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DuplexFields

Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.

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joined 2022 September 05 05:51:34 UTC
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DuplexFields


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 05:51:34 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A clear and very delightful essay from Wayward Axolotl in 2017 on free speech being a means toward the unalloyed good “social rationality”:




What is freedom of speech?






People often confuse the principle of free speech with a specific law intended to protect free speech, such as the first amendment of the US constitution. Freedom of speech is not a specific law, or set of laws. Freedom of speech is the principle that coercion should not be used to suppress ideas.






What is freedom of speech for?






The primary function of free speech is to enable social rationality. Social rationality means thinking together. Discussion and debate are ways of thinking together. They are ways of solving problems and making decisions together. Freedom of speech creates a space in which people can freely exchange ideas, and thus think together.






Freedom of speech is necessary for social rationality, because otherwise alternatives cannot be presented for consideration. Without freedom of speech, the majority or official opinion is the only one that can be safely expressed. Under those conditions the social belief system is fixed. Errors cannot be corrected, and new ideas cannot be explored. Thought requires the freedom to consider alternatives. It requires an open mind. A society that does not permit free speech has a closed mind. It cannot think. Freedom of speech protects society from becoming trapped in a vicious cycle of conformity.




This got me thinking about Google, which is in a round of layoffs of thousands of employees. I find myself thinking conspiratorially: this would be a great time for them to purge all remaining wrongthinkers from their midst, possibly using their AI to pick those who hold such “hateful” ideas as James Damore.


I have no evidence at all, nor have I heard of such a thing happening. The thought was partly inspired by the military having a similar purge under Obama and now Biden, such that the top generals and admirals are reported (on rightward and far right media alike) to be fully “globohomo” at this point.


Those of you in Silicon Valley or STE(A)M professions, do you know anyone recently laid off from Alphabet, and what their views are?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Protip: to get your soldiers referred to as “murdered civilians” in the press, simply don’t have uniforms.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I am the group it describes. My ancestors came over on the Mayflower, in the New England Puritan wave, in the Pennsylvania Dutch wave, and whenever the Scottish (not Scots-Irish) came over. I drink cow milk and eat wheat and cheese with zero side effects.


What I don’t like is that “white” carries more weight than “American” for my political rivals, and hate that it’s carrying that weight for the enemies of my enemies.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Cosmology matters.


My fellow churchgoers will be my literal brothers and sisters for eternity, while my cousins, countrymen, and conversational partners might only be in my life for a meager century.


I don’t have to worry about being forced into a moral quandary, because my Lord has assured me that if I act from love, He will work it out; after all, He’s not only outside of time and knows the ends from their beginnings, He also knows literally everything and can figure out a better method for accomplishing our goals than anything I can come up with.


I’m a libertarian Republican, yet I have a Master and a King.


Cosmology matters.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
WHY is there a culture war?


A proximal cause is "fellow travelers" being more able to find each other and create echo chambers where they don't have to spend time becoming exhausted by arguing their viewpoints for their neighbors (by chance or fate) with different views. This doesn't just happen online; since people who trust governments more than private citizens tend to congregate in cities and live in apartments and condos, cities become progressive and the rural and suburban areas become conservative. The busybodies and meddlers in each group who can't stand being told what to do by "those people" try to push laws and regulations and ordinances and speech codes to interfere with "those people" getting their way, even if they themselves would never consent to being ruled in such a manner. Thus, the cold culture war.


I do offer an ultimate cause, however, and I hope it'll blow a few minds.


My sensemaking journey began with a simple pair of concepts: The physical world and the world of logic operate on separate sets of attributes and rules, and emotions are a third and equally separate realm like unto the others.


    

  1. The physical: temperature, color, proximity, size, weight, direction, and so on - The What
    2. 

  2. The logical: axioms, premises, hypotheses, conclusions, categories, if-then-else, and so on - The How
    3. 

  3. The emotional: desires, needs, relationships, identities both singular and plural, attribution and transference, and so on - The Why
    4. 



Upon first making a list like this, I realized that the physical essence is masculine, the emotional essence is feminine, and the logical essence is neither. ("Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" and geeks are from Vulcan.) I've called this worldview Triessentialism.


More recently, I observed that physically intuitive people tend to be red tribe/conservative while emotionally intuitive people tend to be blue-tribe/progressive, and logically intuitive people tend to be grey tribe/libertarian. In animal metaphors, the red tribe acts like a pack, the blue like a herd, and the grey like a hive; asymmetric but equivalent. Since coming to these conclusions, I've rarely been surprised when it comes to politics, which tells me my beliefs pay out in prediction.


I could go on and on about these mindsets, and I could even point to Jon Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory as a root cause as to why these mindsets tend to be the three fundamentals. I'd love to talk with him about looking at his data and suggesting three, not two, moral foundation mindsets, with the third being somewhat rare. But for me, I've sensemade enough to consider my theory substantiated.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The only necessary belief is that God counts Jesus’ death as fulfilling my death penalty for the harm I’ve caused.


The only necessary “ritual” is that I do not “blaspheme the Holy Spirit.”


The eternal suffering comes from being imprisoned away from the source of all goodness and kindness with all the other hateful people, and malicious powerful spiritual entities imprisoned too.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The difference in temperaments you cite is not the only factor, nor not even necessarily the most salient.


The main assimilation I personally require for me to feel that an immigrant is now truly an American is that he follows the laws of this country. No assaults unprovoked, no working primarily for the interests of another government openly or secretly our enemy, no theft or casual trespass on others’ property. And the laws on immigration are to be included. If the first thing he does on our soil is break a law allowing him to be here, I want him gone.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Oof. As much as I enjoy your razor-sharp insight, it cuts deep because it is true. I have eschewed grouping myself with my biogroup because of the ugliness of those who do. In doing so I have consciously denied a power to be grasped.


For separate reasons, I still strive for something more excellent, the coming of the kingdom of God, which brings all the lost children of Noah into one great family. I could be paranoid about the originators of my faith being Jewish, but I think that blackpill is poison.




For if the dead do not rise neither did Christ rise, and if Christ did not rise your faith is futile and your sins have never been forgiven. Moreover those who have died believing in Christ are utterly dead and gone. Truly, if our hope in Christ were limited to this life only we should, of all mankind be the most to be pitied!




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My life’s savings were all earned and invested during the Trump years, and they were substantial and thriving. Then, despite my wage actually rising slightly during the Biden years, I haven’t seen my more recent retirement investments do any better than a local credit union savings account.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If the definition of discrimination hadn’t shifted from “treating people as members of a race” to “treating people as if they’re not members of a race”, we’d be there for 90%+ of red tribe.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Nowadays, Trump could probably murder someone on live TV and a majority of the Republican voters would say he didn't do it.




If I saw that, my first thought would be that I’m watching an AI-generated deepfake that was put together ahead of time and the fact that it’s “live TV” was a lie.


My second would be, “Did that person deserve it?”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thank you for pushing back on this “consensus”.


The depth of corruption in Ukraine may result in two Presidents’ impeachments, both disputed by each side, and I dearly hope and pray it doesn’t end in WWIII.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I have no doubt they’re killing civilians. What I dispute is that they’re murderists, a charge all too frequently leveled at Israel, and/or Jews generally, and always a subtle undercurrent when their self-defense actions happen due to circumstances they didn’t want and tried to avoid. They’re pulling the “kill one” trolley lever as fast as they can yank it, but the trolleys keep coming.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well congratulations, you’ve just described all humans in every historical context, with compulsive rule-followers being the rare exception.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I find myself scratching my head at your own model/phrasings of my beliefs/nonbeliefs/“faith” worldview.




You are holding up a list of things that exist as though they are the same thing as a given religions idols (the cross, the prophet, the tablets, etc) when the whole point of atheism is that there is no such thing as an idol.




Idols exist; one was just beheaded. I assume I’ve misunderstood you. I interpret you here as saying atheism is about believing the events, artifacts, and entities of religions either have none of the powers imputed to them or are references to things which never existed, depending on the thing. Is that a sound reading of your statement?


I don’t believe an idol of Margaret Sanger would have real metaphysical power, nor would I ever think atheists would believe such. It would be an attack on the reverence which progressive atheists have for her, calling them idol-worshipers, a label which, by their own actions and words, they would abhor and wish to destroy.




If you are a committed christian (or theist in general, I guess) your reality requires lots of maintenance. You have to […]. Atheists don't have to do that: […]




The way I read this, I believe you assume I am trying to hold an imaginary world in my head overlaid atop the real one, contradicting it at many points of conflict and forcing me to choose obvious lies over simple truths.


Let me tell you right up front that would be far too much work for me. I try to discover reconciliations between every apparent point of conflict between the real world and my faith, and I’ve found only one which really requires me to set it to the side instead of explaining. I have every confidence that my God and Teacher will eventually reveal His answer to me.


As for faith, I hope you’re not referring to the mystical Douglas-Adamsian definition of faith that if the object of my faith is ever proven, I will have lost faith and thus I will be disqualified from gaining faith’s rewards. On the contrary, seeing the object of my faith is my goal and will be a wondrous blessing, and in that moment faith “in things not seen” will become a confirmed belief, a much better thing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


lockstep approval




Although both the lock-stepping Nazis and the celebrating Palestinians are/were anti-Semites, I’d instead characterize the latter as “like-minded.”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Wait, does that mean that by dissolving the company, the judge is “firing” him and thus nullifying his residence there?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Fundamental Question of Rationality is: "Why do you believe what you believe?", or alternatively, "What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?" - LessWrong


If you find a mechanical wristwatch sitting on the side of the road, and when you take it home you discover it only ticks forward fifty-eight minutes every hour, you don’t believe it to have been imperfectly made to begin with; you believe its perfection to have become corrupted through circumstance.


Yud’s whole telos is using the scientific method (and Bayes Theorum) for everything in life. That’s the core of rationalism. The core of the scientific method is that once you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how absurd or intricate, must be the truth. Science is perpetually trying to falsify all assumptions, all explanations, so that the truth may be seen in its naked glory.


But in that essay he spoke about a Judeo-Christian God, without the specifics of theology of any single religion, sect, or cult within that wide umbrella. He referenced a belief in a loving, immanent, benevolent God who deliberately used a cruel process of death and suffering to refine slugs to apes, and apes to humans, for the purpose of proclaiming His glory forever after death. And he did a fine job of destroying those cosmologies which embrace this patent absurdity.


Ken Ham, the premier creationist, does the same, using the same evidence.


Yes, Eliezer Yudkowsky has more in common with Ken Ham than either do with the theologians of ecumenical denominations, whether Judaic, Christian, or Hindu. Both Ham and Yud believe in a specific historical sequence (heh) of events which led to the world we live in now. Both believe in, and proclaim loudly, the purposelessness of evolution, and both loudly proclaim it is not God who made the world a place of toothless elephants or fat humans.


But where Yud says it is only man which brings the light of intellect to the universe, Ham points to the very first part of the ancient Scriptures of his religion and says it was man, not God, whose choice brought death into the world, who wrought entropy across the surface of the Earth and ended the perfection of a loving God’s garden.


Yudkowsky did not show that the artifacts of purposelessness inherent in an entropic and random world must be the result of a vast regression of chaos to the beginning of time; he didn’t see a need to falsify the only alternative which also fits the evidence.


Where he sees a Bronze Age civilization’s myths and just-so stories, Ham sees a miraculously preserved historical narrative documenting in detail a fall from a perfect world created by omniscience, resulting in the world we can see and measure, and dinosaur fossils we can dig up as evidence of this true history.


The mere existence of the “problem of pain” argument, however artfully phrased and carefully evidenced, is not in itself a proof of the nonexistence of the God of the Bible.


Now, I know I’m not going to convince anyone on this forum (of all places) to trust Ken Ham over Eliezer Yudkowsky. What I’m doing is making it crystal clear that Yud has handily falsified the weakman argument. The strongman is nowhere to be found in that essay.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sounds like that person has a script for political discussion, as if they were a “contrary”-type townsfolk programmed to give predictable dialogue. An NPC, as it were; after you’ve spoken with them once, you never need to again, as you know approximately what they’ll say as the culture war unfolds.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My philosophy, Triessentialism, breaks things down to (or sees things through a lens of) three essences: Physical, Logical, and Emotional, or What, How, and Why.


I see science as the How of the What, and engineering as creating a What with a built-in How; they’re the same thing but in different directions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That’s such a Virgo thing to say. I bet you’re also a blood type O.


(This was an example of how nonconsensus and/or technical terminology can be used to insult someone.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No. The principles involved might include numbers, which would require a measurement of some sort to have a min and a max, but there are a few other qualifications which should be considered. For example, is it known that this person was freed from prison in their home country to get a visa to the USA? No visa.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If the US government issues visas for a hundred million inhabitants of the third world to come to the US, Texas can’t do anything about it other than secede.




Issuing visas would, at the very least, include an enforcement mechanism for finding and deporting people who don't meet their visa conditions. This would put the lie to either "Republicans don't like immigrants, 'illegal' is just a fig leaf for hate" or "Democrats don't want any border security, they just want new voters, either this generation or the next."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Stranger had polyamory too, was five years earlier, and (according to some accounts) kicked off the free-love Sixties as pop culture knows it.


https://old.reddit.com/r/polyamory/comments/23du3h/the_early_poly_movement_and_heinleins_stranger_in/


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The user above you cited a specific “miracle,” restoration of eyesight, and you cited a lack of a different category of miracle, regrowth of a removed limb. You wouldn’t claim Viagra doesn’t work because boners could have other causes but it doesn’t make bald people grow hair.


Even disregarding the categorical error, there’s another point to be made. Instead of claiming your null result negates and dismisses the documentation of a positive result as a single anecdote instead of data, come up with a different falsifiable hypothesis rather than jumping to the null hypothesis. If there is a fully material way to restore macular degeneration, the world needs to know it to relieve much suffering.


It seems that in the cited restoration of sight, the person knew they were being prayed for. We also know that yogis can perform incredible feats of biofeedback manipulation through meditative states and/or self-hypnosis. The accounts of Jesus at least once have Him saying, “Go, your faith has healed you.” Perhaps there is a method of hypnosis which can cure certain types of blindness. Come up with an experiment to falsify that hypothesis, changing no factors from the cited anecdote.