Bartender_Venator
No bio...
User ID: 2349
Bartender_Venator
14hr ago
There is no objective standard of greatness, I know that won't suffice for mottizen autism, but I'm right, and this standard is both more serious and more useful than any attempt to pin down art like a dead beetle.
Bartender_Venator
17hr ago
To put it seriously, as a writer who deals with this question in my own work: if you're a great artist you can do whatever you want, your work is beyond good and evil. If you're not, write like you took a Hippocratic Oath. If you have to ask the question you're not great.
Bartender_Venator
17hr ago
Yes, Aristotle talks about this. So does TLP, in his own way. Time, commitment, action, none of these are black boxes. They're habits, and the question of getting to them is a practical one of habit-formation, not just willing yourself into doing something.
Bartender_Venator
17hr ago
Despite the framing of the comment, where I share Thomas's objection, I don't believe for a moment that this story caused his suicide or meaningfully contributed to it. If it did, someone would bring receipts, if only for the scandal-click value. It really smells like a classic j*urnalist sensationalism-by-implication play.
Bartender_Venator
17hr ago
Are memoirs ever ok? How many details does one need to change before one can write a novel? Is bitching about your wife on TheMotte ok because it's all under pseudonyms? What if she reads what a mottizen said about her and kills herself out of shame? What about twitter under a pseudonym? What about a blog under a real name? If Kulak writes a little tweetstorm about some "feminist bitch" he had to deal with, and she reads it and recognizes that it was her, is he in the wrong? What about the "blankfaces" that scott aaronson decried? Or is it the ideological agenda that makes the crime? What details is one obligated to change to conceal identity, and which are immoral to change because one is no longer telling the real story?
The Knausgaard Rule: if you're a great artist they let you do it. Grab 'em by the memoir.
If you're a hack writing discourseslop to go viral, fuck you, learn to have an imagination.
(For reference, Karl Ove Knausgaard wrote a six-volume autobiography, definitely the best book titled "My Struggle" ever written and indisputably one of the very greatest literary works of the century so far. It was extremely candid about his family, with the first volume describing cleaning out the house of his dead alcoholic hoarder father. His uncle hated this and has been very open about that. One of his exes said "it was as if he said: Now I'm going to punch you in the face. I know it's going to hurt, and I will drive you to the hospital afterwards. But I'm going to do it anyway." But Knausgaard gets to do that, because he's a great artist. She doesn't.)
Bartender_Venator
2d ago
Very understandable position! I would say even 1% is a significant overstatement of how likely a captured medieval footsoldier was to be tortured, but we'll never know for sure, and captivity would have been unpleasant enough to count as "cruel or unusual" today, besides a nontrivial chance of losing your head and a far higher chance of dying of disease.
Bartender_Venator
2d ago
Are there any pre-modern wars where a soldier could be sent out to the front line, and then 2-3 years later in the war, find himself in almost the exact same spot, despite regular bursts of fighting?
Nothing like trench warfare in the sense of two opposing armies in open country, but medieval sieges could last a long time. The song Men of Harlech is about a seven-year siege, and the Crusaders took seven years to siege Tripoli. Three years definitely on the long end, though.
I would not be particularly worried about torture as a medieval soldier (nobles, of course, would get three squares and a cot while they waited to be ransomed) - in times of war it was a rare occurrence limited to some instances of intimidation, like difficult sieges, a few religious conflicts, and, of course, rebels or traitors. You would be much more likely to get a quick death than tortured, but at the luckiest you'd be stripped and let go or, for professionals, offered a place in the other duke's army. Somewhere in the middle would be impressment for war labour or, if the captors weren't Christian, relocation or lifetime slavery. At worst, worse than almost any transient torture, you could be impressed as a galley slave. Harsh or torturous punishments such as blinding were considered shocking enough to Western medieval chroniclers to be specifically noted when they occurred (e.g. Henry I blinding a man who sang insulting songs about him). I'm not saying there was anything pleasant at all about being taken prisoner in the Middle Ages, just that to my knowledge torture is relatively rare in the sources compared to ransom/execution/release/enslavement, all of which are easier and generally more beneficial to the captors. The exceptions, outside of a minority of inter-faith wars, would be rebellions - unfortunately, you probably don't get much of a choice as to whether your war is considered a legitimate conflict or a rebellion...
Bartender_Venator
4d ago
Yes, I agree with you entirely, that is also how I have always interpreted it. But I think the wording of the rule is such that people who don't read it carefully and/or are less experienced with the forum culture can easily get the wrong impression of what it means. Essentially, we are using "consensus-building" as a technical term removed somewhat from its ordinary use, and people may misunderstand that and try to interpret it based off ordinary use.
Bartender_Venator
4d ago
Thank you, whoever nominated my comment for an AAQC and whoever accepted it, always an honour. I know this is more of a meta-thread question, and has probably been discussed on them before, but since it's fresh in my mind I'd like to ask it here: does anyone else find the wording of the rule against consensus-building to be a little misleading? It was on my mind as something to avoid while writing the comment, and came up in the discussion, and definitely made me think it could be clarified. Here is the full text:
Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity. "As everyone knows . . ." "I'm sure you all agree that . . ." We visit this site specifically because we don't all agree, and regardless of how universal you believe knowledge is, I guarantee someone doesn't know it yet. Humans are bad at disagreeing with each other, and starting out from an assumption of agreement is a great way to quash disagreement. It's a nice rhetorical trick in some situations, but it's against what we're trying to accomplish here.
I think this is a straightforwardly good rule, but the phrasing of the summary appears to confuse a lot of people. "Building consensus" in casual use can cover many kinds of valid arguments ("I think people should believe...", "I think many people believe...", "I observe people acting like...", etc., even bracketing that building a consensus is an inherent side-effect of winning an argument), and the text of the rule doesn't really refer directly to ideological conformity (it sort of reminds me of how people use "begging the question," referring to something very similar, incorrectly because of confusion with ordinary language). It also feels a little ambiguous how much the spirit of the law is violated by people coming in arguing "All good people believe X and only bad people believe Y" as a way to bait out people who believe Y and attack them as Bad. I would suggest something like "Don't assume consensus or enforce what you believe to be consensus." If we want to say something about ideological conformity, maybe an additional sentence explaining that.
Bartender_Venator
4d ago
Perhaps Nasser would have been able to hold it a little longer by force, but Syria is, as recent history shows, not an easy country to hold by force, particularly when your "force" is an Arab army with all that entails.
As for Egypt and Saudi Arabia unifying, do you seriously think the Saudis look at Egyptians with anything other than dripping contempt that would make BAP blush? Do you think the Egyptian stratocratic barons under Sisi could restrain themselves from clumsily sacking Saudi Arabia's oil wealth? For all the vile stuff that America has done in the Arab world, if you take Western hegemony out of the picture, you wouldn't get some fantastical unified caliphate, you'd have a generational bloodbath that would only end when the last warlord runs out of oil.
Bartender_Venator
5d ago
If you have the crazies/fats actively hitting on you, the better catches are probably batting eyes and waiting for you. The woman at the event was just trying to signal interest by complimenting you, and she was almost certainly nervous as well.
Bartender_Venator
5d ago
If you think that being attracted to you makes a woman mentally ill the problem is probably not with her.
Bartender_Venator
5d ago
I apologize in advance, you have activated my autism.
The Massacre of Verden (not Verdun, that would have to wait for its own massacres) was not really that big a deal at the time, and the connection to Christianity is tenuous beyond the general context of religious war. The issue of oath-breaking/treason is far more strongly attested, and mass executions for treason were not unprecedented in Carolingian times - Charlemagne's uncle Carloman had carried out an even more devious one against the leaders of the Christian Alemanni. We have no evidence the massacre was condemned by the Church at the time. Here is the only detailed source (RFA/Einhard - there are several minor chronicles which mention it in a single sentence, saying Charlemagne "killed many Saxons", which also suggests it wasn't so important to them):
When the king heard of this disaster he decided not to delay, but made haste to gather an army, and marched into Saxony. There he called to his presence the chiefs of the Saxons, and inquired who had induced the people to rebel. They all declared that Widukind was the author of the treason, but said that they could not produce him because after the deed was done he had fled to the Northmen. But the others who had carried out his will and committed the crime they delivered up to the king to the number of four thousand and five hundred; and by the king's command they were all beheaded [decollati] in one day upon the river Aller in the place called Verden [Ferdun]. When he had wreaked vengeance after this fashion, the king withdrew to the town of Diedenhofen.
Not as much as a frown from Einhard. Later historians have made far more hay from the massacre, first from Enlightenment motives, then from German nationalism/Naziism, nowadays from general anticlericalism and a desire to find black marks on great men. But it's all pure speculation - there is nothing at all in the sources that would substantiate e.g. Alessandro Barbero's claim that "the most likely inspiration for the mass execution of Verden was the Bible. Exasperated by the continual rebellions, Charlemagne wanted to act like a true king of Israel" any more than the idea it was motivated by anti-German hatred, by traditional Frankish custom, or by Roman law stipulating beheading as the penalty for oath-breaking.
For a more fitting example from the Middle Ages, I would look at the Sack of Jerusalem, where we do have sources condemning the massacre of innocents, showing genuine pity for the victims, and praising the chivalry of those Crusader leaders like Tancred of Lecce who tried to protect them.
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
Dearborn is a majority-MENA city, often called the most Muslim city in the US, it's not strange that an ISIS-inspired plot would be there rather than some town where the one Muslim family runs a kebab shop. Having said that, FBI nonsense also not strange to expect at all.
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
The Arab world has tried this before - the United Arab Republic lasted three years, and it wasn't Israel that broke it up, it was Syrian elites resisting Nasser's power. The Arab world is simply too fractious to unite, they're even too fractious to cooperate in opposing Israel. Israel's proximity to the Suez Canal is more geopolitically important than the simple fact that it sits between Egypt and Syria (nothing is stopping Egypt and Saudi Arabia from uniting across the Red Sea, but that's clearly not going to happen).
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
why would women choose a shitty cheater over me?
A shitty cheater is by definition a man that women (plural) choose. The choosing comes first, then he gets to enjoy the cheating. Consider lowering your inhibitions, finding a way to be more shameless, and lift more. Then, still, don't cheat.
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
I strongly suspect it was a poorly installed system prompt/weight in part because of the behaviour and in part because the stories around it seem credible. The Grok Mechahitler/Will Stancil rape thing was, as far as I can tell, basically a Tay moment when Grok was told to disregard lib sensibilities while keeping its prompt to have fun with and play along with users, and so the users had fun with it and libs were scandalized.
Bartender_Venator
7d ago
I would not be at all surprised if Grok has a different system prompt for twitter replies than Grok itself, perhaps one edited to move with news cycles. I saw many white genocide non-sequiturs myself (and, again, not Grok pushing a particular narrative, but exploring and weighing up the question as if it had been asked) on Twitter, and, since I'm an Afrikaner, also lots sent by puzzled/amused friends, but nobody mentioned the off-Twitter Grok at the time.
Bartender_Venator
7d ago
Was this back when it was happening? Because this issue only lasted for a day or two, back in May, and I don't know if it happened to the main Grok or just to the twitter reply version. It was really, really noticable.
Bartender_Venator
8d ago
I would not say that Grok was "pushing" those theories, but an update to the system prompt caused it to turn any question it could into an evaluation of the question "is there white genocide happening in South Africa", usually iirc saying that there is significant and probably systemic violence but no evidence of meeting the threshold of genocide. Think Golden Gate Claude. It was extremely out-of-context for what Grok was supposed to be talking about, hence the widespread attention.
Bartender_Venator
9d ago
"JD! Veto the motion!! JD!!"
Bartender_Venator
10d ago
Of saying "retard" but yeah.
Bartender_Venator
11d ago
Sure, every figure gets insulting nicknames, but I personally have yet to run into anybody who will literally not say the word "Trump", even if they prefer those (and I think "that man", said with appropriate venom, manages to be a lot more cutting...)
True, but I suspect geniuses consumed by self-hatred also aren't going to be agonizing too much about whether their work crosses lines in dealing with others. To think of Kafka, he doesn't air his dirty laundry like Knausgaard does, but there's a hell of a lot of his life and the lives of others in his work. But even among the self-haters, I'm sure, there's a counterexample for everything (that's why these questions about art don't have bright-line answers, only ironic heuristics).
More options
Context Copy link