Corvos
11mo ago
Precisely. If you try to associate an idea with villainy, you run the risk that the audience keeps the idea and rejects the attempted association. If you punish people heavily for discussing the idea at all, you can hope that the children never think of it for themselves and the adults don't pass it on.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainHasAPoint
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StrawmanHasAPoint
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InformedWrongness
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RootingForTheEmpire
Corvos
11mo ago
I think the steelman is this:
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We (the review site) know that audience trolls attempt to manipulate ratings in various ways. (Review bombing, stanning, reviewing without seeing the film).
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Either we let this stand, and users see audience-manipulated scores, or we attempt to correct for this and give a good idea of the real sentiment of good-faith reviewers.
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Time passes.
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We're already filtering out trolls who are review bombing because Luke Skywalker's lightsaber is the wrong shade of green, why not also filter out people who give bad reviews because the mermaid is the wrong colour?
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Some of the trolls have got wise to this, and give bad reviews for plausible reasons, even though actually they're racists who hate the film for having a black lead.
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People who criticise films with a black lead should be filtered out, even if (especially if!) they have legitimate points.
This is the same logic that has played out in every part of social media over the last 15 years.
Corvos
11mo ago
Oh, sure. But this is how Twitter / Facebook / Rotten Tomatoes and all the other ones talked themselves into their current policies, or got pushed into them, or justified them to skeptics. If I remember correctly, one of the big turning points was when social media companies realised that they were the linchpin of Isis recruitment efforts, complete with execution videos.
If you’re serious about building something which supports free speech, you therefore have to recognise that a fraction of your users are going to be trolls and bad actors. Another fraction will use the existence of the first faction to push their agenda, and you have to have countermeasures for both.
As countermeasures go, this site’s rules do pretty well, I think, with the caveat that it relies on the good will and restraint of a handful of mods to function.
Corvos
11mo ago
Yes, it has to be near-hegemonic to work. It can, though, I think. All the stories I’ve heard indicate that people really were much more sexually sheltered in the 30s, or even the 60s, compared to now. It wasn’t until the Sexual Revolution spread through society in the late 60s that knowing a lot about sex became the default rather than the exception.
Corvos
11mo ago
I think there’s a lot to that. Makes me think of Brandon Sanderson. The Mormonism gives him somewhere to stand and serious (now also vaguely countercultural) principles to conjure with, but aren’t so restrictive that they force him to be dour and po-faced.
Corvos
11mo ago
Wouldn’t work. Trump’s ego is too big to work with genuinely competent people long-term. Same problem with Boris Johnson: ultimately he couldn’t bear to share the stage with Cummings. (Other problems too, but that was a biggie.)
If you want to work with good people, I think you have to be able to give public credit where it’s due, and you have to tolerate some genuine pushback from your advisors.
Corvos
11mo ago
He wasn’t that smart but he was certainly smarter than Boris.
Getting more general, I think that having a charismatic showman front for intelligent advisors is often proposed as the ideal combo but rarely works because the love of the spotlight that produces showmanship doesn’t allow you to recognise that your advisors know better than you.
Corvos
11mo ago
Note that both of your examples are prior to 2016, ie pre woke.
And yes, maybe appropriation by white actors is bad, depending on your philosophy, but it wasn’t self-aware. It was the natural consequences of films being made by a mostly white film industry in a mostly white country for a mostly white audience. What makes my blood boil is when all the same people who came up with concept of appropriation and wrote articles like the above turn around and carefully, deliberately do exactly the same thing. And now it’s okay because it’s the right people being erased.
My manager swears by ‘Making of a Manager’, if it helps. It’s a pretty good book.
But I think it mostly boils down to is the fact that you are trying to fix management problems as an engineer rather than as a manager. It happens to pretty much everyone. But your job isn’t to fix stuff anymore (or automate it). It’s to arrange matters so that things get fixed.
That means that if people are ignorant, you have to arrange for them to get trained or fired. If your sysadmins don’t think that their role covers stuff you want them to do, you have to sit down with the relevant authorities and decide the correct boundaries of their role. Maybe that means hiring or reassigning somebody to handle the gap between these guys and your users, maybe it means making clear that their job does in fact involve dealing with users and they can lump it or leave it. Maybe it means assigning people to do the automation work you’re doing now. But as their manager your reports’ attitude/competence problems are now your problem and you have to fix the problems at their root.
I hope this is helpful and not too harsh - you’re managing a larger number of people than me. This is mostly based on advice I’ve got from the people above me.
Corvos
11mo ago
Back in the 90s, people in the UK used to get really upset about America taking English stories and setting them in America. For example The Seeker is an adaptation of The Dark is Rising, a fantasy set in Buckinghamshire and deeply intertwined with English history and Celtic mythology... but Hollywood set it in suburban America because they figured otherwise Americans wouldn't watch it. They tried to do the same with Harry Potter and Discworld - one of the reasons why it took so long to get adaptations of the latter.
Theatre is a bit different because there's a long-standing tradition of swapping the settings around. You have to physically put on the same show again and again, and to keep in interesting they like to set Macbeth in North Korea or Romeo and Juliet in New York (West Side Story). In theory this is done to keep the audience engaged but I think it's more for the producers and actors to have a little variety. (EDIT: @raggedy_anthem said it first, sorry).
Thank you for taking the time and effort to write these posts. As I understand it, your argument is more or less as follows:
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There is a large inferential distance between yourself, as a former soldier and a representative of the Red tribe, and most of us on this forum, who went to university young and are mostly some form of international knowledge worker.
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This is not something we can see ourselves. The equipment being used to do the looking gets in the way of the looking. As with the matrix, only a situation that forcibly relocates our worldview will allow us to see what you're getting at.
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This inference gap, to the extent that we're capable of seeing it, is basically that we ultimately see things in a systemising, academic way. We are armchair professors who sit down and discuss abstract ideas like race, class, representation. We believe in the existence and importance of Society with a big S. We spend most of our lives in urban environments where social convention and rules are more relevant than fundamental natural laws.
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Because we discuss in those terms, we're incapable of stepping back and seeing that this is all just people. By discussing the culture war, we inevitably find ourselves seeing the world on the culture war's terms. You aren't sitting in traffic, you are traffic.
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Therefore it is acceptable to describe the average Mottizen as a progressive, even if we vehemently reject that classification, because ultimately it's true. From the perspective of one who can stand outside, we are part of a modern movement which uses a lens that is fundamentally incompatible with what we say we would like to conserve.
@HlynkaCG This is a bit short and muddled, but how close is it? I have thoughts but will put them in a different comment.
(Continued from the above)
I have some innate sympathy with this position, because I have personally known very intelligent people who had blindspots you could drive a bus through and they couldn't see it however gently you led them.
I used to think somewhat similarly to you (perhaps, inferential distance and all that). I was a Cameron Conservative in the UK (kind of like a Reaganite conservative in the US). I really believed in colourblindness, and treating everyone as an individual, and in equality of opportunity. I scoffed at left-wing abstractions like the Establishment, manufactured consent, class conflict. Most of my extended family were army officers.
And then the wind changed.
Without any particular intention to do so, I got caught up in a proto-Culture War conflicts in 2015/2016. I won't bore you with the details, but I learned very quickly that what was said did not matter. There was no meaningful possibility of persuasion. The way you won conflicts was by controlling the people who were in the room to vote. The usual mechanisms for that were to get the committee secretary to slip in lots of boring business before the meaty stuff, so that anyone who didn't care enough to listen through hours of bullshit and miss supper left, and by making life miserable enough for the people who stayed that they didn't come back. I also learned that it's impossible for a man to win a public argument with a crying woman.
The Brexit vote happened maybe a year later. The pattern was stark. Mostly the university staff (cooks, cleaners, etc. were in favour). Every single academic and student was against. Every. Single. One. Even outside academia, again and again I would find myself the only one in the room. At best people would be interested, at worst they would say vile things without even considering the possibility that someone like me could exist. (Those who expressed doubts about mass vaccination during Covid will recognise the feeling). The Establishment did exist, and I'd just fallen out of it.
By your taxonomy, maybe this makes me a failed progressive, I'm not sure. But what I feel like is a failed Conservative. I tried to be an individualist and I found that in this place and at this time, individualism is wrong. There really do exist mass movements of people that you describe with an abstraction like "whites" or "blacks" or "the Establishment". In a world ruled by identarian leftists, which one of those groups you get pattern-matched to, and the relative status of that group, really does matter - it changes what you can do, what you can say, and the consequences for doing so.*
The live-and-let-live rugged individualism that I think you would like us to follow is not adaptive. A predator has appeared that exploits its weaknesses with great efficiency. The Kendi card beats the MLK card at trumps. You can sit there in splendid isolation as you lose your money, happy that you stayed true to yourself, or you can find a different card.
I don't know what that card looks like. Accusations of anti-semitism were very powerful against Corbyn, groomer discourse seems to get somewhere. To be honest, I think it's too late for the UK - we've imported too many immigrants and we have too few children. We are going to be cursed with a permanent disaffected ethnic minority and the resultant identity politics from now on and I can't see anything we can do about it in the time left. So it goes, I guess.
But if you are sure that the most important thing for conservatives is that they hold fast and don't get seduced by the poison of identity politics, please consider it possible that you might be wrong.
*I have a strong feeling that you are going to say, "Nope, you can say and do whatever you like. That's your decision, and the consequences will be whatever they are." Bugger that. There was a time I didn't have to self-immolate to have a sensible conversation and I want that time back, please. And call me a coward, but if I'm going to kamikaze I want a reasonable estimated return on investment.
Well, yes. One of the things that I would really like Hylnka to write about is what this inferential distance means for his understanding of the average Mottizen’s position.
EDIT: I think there’s something to it, though. I write a bit about it below but in the last few years my understanding of the world had several big shifts. There’s an impossible-to-describe difference between intellectually analysing position that position and feeling in your bones that it’s true. I have a friend who is a pretty serious conspiracy theorist and on occasion I can just about get close enough to feel his viewpoint from the inside. It’s vertiginous, a cascading loss of trust that produces a completely different understanding of the world. Discussing it from the outside is much easier and more comfortable.
Fair enough. Serious question: What is your plan for obtaining a critical mass?
From where I am standing, you and I are the possessor of exactly one human body each. Those bodies exist in the vicinity of many, many other bodies and so, whether either of us like it or not, they must contend with game theory.
The power of tyranny comes from fear. Fear is generated and maintained by observing punishment. Every time someone stands up for their principles without a plan to survive doing so (or at least to extract net benefit), I believe they are making of themselves a sacrifice to feed what they hate. So the outcome matters. Whether your beliefs work in situ matters. I’m not arguing for nihilistic pursuit of gain, but I am arguing for pragmatism, and sacrificing your lower-level principles when they’re sabotaging your ultimate ones.
Corvos
10mo ago
I think that Spider-Man: Across the Spider Verse qualifies. The first Peter dies and has his mantle taken up by the black Miles Morales. The second Peter doesn’t die for Miles but it’s clear he’s prepared to, and his story is that of a white screwup being redeemed by tutoring a non-white replacement.
I’m not an expert but it seems to happen a lot in modern comics. If you want an innocent explanation it probably looks something like:
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People are bored of our classic hero (or younger demographics aren’t showing enough interest).
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We need something new and fresh. Maybe a gender swap or a race swap, which makes them obviously unique and also gives me warm fuzzies. Let’s also give them a cool new trick (eg lightning powers) that we can market.
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To keep the old fans on board and introduce the change, let’s have a handover. Maybe the old guy can mentor them a bit, show the old fans he approves, then conveniently die and leave the whole thing to his replacement.
Truth be told, there’s probably something to the above but I’m not actually that much of a quokka. There’s some political stuff going on here, I think, not just the straightforward minorities-good-whites-repent propaganda but also the cuckold fantasy as you say of having someone younger and more virile than you show appreciation and desire for what you have whilst simultaneously promising to take it off your weary shoulders.
Corvos
10mo ago
What specifically does, say, a Filipino need to do to join a Western nation? Why can't they do that?
To me, they need to commit to propagating the culture of their new home rather than their old one. That means not hanging out with other Philippinos, it means speaking almost exclusively the language of the country they immigrate to, and raising their children with the same mores and customs as the natives.
In my experience, this is very rare. Learning new languages is very hard even when you have the time and money; it’s difficult to get by at first without help from ethnic support groups; and without introductions it’s hard to get into new social circles as a foreigner. The children also tend to feel isolated and retreat into their ‘parent’ culture (where they don’t fit either).
I say the above as someone who tried very hard and failed. I’ve only seen it happen successfully once. For this reason I’m very skeptical about the viability of integration except for minute levels of immigration.
N.B. It’s also much harder if you and your children are visibly different from the people around you.
Corvos
10mo ago
Sorry to double-post, but I wanted to separate my thoughts and make debating easier.
I don't feel like the people around me whose families come from Vietnam are any less Australian than someone like me whose family comes from Britain.
But would Australians a hundred years ago feel the same? There seems to be a runaway effect where mass migration dilutes the culture of the host country. This makes people less protective of their increasingly-globalised culture at the same time that it reduces the demands on immigrants, which leads to more mass migration, and so on.
As has been remarked about America here a few times, ‘integration’ is as much about the host culture becoming indistinguishable from immigrants’ culture as it is about the reverse. Good news if you like immigration, bad news if you like the old culture.
Corvos
10mo ago
The one I learned is infamously difficult, which might be clouding my view. The problem to my mind is more that even if you learn quite quickly, a lot of stuff is front-loaded. Banks, rent, making new friends… if it takes you six months to get properly conversational, chances are that you’re already hanging out with a bunch of foreigners who helped you out and it’s easier to deepen your relationship with them than cut ties and start fresh.
Again, I didn’t go Europe to Europe so it’s possibly different. But even my pretty-fluent European friends say that speaking English is more of a strain than speaking their own languages, and they get most of their news & entertainment from home.
Corvos
10mo ago
California or New York or Texas values?
Wherever you go.
To be clear, this is my answer to the question: what does somebody have to do to really go native, as opposed to being at best a cultural hybrid? Like it or not, we are very influenced by who we spend time with, and what we spend that time doing with them.
I’m aware from personal experience that what I’m suggesting is harsh and almost impossible. I said so. That’s why I believe that immigration (except really tiny amounts) should be an absolute last resort rather than eagerly embraced.
As far as the children go, I believe that they might end up being a bit more integrated into the local culture but they’re also a lot more likely to be hostile to it. Unlike their parents, they didn’t choose to be there and they also don’t have a fully fledged cultural identity of their own to fall back on.
Corvos
10mo ago
Personally I like the culture war thread. Having to run on the treadmill keeps things focused and keeps a sense of momentum, while discouraging too much nitpicking of what someone said three layers up.
In short, I think having to be relevant is good exercise. If there’s something you really want to discuss, post it in parts like @Hylnka’s recent series. That way feedback can ideally be incorporated and you can refine your thoughts as you go on.
The point of all these examples is to say that yes, immigration is difficult. And yes, modern Western nations may not be in a perfect spot to assimilate immigrants, there are many flaws with social programs and how immigration works currently. I'll concede all those points.
However, I think the reason immigration and assimilation is so attractive to so many intellectuals lies in the potential!
Except that the potential hasn’t materialised and the problems have turned up right on cue.
Mass immigration is a exponentially accelerating total rewrite of society, irreversible without literal genocide, and it was carried out against the explicit wishes of the electorate over and over again. In the UK the government literally lied for the last fifteen years and said they were going to bring down the numbers even as they raised them.
I get it. I was pro-immigration too, once. If you really care about making immigration work, treat it the same as any other piece of engineering. Shut down the runaway reaction, wait until all of the pieces have stopped moving, and then control it.
Japan’s government is even more homogenous than its citizens. The ruling party has been out of power for only five years in the last seventy.
https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2018/01/19/explaining-one-party-dominance-in-japanese-politics/
Nobody can name more than a couple of politicians and nobody discusses politics because it’s too boring.
And it works. The government just gets on with things. Occasionally you get corruption or scandals, the offender gets punished and everyone just shrugs and says that that’s the kind of thing politicians do sometimes and it can’t be helped.
Homogeneity is underrated.
I think that one of the ideas you are trying to get at is the difference between 'reality + imperfect methods for dealing with that reality' vs. 'the world as pure social construct'. Thus the distinction between 'you can't do this because the law says so' vs. 'you won't do this because you don't want to defy the law right now'.
To me it makes sense to see this on a spectrum. For example, as you move from rural to urban, the amount of your experience that is 'raw' reality unmediated by human systems decreases compared to the amount that is determined by social systems. The same is true for (most) startups, where you are very close to bankruptcy at any given time and exposed very closely to the needs of your client, vs. a large entrenched bureaucracy like the civil service or the (peacetime) army.
I've long had a theory that as America becomes fuller and more urbanised, the population whose day-to-day experience is very highly socially mediated will continually increase and that American society will consequently become more European, with a more entrenched class system and more complicated systems of deference. So far that theory seems to be holding up quite well.
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