4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
<3
User ID: 355
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
I think you are missing the linchpin of the worldview, which is an axiomatic assumption that persistent group differences in outcomes can't be just, natural or accidental. The fundamental equality of groups (rather than individuals) is as close to a central dogma of faith as you can get for the dominant secular religion, and everything you observe follows quite easily from trying to square this belief with observed reality. Do you have a better explanation for US statistics that does not violate this belief than that somehow, despite superficial appearances, pro-white bias must have found a way?
(Regarding the bafflement, surely smart and rational people being unwavering in a religious belief should not be surprising, given humanity's track record.)
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
On the whole, the Brexit campaign was associated with future immigration reduction, this is the broad essence of what was communicated.
If you are being lied to repeatedly, but still continue believing what you are told, that seems like a pretty canonical indicator of insufficient brainpower, informally known as stupidity. Your subsequent quote also further confirms that Brexit voters voted for Brexit because they expected it to lead to a reduction in immigration. If being able to predict the consequences of your actions is not a measure of intelligence, then what is?
They'll have lots of fun with a population that instinctively resists their policies and distrusts their leaders.
I mean, the first half of your post, put in the context of everything that happened before Brexit (and I'm sure that any attentive participant of the political system can show me a long list of instances of the electorate being deceived since the dawn of democracy), seems to suggest that the population is actually quite credulous and trusting of their leaders despite everything. At the moment Labour seems to be leading in polls, but I'm sure that if they get elected and screw up in some way power will revert to the Tories. Clearly there is no sufficient distrust to make people do something as drastic as vote third or rather fourth party, or do anything else that would reveal a preference for not continuing in the same way and deferring to the same leaders. I doubt politicians will lose many nights of sleep over people saying in TV interviews that they don't trust them and will resist their policies, as long as those people reliably keep paying their taxes, spinning in the hamster wheel, obeying the laws and voting for them.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
Ah, thanks. Those are interesting examples.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
The rest of Canada seems to overwhelmingly want Quebec to stay, and I'd assume that they and their representatives and elites are engaging in plentiful propaganda and lobbying for this (surely the Quebec independence movement is not propagandising unopposed?). In fact I can't think of any instance of a nation being in favour of getting rid of a minority along with the territory they occupy, no matter how vexatious; being big and relevant is evidently one hell of a drug.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
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.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
I have seen it argued somewhere (unfortunately I can't remember the source) is that significant gender imbalances in either direction exacerbate inter-gender hostility and conflict, as the more scarce gender is locally incentivised to overplay their market advantage (evoking hostility on the other side while also not cultivating the qualities in themselves that would enable them to have a successful relationship after the age where biological wiring towards pair bonding tends to kick in) while the more abundant gender is incentivised to "cartelise"/form an internal power structure that controls access to partners of the other gender (because random stats rolls mean you inevitably get some individuals who are more skilled at exercising power over others than at winning in a free sexual market, and the market can't clear).
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
The main repressions story I was thinking of was this, but there was also an older report just shortly after Euromaidan. The "almost cancellation" incident, however, actually was a much later story about the Ukrainian army garrisoning in civilian objects from after the war broke out, which I had mentally conflated with the previous ones; sorry about the mistake.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
Voters in Britain apparently considered it to not be a sufficiently important issue to vote for a different party over. There is a clear enough choice: you can continue voting for the parties that made it clear in word and deed that they want more immigration, or you can vote for literally any other parties, or you can start your own.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
Considering that previous referenda (1991, 1994) in which Crimea overwhelmingly voted for independence and then greater autonomy from Ukraine were ignored by the central government, what grounds did they have to believe that they would fare better this time after a government got couped in that was explicitly against their ethnicity and chosen political representatives? (And then, consider the reasonably widespread repressions against the pro-Russian population that even Amnesty noted before almost getting cancelled for it.)
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
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.)
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
What is your working definition of fascism? I'm not sure I see one under which your outgroup's use of the term is as obviously meaningless as you make it out to be, but at the same time your description of COVID policies as such is not.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
Is that doctor representative/typical of, or even represented among, those who loudly protest being called groomers? The vast majority of progressive activists do not operate clinics or hormone-selling businesses.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
"Groomer" implies that the person is doing it for base selfish motivation (of future sexual gratification), when the people you call that believe they are doing it for the sake of the children and society at large. This is bound to be insulting to activists who come from a (sub)culture that denigrates selfishness and have built their internal narrative of purpose around doing what they are doing.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
This converse you are talking about is not the position of the liberal consensus that white nationalism is up against, though; rather, it sounds like some form of straw "anti-white nationalism". Consensus liberals reject the idea that liberalism or other desirable qualities have anything to do with racial or genetic background at all, and instead consider them entirely cultural, and moreover believe in the missionary quality/persuasiveness of their own viewpoint. Admitting people from illiberal cultures into their midst of therefore good, as it will make it likely that those people or their descendants will convert to liberalism; also, shunning white nationalists is good, because these people carry some rare set of memes that evidently conveys resistance to conversion despite exposure to liberal ideas.
Compare how medieval Christianity, despite being convinced of its superiority, travelled around the world and sought to deepen its relationship with pagan peoples (whether by trade or colonialism), effectively bringing them into its cultural fold, while at the same time treating internal witches and heretics harshly.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
Her reading of the intentions behind offering her financial assistance/housing may still be correct; from the family's side this would just be "we'll buy her a house so we can keep tabs and make her go and get a proper career rather than whoring herself out online", which she might find unacceptably intrusive. Compare to anecdotes about homeless people who would rather risk dying of exposure than accept a shelter spot because the shelters are intolerant of drug consumption. I've also heard from Asian-American acquaintances whose life plans were too messy/unstable for their parents' liking that the parents would start pestering them with offers of buying them a house or apartment near where they (the parents) live and/or setting them up with a desk job at some company/office run by family friends, which said acquaintances would read as a transparent bid for greater control calculated to catch them in a moment of weakness.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
Are you seriously claiming that the IDF are filming themselves as they go around slaughtering civilians, which is what Hamas did?
No, but I consider the main bad thing to be the part where you slaughter civilians, rather than the one where you try to farm internet points for it.
Israel was attacked by Hamas, who run the polity of Gaza. Such actions often lead to an unfortunate state called "war". When Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Habor, the casualties were only a factor of two higher than in the Hamas attack. (Of course, these attacks differ in other ways, the victims of Pearl Habor were overwhelmingly military, and Imperial Japan had odds of winning which were orders of magnitude better than Hamas, though still not that high overall.)
That's you doing the "calculus of retaliation should have a cutoff date" thing. Rather than ignoring everything that happened before the Hamas attack this time, we could set the arbitrary cutoff date to be December 26th, 2008 instead, and write the same story flipped starting with "Gaza was attacked by the Israeli government, who run the polity of Israel". If we do not set arbitrary cutoffs, surely the story begins in 1948, when IL was formed as a result of an ethnically cleansing invasion of the remains of Mandatory Palestine.
In wars, civilians are often killed as a side effect. This is bad, but totally different from going around and beheading people.
Sorry, but I do not share this perception that killing civilians by bombing them from afar is somehow better or more tasteful, especially considering that I want to correct for a lifetime of consuming propaganda commissioned by the people who have a monopoly on bombing-civilians-from-afar capabilities to make it appear more tasteful.
(I should make clear that I don't think I'm an anti-IL dogmatic; at this point I would consider "recognise that the International Community does not have the collective moral will or executive power to stop them outright and therefore give IL special dispensation to exterminate their uppity charges once and for all" to be a perfectly acceptable course of action to minimise expected total future suffering.)
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
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)
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
It may well be that this is a feature of what you describe as "tech twinks in the laptop class", but then the crux is that opinions and trends (that OP is exposed to) are largely set by what you would describe as such because most culture nowadays is produced by twinks teching on their laptops. (On that matter, the circumstance that you associate it with tech and laptops may be suggestive of you underestimating the size and reach of the bubble that is not yours in other ways: my parents had me in their mid-30s too, as did most of their circle of Soviet academics that had children at all, and I recall the kids of their Western European peers also being in my age bracket.)
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
Your formulation makes it sound like it is intended as an attack, but as a (hopefully not too non-central) leftist, I'm fairly happy to stand by "[love the weak and] hate the strong" - more the latter than the former - as a tenet. Right-wingers who celebrate strength, in my general experience and certainly on here, are very quick to conflate strength and excellence (in the sense of being good at something that the speaker values terminally, hopefully not circularly including strength qua strength); but as I see it, the evolutionary telos of strength is the telos of evolution itself - that is, survival, domination and reproduction - and though strength makes it easier to attain excellence, it only does so reluctantly as a side effect when excellence is the least-resistance path to attain said domination. This, in turn, is actually more often the case when we do not grant strength the compound interest of celebrating it for itself, but instead denigrate it to force it to camouflage as something else.
I think many right-wingers, at least here, actually understand the difference between strength and excellence quite well; at least I do not see them, looking out to the sea as the SJ juggernaut rises, going "Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?" with sparkly eyes. What draws me to oppose the SJ movement is its strength, and to the extent any conservatives are drawn to support it on that basis, they become the "liberals who are the real authoritarians" that are only spoken about in hushed tones, whether you fear the modus ponens or the modus tollens.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
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"?
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
From the article, it seems like the government merely ruled that (government-provided, in the UK) life support should be withdrawn, which does not register as "ordered to be killed" any more than I would consider the government refusing to subsidise plane tickets for unemployed people to amount to imprisonment. The weird part only begins at the point where they also arrogate to themselves the right to prohibit transferring the baby to a different hospital - but this is part of a general tendency towards legal paternalism in medicine. I was under the impression that the appetite for making it illegal to go do something that is not authorized locally (including recreational drugs, experimental treatment, and especially medical interventions that touch upon ethically touchy topics such as abortions, embryonal selection, cloning...) is generally high, and people get away with it it is only due to the inattention of the legal system.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
I haven't encountered an authentic version of the "I don't want children because they will have to suffer through the warming apocalypse" sentiment in the wild, but then for myself a certain general feeling that I can't imagine a life on earth 50 years hence that will be worth living (though my blackpill of choice is more about AI and/or technologically fueled turbo-authoritarianism) certainly has been tipping the scales further against having children, so perhaps the general sentiment is not so rare. I think that the most pervasive cause is still that none of us have any mental conception of a (capital-g,l?) good life that features children. A parental generation that was never shy to resort to guilt-tripping over all the sacrifices they made to raise us certainly isn't helping there, but the understanding that millennials value experiences (which children get in the way of) over things (which children don't get in the way of as much) has been around for a while too.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
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.)
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
The one thing that unites everyone I know, ranging from the most hardcore SJWs to alt-right RETVRN types, is that nobody cares about children at all, especially not more than our respective political convictions, and especially not the abstract children of others. If you come from a genuinely more old-fashioned or natalist bubble, you may underestimate just how insignificant children have become in younger elite circles; on a gut-feeling level it is genuinely difficult for me to imagine how someone would pretend to care about children for any reason other than as a mysterious ancestral ritual that may score points against the outgroup.
(It may not be surprising that birthrates in my mid-30s cohort are very low, and the few people who did reproduce have largely dropped out socially - not, as far as I can tell, to socialise with other people, but to be alone.)
I don't think that most people think about Kenyan runners at all, but if they do, they can surely also chalk this up to something non-genetic like life in some parts of Africa just happening to involve really good running training.
A... pink slate?
You mostly can't convince religious people with correct arguments either; if they (or, more commonly, their children) are persuaded at all, it is usually precisely by status gradients. To the extent your argument works for progressive antiracism being fake, it seems that it would do likewise for religions - but then that fakeness is surely moot, since smart people have lived, killed and died for it in droves.
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