ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
No bio...
User ID: 1012
I could have written this post, I feel the exact same, the whole thing made me even more cynical about the average person. But what creeps me out the most is
Turn the switch on, and people who are ordinarily perfectly reasonable are frothing at the mouth saying you're killing grandma, you're a menace to society, you're a dirty plague rat. Turn the switch off and it's all forgotten. Like it never even happened. They don't even think about it anymore.
What does this phenomenon really tell us? To me, the implications are quite disturbing.
When I've gone around loudly proclaiming to be right about something (online or IRL) and then turn out to be wrong, I feel highly embarrassed when I get called out after the fact. In my better moments I respond with humility, and in my worse moments I respond with rage or misdirection. But the point is that I respond somehow, I feel something.
But a lot of the covid fanatics seem to simply not care at all that they were wrong. When you call them on it, you might get a shrug and a "things were different then," or even just a vague confused stare -- why are you still talking about that? Don't you know it's $currentyear? Haven't you heard about Putin?
When they were shouting about killing grandma or plague rats, I had understood those utterances as words that containing meaning or argument. But was I wrong? Were the vast majority of people literally just making mouth noises that simply signalled their alignment with the current Correct Opinion? I'm not being metaphorical here -- the Covid hysteria makes me wonder whether a large majority of our population just parrots slogans to jockey for status without engaging their thinking brains at all (outside of status calculation I guess)? If so, this would explain their apathy about their argument being wrong. "What argument?" they might respond.
Yes, it's not news that the average person is not a deep thinker. Everyone here is aware of that. But to me, the above implies that many people are not just "not deep thinkers." If they were, that wouldn't bother me much -- they and myself would be essentially the same in that we both think, just to different degrees.
But maybe these people are not just shallow thinkers, but non-thinkers. The difference between thinkers and non-thinkers is huge, and I am weirded out by the idea. It almost feels like sharing a society with a bunch of p-zombies (EDIT: to be clear, I don't actually think these people are literal p-zombies). Recent memes about internal monologues and "The Breakfast Question" come to mind. If this model is closer to the truth, it changes my outlook on many things.
I just can't sympathize with the complaints in this vein:
By the time I got to the motte, there was an awful lot of IQ/race discussion, and if you want a diversity of viewpoints, maybe consider that people that are the target of that kind of talk find it pretty exhausting to have to share space with people who seem to be obsessed with devaluing them. It creates its own sort of echo chamber.
This just sounds like someone who belongs to the dominant ideology and has never experienced people unapologetically stating non-mainstream views before. As a reactionary conservative Catholic for the last 20 years, the overwhelming majority of opinions I've read have been counter to my beliefs, to put it mildly. There are people on this site who think I'm a net negative to the human race. And that's just fine. I'm hear to read what they say because it's interesting and because I can handle it. If it's standard prog/transhumanist/libertarian argument #2,547 I might skim it, but there's still a good number of novel (to me) ideas in the posts here.
I really think this describes the majority of the left wing burnouts. "It's too hostile! Everyone's always pushing back on what I say!" Maybe that's because your own ideas are soft because your rarely receive pushback. No, your Thanksgiving dinner table argument with your redneck dad doesn't count even though it probably made you feel like Rosa Parks. The right wingers here are more tenacious and educated then average, so their criticisms and argument sting more. Welcome to The Motte, that's what this place is for.
To be clear, I'm not trying to dump on those folks. I'm sure it's a legitimately challenging and shocking experience. And I want to give special thanks to the left of center folks who stick around on The Motte. Without y'all this place wouldn't work, and I hope you stick around to keep the right wingers on their toes.
(Also one of the other posts successfully guilted me into resuming janny duty. Forgive me Zorba for I have sinned.)
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
Your general point is lost on many people. I was talking to my boomer mom about Kanye getting blacklisted for alleged anti-Semitism and her response was basically "I don't see why him getting punished is a big deal, everyone knows the Jews run Hollywood and finance, but everyone also knows it's just not something you're supposed to say in polite company because it's un-PC, so he's an idiot." Except that a lot of my fellow millennials seem to thinking that Jewish overrepresentation is an evil conspiracy theory spread by evil people (I would know, I was one of them). Same goes for the "days of rage" in the 70s.
What "everyone knows" in one generation is often seen as "false" by later generations if it's not allowed to be discussed. I ran into the same things when speaking to Chinese people about the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square. The older folks who were around for those events had nuanced opinions, even the nationalists, while younger people either believe that it "wasn't really that bad, certainly nowhere near as bad as Western propaganda makes it out to be" or they have no opinion at all.
Enforced silence on a topic can be more effective than enforced orthodoxy, since it's so much more subtle.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
11mo ago
Thanks for sharing. But I'm nearly as tired of Holocaust-themed morality plays as I am of the Civil Rights Era-flavored ones. Has anyone under age 70 not been bludgeoned through their entire lives with "Prejudice is bad!" and "The banality of evil!" and "Never again!" etc?
I don't understand people who write books on these themes in 2014. Is there even the thinnest residue of stunning bravery to be mined and exploited by speaking truth to a (long vanquished) power? I have to imagine that even blue tribers would yawn at yet another Holocaust tear jerker or To Kill a Mockingbird clone, "don't they know trans persecution or MAGA terrorism are where the points are scored in 2023?" And even dispensing with the cynicism, is there really anything interesting left to say on these topics? I'd wager that nearly any book you could write on them has already been written.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
11mo ago
I'm increasingly against the concept of "asylum" in general. A lot of discussions about immigration seem to take it for granted that we must let in a nonzero percentage of "asylum seekers," that this is just some sort of given, or law of physics or something. It's not. The number of asylum seekers we have to take in is zero.
It must suck to live in a place controlled by warlords and gangs. But life sucks in a lot of place and in a lot of time periods. Sometimes it even sucks within the borders of the U.S. I don't believe I or my countrymen have a special moral duty to shelter every single person who shows up at the border with some unverifiable story of persecution. The idea sounds good in theory, but in practice it is one of those ideas that seems unstable in its theoretical limited form and which inevitably decays into its more stable degraded, excessive, unlimited form (see also college financial aid).
Even a midwit like me can tell that there are simply too many people in LatAm and the 3rd world for the U.S. to absorb without impacting the living standards of Americans, so I have to suspect that "taking care of asylum seekers" is really a pretext for serving some other ideological belief, like "increasing diversity" or "destroying white hegemony" or "free market absolutism." I guess there are a few true believers among the suicidally altruistic (religious charities come to mind) but I wager that they're a minority and are mostly the "useful idiots" that the ideologues in power use to further their ideologies.
Please explain how the remnant culture left over at that point avoids being outcompeted, crushed, and enslaved by one that still values objective thinking and hard work. What, you just put the sassiest guys you can find in charge of military R&D and hope you maintain a technological edge based on chutzpah? Fill your logistical chain with guys who don't adhere to schedules but have a lot of swag?
My impression is that woke activitists assume that there is functionally infinite seedcorn and that they can complete the worldwide revolution before people begin (literally and metaphorically) starving and they themselves get eaten. That things like a healthy social fabric and functioning economy and strong military just spring out of the ground, or at least America's versions of those things are resilient enough to never fail.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
10mo ago
My reactions to reading your synopsis:
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This sounds like a social justice fantasy so outrageous that it borders on pornographic
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This sounds like what might actually happen today if the races were swapped (and sure enough @Folamh3 says it was; do you have a link to the case?)
To your prompts:
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"No" to all those questions. Alabama in 1996 is much closer to Alabama in 2023 than to Alabama in 1926.
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Not very differently. Which is to say, both back then and today the jury would have been quite fair and just, unlike the ridiculous civil rights fantasy the movie portrays. Alabama today might actually be slightly less tolerant than Alabamians in 1996, since back then they were on board with "colorblind" race relations as a sort of truce. Now, racial identity politics and tribalism are on the rise, but I still don't think it would be enough to change how the trial would be handled.
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Light sentence for the murders of the two scumbags, and whatever the standard sentence is for unintentionally shooting someone.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
11mo ago
In Japan, it's simple: it's because everything is like that there. Normie Japanese people take a certain pride in being "normal," i.e. following all the spoken and unspoken rules. There's no real democratic tradition over here, no concept of "consent of the governed," and certainly no American-style anti-government/anti-establishment sentiment. If this sounds like I'm being uncharitable, consider that Japanese people IME mostly see this as a good thing. They seem to see the U.S. as violent, dangerous, unpredictable, and atomized, the same way an American might think of, say, a Brazilian slum.
Chinese people (in my now somewhet dated experience) tend to follow the letter of the law while unspeakably violating the spirit of the law whenever it suits them. So any significant mask wearing there is probably only done in places where people are getting filmed or watched. There are probably a significant number of Chinese people who mask up because they believe that corona will kill them, their mom, and their dog if they get it, similar to leftist hypochondriacs and tinfoil hatters in the U.S. I met many otherwise normal, sometimes well-educated Chinese folks who had normal beliefs about most things but insane paranoid beliefs about one or two things because the CCP/Global Western Conspiracy (depending on their political leaning) was covering up the truth.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
As one of the few dyed-in-the-wool, practicing rightists on here (in that I have multiple kids and had my first in my mid 20s, come from a red tribe family, have been a practicing orthodox Catholic since a young age, never considered myself a leftist or "liberal" even in high school or college, etc) I don't think this place is "right-wing" in the way that normies would usually use the word. I know this because in the past I've gotten into tedious arguments with people about whether god exists, or why the family is important, the intrinsic value of human life, the existence of only two sexes/genders etc, all issues that most normal right-wing folks (i.e. not Twitter monarchists or whatever) would just consider self evident or settled. That would happen if everyone here were run of the mill right wingers.
There's a large majority of anti-progressives here that includes libertarians/Grey tribe people, transhumanists, and disillusioned leftists who just want to go back to "tits and beer" leftism. They all have way more in common with each other than they do with me in that they think that a lot of recent "progress" is good but there are just some problematic bits that have recently popped up, and they especially dislike the rise of the evangical Woke religion since it is an exclusive faith that refuses to make common cause with heretics. That's why there's so much bitching about woke stuff.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
10mo ago
Care to speak plainly? The rhetorical questions are getting tired.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
In doing so, Zilly issued a blistering order that leveled crippling sanctions against the city
I'm imagining the judge as some sort of Godzilla-sized ant creature spewing jets of hot acid across Pioneer Square, BLISTERING hundreds of bystanders! And permanently CRIPPLING many more! Disfigured and mamed for life! Let's hope the judge doesn't start SLAMMING people into the pavement, EVISCERATING and GUTTING them with his mandibles, or BLASTING them with additional acid streams.
The absolute state of modern journalism.
I agree that his white trash manner is extra inflammatory to the PMC, but I thinking you're only 80% of the way to explaining their hatred. The final bit is that people like him aren't supposed to win. They're supposed to lose, they're relics of a backwards evil bygone era. If people like him win, it could undo all the salami-slicing, Nudges™, and demoralization works that has been wrought upon the plebs. They'll stop seeing the Glorious Technocratic Bugpod Future as an inevitability and maybe even stop feeling powerless, and then maybe they'll even finally try to do something about it all. And so Trump can't be allowed to get away with it, he has to be dealt with like Winston, and the old Party Members -- not martyred, but degraded, hounded, dragged through the mud, abused until he's a shell of his former self, so that everyone else can see that this is what happens to people who oppose Progress, even very rich well connected people who get elected to the most powerful office in the world. Any wealthy conservative considering a future presidential run will now be keenly aware of what happens if he should step outside the controlled opposition pen and will doubtless think twice.
Edit: Re-reading this, it sounds like I'm accusing my outgroup of being part of a vast conspiracy and bent on ruthlessly crushing an enemy for defying their power, but I'm not. Rather they're unwittingly part of an SSC-style prospiracy. The people who feel this way don't consciously think they're channeling O'Brien, they think they're Standing Up for Democratic Norms or whatever rationalization works for them.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
10mo ago
she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question - "Is this all?"
I've always thought this was a ridiculous question. The answer is clearly "yes" and I don't think this would have been difficult for most people before WW2. Indeed, Ecclesiastes said millennia ago:
Men are born only to die, plant trees only to displant them. 3 Now we take life, now we save it; now we are destroying, now building. 4 Weep first, then laugh, mourn we and dance; 5 the stones we have scattered we must bring together anew; court we first and then shun the embrace. 6 To-day’s gain, tomorrow’s loss; what once we treasured, soon thrown away; 7 the garment rent, the garment mended; silence kept, and silence ended; 8 love alternating with hatred, war with peace. 9 For all this toiling of his, how is man the richer?[1] 10 Pitiable indeed I found it, this task God has given to mankind; 11 and he, meanwhile, has made the world, in all its seasonable beauty, and given us the contemplation[2] of it, yet of his own dealings with us, first and last, never should man gain comprehension. 12 To enjoy his life, to make the best of it, beyond doubt this is man’s highest employment; 13 that gift at least God has granted him, to eat and drink and see his toil rewarded.
The human condition is the indignity of being an eternal soul bound to a finite body, trapped in a fallen world filled with suffering. Even non-Christians feel a similar void. I'm no Nietzschean but I sympathize with him when he says:
“If there were gods, how could I bear not to be a god? Therefore, there are no gods.”
The default experience is to "struggle alone," to wrestle with the apparent fact that life has "no goal, no ambition, no purpose," feel that one is "buried alive" by the hideously mundane, tedious, and exhausting demands of daily life.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
Definitely aimed at the hegemonic ideology and not me, since I relate intensely to this paragraph:
If I had had to suffer through a few more skeptics calling me racist because I wanted to know why there were giant underwater pyramids, I probably would have believed in Atlantis even harder, out of spite, and never talked myself out of it. And then when ivermectin came along, I would have thought “Scientists? Experts? They’re the guys who are so dumb they can’t even figure out Atlantis existed when there are giant underwater pyramids right in front of their eyes. Screw them, I’m listening to Bret Weinstein."
I often find myself leaning into weird or unsubstantiated beliefs due solely to resentment at how much scorn is poured on people who dare question the relevant orthodoxy. I'm probably a lot more willing to entertain HBD or even JQ stuff simply because asking a good faith question about either topic (and others like them) gets you shouted down, ostracized, blacklisted etc.
It's actually worse than Scott's example, because unlike the the guy Scott is beefing with, who apparently knows something about ivermectin, most people aren't even capable of arguing the "orthodox" positiom but still wouldn't hesitate to puff up and self-righteously shout some string of load catchphrases at you to score social points for being a Doubleplus Goodthinker "LMAO HORSE DEWORMER INJECTING BLEACH LOL" It's all so tiresome.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
11mo ago
It wouldn't work. What constitutes "prejudice" or "discrimination" doesn't in practice follow coherent principles, it's merely "who, whom" because anti-Catholics (in a broad sense) control all media by which the message would be delivered and can thus mute o, even better, skew or taint the message.
It is a highly effective strategy. When I think of someone on TV complaining about anti-Catholicism, I think of some crackpot or blowhard that has been brought on as a slow news day sideshow, and I'm a practicing Catholic who believes anti-Catholicism is a serious problem! I know for a fact that there are many highly articulate priests and professors who could give an excellent rundown of anti-Catholicism on TV, I've personally seen many of them speak. But they would never be allowed on air for fear that they might actually sway some folks (look up Fr. Coughlin), so instead you get Bill Donahue.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
10mo ago
Edmond Dantes was in deep despair while imprisoned in Chateau D'If for an unspecified crime on the accusation of an unknown person. Only when he finally deduced what his "crime" had been and who was responsible for his wrongful imprisonment did he regain his will to act.
I think this is an accurate reflection of how many people internally experience oppression by a specific person with intelligible motives versus oppression by an impersonal, alien force to which they are merely unnoticed collateral damage.
"Why is my rent going up this month? Isn't there anything you can do?" "Nope, sorry, the computer system says your rent goes up $125 this year. Corporate sets the rules, there's nothing I can do."
Indeed, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Without a "why," the "how" is often unbearable.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
11mo ago
For me it was the police's ability to hold anyone in custody for up to 23 days without charges. I avoided police, and in the rare case I had to interact with them I was exceedingly deferential and polite.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
10mo ago
There's a bit of a dogpile here in the vein of "Well why do we still celebrate ${holiday commemorating event}??" which I think doesn't grasp the point you're trying to make.
Pride Parades used to be more in-your-face, freak out the squares squares type events that were held as protests. "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!" Now that everyone's either "used to it" or afraid of drawing the wrath of HR and/or Twitter mobs, there should no longer be any need for protests.
But Pride Parades turned out to be great opportunities to siphon off bit of the heady nectar of the latest "civil rights victory." If you're queer, you can go there and celebrate defeating bigotry and bask in the righteousness of the cause ("Fuck hate! Love conquers all!") If you're normal you can go there and enjoy the same as an "ally." As mentioned in this thread, corporations got involved to sell stuff and also to get a little of that civil rights glory for themselves, likewise for the city government. And so it is no longer a protest, but a big, well-funded party where you can have a blast and showcase your righteousness.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
10mo ago
Kind of a shower thought, but could it be that it's just really hard to write an interesting, unique badass hero nowadays without being excoriated for toxic masculinity and being retrograde? Indiana Jones and Han Solo get grandfathered in as endearing classics of a bygone age, so you get a pass if you recycle them (although you probably have to pay some tribute to wokeness in the form of retcons and script changes).
Perhaps also there's also a suspension of disbelief problem. Millennials and zoomers are permanently on seven layers of irony and have grown up on endless trope subversion. How could you write a straight action hero who would appeal to such an audience?
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
11mo ago
It's too good not to post:
When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
11mo ago
I think it can go over quite well, but you have to own it completely. I've told crying women "I'm sorry you're upset, should we continue this conversation later?" to which they responded by turning off the waterworks or by doubling down and lashing out ("How can you be so insensitive about X!?"). The key in the latter case is to maintain frame and not be provoked, but instead simply make a mildly concerned, sympathetic expression as you allow her rage to pass over and through you. If she tries to drag you in by demanding a response, just calmly repeat the question.
I've never suffered any lasting social damage from this approach, but you really have to be rock solid in your frame.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
11mo ago
HBD is even weirder as probably at least sort of real science that Blue doesn't dare to acknowledge the existence of, and even Red mainstream shies away from.
Blues generally have a worldview that is very uncomfortable to reconcile with HBD, so that makes sense.
Reds' aversion to HBD is a little harder to figure out. My theory is that conservatives as "progressives driving the speed limit" is broadly true, but that mainstream conservatives don't realize that they've absorbed many progressive axioms and that, consequently, they have sabotaged many of their strongest arguments against leftist programs like CRT. When you're a conservative who believes in deeply in Equality, hates Racism, and believes in Women's Rights (but all "only to a certain extent and not as far as those crazy libs take it!") you've already given up the game.
So while a conservative from 1963 might have been comfortable with HBD, a conservative from 2023 has ceded too much ideological ground to feel comfortable with the idea.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
1yr ago
I dislike jaded contrarian posts in the vein of "oh sweet summer child," but I guess it's my turn to wear that hat
The biggest surprise in my opinion is that Tallarico managed to get away with this for so long, despite regularly interacting with a nerdy demographic I would assume would be especially fastidious about video game history claims.
I'm not surprised at all by this. The older I get and the further I progress in my career, the more I find that sheet brazeness and confidence are 80% of the game. It's an eye opening discovery. Hard workers don't always win, honesty doesn't pay. Casual cheaters never prosper, but calculated and/or shameless cheaters often prosper mightily. Stated thus it sounds like I was hopefully naïve, but I'd wager that most Mottizens reading this post subconsciously subscribe to this flavor of the just world fallacy at least a bit.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
10mo ago
Where do you go on the internet to have fun in 2023?
I used to frequent the chans back when there were many small ones, read a lot of SA, Fugly, iMockery, even early Cracked and some Maddox, among dozens of other small sites. Then there was Stumbleupon which was like magic to me when it came out, and I came across all kinds of weird and interesting sites while using it.
I've outgrown a lot of those sites now -- they were a lot funnier when I was 15 -- but I haven't really found any new sites or communities that scratch the same itch. I usually check this place first for interesting bathroom reading, then if there's nothing new I check a few subreddits, and if I'm truly desperate I'll open 4chan, although the noise/bots/spam seem to finally have killed any originality that was still lingering (except for during the rare major Happening).
Help me avoid reading books and going outside by recommending a few fun, funny, and/or interesting sites to read.
Was it this one?
https://herandrews.com/2015/03/01/women-against-suffrage/
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