Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
Disabled Alaskan Monarchist doomer
User ID: 2666
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
18hr ago
I can understand why most republican policy is in the best interest of republicans, but I'm honestly stumped on this. Is it legitimately just ideological consistency? A willingness to suffer to Do The Right Thing?
I'd say it's that, despite all the talk of MAGA having wholly taken over the Republican party, much of the institutional core of the party is still the "what's good for Wall Street is good for Main Street" crowd. As someone in a several-hour-long Youtube video (on the county-level political map for Congressional elections, every two years, from the end of WWII to the turn of the century, with a focus on how, once you set aside the highly-granular and variable presidential elections — particularly the Reagan landslide — the South didn't really stop voting (D) until the 90s, as all the old "Dixiecrats" finally died, and the new generation of Dems were abandoning the working class for the professional managerial class and minorities) I once watched said, "the Republican Party was founded as the party of New England banking interests… and that's what it always will be."
I also recall, but can't find again, an interview with a GOP campaign strategist who got a bit too candid with the interviewer and ended up saying something to the effect that Republican candidates already know that their job is to make empty promises to working class rubes to get elected, then deliver for the "donor class" instead once in office, so his job, as strategist, is to help the politicians lie to those flyover rubes more effectively.
Both party elites are elites — while only Hilary may have said it openly, plenty of the top people in both parties consider blue-collar rural whites "deplorables" — R's are just the ones more reliant on winning their votes, and thus given more incentive to hold their noses and pander.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2d ago
Even in that case, you can easily satisfy yourself using hookers. According to quick AI search the prices ranges from $20 per hour for street hookers to around $150 for average escort to $300 plus for high end hooker in USA.
This fails to "price in" the associated legal risks — reputational damage, arrest, fines, jail time.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2d ago
I think the subset of the human species that has the necessary skills to achieve interplanetary spaceflight is probably going to figure something out in time.
What is your basis for concluding this? Because as I look at things, my view is that we most likely won't. (It seems to me like humanity has already peaked back in the late 20th century, things will never be that good again, and it's all downhill from here.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2d ago
non-human persons
Is there such a thing? I mean, AIUI, unless you're talking about the legal construct that is the "legal personhood" of things like corporations (and I don't think you are), modern US law says humanity is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for personhood; and, also AIUI, most countries aren't much different. (I've seen this discussed in the context of legal issues surrounding potential future contact with intelligent alien life, including the claim that the branch of the US Federal government with the proper legal authority over such contact would be the Fish and Wildlife Service.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2d ago
Let the people who are of sound mind and have a stable commitment to end their lives
Except I've seen plenty of people argue that these are completely mutually exclusive — a "commitment to end one's own life" being itself proof positive of an unsound mind. I once had a therapist argue, in all seriousness, that the 47 Rōnin must have been clinically depressed — along with every other samurai who ever committed seppuku — because suicidal intent always means depression, without exception.
This can be used to turn your proposal to a clear Catch-22: you can kill yourself via "legalized but regulated" suicide so long as you're of sound mind… but the fact you're seeking to do so proves you aren't — the only people allowed to kill themselves, then, are those who don't want to.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2d ago
I'm confident we'll 'figure it out' because the drive to reproduce and the forces of natural selection are not going to give in so easily.
Who is "we" in this context, who are going to figure it out? The human species… sure, this (alone, at least) probably won't result in the total extinction of *H. sapiens. Societies capable (and willing) to maintain post-Industrial Revolution tech levels? I'm not so sure. The West? Even less sure.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2d ago
deeply oppressive traditional cultures more generally- have a lot of supporting social structures which are much harder to generate de novo.
On the one hand, yes, this. It's why the atheist Confucian Xunzi is rather more conservative than many of his contemporaries — social technologies are a fragile inheritance, the accumulated wisdom and social capital of centuries, and are not easily regained (if they can be regained at all) once lost. I, too, find myself frustrated by people who act as if generating such institutions de novo is trivial or easy.
But on the other hand, the second best time to plant a tree and all that. Sure, working to rebuild all those social structures is, again, a multi-generational project requiring a lot of hard work and sacrifice… but what's the alternative?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2d ago
"Sounds like someone's grandma" and "so offensive, it'll get you labelled as an misogynist and people will vanish at the speed of light" are not mutually-exclusive categories — far from it.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2d ago
They have to realize the error of their ways and make efforts to fix them.
And if they, "the the dopamine-hacked", collectively don't realize the error of their ways?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3d ago
How do you all interact with LLMs?
I, for one, pretty much don't. I've never really figured out how — I'm not signing up for anything, let alone paying for something — or what webpage to even go to. But then, that's probably because I don't see any reason for me to put much effort into doing so, because I can't see any use for them in my life.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
5d ago
Why do so many people think it's trivially easy for a "new religion" (as opposed to a new church/temple/whatever you want to call it within an existing and well-established denomination) to get tax-exempt status in the US? Because I keep encountering people blithely asserting this, despite it being my understanding that the IRS treats every "new religion" as nothing but an attempted tax-evasion scheme unless and until conclusively proven otherwise.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
5d ago
Ipso fatso
I don't know if this was deliberate, or a typo/autocorrect, but if it was the former, then hats off for a clever turn of phrase.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
6d ago
People significantly choose what side they're on by considering the effects of what they believe to be facts beyond subjective self-interest or family ties. They demonstrably spend time researching "the facts" and the "science."
We apparently know very different sorts of people, because that's not my experience with most people IRL, unless by "researching "the facts" and the "science"" you mean watching Fox News.
Most people I know determine their positions on "ethnicity have to contribute to considering the effects of certain economic policies like price controls, or law regarding the environment, or political and institutional design" by "what does the Republican party support" or "what does the Democrat party support."
IIRC (I don't recall where I saw the data) most Americans partisan identities develop in their early 20s, and then generally just keep voting for the same party the rest of their lives.
What you describe as how "people" behave is simply alien to my experience.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
6d ago
This is not 1955.
Yes, Americans have gotten softer, weaker, fatter, and far more pacified since then.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8d ago
I'm curious what family, tribe or ethnicity have to contribute to considering the effects of certain economic policies like price controls, or law regarding the environment, or political and institutional design.
Read my reply more carefully. You asked why people choose a side. That is the question I answered. It's not about "economic policies like price controls," it's about whose side am I on.
This is pure Carl Schmitt — that the essence of politics is the friend-enemy distinction: who is my ingroup, and who is my outgroup.
It's something I see often among the leftists on Tumblr — they don't have considered positions on issues, or even fixed principles, they have a side. They support whatever their "tribe" currently supports, because their tribe currently supports it, and if that changes, they change with it.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
9d ago
It's a curiosity because without principles, what makes someone choose any particular side to begin with?
Familial/tribal/ethnic loyalties? Nobody is born into a void, into the "view from nowhere"; we're all born into a particular place, a particular family, particular conditions; embedded in a specific social context, full of unchosen bonds and obligations, which indelibly shape who we are.
You (generic/rhetorical "you," not making any assumptions here) love your family not because they're "the best family" according to some prior metric, you love your family because they're yours. Much the same with patriotism. To quote Chesterton, "Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
9d ago
Scenario 3: Congenital felons again. There is a strong correlation between high IQ and low criminality, but it's not perfect. Imagine we uplift their IQ, but not their criminal dispositions?
And now I'm reminded of a classmate in elementary school, the "gifted" class's perpetual troublemaker, who combined high IQ with even higher impulsiveness. At an age where most kids figure out they shouldn't do whatever random, impulsive thing crosses their mind because they'll get in trouble for it, and the rest figure out that they should at least put some thought into how to not get caught doing the thing before they do it, he couldn't even find the impulse control to do much of the latter before following his impulse. Instead, he'd just follow his impulse, get caught, then put his high IQ and high verbal fluency to work trying to weasel his way out of the consequences.
‘Not enough power for the Catholic church’ is a baffling criticism of Franco.
Which is why my criticism isn't "not enough power for the Catholic church" so much as "didn't turn the clock back far enough, and in too few areas." As you note, fascism does not have enough staying power; I'd say that's because it's way too modern.
Show me a leader who will give his best efforts to roll back every part of society he can — except science and technology — to before 1500 AD, and that would be a proper reactionary.
Edit: as I've said to people before, most Americans' vision of the "sci-fi far future" looks like Star Trek — ranging from TOS for the Republicans to Kurtzman's abominations for the Woke (or, for some of the well-read "Grey Tribe" techno-optimists in places like this, it looks something like "The Culture" (shudders)).
Me? It looks more like Battletech, Dune, or Warhammer 40,000.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
13d ago
If no genes are good or bad then they ought to have no objection to an embryo being edited to have the "bad" genes that produce congenital disorders of one type or another.
The objection is that the procedure to edit such an embryo is neither risk-free nor costless. So why, then, would you pursue a costly, risky procedure, unless you think there's something to be gained from it? Putting an embryo at risk of complications for absolutely no reason whatsoever is something that probably should be forbidden, no?
If you truly believe that all genes are equal, then you'd believe that there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to ever even bother replacing one human gene with another, and thus, no reason whatsoever to spend even the slightest time and effort developing the technology to do so.
This was a key thrust of Prior's whole mass of arguments, and why he chimed in with them any time CRISPR or gene editing came up: anyone who supports (or, for that matter, allows to pass unopposed) any form of research whatsoever into human genetic modification is definitionally a Nazi, and must be dealt with accordingly.
The aversion to judging negatively fails when it results in the reluctance to provide any judgements at all. It's an overcorrection. Failure to exercise judgement can be equally as bad as eagerness (thisisfine.jpg).
I agree. But then, to folks like Prior, that just makes us two more people who clearly and obviously want another six million murdered.
Well, this one was from a different young twenty-something steeped in Tumblr leftism, ready to pounce on the slightest "racism" in ways that displayed their serious ignorance.
But they were quite vehement that the people at DC (specifically Julius Schwartz, Dennis O'Neil, and Neal Adams; not that they knew that) were engaged in deliberate racist messaging when they (back in 1971; again, not that they knew that) created an "Eastern" villain (Middle Eastern with some East Asian ancestry, I believe) to threaten the "Western" — and "implicitly white" — Gotham City like some kind of "racial ghoul"… and then named him exactly that. Oh, sure, they deliberately misspelled it to look pseudo-Arabic, but c'mon, "Ra's al Ghul"? It couldn't be any clearer what they really meant.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
14d ago
Modern "reactionary authoritarian governments" are still too modern — I don't recall any of them restoring feudalism and hereditary aristocracy, let alone pre-Reformation attitudes on the role of the Church. Franco was, ultimately, a failure, primarily because he wasn't nearly reactionary enough.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
15d ago
but murdering the disabled for being a burden is a thing I associate with liberal democracies like Canada
It wouldn't be my disability that would get me executed; that would just get me cut off from the welfare teat and left to starve. No, I'd expect it to be my atheism that would do it.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
15d ago
Is that more or less ridiculous a take than the people who complained that Blazing Saddles was racist?
I'd say only slightly more. The people who complain about Blazing Saddles are generally the sort who can't grasp the use/mention distinction, and also often the sort to argue that certain very bad things should not be depicted in fiction even to condemn them, like the nerd forum (I can't remember which one) that was considering banning any and all mention or discussion of Chainsaw Man, because it depicts
Meanwhile, the person complaining about the "Druish Princess" joke in Spaceballs also thought Brooks's Yiddish accent as Yogurt was Italian, because it's one of those "white ethnic" accents you hear in NYC, right? And "Brooks" isn't the most Jewish-sounding surname, is it? So expecting her to know he's Jewish — and thus the joke is "classic Jewish self-deprecating humor" instead of an "antisemitic microaggression" — is totally unreasonable, and you know what the only kind of non-Jew who bothers to learn and remember who is or isn't Jewish is….
(Now ask me about the "naked Orientalist racism" in Batman comics…)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
15d ago
In a completely non-racial way, Sydney Sweeney has great genes. In the same way that Saquon Barkley has great genes, that Barack Obama has great genes, that Fedor has great genes, that Lucy Liu has great genes. Great genetics aren't inherently a racial question.
But plenty of people will argue that, racial or not, it is a eugenic position, a Nazi position.
The main example that comes to my mind is a guy who used to comment over on Marginal Revolution under various handles (prior_approval, clockwork_prior, etc.). Any time Tyler Cowen would mention CRISPR or gene therapy, he'd show up to make snide comments calling Cowen a Nazi. He'd invoke his coming from Virginia — home of many of the first eugenics laws — and current residence in Germany — no need to elaborate — as to his personal authority on the matter of the inevitable horrors of any attempt at "genetic improvement", and frequently mention the Grundgesetz, and the guarantee of inviolable human dignity in its unalterable first Article, as to why "Nazis" like Cowen would be stopped, and eventually get what they deserve.
He'd only ever give fragments of an argument amidst the snide denunciations and grand invocations of the Grundgesetz, but if you read enough of his comments (as I did), his argument did come together. It mostly came down to a belief in "eugenics" being a singular entity which must be condemned or approved of as a whole, and there are no lines to be drawn within it (so you must either approve of "genetic improvement" — including the Holocaust — or reject it — including CRISPR-style gene therapies); and that whether or not someone is a "Nazi" comes down to their view on "the Nazi idea." Not a Nazi idea, the Nazi idea; the singular view from which all the other terrible elements follow.
And that idea? The very phrase used in the pun: "good genes." The Nazi idea is that of genetic superiority — that a person's genes can be "better" or "worse" than another's, which follows, logically, from the belief that a gene can be "good" or "bad." The inviolable human dignity guaranteed forever by the Grundgesetz requires the unwavering belief that everyone's genes are equal, and thus every gene is equal. No allele is ever "good" or "bad," ever "better" or "worse" than another.
And why would you ever go through the trouble and effort of modifying human genes, of replacing one allele with another, unless you think the new allele is somehow "better" than the old one? And if you believe that, you're a Nazi, and you'll be dealt with like every other Nazi.
Prior is my primary example because he's the one whose comments I read the most of, back when I read MR occasionally. But I've seen similar views (even less well-argued) from others whenever the topic of genetic modification — or genetic "quality" in general — comes up. Sydney Sweeney, Saquon Barkley, Barack Obama, Fedor, Lucy Liu; their genes are all no better than anyone else's — and anyone who disagrees is a Nazi eugenicist, who must be stopped before they inevitably cause another Holocaust.
Increasing motivation does not imply increasing ability. It doesn't matter how much people want to overcome the political obstacles if those obstacles are totally insurmountable. And it looks to me like they are just that.
I disagree. First, because as FedGov starts to collapse, one of the highest priorities for uses of its fading power will be to crush any and all rivals, particularly state governments. And even without that, well, it might just be me looking at the government of my state, but I don't see this capacity.
I attended talks by the Mars Society back at Caltech in the early aughts, so I'm far from unfamiliar with the topic of space settlement — and the barriers involved. Barring some miracle, I don't see us getting any kind of long-term off-world presence of biological humans, let alone "semi-self sufficient communities" in the next hundred years.
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