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このMOLOCHだ！

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 01:50:31 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hm. There's definitively a sense in which Christians are being treated with kid gloves (due to, I'd wager, the conservative slant of the community as well as a perhaps somewhat outdated sense that such a person being willing to talk to and expound their beliefs to us is rare and precious), but the first two examples do seem to narrowly keep within our Overton window of permitted antagonism simply because they keep the assertions of delusion within the requisite "I think that..." container. (The last one might just have evaded attention as a barely-engaged-with leaf comment.)


I wouldn't feel particularly worried about saying that I think that Christians are indulging in a mass delusion as part of a larger post, though if I made that the only thing I say a modhat response would be quite justified. (Of course, I'd wish for the same in response to a COVID post saying only that.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You seem to be painting a picture where the problem is basically that voters are too stupid (to see through lies and avoid repeatedly being fooled, or pay attention when the proponents of Brexit make it clear that they aren't actually against immigration) and helpless (to build their own institutions and political parties, or even "just" start a revolution) to get their preferences satisfied. At that point, it's hard to even invoke something like a social contract for why politicians should heed voter interests in this matter, since a contract implies a deal which implies some sort of mutual benefit and evidently there is no detriment to politicians from defecting; and all that you can appeal to is some sort of slave-morality pity or obligation towards their inferiors. Wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, etc.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, I understood that (see second half of the post). But in that interpretation, isn't any legal prohibition of experimental or perceived-to-be-unethical medical interventions still similarly equivalent to "deciding someone needs to die"?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Many more people starve or die violent deaths. By "not care", I mean that children cease registering as an either morally privileged or familiar category; in a way the adult Palestinian civilian feels more relatable and his hardships therefore like more of a concern, because he's a fellow adult and I also think I've interacted more with Palestinians than children in the last 5 years.


(Have you ever used vi, the text editor? Did the "Help poor children in Uganda!" line on the startup screen make it past your mental spam filter? I would guess that for most people, it got filtered well before the current situation I am talking about set in. It's just that for us, all children might as well be poor children in Uganda.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is weeding out those who have trouble with resolving the confusion towards "whatever the overwhelming societal consensus backed by the local monopoly on violence wants me to believe" a bug or a feature? Society's wheels are greased with a million falsehoods, oversimplifications and truths that are too hard to verify for the vast majority of people, and not all of them are as memetically reinforced as this one. Perhaps having a conspicuous honeypot (which I'd also estimate to be in the third category, even if some cosmetic details may be fudged, which only serves to raise its attractiveness) is better than letting the compulsive contrarians advance through society and wind up somewhere where they can do real damage.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Disagree Russia had any strategic fear of NATO.




What is the basis for this belief? Doesn't the current war prove that they would have been right to have a strategic fear of NATO proximity, considering that right now NATO is using its proximity to successfully stop Russia from attaining its interests in a third country?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The symmetry with bank robbery doesn't hold, because "jailing bank robbers is unjust" is a minority position, and opposition to any jailing at all is even more so. On the other hand, opposition to torture in general is (mercifully, in my eyes) still mainstream, as is the belief that extreme punishment for negligence is unjust. Argue for jailing bank robbers and most people will nod along and no norms will be changed. Argue for torturing scientists who oversaw major accidents, and you will only leave us with additional torture, because abstract principles like "no torture" are always softer than tribalism like "if we torture, it better be the outgroup". This will neither be torture that you want (because you and your people are in a minority (as weighted by power) disagreed with ~ despised by the majority) nor torture that I want (because I don't want there to be torture).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You mis-remember, or at least mis-understood.




Sorry if that was the case. That being said, I don't think there's a point in relitigating the object-level justness of this war for either side yet again, since this has been done on this forum many times already and presumably hardly any opinions were shifted. (For the record, my position is still that all sides are morally in the wrong - the current Ukrainian government for seizing the country in a revolution in 2014 and prosecuting a war against the side that did not back the revolutionaries, the American government for providing material support to the winning side of the revolution since 2014, and the Russian government for entering the war on the side of the losing side in 2022; and yes, I grant that Russia's support is the greater immorality than the preceding ones by virtue of the greater degree and suffering it brought, but this is a difference of quantity, not quality).


I don't think that your predictions about how the war would go are of particular relevance to the question, though I'd be interested to hear why you thought that they are, because I've seen posts that suggest that "believing side X is in the right" and "believing side X will win" is strongly entangled in the view of many and it puzzles me. Despite my position above (and, orthogonally to questions of justice, preferring a future in which Russia has won the war to one in which it has lost, in purely geopolitical terms), I have also believed from the start that Russia's military and leadership is inadequate and their loss is overwhelmingly likely.




People believing stupid things is both plausible and still stupid, and the sincerity of someone's belief in their beliefs does not really affect the correctness of their arguments. As the fable goes, only one woman actually gave birth to the child, no matter how many claim, or sincerely believe in, their mothership.




I think the sincerity (and plausibility) of their beliefs is significant to their moral culpability, though. I know Americans dislike and have strong memetic antibodies to ("whataboutism") their own country being compared to the villain of the day that they are bringing charges against, but do you really feel that the common American has, for example, the same degree of culpability for the immeasurable amount of death and suffering brought about by the Iraq war (still much greater than what has happened in Ukraine so far, according to most estimations, and supported on the basis of arguably quite stupid beliefs about Saddam-Osama links) that you assign to the common Russian right now? When I ask whether you really feel, I do really mean the sense that they deserve to pay an appropriate price for it in suffering, which I do think the vocally pro-Ukraine posters here generally do feel towards the NPC Russians. I don't think I feel that way towards the common folk of the US, even though I have thought that maybe in the interest of cosmic justice I ought to.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Even if short men could literally not get a partner ever, this would not take them half the way to the situation of Cagots according to most people's value function (though I have certainly seen a tendency in incel communities to obsess about female acknowledgement/attention to the point that it displaces anything else, and they can truthfully say that they consider deficiency in it worse than the previously listed set of abuses; this seems to me to be pathological).


Moreover, I do not think it is in fact true, unless one is so short as to be disfigured; among all my acquaintances I can not point to a single single guy whose singleness appears to primarily be due to them being short, though there may be nontrivial indirect causality (along the lines of shortness contributing to lower SMV, which contributes to negative experiences, which contribute to personality flaws). I know of two long-term couples where despite the odds the guy is significantly shorter than the girl (and in neither of the two cases does he have any overwhelming compensatory advantages like being rich or famous). Being so short that there are no girls shorter than you at all, for a guy, at any rate would be very rare.


You could argue that the "short->unattractive personality->no dates" pipeline is just "short->no dates" with a technical extra step, but it's not like there aren't plenty of other initial causes that end in "unattractive personality->no dates" for men all the time. Among the people I knew, "got into the wrong kind of anime early on" depressed performance more than "is short"; and while you could argue that getting in the wrong kind of anime is fixable in a way being short isn't, in this case we are talking about either effect being mediated through personality (you can't unwatch Love Live! any more than you can gain height), which in either case is likely fixable, even if you need to get electroconvulsive therapy or something in the toughest cases.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How does it not? There is a bounded amount of things of value, and everything available for the use and consumption of Elon Musk is not available for the use and consumption of J. Random Janitor. Whether we directly confiscate Elon's land and redistribute it among the Janitor family, or reduce the number in Elon's bank account so that Elon's ability to bid and win in implicit or explicit auctions for things that the janitor also wants, making Elon poorer helps the janitor in expectation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But you fuck one goat...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The word was in the longer substack post linked at the bottom.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Can you spell out why you believe that giving things to the homeless, or abstaining from assaulting or expelling them, is bad? Is it just the "more of them will move into the area" thing (so it's bad that they disgrace some people who don't want anything to do with them with their presence, as opposed to... staying somewhere far away from civilisation? If they otherwise just hung out in another city, the total number of people unwillingly exposed to the homeless would be about the same), or do you actually think that this materially increases the number of homeless (either by keeping them alive when they would otherwise die, or by incentivising people to become homeless who otherwise wouldn't)?


It seems to me that the last theory would require extraordinary evidence, and the "homeless would stay in the woods if civilisation were successfully hostile to them" route can be expected to result in them dying all the same (I'd guess that the majority of people who are homeless don't have the executive function/skill level to eke out a living on land that is so useless as to remain unclaimed by civilisation). If your ask amounts to solving the homeless problem by accelerating the homeless-to-dead pipeline, you should be explicit about it, because the main obstacle to realising your proposal will be that upon reflection most people will be against it on moral principle, and this topic attracts enough attention that you can't hope to sneak some policy past the public without them realising this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think that definition is awfully general, but then surely right-wing preoccupations such as privatised prisons, the military-industrial complex, anti-union laws, and generally every instance where the state collaborates with corporate interests against private individuals (such as the whole legal edifice of copyright and DRM, prosecution of whistleblowers, ...), which historically have been a right-wing domain under the umbrella of pro-business - and let's not start talking about all the military misadventures that the US continues engaging in allegedly in furtherance of the interests of oil companies - should at the very least suffice to make left-wingers' accusations that right-wingers are fascists a plausible thesis to be debated.


(It's true that many of the above have fundamentally become bipartisan ventures, but many lefties within the US and beyond would surely retort that this is just a sign of both US parties being right-wing except for a bunch of wedge issues.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Setting up a self-sufficient homestead is not even particularly expensive in the modern US if you’re not picky about location and willing to work very very hard, so one wonders why so few of these fantasists seem to do it!




So where would you do that? In the continental US, you can't escape the Sword of Damocles of a something-studies graduate coming along and saying that your homestead is built on stolen Indian land, or the law school graduate coming along and finding some tax code or ADA regulation that you can get extorted over, and nowhere on Earth can you escape the environmentalist arrogating to himself the right to regulate how you eat and heat and breathe lest your sinful vapours sully the planet. Sure, these events might be unlikely/trifling/easily worked around, and it's not like space is without its perils. I'm still sure that a big part of the visceral appeal of the frontier is the idea that you can actually escape this and go somewhere where nobody can argue that you owe them anything, because many people's psychology is such that losing their house to unfeeling nature is bearable in a way in which losing their house to a smug and self-righteous sentient being is not; and conversely a large amount of the opposition to it seems to me to be carried by lazy rationalisation (wasteful! won't help you against the gamma ray burst anyway! why don't you start in the deep sea!) for what is really a visceral aversion against the same (because there is no greater hubris than plotting to escape the great web of obligations).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No, because I doubt any protagonist thinks of being housed in a women's prison as a perk or mercy or thinks much of the involved perpetrator at all. The thinking is that this is a great opportunity to grandstand for the  principle of trans acceptance (further amplified by toxoplasma), and anyone trying to distract from this by making other considerations more salient (such as the nature of the crimes committed and what other principles they may pertain to) is concern trolling/not arguing in good faith.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Right, I understand that. The point I'm trying to make is that "why do you care so much?" is not inconsistent or hypocritical: it's just trying to get the conservative interlocutor into admitting this after all (or force them into contortions that will make them look ridiculous to spectators).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Yet as far as I am aware, the first the woman sees on tinder is looks, and ones ranking on them is considered to be important by those that advise men as to how to increase their match rate. Would apperance play second fiddle to character in what women value, suggestions to hire a professional writer to write ones bio would be more common than suggestions to hire a pro-photographer.




Do people actually read/write bios on Tinder, and does however much space it offers for them convey enough of a signal about the traits women actually care about? (To begin with, if we're talking about Tinder, surely it already represents a biased sample of women, namely those who like the idea of swiping on hunks for a fling)




What is the negative trait men on tinder posses, which is mirror of this?




There doesn't have to be one. I don't dispute that there is some inbalance in terms of how much men like the average woman vs. how much women like the average man. However, the chart does not need reflect the scale of that imbalance, any more than the proposed "income to like" chart would reflect the scale of men's dislike for the negative trait in question. At the extreme, we could pick a completely irrelevant trait ("degree of preference for cracking breakfast eggs on the dull side"), and get a chart which would be uniformly one or the other colour given the slightest imbalance.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I have never read NYT comments, so I don't have a high-confidence model of what the commentariat would say, but the vague order of (object-level) thoughts I had up to writing this post:


    

  1. 

    Would they cope that this isn't a big deal? But how could you spin it like that?
    

    2. 

  2. 

    (Seeing a little bit of a post below that starts by indicating that the circumstance someone made this post on here carries nontrivial information)
    

    3. 

  3. 

    Right, a priori, given no top-level post about this, the natural thing to expect would be that the commenters are upset and expecting the return of Jim Crow or something.
    

    4. 

  4. 

    Given the post was made, perhaps they could argue that nothing much will change on the basis that by now everyone that matters should have realised that the outcome it would produce is the meritocratically optimal one anyway.
    

    5. 

  5. 

    Could I imagine a scenario in which I've mispegged the NYT commentership enough that they just straight up cheer the abolition? (...) No, that would be extremely surprising. Someone would have raised a stink by now and I would've noticed.
    

    6. 

  6. 

    Wait, given what I know about the Motte these days, what's the likelihood that OP is a right-winger who wants to reverse bamboozle and it is actually 3.?
    

    7. 



(7. Perhaps I am focussing on the wrong thing and they are actually talking about something different than what they expect the outcome on hiring to be. Whatever. Let's hit submit and be done with this.)


edit: After looking at it, my impression is that most of the top comments talk meta about other comments or pounce on some small detail, with "it's not a big deal" perhaps being fair as a directional gloss only on the basis of people not thinking that the most important thing to talk about is how terrible its abolition will be.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The laziest nontrivial argument to do whatever it takes to stay torture-free is that we are in a society that at least tries its darndest to maintain a pretense of shunning deliberate torture even if it is for the greater good, and all the most recent ones that did not maintain this pretense seem pretty terrible to live in.


I do concede that wanting to have all those who advocate living by the sword die by the sword and only then abolish swords is somewhat gratuitously brutal, and I'd personally be quite contented with merely locking up anyone who was involved in introducing torture. (Note that this is not to say I want to lock anyone up for arguing for it, as long as it is not implemented. That would run up against other principles.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Mocked and derided by whom, exactly? Probably not by other pro-war people. With few exceptions (usually shortly preceding that side's failure to attain its objectives for the foreseeable future), most wars are supported by most people on each warring side. If I remember correctly, you are one of the pro-war people for your side in this war, too. Something like a "but this is morally different because the others started it" also is not so compelling when the others plausibly believe the same about you, as I figure each side also does in just about any war since the "we shall gloriously seize land because its current owners are weaker" narrative has gone out of fashion centuries ago. (Claiming that this is what the other side believes hasn't, but that's a different matter.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean, yeah, in a way this war is close to a perfect setup for the Imperium to fight against the Russians - in a properly declared war between the parties (nukes barred), contained by some gentlemen's agreement to Ukrainian territory, one could surely expect the Russians to at least shoot at the AWACS drones that have been circling around Ukraine's borders since the start and possibly even Kessler low-earth orbit for the next few decades (which doesn't seem to be all that hard). As it stands, they get a massive and highly motivated fighting force at no domestic penalty, and can continuously employ outrageously fragile intelligence platforms that normally would not survive in a conflict with a near-peer adversary to their own advantage.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"If you behave like a rabid dog, don't be surprised if you get taken behind the shed and shot"


It is easy to mistake the leeriness of members of a society you find yourself opposing some key elements of for irredeemable, minus-infinity-level hostility that the only dignified response for you is to fight with all your might, but the natural consequence is then that every time you fight back against someone, more members get leery of you, until you are left standing alone against everyone. Sometimes dissidents who contain their righteous anger and try to work with those organs of society that are predisposed against them fail miserably anyway, but it seems quite clear that 100% of those that do not contain it do. Of course, it may be that you value a great chance of coming out looking more dignified to yourself in your loss higher than a small chance of not losing, but then forgive me if I don't want to participate in your particular rebellion and prefer one that is in it for victory rather than aesthetics.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Bailey Podcast E036: White Right
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No, but I seek to/am part of states that WNs want to make into white ethnostates. (Ignoring the part that I no longer live in the US nor was ever a citizen) I don't think that BLM ever wanted to make the US into a black ethnostate, or split off a part to form one, either; and even if they did, I for sure would not meet the definition for inclusion, nor would anyone I know or have care for beyond of the level I have for the generic stranger (as I somehow managed to spend my $many years in the US completely insulated from the African-American community).


To the extent to which they do want to seize control of things that I or those in my circle of care currently have (possibly shared) access to to hand to those outside of my circle, BLM would be a straight-up enemy to me, but how they define their membership in detail is then not so relevant to me. Unlike in the case of WN, they would presumably not try to lure me or anyone in my circles with a dubious promise that they are fighting for our benefit; it would be beyond any doubt that it is not so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				ISRAEL GAZA MEGATHREAD IV
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the role of framing is being underestimated here, and in general. On one hand, sure, Hamas brutally killed over a thousand civilians who presumably were largely innocent beyond whatever guilt they inherit through general support and acceptance of benefits of their country; against the standard of normal morality that most people would claim to subscribe to if asked in a non-charged setting, this was surely unjustified. On the other hand, we are constantly being asked by our authorities to consider it justified that Israel has retaliated by doing the same against Palestinian civilians. You can either try to come up with some additional principle to break the symmetry in favour of Israel's stance (Killing civilians is better when it is done by well-uniformed military members acting professionally than when it is done by shabby guys on pickups? The calculus of retaliation should have a cutoff date somewhere in 2020 so the Israelis can claim to have been attacked first?), or consider both the action and the response justified as many of those 18-24 year olds probably do, or consider neither the action nor the response justified.


At first sight, of course, why not do the last? - but my intuition tells me that this option bumps up against a particular American instinct, captured by the frequently-heard "well, do you have a better idea?" or perhaps even the adjacent "person saying it can't be done should stop bothering person who is actually doing it". Once you have identified something as a problem, whatever countermeasure remains after you have eliminated all the impossible ones must be good, because the alternative would be to shrug and say that nothing can be done which is something for debbie downers, lazy people and those lacking the requisite moral certitude. (I'm reminded of The Quiet American, an early British novel built around calling out the same trait, which at the time hit enough of a nerve that they spitefully made a movie adaptation that inverted its punchline)