Eetan
11mo ago
-- Trump 100% originally ran for President on a dare from Bill Clinton. It was supposed to be a joke run to weaken JEB! and Ted Cruz and soften them up for HRC in the general, then he got there and thought huh maybe I can win the damn thing. None of the principals involved can admit to it after it went the way it did.
Hmmm .... imagine you are a boxer hired to participate in fixed match. You are supposed to convincingly fight for few minutes and then lose, but your opponent is so bad that you KO him by mistake and win.
You can enjoy your victory, but have lots of explaining to do afterwards.
This could explain Trump's lackluster campaing in 2016, this could explain Trump's face when he saw the states going red and number of delegates going up, this could explain why Trump had no victory speech prepared.
Most of all, this could explain the extreme rage that Trump inspired and extreme attempts to bring him down.
Eetan
1yr ago
Disgust? Read how disgusting and unnatural people saw IVF, contraception, organ transplants, blood transfusion, anaesthesia, open chest surgery, autopsy of the dead and other medical procedures we now take for granted when they were new.
Nothing is more arbitrary the disgust, and not only in the medical field.
Obligatory obscure anecdote: I remember reading memoir of 19th century German settler in Russia.
Germans arrived on empty land given them by Tsar, and began to cultivate it according to their customs. This included using animal manure to fertilize the fields.
The local Russian peasants were disgusted, revolted and absolutely horrified.
"These furrin devil worshippers spread animal shit on their fields, instead of throwing in to the river to get rid of it as normal people do! Do they want to poison good Orthodox people with shit bread?"
Few years later:
"See the how big harvests do these swine have, while we good Orthodox people can barely feed themselves! Satan is helping them! Burn down their village, now!"
Eetan
1mo ago
If you want to change things, if you want your cause win, yes, complaining online (or offline) solves nothing. You should become part (or full) time activist and dedicate your life to educating, agitating and organizing. Of course, there will be very substantial costs to be paid for very unclear benefits (most causes in history failed badly, most idealists wasted their lives for nothing).
You do not have to start from point zero - all causes you listed aready have many people fighting for them.
But what's the point?
This place is not activist space, this place is debate space for curious people who want to understand how the world where they live works.
Eetan
5mo ago
Since special thread dedicated to current Middle Eastern issues fell into abeyance, I am posting latest war culture war report from the scorching sands of Middle East cold and brutal streets of Gotham City.
And the latest victim of the war is one Stuart Seldowitz, former humanitarian diplomacy consultant, National Security Council member and deputy director of the US State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs,who fell in glorious struggle against terrorism was arrested by NYPD for persistent harrassment of halal food street vendor.
In one widely shared video, Seldowitz is heard to ask the unidentified vendor: “Did you rape your daughter like Muhammad did?” In another, he states: “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough.”
When the vendor says he doesn’t speak English, Seldowitz laughs and says, “That’s why you’re selling food in a food cart, because you’re ignorant,” before suggesting that the vendor will be deported to Egypt and tortured by intelligence agents.
“The mukhabarat in Egypt will get your parents,” Seldowitz said in the video. “Does your father like his fingernails? They will take them out one by one.” The vendor is heard asking Seldowitz to “please go” and saying that he would call the police.
An NYPD spokesperson told the outlet that they are aware of the videos and monitoring the situation but that no reports had been filed. The woman who posted the videos, who is believed to be a social activist and Columbia University graduate, said Seldowitz had been harassing the vendor for weeks.
According to some reports, the street vendor was allegedly previously tearing down posters with dead and kidnapped Israelis.
Whole incident was covered on dead bird site in every possible angle, if you are even only casual deadbirders, you already learned about it and made your own minds.
What is my take?
In the best possible world, no one would be tearing these posters, because there would be no such posters on the streets of Gotham City, because whole world, including Middle East, would live in peace and harmony, there would be no wars, no one would be killed, no one would be kidnapped, no house would be bombed or bulldozed.
In the second best possible world, no one would be tearing these posters, because there would be no such posters on the streets of Gotham City, because no one living in Gotham City would care enough about some war going on the other side of the world to deface their beloved city.
In the third best possible world, no one would be tearing these posters, because there would be no such posters on the streets of Gotham City, because laws of Gotham City against posting and graffiti would be strictly enforced and people splattering around unauthorized posters and leaflets would be fined (and, in case of repeated and persistent vandalism, deported from the city).
Well, we do not live in any of these worlds.
Eetan
6mo ago
The more interesting question is why isn’t there a conservative Wikipedia?
There is! More precisely, there are two.
Normie boomer conservative Conservapedia that began as creationist intelligent design project during the noughties and Infogalactic, alt right flagship project by Vox Day.
Why you never heard about them, you are asking? Because they are not Wikipedia. Everyone uses Wikipedia because everyone uses Wikipedia, because Wikipedia link comes first in every search. Even if Elon started heavily shilling one of these sites, I cannot see how he could singlehandedly change it.
Eetan
7mo ago
What do you think about the idea that in order to be morally worthy of a romantic relationship, you need to be willing and able to endure great suffering either for the greater good, or for your tribe, or for no reason at all?
What I think? I think you made your own personal religion worshipping suffering for its own sake as holiest thing ever, and try to preach it here, with little success so far. Do not let it dissuade you, keep up the good work.
Eetan
1yr ago
I find it interesting that The Motte tends to treat atheism with kid gloves that are not reserved for other belief systems.
Congrats to your search and replace skills.
What you said is true, atheism per se is not questioned here.
Is it because theists gave up.
No more philosophical proofs of God's existence, no more evidence that Bible is literal word of God, no more irrefutable arguments that Jesus indeed rose from the dead.
What today counts for evangelism are purest materialist arguments - either collective "Society needs to believe in something" "Christianity is better than wokeism" "Lower orders need religion to keep them in check" or individual "Just go to church, bro, it is nice place with nice art and music, good place to make friends and pick up girls".
In short, the noughties are gone.
Want to bring them back? Want to RETRVN to christian-atheist debates of the golden age of the internets?
Just start it. Make effortpost about existence of God, about cosmological argument, about irreducible complexity of life, about intelligent design. When godless infidels start objecting, demolish them with facts, logic and reason.
Eetan
1yr ago
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said
Ouch, this dreary poem again, the poem everyone loves and no one knows what is it about.
This poem was written in 1920, and it was not meant as timeless wisdom for all times and places, but as a commentary about current events.
What were the current events?
If you lived in UK 102 years ago, there were three major issues that split the country, issues that everyone politically aware had to take a stand on.
1/ Military. Should UK negotiate with other great powers to limit armaments, or should it strive to be greatest power ever at any cost?
This is what "the Cambrian measures" of the poem mean.
If you thought that what the country needs right now are more battleships, the bigger and shinier the better, congrats, you are Kipling.
2/ Social question, especially eight hour working day.
"the Carboniferous Epoch"
If you thought that workers and miners already live high on the hog and do not need any handouts, congrats, you are Kipling.
3/ Votes for women.
"the Feminian Sandstones"
If you thought that the country has already too much democracy, congrats, you are Kipling.
Now, what happened? Did the country followed Kipling's advice?
No, it did not.
The British establishment negotiated Washington Naval Treaty, let women over age 30 vote and even gave some concessions to the working class.
Were it good choices? If instead they engaged in massive military buildup and crushed the uppity mob with iron fist, would it make Britain great again, greater than ever?
Eetan
5mo ago
Suppose you have a 13 year old child dying of a terminal illness, and their final wish is to lose their virginity before they die. Is it ethical for the Make A Wish Foundation to hire them a prostitute?
This is not completely fantastical scenario.
Original source is long gone, but here is the second best, Free Republic mirror and lively discussion thread and other thread
Dying boy, 15, gets wish: losing virginity Chicago Sun Times ^ | 12/23/01 | BY BENJAMIN ERRETT
Posted on 12/23/2001, 3:26:24 PM by Mopp4
A terminally ill boy had his dying wish granted in Australia this month, but ethicists are still at odds over whether it was the right thing to do. The wish was not for a trip to Disneyland or to meet a famous sports star. Instead, the 15-year-old wanted to lose his virginity before he died of cancer. The boy, who remains anonymous but was called Jack by the Australian media, did not want his parents to know about his request. Because of his many years spent in the hospital, he had no girlfriend or female friends. Jack died last week, but not before having his last wish granted. Without the knowledge of his parents or hospital staff, friends arranged an encounter with a prostitute outside of hospital premises. All precautions were taken, and the organizers made sure the act was fully consensual. The issue has sparked fierce debate over the legal and ethical implications of granting the boy's request. By law, Jack was still a child, and the woman involved could in theory face charges for having sex with a minor. The debate was sparked by the hospital's child psychologist, who wrote a letter to "Life Matters," a radio show in which academics debate ethical and moral dilemmas. The scenario was presented in the abstract, with no details about the boy's identity.
No surprise, boomer cons in 2001 reacted as expected.
My inital reaction to this article was shock. This boy is dying at age 15 and the most important thing in the world to him is to get laid before he passes on. He didn't even want his parents to know about it. Is this reflective of the way young people view life today? I don't care that I will be missing out on the chance to lead a full life, just let me have sex before I go?
This is the sort of soul-less, animalistic response to impending death that might be expected from a human child raised by beasts.
Interesting: His eternal life is immediately before him. And this "child of the media" wants 30 seconds of immediate sexual gratification rather than an eternity of life.
What can be seen as more surprising, this story was revived in 2014 by Eric Raymond on his blog and reaction of libertarian both left and right tended to be positive and affirming.
I’d go so far as to say that the most important experience this hooker gave the kid probably wasn’t the orgasm itself but her natural human compassion for a dying child, her willingness to touch him and comfort him and give him what he had wished for.
Something not thinkable today.
Eetan
1yr ago
Why are you against banning or restricting unhealthy food?
Idealistic reason:
http://www.quickmeme.com/img/a0/a0278d6ebd9591c39e398b65ed9c5dd9d7d6ea7686578f1088d41908c6b92ca4.jpg
Pragmatic reson: Who gets to decide what food is "unhealthy"? You can bet it will not be you.
Once the mechanism for restricting and banning "for your good" starts rolling, it will not stop at foods you do not like. I am sure there are many scientific studies that prove your favorite food causes cancer, impotence and baldness.
Remember when deplatforming happened only to few terrorist, nazis, and other bad hombres?
Eetan
6mo ago
What's going on in the West Bank right now? I haven't seen much coverage of it.
Settlers going on rampage - destroying crops, burning houses, evicting whole Palestinian villages at gunpoint (yes, unlike Israelis in Israel proper, these hilltop guys are heavily armed and unlike Gaza, Palestinians in West Bank are thoroughly disarmed).
Lots of coverage, but you have to dig up into Arabic sources to find it.
Eetan
10mo ago
I was raised Muslim but abandoned it as an atheist a long time ago, and this passage is particularly painful for how real it is. The discordant discourse above has largely been operating in parallel and disconnected tracks. On one side you get a bevy of purportedly "Muslim" activists announcing that Islam can mean whatever you want it to mean, and actual Muslim religious scholars responding with The Fuck?:
There is good reason why atheism ended on garbage dump of history, why outspoken atheists are in the current year seen as racists and fascists.
Old, bolshevik style smashing religion with sledgehammer worked, but this new way, hollowing religion from the inside and dressing in its skin, works much better.
It worked on Christianity, despite many Christian religious scholars protesting that Christianity was never tolerant and LGBTQ+ affirming, and it is working on Islam now.
And it works well. 100 years ago, 50 years ago it would be unthinkable for Pope openly display and worship pagan idols in the Vatican. Today, it is just another day.
pro and contra positions on the controversy.
Here is inverse inverse conspiracy theory: modern flat earthism, when it suddenly appeared about 2012 - if you remember, you would remember deluge of slick, professionally made Youtube videos - was not product of believers, was not a joke, but experiment how could disinformation and fake news spread on then new social media (it turned out it can spread like wildfire).
Anyway, if the Earth is not flat, it should be. See you on Kek island.
Eetan
1yr ago
Finally, concrete plan how to save the world from paperclipping dropped, presented by world (in)famous Basilisk Man himself.
https://twitter.com/RokoMijic/status/1647772106560552962
Government prints money to buy all advanced AI GPUs back at purchase price. And shuts down the fabs. Comprehensive Anti-Moore's Law rules rushed through. We go back to ~2010 compute.
TL;DR: GPU's over certain capability are treated like fissionable materials, unauthorized possession, distribution and use will be seen as terrorism and dealt with appropriately.
So, is it feasible? Could it work?
If by "government" Roko means US government (plus vassals allies) alone, it is not possible.
If US can get China aboard, if if there is worldwide expert consensus that unrestricted propagation of computing power will kill everyone, it is absolutely feasible to shut down 99,99% of unauthorized computing all over the world.
Unlike drugs or guns, GPU's are not something you can make in your basement - they are really like enriched uranium or plutonium in the sense you need massive industrial plants to produce them.
Unlike enriched uranium and plutonium, GPU's were already manufactured in huge numbers, but combination of carrots (big piles of cash) and sticks (missile strikes/special forces raids on suspicious locations) will continue dwindling them down and no new ones will be coming.
AI research will of course continue (like work on chemical and biological weapons goes on), but only by trustworthy government actors in the deepest secrecy. You can trust NSA (and Chinese equivalent) AI.
The most persecuted people of the world, gamers, will be, as usual, hit the hardest.
Eetan
1yr ago
It wasn’t “realistic”, but that doesn’t mean the people doing it thought it was a LARP. The “Reichsbürger” are German sovereign citizens who are ideologically diverse (eg. range from US-style libertarians and ancaps to Bismarckian monarchists) but all believe in what is essentially a boomer Q-esque theory that the German state is illegitimate because it isn’t the “legal successor” to the German Empire of the 19th century (there is debate in the group as to whether the illegitimacy began in 1918 or 1947).
This thing is not so exceptional, in Russia are also people who claim that 1991 dissolution of USSR was illegal and Soviet Union still exists.
Eetan
3mo ago
What I mean by all this is that it’s entirely possible Europeans have higher prosocial genes due to 1400 years of evolutionary selection, that this is pro-civilizational, but that our current “widget meritocracy” is ultimately anti-civilizational because it rewards self gain through widget production which (because cognition is zero sum) necessarily punishes those with substantive moral feelings.
If Christianity helped to spread "prosocial genes" in population, we would observe that people who were Christian the longest - Greeks, Sicilians, Southern Italians, Spanish and other Mediterrannean peoples - would be the most "prosocial" and people who were Christian only for short time - Nordic and Baltic peoples - would be wild raging two legged beasts.
Do we observe it?
Eetan
1yr ago
I was confused by that. He said it was written in 2002, but it's cited as Reader's digest 2017. Is that like...The reader's digest? Or is it some kind of internal Eunuch Archive reader's digest? That excerpt wasn't from the other article he mentioned, so is he citing it directly using his own account on the site?
It is fictional story set in utopian (for the author) far future, I think it was clear from the context.
The shining future predicted by the author indeed came true, we are all wearing mirror shades and we love it.
Was it a conspiracy, or just people working together to achieve their dreams?
Many cases of fiction influencing real life - just remember all the science fiction fans who worked on real space program and helped to make their vision a reality.
Eetan
1mo ago
"Comrades! It must be a mistake! I am lifelong revolutionary, old party member, decorated war veteran and distinguished worker, no way I can be a fascist spy!"
What could and should be outsider reaction to such situation, except good and hearty laughter?
Eetan
3mo ago
Big Bang
Theory of expansion of universe was formulated by Catholic priest and met, at first, with very strong opposition from "rational materialists" who saw it being too similar to biblical story of creation.
"Big Bang" name itself was coined as derogatory nickname.
Nevertheless, rational people, whether materialists or idealists, accepted it because the evidence is overwhelming.
Eetan
6mo ago
In another related dead bird news, Vivek goes into full Hindu Zionist mode.
2000's Onion satire again becomes 2020's reality.
Now is the moment for Israel to return to its founding premise: the Jewish State has an absolute right to exist. A Divine gift, gifted to a Divine nation, charged with a Divine purpose.
Very strange for professing Hindu to say.
Yes, technically, all life has a divine soul and divine essence, but we know Vivek does not wanted to say it, we know he wanted to say: "Hello my fellow Evangelicals, I am one of you! Vote for me!"
And, judging from bird site, it does not work. Every Vivek's tweet talking about God is followed by numerous Christians posting pics of many armed Hindu deities and asking "What God, Vivek? WHAT GOD?"
Eetan
8mo ago
God isn't real, of course, and I doubt Vivek thinks so either.
And so it begins. Second Great Internet Atheist War, exactly 20 years after the first one.
No idea if Vivek wanted it, but if he insists in returning to God talk of halcyon times of Bush admin, this is what he will get, together with second, even more crushing defeat.
And it was completely unneccessary, nothing about current material and cultural battles is about religion.
The other nine proposals lead to concrete political demands and actions, but what about this one?
"God is real", then what? Teach creationism intelligent design in schools?
If there was something good about Trump and Trumpism, it was dropping this futile and embarrassing stuff. Now you want to bring it back?
Just start your points with "America is great" or something similar. This will energize your base and enrage your enemies much more.
Eetan
8mo ago
The Washington Post reports: Florida schools drop AP Psychology after state says it violates the law
If only.
Dateline 1723: Gazette de France reports: Venerable University of Utrecht drops medical classes after state finds it violates the law against heresy.
What tragedy! Where will now Dutch students study the four humors science, where will they learn the proper methods and proper astrological signs for bloodletting and applying leeches?
Even by standards of modern sciences, psychology stands out as complete fraud.
Not all of it - there is one part of psychological science - one involving IQ and racial differences in IQ - that reliably replicates and stands to scrutiny. Something tells me that Florida psychology courses do not cover this.
One can only wish that DeSatanis got his pitchfork out for real and cleaned this nest of superstition Khmer Rouge style. One can dream.
Eetan
11mo ago
Update of previous culture war post in May 1 thread.
The contentious marker was removed without any ceremony and all dwindled into nothingness.
Maybe other more cinematic events, like New York Subway Thunderdome fight, stole the limelight, maybe the whole thing was just too obscure to turn into major culture war battlefield.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is still dead and so are most of causes she dedicated her life for. Causes like communism, that moved hundreds of millions and turned the Earth asunder, are now just forgotten or reduced to cosplay attire.
As will happen to all of us, as will happen to every cause we hold dear.
Eetan
1yr ago
This is self evident tyranny and the people who would want to control compute in such a manner must be violently resisted in their plans for enslaving humanity thus.
You can count on it. Remember when experts told the world that deadly virus is spreading and everyone must stay in their homes indefinitely to stop it, and people of the world united, picked their pitchforks and told the experts to fuck off, or else.
Well, there is hope (or wishful thinking) that the scrolls were only small part of villa library, that they were special Epicurean collection most valued by the owner (the scrolls were not on shelves, they were packed in chests, ready to be carted away).
Alternatively, they were possessions of previous owner inherited by new owner, who was not interested in Epicureanism, put them off shelves into storage space and forgot about them.
Well off and cultured Romans would own more books. Villa owner was one of 1% of 1% of Roman Empire and definitely was a man of culture.
Such house would be expected to have two large symmetrical libraries, one Greek and one Latin containing classical works of the respective literature.
More details and sources in Reddit thread
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