Goodguy
8d ago
Well, I more or less am one, and for obvious human emotional reasons I enjoy spending time around other ones, so subjectively to me, while I do find them unfortunately much much less common than I would wish, at least to me they don't seem so rare as finding a unicorn.
Do you have any reason to think that @magicalkittycat is not, in fact, just a principled liberal? You are going on these highly emotional and extremely militant rants and assuming that this person is retreating to liberalism for tactical reasons rather than, you know, just being a liberal.
Leftists have, indeed, done some real damage. For example, by supporting soft-on-crime policies. I'm no fan of such delusional ideas. But it seems to me that you are just lashing out blindly. You might do better if you describe specific leftist policies that have damaged you, and if you also do not automatically assume that people who criticize you are part of what to you is the enemy tribe.
Goodguy
8d ago
Would signing an open letter committing oneself to help the 4th Reich take over the United States also be pretty innocuous?
Yes, it would be. The United States is so far away from being taken over by either communists or by Nazis that an open letter in support of either of those groups would be innocuous.
Goodguy
8d ago
Just because I find it obnoxious doesn't mean that I don't find it innocuous. I observe obnoxious political activities all the time, coming from both the left and the right, without necessarily thinking that it is any sort of serious political threat.
When people with the opposite politics get in power, it is perfectly reasonable for them to decide that no, they do not want to provide government funding for institutions that are fighting them politically.
I agree! And I agree that the open letter is pushing it, and I find the letter pretty obnoxious.
I think that Tao by signing the open letter was, deliberately or not, unfairly taking advantage of the fact that non-leftist academics who signed an open letter supporting different politics would possibly expose themselves to career-endangering consequences.
That said, I still think that @Sunshine's take goes overboard. Identifying your own political side with America as a whole and calling for the wholesale demolition of the other side is a bit much of a reaction to what amounts to an academic most people have never even heard of putting his name on a politicized open letter.
Goodguy
9d ago
Signing an open letter and writing an article that attacks Trump is pretty innocuous behavior, in my opinion. Is there any evidence that he tried to, for example, cancel anyone?
Goodguy
9d ago
Whew boy, now this is really some waging of the culture war.
Has Terence Tao actually engaged in any political activism other than sharing his opinions, or are you purely criticizing him for having anti-right political opinions and working for a California university?
Saying that being a professor at a California university is like being a soldier of the new Red Army is hyperbole. It's the same kind of hyperbole that committed Soviets used against their own ideological enemies in the Soviet academic system.
Sure, I don't think that Terence Tao is entitled to taxpayer money. I don't think even he is trying to claim that he is entitled to taxpayer money. Surely there's some room for nuance in looking at this situation.
Goodguy
14d ago
That's a good point. Yeah, abstractly I don't care whether humanity survives in the long term or not, but in practice it would probably be very unpleasant to live in a society that is convinced that humanity is about to go extinct.
Goodguy
14d ago
I don't think it would be prosocial to bring humans into the world just to pay my social security and wipe my ass.
Of course I would love for people to take care of me when I'm old, but to me that just doesn't seem like a good enough reason to bring new people into existence. It's very selfish. If I'm going to help bring new people into existence, I would probably like to do it for less selfish reasons than that.
A note on motivations.
I often see people making arguments of the type of "we need to get fertility rates (across the board, or maybe just for group X) up otherwise human civilization will collapse".
Here's the thing though. I'm fine with human civilization ending. I don't see anything inherently good about human civilization continuing. And I don't see anything inherently good about human civilization ending. I'm neutral about it. If human civilization ends after my generation, I'm fine with it. Of course I want living standards to continue to be good during my generation at least, but that doesn't mean that I have any attachment to the idea of wanting to maintain human civilization 100 or 1000 years from now. And if human civilization continues after me, I'm fine with that too. I don't care much one way or the other.
Humanity has been doing this whole reproduction thing for hundreds of thousands of years now. Repetition and quantity is not the same thing as quality.
I get that it feels different if you have kids, which I don't. I might be interested in having kids, but I'm not sure if I want any or not yet.
In any case, if you have kids, I didn't force you to have kids. I hope your kids do well, but it doesn't change my fundamental calculus.
I enjoy being alive, but I see no fundamental deep importance in keeping the human species existing. I'm not a nihilist in the least bit. I love being alive in a very visceral way. I love the smell of flowers, the look of sunshine in the sky. I just see no clear positive advantage to continuing the species. Or to ending it. Like I said, I'm neutral on the matter. If the species continues, cool. If it ends, cool. I don't want to end, and I don't want any currently alive humans to end, but to me the idea of continuing the species beyond that is very abstract and I really don't care about it.
I intellectually understand the possible seduction value of treating women as narcissists/children. I broke into sexual success years ago through PUA, so I'm not unfamiliar with those concepts. However, my actual experience with the women who wanted to be with me longer than a one night-stand has not been that of being with narcissists/children. The women I've had long-ish relationships with have mostly been smart and decent people. Not without their problems, of course, and some of them were no paragons of mental stability, but neither am I, and they were decent... very far from this nightmare image of women as treacherous harpies. I'm actually probably more often the one who screwed up those relationships by being narcissistic/childlike myself, and/or by wanting to spread my wild oats. At least, it's 50/50. The women I've gotten to know, as opposed to one-night stands, I mean, they were often weird, but in the same way that I'm weird... neurotic, well I'm neurotic too... not totally rational, sure, but not any more so than I am irrational. I've also had some cool female friends. And as far as just sexual level stuff goes, I'm no Don Juan, it's not like I have hot girls beating down my door, but I've been with some really attractive women.
You say: "Treat them like narcissist/children" and it works... I mean... how do you go back? How do you compartmentalize that back away?"
I just don't think of it in those terms. Treating them like narcissists/children bores me, it's not arousing or stimulating for me in any way. Even if it works, it's not my thing, it's something that I don't enjoy and doesn't turn me on. I've had enough sex by now, and have satisfied my old painful teenage virgin frustration enough, that now I'm at a point where I'm not willing to do X Y and Z like a chore in order to get to sex or romance. I'm into having fun. I personally enjoy a very minimalist type of seduction, so for me fun in that regard is about just trying to use eye contact and other kinds of body language mainly. But not all guys are into that, I'm all for every guy just doing whatever kind of flirting he enjoys the most. What I enjoy most likely doesn't maximize my success but whatever, as long as I get laid every now and then with attractive women I don't care. I fall in love with every woman I see more than a few times. Not in a simp way, I don't lie or compromise or pretend or put them above myself. And I've never had a woman who I was with for a while actually disrespect me or screw me over in any way that wasn't justified by my actions, so that's never been an issue. I fall in love partly in a painful way, because I tend to get attached. But also in an expansive way, I genuinely become interested in who they are as people. I dunno, I'm still in touch with a couple of my former lovers. It's nice. They're people. Different people than men, sure. But interesting people... I don't even think about things in terms of cock carousel or whatever. If a chick wants to fuck 40 guys in a year I'm like, cool, go for it. I don't want a girl I'm seeing to fuck other guys but if I'm not seeing her then my genuine reaction is like "awesome, hope you have fun fucking".
Goodguy
17d ago
Fair enough. For me it was 100% jealousy, but you and I are different.
I don't think that the Lotharios are actually a major problem preventing you or I from finding women to pair-bond with.
Goodguy
17d ago
I'm not much into mistake theory, but what does annoy me about the "enemy areas" phrase is the consensus-building. @phailyoor's enemies are not the same as my enemies. I'd be fine with it if he wrote "Given the proliferation in areas controlled by my enemies,...".
Goodguy
17d ago
The whole point of pursuing money and status through your career is to gain access to women. If you can cut out the middle man, why not? What's a job other than working 40 hours a week to make your bosses richer?
I got laid plenty before I had any serious money or status. The main reason why I pursue money and status now is so that I can stop working and enjoy life in many dimensions, only one of which is women.
Hate the game, not the player. The problem is that society allows James to get access to women without contributing his fair share.
I don't consider that to be a problem.
You fantasize about castrating James because you are not allowed to fantasize about locking up the girl you dated.
Sure he is, who would stop him about fantasizing about it? Even if we mean "fantasize about it openly", I don't think that the average person would be much less disturbed, if at all, about hearing someone say "I want to castrate a man because he is getting laid without contributing to society" than about hearing someone say "I want to lock up women so they don't have sex with men who do not contribute to society".
Goodguy
17d ago
Sure, many people start there and then get disabused of their original innocent notions. I know that well. I went through some of that journey myself. My point is that, once you've reached the point where you've absorbed the lessons that a more analytic and cynical perspective has to teach, it's good to go to something more innocent and joyful, to a perspective that respects the cynical lessons but is not hollowed out and made joyless by them. I think it is possible to be a romantic without being a clueless simp. The red pill cannot be the final stage, at least not for me. It is just so utterly boring and unappealing to look at romance and sex from that perspective. When I read most red pill authors I get the sense that they're not even enjoying the sex that they are having, it is just an ego boost for them.
If a man is not succeeding sexually because he has not absorbed enough red pill lessons then by all means, he should absorb those lessons. But if he gets stuck at that stage, it's hard for me to imagine him being actually happy with his sex life. The red pill people don't seem happy or sexually fulfilled no matter how much sex they're having, they seem constantly angry and they seem like they hate the women they are fucking.
I am absolutely not advocating that guys stay stuck in some kind of simpish innocent outlook. I went through the whole PUA thing myself, that's part of why I'm writing all this. My point is just that there is something more out there. I'm not saying that one shouldn't "spin plates". What I'm talking about is separate from the question of whether one should be with one woman or many. My point is that even if you "spin plates", it's pointless unless you learn how to deeply enjoy it and be happy with it. If it's just a chore to get ego boosts, it's rather valueless.
Goodguy
17d ago
Maybe your and @faceh's sentiments are more motivated by jealousy than you consciously realize? I don't know, maybe you guys really do care deeply about the health of society and about protecting women from being emotionally damaged by Lotharios. But in my personal experience, whenever I had such intense negative feelings about Lotharios (one of you suggested castrating them - which, even as a joke, is pretty intense...), it was actually motivated 100% by jealousy.
The points that you are making have become commonly accepted, at least among highly online people. I'm saying this as a social observation, not as a criticism of you.
The modern highly online understanding of male-female relations is pervaded by PUA teachings, attempts at evolutionary psychology, a general notion that "the game" is a brutal Darwinian contest, and a deep mutual mistrust between men and women. Many of the modern dating conversation's insights are accurate, and the conversation is not new - men and women have been treating and discussing the art of finding a sexual partner as being a skill or an optmizable strategy for probably almost as long as there has been language.
It's good to look at sexuality from this analytic side. But past a certain point, looking at it analytically becomes very drab, boring, and limiting. Viewed through the lens of purely analytic sexual gamesmanship, both men and women seem like horrible creatures whom no-one would really want to be with other than for a cheap temporary bodily satisfaction, an ego boost, perhaps money... just not for the joy of being with them.
If one doesn't already know the vital lessons that the analytic perspective teaches, it is very useful. Lessons like: Don't be a simp. Have confidence. Don't automatically trust people just because they are attractive. Flirting is largely about nonverbal communication. Don't expect the logic of sexual attraction to work the same way as the logic of friendship. Women are attracted to status to some extent. Etc. These lessons are especially important to pick up if one is shy and/or inexperienced and/or neuro-divergent, or has some other issue that has prevented one from already learning these things.
However, the analytic perspective by itself is joyless and one-dimensional. If taken too far, it reduces romance and sex to a real-life equivalent of grinding a video game. Joy re-enters the equation if one sees the other person as someone who transcends yourself and your image of them and predictions about them. The jaded perspective thinks "oh boy, here's yet another woman who is just like all the other women". And while there is a grain of truth in "all women are like that" (or "all men are like that"), it is not actually true. All women are not the same. All men are not the same. And to over-analyze them, to treat romance and sexuality like attempting to optimize a game strategy, turns the whole thing into a meaningless chore.
By the way, I think that what I am saying applies equally whether you're looking to settle down monogamously or whether you want to go out and keep meeting new people for sex. My comment should not be taken as advocacy for settling down.
Goodguy
1mo ago
"Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument."
It's a good rule, whatever your political opinions are. If it is violated often enough, this place will just become another cesspit like Reddit or X, where most of the political discourse is just attention bait and emotional venting.
Goodguy
1mo ago
I've been temporarily banned here before for going on rants against my political opponents and so on. When I chilled out and let the matter settle, I always realized that the mods had been right to ban me. "Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument" is a key rule that helps to prevent this place from turning into a largely useless cesspit of outrage bait and insanity, like Reddit or X. AlexanderTurok certainly broke that rule many times, but he is not the only one. I've broken it before. I think you've broken it before. It happens. We're emotional beings, after all. I'm about as pro free speech as it gets, but of course in order to keep this forum from turning into chimpanzee shit-flinging, some rules have to be enforced. I think that the ideal of "try to bring light instead of heat" is a good one. No matter what the content of your opinion is, there are more and less inflammatory ways to state it. And again, I say this as someone who is very pro free speech. But the pragmatic reality is that this forum would go down the tubes very quickly if the rule against being inflammatory was not enforced.
Goodguy
1mo ago
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right... here I am, stuck in the middle with you...
I think that a month is much too much, given how many right-wingers here get away regularly with breaking the rules and the ethos of trying to bring light instead of heat. Which I'm not blaming the mods for, given how much content there is to mod, but it's a matter of proportionality. I think a week would be fair. Giving him a month just feeds into the narrative that critics of the right are being persecuted here for being critics of the right, instead of just being modded when they are snarky and so on.
I like Amadan's comment a lot, I think it's one of the best mod comments I've ever read on any forum and is very fair, but I think that "Maybe you really are sincere about everything you say, you believe you are making good, valid points, and your manner of expressing yourself is just so off-putting and against the grain here that it drives people crazy." is not really a good reason to mod people, since people really shouldn't be blamed for writing things that are "so against the grain here that it drives people crazy", which can apply to all sorts of good comments. You can mod him for being repetitively unnecessarily inflammatory, same as various right-wingers are modded for that. If you ban AlexanderTurok for writing things that drive people crazy, you should also give WhiningCoil another ban for the same reason.
I think that most people who care about the Epstein matter, me included, care mainly because of the political implications, not out of empathy for the girls. I abstractly empathize with the girls, but I don't know them, so their woes don't really emotionally affect me any more than it emotionally affects me if I hear that, say, 3000 people died in a flood in Bangladesh. Which is to say, very little. Same with the Rotherham scandal. I abstractly care about the victims, but I don't really feel much emotion about it.
The point of the Epstein business is that I want to see rich, powerful people who seem like predators brought down from their high places, thrown into the mud, and trampled on. That's why I care more about the Epstein matter than about the Rotherham scandal. Because it seems to afford more opportunity to damage rich, powerful scumbags. Now that's something I do feel emotion about. Glee and a zestful desire to see mighty amoral people brought low. It's a very primal, atavistic, selfish emotion, to be clear, not some clean moral imperative that looks pretty on paper. No, it's like the glee that a villager feels when he sees that a lion that has been prowling around the outside of the village for days get shot through the heart with an arrow. I don't feel the glee because yesterday the lion ate some guy on the other side of the village whom I didn't know. I didn't know that guy so I felt little emotion when I heard that he got eaten. But that lion felt like a looming threat to me, prowling out there, powerful, enjoying his lion life in a very annoying way, enjoying it so much, sitting around licking his fangs out there with not a care in the world while I spend the day working, that lion clearly not giving a single shit about my desire to not get eaten or the fact that I have to work for a living. So when the lion went down, I celebrated in the same sort of ecstasy that communists might feel when they see that the rich people are fleeing the city. Will the rich people fleeing the city actually make my life better in the long run? Probably not, intellectually one understands that if the populists come to power they'll probably just make things much worse. But in the moment, one feels an atavistic glee.
Is there anyone here on The Motte whom you do consider a principled liberal? And beyond The Motte, is there an example of a public figure whom you consider to be a principled liberal?
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