure" signals fascist dictatorship at least does not factor through any similarity between it and "Everything in the State(...)".


The connection to Trump is downstream from the discussion that preceded it: @birb_cromble was trying to argue that Trump is not closer to fascism than his American predecessors on the basis that Biden before him imposed mandatory medical procedures, which he presumably sees as a very fascist thing to do (more fascist than any of @guy's examples). I argue contra this in the direction that mandatory medical procedures are not actually all that fascist, and hence @guy's examples about Trump can't be flatly dismissed with something to the effect of "Biden was very fascist so none of this should even rise to the point of consideration".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, but it's a stretch to go from a medical procedure being mandated under threat of losing your job to that motto. There are many procedures that match the motto better than mandatory vaccination, while being very common - like, for example, state railways, public schooling with civics classes, and mandatory ID.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean, I'm aware (and I think most others who have what I would consider this reading are) how centrally it featured in the agenda of Hitler and other core Nazis from the beginning. The "natural consequence" argument is not "they seized power first and then serendipitously decided to kill the Jews", but "someone seizing this much power and agency is bound to produce a pile of corpses one way or another".


This amounts to an almost fully general cynicism against action and ambition - the assumption is that the world frustrates and obstructs you if you want to achieve anything significant, and if you are the sort of person whose reaction to being obstructed is "we should find a way to root out the obstructionists" rather than to give up, then you will likely eventually mass-murder someone while trying to immanentize your ideals, simply because even Little Timmy probably believes in something that, if taken seriously, would require murdering millions and all that is stopping him is that he is quick to give up. This is of course pretty antithetical to the Yankee ethos, so it would not catch on in "Optimate/Vaishya" (or what those Moldbug terms were) America.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The old tension between the "the salient thing about the Nazis is that they killed Jews" and "the salient thing about the Nazis is that they seized power and brutally eliminated all dissent, the Jew-killing just came later as a natural consequence" views? Americans are often programmed to favour the former, but I don't think the latter is so rare or unreasonable. This is especially so because I am European, but perhaps some American lefties are in the same memespace now. In our eyes, the Nazis would still have had the Nazi essence even if they hypothetically had left the Jews alone. Comparing to such hypothetical versions of the SS and Gestapo is still hyperbolic, but not in the way or to the extent you say.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is this a thing that is associated with fascist dictatorships more strongly than with other forms of government? Usually "if the government forces me to do things I don't want, that's basically fascism" is a leap of nomenclature more associates with young lefties.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Fair. I mean, I want more people who want them to win around! In this context, it just seemed more expedient to talk down Iconochasm who felt besieged/mocked by and snapped back at an outgroup that most likely was not involved in that exchange at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Motte is a tiny and obscure forum. Posts here are not going to normalise anything or materially affect the outcome of the culture war, even on the off chance that they persuade a significant number of posters here. In fact, assuming this is necessary to make it possible to have a reasonable debate here at all; if you treat this forum as a pulpit where posts must be judged for their effect on the course of history rather than their factual content, you just reproduce the grandstanding popularity contest dynamics of Xwitter and Reddit.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Your attempt to pull a UNO Reverse card here falls flat, because the implied accusation against your interlocutor of concern trolling is not credible. On a forum like this one, it is a given that basically nobody wants the DEI/pro-immigration/pro-trans/? wing of Democrats to win, and therefore the parent poster's concern (that ICE's strategy might lead to just that) is more likely than not genuine. On the other hand, you are not even trying to convince anyone that you would be unhappy if the Democrats' access to power suffered due to any putative bad optics.


The parent might not favour your specific brand of Republican politics, especially if that brand is just "more power to God-Emperor Trump and his goons", but it seems very plausible that they are coming from a place that is more like "please, surely none of us want to go back to the Obama/Biden years, so stop doing things that will lead to that" than "I want you to stop doing things your party likes and start doing things my party likes". It might of course be that the former is not very compelling to you because you are one of the people who have memed themselves into valuing everything other than "whatever Trump does, or perhaps more of it" at minus infinity so there is simply no viable solution that involves any form of restraint, but if so that would make you unusual enough that you should state your value function explicitly rather than just shit-flinging because you assume your interlocutor knew this about you and wanted to troll.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
His arrest seems fine to me in isolation, but I'm pessimistic about any prospect for an even-handed underlying principle there. A general legal framework against nonconsensual communication would be nice, but are any major political actors willing to forfeit their ability to impose their spam on others in return for being left unmolested themselves? I, for one, would be happy if this guy, abortion clinic protesters, university lecture disruptors, Samsung executives who greenlight patching your smart fridge to display ads and Motte ban evaders all had to share a prison cell going forward.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm on board with the object-level counterpart to the first three points, but only partially with the last one, because I think standards for federal agents (who are supposedly a selected group) about killing should be higher than standards for men in general. Likewise, with the bar story, if you replace the generic man at a bar with, I don't know, a social worker involved with prostitutes, I would absolutely consider him not being able to resist the temptation to rape a slag a signal in favour of "male prostitute counselors are vicious opportunistic rapists".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


When criminals commit a robbery, and police accidentally shoot and kill civilians, the robbers get charged with those murders too for creating the conditions in which they happened.




Yeah, that always struck me as stupid tough-on-crime porn that creates wrong incentives too. It's not like the people who do messy robberies have the executive function or maybe even just the value function (would you not just think caught = it's over in the US?) to be influenced by this additional threat, but for the police it would just strip away incentives to pursue even low-hanging fruit as far as proportionality or care for bystanders is concerned. US police already looks spectacularly unprofessional compared to other first-world countries; I'm familiar enough with all the structural arguments about their job being uniquely hard, but it seems to me that forcing them to shape up has never really been tried.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
From whom? I'm not surrounded by enough Americans in real life nowadays to actually get organic interactions about this stance, and on this forum I certainly get the sense that a lot of posters think there ought to be zero negative consequences for the agents. I wasn't sure if OP was in that class, which is why I responded asking for clarification (as should have been made clear by the very first sentence of my post).