Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
No bio...
User ID: 1864
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
6d ago
Thomas Jefferson was a botanist, architect, paleontologist, president of the American Philosophical Society, politician and other things I'm surely missing. Benjamin Franklin had a similar resume. An LLM or a better historian than myself could fill in the blanks for some real Renaissance era Renaissance men.
Fast forward to the mid-late 20th century, and we're in an era where scientists can conceivably read every manuscript/major text in their field. By the 90s, the scope narrows a bit so that you could reasonably have read every paper in your subfield, by the 2000s we're talking sub-sub field. Today, if you look at one of the popular genes to study there are literally >100,000 papers published on it, with about 5,000 more coming out per year. The scope has narrowed from comprehensive knowledge about biology -> subfield (genetics, immunology, oncology, etc) -> sub-subfield (autoimmunity, leukemias, etc) -> gene or gene family -> some aspect of a gene family or cell type. Teamwork, communication and interlocking specialties are hugely important in ways that they weren't before. My main paper had over 50 authors and included dozens of different specialties and techniques I have no idea how to do.
Now it's beyond that, it's systems of shoggoths that we can tweak and manipulate, but none of us can truly grasp as a whole - and we can't even really imagine someone who can.
Biology is a shoggoth we can't ever grasp as a whole. Maybe there are limitations to intelligence, and no being is ever going to truly grasp biology in a comprehensive way. But if you want to keep making progress, you either need to build a shoggoth-oracle and have it teach us or you need to enhance our brains somehow a la neuralink. Otherwise, we're just going to keep spinning our wheels pumping out shitty papers that nobody reads or can fit into any kind of coherent picture.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
10d ago
I'm sure the respectability centrists among us will pop in to drop some absolutely scathing denounciations of the Virgina Democrat party.
Who are you even thinking of when you say this? Respectability centrist isn't a label I'd apply to anyone here.
In the event you're thinking of me, Charlie Kirk's assassination was Bad with a capital B, Jay Jones' texts were Bad and should have been disqualifying, if people voted for him as an endorsement of those feelings then that is also abhorrent. I'm not sure the latter is true, but I'm also fairly far removed from Virginia.
Are you ready to denounce the bullshit on your side too, or do you get to dodge that responsibility by not identifying as a 'respectability centrist?' Next time Trump does something bad, shall I demand you pop up in the comments to say something about it?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
11d ago
Don't know. Probably around a dozen, maybe more.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
11d ago
This type of reaction you've shown to me makes me angry. You clearly don't respect my values enough to even ask why before you start telling me how it looks, and ridiculing the thought process right out of the gate. But maybe that was your intention.
For what it's worth, no, I wasn't trying to troll you or make you angry. I had assumed we were starting from a position that your values or worldview were maladaptive given that you're asking for help in 'getting over it,' and use the word preoccupation which to me at least carries a negative valence.
But if you want to dig in and insist on your values, I wish you luck in your coping.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
12d ago
For men: in a relationship, do you ask about your partner's body count?
No, but it tends to come up naturally. But also, I and most of the people I've dated didn't really know? Depending how you define body count, I'm probably somewhere between one and three dozen?
Does asking about it actually help with the preoccupation at all? How do you get over it?
What preoccupation? Who cares how many people either of you have slept with? Being preoccupied with exes or their penis size (as described below) just reeks of insecurity. It seems more productive to focus on being a good partner in and out of the bedroom and having confidence in your self-worth.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
12d ago
I'm a tech development and "innovation" nerd. There's a small, but growing, especially in recent years, online commmunity of people who read organizational histories of places like Bell Labs and the original Lockheed Skunkwords to try and figure out the best ways to do real tech development. Not academic science projects and not VC backed bullshit which is mostly business model innovation (that even more often fails).
Can you point me towards the community you're referring to? Is this related to roots of progress? I've been a bit underwhelmed by them, but also haven't checked in for a while.
Side note on the hard tech angle: patent issuance used to be a decent enough and standardized enough measure for "innovation." Since the rise of legalism post WW2, however, it's so much more noisy now that it's questionable if it remains a valid "fungible currency" for studying innovation and tech development.
What do you think is a robust measure, then?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
15d ago
Interesting, although I'd push back and say that (without actually looking for any data) I doubt those numbers don't apply to Israelis, Jews further down the orthodox spectrum and the boomer-Jews who have real money/power outside of Hollywood/conventional media. Even the doctors/professors I meet are not at all like the anti-Israel protestors. But I take your point more broadly.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
15d ago
This is a point I've brought up privately to Jewish friends of mine: Israel is burning through goodwill that they and their parents and their grandparents have spent decades building in the American public.
Just so I understand your argument, you're saying that Israel/American Jews built goodwill by pushing Holocaust education in school and anti-Nazi/antisemitism propaganda? What have they now done differently to burn the goodwill? Is it this:
This was what gave the Jews a special exception from the liberal world order in Israel for decades, what allowed them freedom of action. And now it seems to me that they've pissed a lot of it away on a few years of mowing the Gazan grass.
Because the American right writ large does not give a shit that Israel has turned Palestine into rubble. After October 7th, plenty of people here were gung-ho for a little genocide/purge. Precious little of the conversation in this thread is focused on Palestine, whereas most of the standout comments focus on Jewish control of Media/Finance/Hollywood and other institutions.
So it begs the question - why is the American right turning against Jews now, and what changed in the last 20-30 years that enabled it? Decentralization of the media and sources of information has disproportionately benefited fringe people like Fuentes at the expense of traditional media. Cynically, and depending which movie screen you're watching, this either makes it harder for Israel to spread their propaganda or lets Fuentes spread hateful antisemitic tropes.
Neither has much to do with American or Israeli Jews 'burning the goodwill of the American people,' nor is there anything they could really do differently to mitigate it.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
24d ago
Maybe don't take claim of abolitionists if you don't want to be saddled with everything else over three centuries?
Then how should I respond to the accusation that liberals are to blame for right wing skinheads? Is '"Liberals are the only people with agency" theory undefeated' the professorgerm approved line?
Dubyah? I'm not quite as old as you think, I guess; I couldn't vote yet. Given my druthers I probably would've voted third party.
Who cares? I obviously couldn't vote for LBJ in 1965. Most people couldn't vote for Reagan, but apparently he was the last 'real' Republican president prior to Trump, everyone else was a Dem or Dem dressed up as an elephant. The only other real Republican presidents in the 20th century were Nixon (unfairly set up by the CIA/FBI btw) and Teddy Roosevelt.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
25d ago
Well of course not, they strategically located their weapons depots under the hospitals universities.
What?
I learned from the best!
Who, me?
The vast majority of the modern left are identitarian, so not incorrect but also not a clarifying statement.
This is my point. What does it matter if Nara dresses his partisanship up in pretty language when the functional outcome is more or less the same?
If Rachel Maddow or whatever other blue partisan hack you want to choose went on MSNBC and said I don't hate Republicans, I just hate people who oppose immigration, would you be fooled into thinking she's some enlightened centrist operating on lofty principles?
Why not?
Because for the purposes of this conversation, the cause of the differences doesn't matter. If I don't utter that shibboleth everything inevitably devolves into a discussion about HBD.
If you want to own abolitionists, you have to own the eugenicists too. Is that really what you want?
In a single conversation, I've been told I need to take responsibility for:
- All the inner city slums and attendant race riots - 1910-1970 (built by progressives, progressives imported black people from the south)
- Right wing 'ethnonationalism' or whatever euphemism is deemed inoffensive by the users of this board - present day (it's the fault of progressives)
- 9/11 (progressives passed an immigration law in 1965 enabling hijackers)
- Antisemitism in America/running cover for Islamofascism - present day (Spoiler: it's progressives who are the real antisemites!)
- Eugenics movement in the US - 1920s?
Lol, alright. If you want me to take responsibility for a hundred year old eugenics movement, maybe try taking responsibility for the president you elected 20 years ago instead of frantically trying to recast him as a democrat. How's that for a non-sequitur?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
25d ago
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
25d ago
It started 30 years before that
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
25d ago
No actually it was racist white southerners lynching them and denying them economic opportunity that drove millions of them north
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
25d ago
My point was that magicalkittycat was engaged with a mixture of whataboutism
How can he engage in whataboutism when he is the one initiating the conversation...?
Chinese Robber fallacy
So your argument is that antisemitism is vanishingly rare on the right, and common on the left?
Insofar as 'running cover' implies the news media has some secret agenda to promote antisemitism, no, I don't think it's true. Insofar as they're sequentially denying, deflecting blame, minimizing and whatabouting, yes, they're running cover for antisemitism.
Again, you're deflecting and refusing to engage with the object level by reverting to criticizing the way the 'news media' (a, how did you put it? Unmitigated bullshit line? if I've ever heard one. As if the news sources consumed by your average MAGA footsoldier has any overlap in coverage whatsoever with the NYT) covers what you see as leftist antisemitism. You're minimizing the existence of antisemitism on the right (Chinese robber fallacy), and in the rare cases where those Chinese robbers get caught, they were pushed into it by the lefists!
Right, and the circlular firing squad for this argument is the one where I point out that you're playing the role of the leftist who simultaneously speaks as the arbiter and adherent of objectivity and truth while downplaying the possibility (or at least likelihood) of objectivity and truth.
I'm not downplaying it - reaching some Platonic ideal of objectivity is impossible. Thinking otherwise is foolish. Discarding the pursuit of objectivity is equally foolish.
I'm not the arbiter of objectivity and truth, and neither are you. But the data don't lie. I'm fairly confident I could go through your post history, tally up the posts that are right-wing coded, tally up those that are left-wing coded, and I imagine a statistically significant pattern would emerge. But, 1) I assume I'd run afoul of some kind of harassment wildcard rule and get banned and 2) there would be a hundred reasons you could give to preserve your self-image.
And yet exactly one of us in this discussion has frankly admitted the existence of, and offered criticism against, both right-wing and left-wing antisemitism and racism, and it isn't you.
This is just blatantly false, but I suppose if Trump taught us anything, there's a lot of value in making truthless accusations without any supporting evidence. If nothing else, it puts the other person on the defensive and makes them respond. So, this is the closest you come to criticizing right-wing antisemitism:
That said, just speaking from personal experience, in my social feeds earlier today I read some surprisingly outright racist remarks in response to Ketanji Brown Jackson's ill-advised suggestion that being a racial minority be considered a kind of disability. As an anti-identitarian liberal this concerns me greatly, but I do think it is (as others have suggested) directly downstream of leftists spending decades crying wolf.
Which is hilarious that in your mind you consider this some even-handed criticism of right-wing antisemitism. Throw in some tiki-torch cosplaying and you've got some quality partisan hackery going on here!
Insofar as you're accusing me of not admitting to left-wing antisemitism, I did break it down into multiple components, but if you'd like me to be pithy and explicit: Yes, I agree that it exists. I think it's fundamentally different and less dangerous than right-wing antisemitism in the ways I described and with which you completely failed to engage with.
Why is it that forums with actual free speech so often begin leaning to the right--almost as though leftism can't stand on its own two feet?
Well, thankfully this space offers a valuable refutation of your point. We've been here for nearly a decade now and there is still an equal balance of left and right-leaning views, right?
And I think a lot of Leftists are not identitarians, though sometimes they have to be reminded of that.
You'd be surprised, although again your desire to label someone as an (anti-)identitarian will elide a lot of heterogeneity in political views.
The main difference between left-wing identitarians and right-wing identitarians so far is that left-wing identitarians mostly control their political coalition (the Democratic Party) while right-wing identitarians remain at the fringes--albeit, less at the fringes than they were before the Great Awokening.
Indeed, that is why AOC and her crew ran the table with the old guard and toppled Nancy as speaker of the house. But sure, while I think 'mostly control' is another unmitigated bullshit line, before we get another 'exactly one of us has frankly admitted the existence of both right and left wing identitarianism and it isn't ChrisPratt!' moment, I acknowledge the existence of what you're alluding to and won't debate it in order to avoid an entirely new conversation.
But, the fact that you think Trump and MAGA are not identitarian just lays bare the gaping blind spot in your entire self-conception. And may be one of the funnier things I've read today. I know, I know! Circular firing squad. I guess I'd better let that one slide so we can break this cycle of violence.
With specific reference to antisemitism, the antisemites on the Right are reactionaries who fetishize a failed effort to implement national socialism in a country they often know nothing about.
No; there are plenty who dislike black people, who argue that some Jewish elite controls [X] institution, that immigration is a Jewish plot to dumb down the gentiles, and whom never bother invoking the Painter or tattooing swastikas on their foreheads. But you'd rather focus on the latter to fit your Chinese Robber narrative.
The antisemites on the Left, by contrast, are the vanguard of Islamofacism, a movement with at least tens of millions of supporters around the globe, who are prosecuting a centuries-long grudge against the ideological descendants of Judaism and Christianity.
Muslims make up 1.1% of America, and antisemites make up some much smaller fraction of that. Are you genuinely misguided enough to think that these people are the 'vanguard' of islamofascism in America? What do you think follows the vanguard, an invasion force of Taliban led by the spirit of Mehmed the conqueror to purge America of the Jews? What western nation has ever been so influenced by 'Islamofascism' that it started pogromming Jews?
White nationalists and Christians, on the other hand...
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
28d ago
They are fools running cover for the most relevant group of anti-Semites in the modern world (a large subgroup of Muslims, fronted by the Palestinians).
Or they genuinely believed the lies about 'Never Again' that they were sold by their leaders.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
28d ago
Harvard, Columbia, and many other universities are still fighting court cases about their abject failures to make that distinction, aren't they?
Maybe you're right, I'm not particularly familiar with the details of the court cases or what specifically happened during the protests.
That said, I'm also not impressed by the mere fact that Trump decided to sue a bunch of Blue Tribe institutions.
And the people most likely to preach that white people are the scum of the earth are progressive white women and pick-me progressive white men. Projected self-hatred is not exactly an uncommon psychological ailment.
It's a bit condescending to suggest that Jews protesting Israel killing thousands of Gazan civilians must be doing it out of some psychological ailment. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone here defending American Adventurism in the 21st century (to the point of obsessively redefining George W. as a democrat, and Trump as the first true Republican in forty years), yet I imagine this is a rational argument rather than a bunch of self-hating Americans?
Still waiting to an answer on this one first.
Then you can keep complaining about woke, Magicalkitty can keep complaining about nazis, and I can write 10,000 words to gesture at the ascendant [redacted] in the west.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
28d ago
But you guys are are nazis! Look at all these things we never fucking talk about because we're too busy calling Trump or Stephen Miller a nazi! What else are we supposed to do except bring up shit that I don't think is Nazism and use it to tar you as nazis?". I don't know, talk about the shit you think is actually Nazism?
No, I'm serious - I don't want to call you a nazi, nor have I called anyone a nazi. What word would you like me to use to describe someone who believes that politicians are importing brown people to replace the white race, and all the attendant beliefs that normally swirl around that one? A Great Replacement Theorist? What word would you like me to describe someone who thinks that Trump should have power to do X, Y and Z regardless of their legality without resorting to what you see as slurs?
We have been telling you that this would happen from the very beginning.
No, progressives have been telling you this would happen since you brought the first slave ships over in the 17th century! Why would you do such a thing, Fruck?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
28d ago
I honestly can't tell whether you're being ironic or just aggressively misunderstanding my point.
I am neither being ironic, nor am I aggressively misunderstanding you. Thankfully options exist outside your false dichotomy!
Less charitably, I did find this line to be unmitigated bullshit:
Thank you for your honesty. Now, moderator, ban thyself.
I am not running cover for antisemitism on the right, and nothing I wrote can be reasonably construed that way.
Your post was a mix of whataboutism, if it's true that there are nazis on the right it's not their (red tribe) fault, and oh, while I hate nazis they'll treat me better than the woke police. Insofar as 'running cover' implies you have some secret agenda to promote Nazi material, no, I don't think it's true. Insofar as you're sequentially denying, deflecting blame, minimizing (lol Tiki Torch cosplayers) and whatabouting - yes, you're running cover for them.
Hell, I am occasionally accused, here, as a moderator, of running cover for the Jews!
In reality, you are a flawlessly objective crystal passing judgment from on high. You have principles that you live your life by, and you chide the left and the right equally, god damnit! Anything less would be to descend into partisan hackery.
And Nara, I am (whatever people may think) fundamentally of this place. I believe that we should strive towards objectivity, that it exists, I deeply believe in mistake theory and progress and that things are getting better and discussion is good. I reject the people on the left who claim that everything is political, nobody is objective and it's all just white supremacist/patriarchal/isms all the way down and doubly so if you're a white man.
But dude, I have to actually invoke that progressive argument here, much as it pains me. You fit the trope of the partisan pretending to be objective and principled to a T to avoid confronting the fact that you are, in fact, also waging the culture war most of the time.
because everyone is so distracted by the tiki torch cosplayers they fail to notice (or outright excuse) blatant antisemitism from the left and its political allies.
Tiki torch cosplayers vs. blatant antisemitism. I am impressed by your objective framing of the political situation!
My beef is with identitarians.
Your beef is with the vast majority of the modern left. Seriously, replace identitarian with vast majority of the modern left - is your statement significantly different?
I don't like it. I don't agree with it. I think that nothing good will ever come of identitarianism, no matter how righteous-minded its practitioners. I don't think any of it is good. But neither do I think it reasonable to apportion blame equally to both sides; this is a mess of progressivism's making.
Nara, go to West Philly. Go to Baltimore. Go to Chicago. Much as I love your race-blind ideals, much as they resonate with me, the modern incarnation of progressivism and identitarianism didn't build the slums and the poverty and the suffering. Cancel culture wasn't a thing during the Rodney King riots. You can't be naive enough to ask an entire nation not to Notice that people of one skin color are overwhelmingly worse off, and it doesn't even matter what the cause is. People take that information in the direction they prefer.
Discussing the culture wars is not the same as waging them. Yes, I acknowledge that people do wage them, to various degrees. But we do try to discourage that.
The problem is that people like waging the culture war. I commend you and the moderation team, because the failing lies with the users. You can't mod yourself a better forum population.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
29d ago
it's difficult to not see this entire post as an artful, nut-picking troll.
The only remarkable thing about this post is the political valency; what is this place if not nut-picking to wage the culture war?
left wing antisemitism, or perhaps more specifically Islamist antisemitism from left wing political parties, is so frequent that people scarcely bother to report on it (or, perhaps, they actively suppress it because it hurts Democrat narratives).
Broad swathes of 'antisemitism' on the left can differentiate between opposing Jews and opposing Israel. You and others running cover for antisemitism on the right ignore the significant presence of slogans and groups like 'Jews for Palestine' at all the rallies on college campuses. The largest protests against the Israeli war in Gaza in my region were led by Jewish men in kippahs with megaphones blocking traffic.
Hardcore fundamentalist Islamists who truly hate Jews and want to 'do a genocide' in the local parlance (usually by people who want to murder Palestinians) are broadly orthogonal to left and right. Were the 9/11 hijackers leftists?
And, yes, apparently there was a nutjob who shot up an embassy and presumably wanted to kill Jews. Who was just complaining about nutpicking, again?
Antisemitism on the right rarely bothers to make the Israel/Jew distinction, particularly when it arrives at it's antisemitism via the protocols of the elders of Zion and the Great Replacement Theory and Holocaust denialism. They view all Jews, everywhere, as the problem, nowhere more so than the US government/wall street/other institutions and blame them for immigration and a supposed genocide against white people in the west. Contrasted with 'leftist antisemitism,' how many Jews do you think subscribe to this ideology?
One of these flavors of antisemitism, were it to gain power, would likely cut foreign aid to Israel and boost aid to Palestine. The other would likely pogrom the US government and elites, or worse.
but I do think it is (as others have suggested) directly downstream of leftists spending decades crying wolf. If you spend enough time and energy insisting that your political opponents are Nazis, at some point your political opponents are going to decide that they might as well break out the jackboots, then.
See, when this is done by people you dislike you break out the Narcissist's prayer:
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
How many times have I seen this pasted here when it comes to the gays? trans people? Communism? Cancel culture? At first they said nobody was crazy enough to change genders! Then they said it's happening, but it's good actually! Now the HR lady is crushing my balls while I have to swear fealty to the rainbow flag!
Well, fuck man, if you were calling us gay trannies who cancel people for wrongthink for the last twenty years, I guess we might as well all be gay trannies who cancel you for wrongthink, amirite? Why would you spend so much time and energy insisting cancel culture was a thing? Guess I may as well cancel you now, and also it's your fault.
No, Trump is not a nazi. Nor is JD Vance or Stephen Miller, or probably anyone in the administration. I'm skeptical that any of the incidents OP posted are suggestive that the Fourth Reich is some fifth column in the Republican party. But at the same time, there's been a groundswell of interest and support and tolerance of ideas like Great Replacement Theory and authoritarianism in the Red Tribe mainstream that's been slowly gaining steam for the last decade. And, while I know everything wrong with the Red Tribe is actually the Blue Tribe's fault, what word would you like us to use to describe that? Not nazism, not racism, not fascism, so...what?
How do you, personally, decide who is to blame for the government shutdown? If Republicans had made concessions to Democrats, would you then be here arguing that it was a 'Republican shutdown?'
More options
Context Copy link