Doubletree1
6mo ago
You're the second person who has had to reach back literal years to find a relevant example from the left. Without access to those posts I cant evaluate whether they are a valid counterexample. Suffice to say im unconvinced by your assurances but I think we'll have to set that aside.
Presumably the rules by which you moderate are designed produce some outcomes and accomplish specific aims in the tenor and culture of this forum. Probably these are things like, ensure the average comment quality remains high, keep inflammatory and emotionally triggering posts to a minimum, encourage thoughtful and respectful engagement, etc.
One of the aims which I thought the rules were designed to achieve was establishing some cultural norms that encourage the consideration of cross-axis views in a charitable and good faith way. Correct me if I'm wrong.
FC's post contributes to the erosion this norm. By publicly advocating for the wholesale and categorical defection against liberal institutions, he is sending a signal that he believes cooperation with blue tribe is pointless. Therefore, why should I engage with him, a public defector? I simply won't. It would be irrational of me to do so. That is a potential cross axis engagement point that has been eliminated. And the more similar attitudes I see, the less likely I am to engage overall. And I think many people would respond the same way.
I think this forum highly benefits from this norm of cross-axis charity (luckily most have internalized it I believe). The alternative is an echo chamber, or one filled with ideologues. Even with a veneer of politeness, there is no value, for me at least, in a place like that.
Do you think this is just a fine example of the kind of decorum that's acceptable here? If these kinds of posts were 100x more frequent, at the same level of decorum, would that make the motte a better or worse place? Personally I think the motte would quickly become unusable.
Doubletree1
6mo ago
Yes it is all about decorum, that is in fact my point. I have seen many people criticize conservatives, but none that I have seen have done so with decorum youve shown-- the finality of the tone and extreme positions advocated for, (at least originally) without explicit argument, while at the same time telegraphing your intent to defect from your enemies...
You say this could be tolerated from the left, but I really don't believe it. I would welcome some examples from you if you think otherwise.
Doubletree1
8mo ago
So? The police in smaller municipalities aren't.
The military is controlled by the commander in chief, the sec-def and the combatant commanders which are political appointees.
Doubletree1
8mo ago
I read your post. You clearly say.
but the fact remains that practicing homosexuality is a lifestyle with health consequences similar to those we associate with smoking, sedentary lifestyles, bad foods, etc. Which we typically do not ban, but do often seek to regulate, or at least socially disapprove.
Without presenting evidence that the association is any more than correlative.
Later you say
But you said you "don't see anything unhealthy about homosexuality," which statement would seem to me to require a very constrained definition of "unhealthy," much more constrained than we apply in basically any other context.
I disagree. I think way we use "unhealthy" in normal contexts is far more often causative "smoking is unhealthy" rather than correlative "driving a pickup is unhealthy".
Yes that heavily downvoted post... great example! The community obviously thought it was below some standard on some level, and I would tend to agree. We will see where FC's post will stand in 24 hours.
Given how conservatives still seethe about the moral mutant post, it seems to me an obvious net negative in its impact on the discourse. In fact, I think I recall FC, or some other, citing that post as a justification for their tone. Well obviously defection begets defection. I think the ideas in that essay could have been presented another way, and should have, but the OP chose the way of brash, arrogant condescension. And we see the fallout from that.
Make it make sense, please
It's quite clear, I don't know what it is youre not understanding. I'm not attacking average conservatives, they can believe what they want, as long as they're not trying to force their way of life on me. I'm pointing out the that it is illogical to appeal to liberal sensibilities of inclusion to paint liberals as the bad people for rejecting the illiberal tendencies of conservatives.
As I said, I think there are many things about the conservative viewpoint that can coexist with object-level liberals in a liberal meta-system. Of course if conservatives reject liberalism itself, that can't be tolerated for game theoretical reasons.
In that case the best that can be offered is an enclave -- which is far more tolerant and accomodating and than conservatives would be, if the shoe were on the other foot.
Doubletree1
5mo ago
Your argument is just status quo bias. "auto licensing should be treated as a given because -> our infrastructure is designed around autos because -> we've always treated auto licensing as a given". If auto licensing were not treated as given, then we would be incentivized to adapt our infrastructure appropriately.
Doubletree1
8mo ago
There are others in this thread who are claiming that negative outcomes in children of single parents are primarily due to genetics.
In other words, genetics can tell you to leave your partner but not how much to eat.
These kinds of claims require evidence.
Doubletree1
6mo ago
On reddit, the mantra was that the downvote was not an "I disagree" button. If that's not the case at the motte I sure would like to know that.
Now this would be a violation of this community's decorum.
How so? To seethe means to get angry or become highly agitated. It seems to me factual that many conservatives did angry over the post. And I don't blame them really. It is no less factual or inflammatory than FCs follow up claim that 70% of blue tribers hate his kind and vice versa.
I am baffled by what you consider acceptable decorum. Do you believe Ozys essay meets the decorum standards of this community? Yet my use of seethe does not.
Full disclosure, I think both the substance and the tone in Ozys essay are both quite bad. If there is any kernel or value to be had in discussing it, then the discussion should proceed in a tone that inversely proportional to how inflammatory the subject is. This is a basic principle I think that allows highly charged topics to be discussed productively. I don't think Ozys or FC's posts meet that standard.
Doubletree1
6mo ago
I don't understand this objection. Are you a textual literalist? Or even just for the new testament? Do you think all Catholics should be literalists about the new testament?
Doubletree1
8mo ago
Where do I find the volunteer link from the main page? The previous posts says to "click the banner" but the only banner I see is an image of some spiky objects. Clicking it brings me to the main page.
I'm on a mobile browser if that makes a difference.
Doubletree1
8mo ago
It will help on the margins, which is all that I person hope for these days. But, does your municipality enforce parking minimums and what are they? An frequent new urbanist complaint is that in many places parking mimums regs are significantly higher than they need to be.
It's not incoherent. Amish etc seem content to form their enclaves and practice their values as they see fit without forcing it on others. "Mainstream" social conservatives are not like this and do actively try to pass illiberal policies that would apply to everyone. Even as the Amish are more conservative on the objective level they are more consistent with the liberal meta system.
Do you think liberals who are in favor of age of consent laws are rejecting liberalism itself? Or are liberals who are in favor of state-recognized marriage being exclusively monogamous rejecting liberalism itself?
Depends on how they go about it I think. There are both ethical and secular arguments that can be made for or against both of these. Liberal principles dictate that we should bias ourselves towards a solution that maximizes both personal liberty and liberty of prospective subgroups without causing other on others to be harmed. In practice, if two groups disagree on policy, the more permissive policy has an advantage in that it allows the permissive party and the restrictive party to both coexist (in that the restrictive party and self-apply the more restrictive policy). That's not to say that the more permissive policy is always the right one. In the case of (lowering) the age of consent then the very obvious counter-argument is that children would be harmed by sexual predators.
My original point was that mainstream social conservatives couched their arguments against gay marriage in specifically religious terms which is definitely illiberal: not everyone follows their (interpretation of a specific) religion, so it is illiberal to impose that policy on non-believers on that basis. And so lost the credibility (with mainstream liberals) when they made similar arguments about trans people.
If you want to have an object level discussion about age of consent, or polyamory then state your case.
Doubletree1
11mo ago
Neat ideas. Your first post is complementary to one I have been kicking around on the consolidation cycle. Most of us have lived to see the consolidation of social media/internet forums and all the CW- topics that spawns but the general process happens in many areas (manufacturing, farming, urbanization, etc. )
the post would be examine how technology changes the dynamics of the consolidation cycle. The idea is that the distribution of entities (as a function of size) generally follows a power law and that when a technology comes around that reduces transaction costs between entities two things happen. First, the time it takes to reach the "consolidated" part of the cycle goes down and second the exponent on the power law gets more negative i.e. in the consolidated state the first x% of the domain is controlled by a smaller number of larger entities.
One result of this is the impact on "matching" processes like trying to find a contractor, or Google searching anything. Paradoxically, having a greater "reach" on your search (enabled by lower search costs like internet search engines) at first increases your options, but ultimately reduces your options due to the market response/consolidation dynamics.
I think this dynamic underlies a lot of a host of cathedral vs bazaar type CW adjacent topics-- social media landscape, regulatory capture, dating, urbanization, globalization, the "bowling alone" phenomenon, and others
Doubletree1
1yr ago
like a massive inexplicable gravitational anomaly sitting there..
Only if you believe that aliens are incapable of shielding the gravitational signature of a massive object. And you do believe that they can violate the equivalence principal. Why one and not the other?
Doubletree1
8mo ago
Ever play Escape Velocity? That is the only space exploration game I've really ever enjoyed.
"[A]dvances in HIV treatment have surely raised that number in the last few decades, but the fact remains that practicing homosexuality is a lifestyle with health consequences similar to those we associate with smoking, sedentary lifestyles, bad foods, etc."
The argument is basically centered the definition of unhealthy. It is not precise to label actions that are merely correlative with worse outcomes as "unhealthy" per se. Driving a pickup truck vs a Prius is likely correlated with worse life expectency (i.e., being a male living in a rural area). But it would be absurd to say "driving a pickup truck is more unhealthy than driving a Prius (for the driver)" without extra caveats.
Furthermore the original use of "unhealthy " in the thread in cake's post used a different definition altogether (likely ideologically based) -- making naraburns' reply somewhat of a non sequitur.
Doubletree1
9mo ago
Any technology that improves the pace or efficiency (reduces transaction costs) of the movement of goods or ideas would be at play here: cars, airplanes, television, Internet, (and before that the printing press, trains and the ur-example, the horse). But also certain economic innovations, like standardized weights and measures and private property.
Doubletree1
9mo ago
Lots of Muslims in the USA probably do celebrate Christmas, to one degree or another.
I'm curious what you would consider American "homeland" food. Nearly all of the distinctly American food I can think of is either hyper-local dishes or the result of a fusion of various European, black, and native cuisine.
Doubletree1
11mo ago
Looking forward to this! Some thoughts for your consideration:
Landowners in outer ring suburbs being losers-- would this be the case? If first ring suburbs are allowed to densify, there might be a net migration from outer rings to inner rings (I suspect this is a good thing from the perspective of outer-ring/bordering rural inhabitants). Or maybe you mean they'd be losers from a property value perspective as a result of this migration.
People who want to retain a suburban lifestyle in short driving distance of urban cores being losers -- again would this be true on net. I think to a certain extent this archetype of "dense urban core where all the commercial stuff happens surrounded by low density residential" is an artifact of existing land use restrictions, and may not be true in an alternative world. For example, before the widespread application of more or less "modern" land use, town centers spring up wherever there is a natural Schelling point to meet the economic needs of those in reasonable-travelling distance. So even granting they would lose out on access to the "big" city center they also gain the opportunity create localized pockets of commercial activity that are both closer to them and also more responsive to local needs.
Doubletree1
8mo ago
I'm pretty skeptical of this.
If you believe this, then there is a laundry list of less powerful nations we might theoretically swap places with. Which would you choose?
Doubletree1
8mo ago
they are just disputed zones fought over by countries that do have nukes.
This is why it's bad for the USA for Iran to have nukes.
Charitably, playing an M player game of thrones is easier than an M+1 player game. The USA doesn't even give nukes to it's non-nuclrar allies, and neither do the other nuclear powers.
Doubletree1
8mo ago
No. The left could be filled with 100% terrorists. That doesn't affect whether extreme HBD policies are or are not popular on the center right.
Bari Weiss is running a university to attract customers. those customers may include the center right, woke-skeptic, and also find extreme HBD policies distasteful.
Any joe can host a discussion website. Hosting a site where /good/, /quality/ discussion occurs is much harder, and that I think is the aim, is it not? And that absolutely does require some level of cooperation between participants engaged in that discussion.
Is this supposed to be some kind of gotcha? So lame. Anyway. Perhaps I did not articulate my point well enough, as it does not concern "things I don't like". I read a hundred things I don't like every time I sign on to this site, yet I singled out FC's post in particular. My point concerns behavior that erodes the norms that enable quality discussion.
I don't see how. I am not advocating for modding conservative viewpoints in particular. You already taboo a good number of posting styles /and/ content in order to keep the quality of discussion high. You don't allow trolls, intentional sophistry, or, I believe, outright Holocaust denial. You of course don't allow name calling. For the sake of the argument, why not? Who are you to say that someone shouldn't be able to express their sincere and honest belief that person X has literal shit for brains? And if anyone gets offended by that, well, we can't silence that person just because he puts people off; the problem is people cannot tolerate hearing things they don't like, etc. There are of course real forums where this kind of free speech absolutism is a deeply held principle, but they are almost universally terrible, for obvious reasons.
You get to call the shots at the end of the day. I've said my case about as clearly as I can, so I'll leave it here. Thank you for at least considering what I have to say here.
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