Goodguy
1d ago
Got it. Yeah, I just asked because I sometimes call myself a centrist but I don't make those kinds of arguments. It's certainly possible that the majority of centrists would make such arguments, though.
Goodguy
1d ago
Yes, but mass immigration has been a problem for at least a decade now in Europe. By this point, European populations have had plenty of time to hold politicians' feet to the fire electorally and ensure that they actually curb immigration.
Europeans democratically vote for politicians who pursue pro-immigration policies. The immigration is, roughly speaking, the expression of Europeans' collective preference. One can make an argument that "they vote against immigration but get immigration anyway" - however, the reality is that if people consistently voted against immigration as one of their absolute upper-echelon top priorities, they would get politicians who actually stop immigration. This is because then it would become clear to politicians that being for immigration or running against immigration and then doing nothing about it means the end of a viable political career. I think that allowing mass unfiltered immigration of people from violent and backwards cultures is a very bad idea for Europe, but Europeans, as a group, do not vote like they see it as being critically important.
I believe that to fundamentally fix Europe's approach to immigration you would have to either change voters' minds or end democracy. I would much prefer the former, since in my view ending democracy to fix immigration would be replacing one major problem with another major problem.
Goodguy
1d ago
It's the vigilantism debate, just with a kind of vigilantism that doesn't involve violence. Would it be good for society if a skilled marksman went around shooting muggers? A good case can be made for yes. Would real-life vigilantism play out like an action movie, where the hero never accidentally shoots an innocent person? No. Would vigilantes shoot more innocent people on average than the cops do? Almost certainly.
When normal pro-social mechanisms fail to ensure justice, something must be done. Ideally, fixing the mechanisms. But if that doesn't happen, people will create their own mechanisms, both for good and for bad.
I can't imagine how people who actually bust their asses in physical labor and make less than me feel!
I could be wrong, but I imagine that the average blue-collar worker probably thinks of ultra-high-price escorts as being kinda cool, weird, and glamorous rather than resenting them. It's the same with athletes and entertainers. The average blue-collar worker would direct a bit of occasional grouchy complaining towards them for being supposedly overpaid, but would have no genuine hate in his heart toward them. He can see how they directly provide obvious value to people through various kinds of entertainment. And when it comes to prostitutes, there is the added factor that they are doing a job that the blue-collar worker imagines to be very unpleasant. His resentment toward prostitutes would be largely limited to the subset of prostitutes who do morally dubious things like chase NBA players with the key intent of getting pregnant by them.
I wouldn't be surprised if the blue-collar worker actually felt more animosity toward well-paid white-collar workers whom he imagines (largely accurately) sit on chairs all day long doing arcane corporate bullshit that has unclear tangible value.
That said, the blue-collar worker might well feel resentful of the ultra-high-price escort if her clients are people he feels animosity toward for being supposedly wimpy: highly paid tech workers instead of finance bros, for example.
To be fair, this is largely me going off of vibes I feel like I've picked up in real life and online, not based on any actual data. So I could be totally wrong.
If you want that, I think you're in luck. I think that the majority of high IQ Bayarean women are either pursuing or at some point will be pursuing a pair bond, usually marital, that includes children. And I doubt that any amount of news stories would have a significant impact on the changing what fraction of them decides to turn to prostitution instead.
I think most people are not intelligent enough to and/or do not have the will to see how coherently their various opinions fit together into a larger picture, including second-order effects. The average person who supports people being able to abort Down's syndrome fetuses yet views eugenics as fundamentally wrong is a person who simply does not make the connection that those two things are related in any important way. It's not that they realize the two things are related but have a logical reason to support the abortion but not other kinds of eugenics. It's that they don't realize the two things are related to begin with.
Why do they not realize it? Because they are not in an information environment where they are regularly exposed to the idea that the two things are related. And, lacking the spark to figure it out on their own, they continue to not realize it.
Goodguy
7d ago
The Trump administration didn't do the Republican Party in general many favors by making it so easy for people to describe this initiative as a slush fund for Trump supporters, even if the idea of stopping government institution weaponization against Republicans is in principle good for Republicans. I think the optics of trying to do these things could have been handled much more subtly, especially when Republican leaders are already uneasy about the midterms.
Goodguy
7d ago
Yes, though I have never known one closely.
I've been a vegetarian myself and have known a few others, and neither I nor them were ever absolutist about it to others.
The idea that a committed vegan activist wouldn't have a meat-eating boyfriend is kind of preposterous. Sexual and romantic attraction are very powerful forces.
Goodguy
9d ago
Without knowing anything else about it other than what you wrote, it passes the smell test for me. You can be a committed vegan activist without making your entire life about vegan activism.
Goodguy
12d ago
Definitely. I remember feeling that way too. It sucked. It's hard for me to imagine how a man would jump from such an experience to "most women want you to die and call u a creep weirdo" unless he absorbed exaggerations from social media. As you said, social media made it worse for you. If this guy isn't engagement baiting, then perhaps social media made it much worse for him. What one pays attention to is usually selective and emotion-dependent. If you become convinced for some reason that women despise you, it's easy to go online and find examples from various nutcases and engagement bait artists who will confirm you in that belief.
Going through puberty is hard on everybody, I have to say guys do have it extra tough what with voice breaking, wispy facial hair, etc.
Maybe in the people-finding-you-pleasant-to-look-at sense it is. But to me as a guy, having to deal with menstruation and other female reproductive issues sounds like an order of magnitude worse.
Goodguy
12d ago
Thinking that "most women want you to die and call u a creep weirdo" if you are not in the top 20% of attractive men would be a profoundly inaccurate perception of reality.
Goodguy
12d ago
Oof. That guy from Twitter...
Being a man is brvtal
At first; everyone thinks ur cute, ur face looks angelic and cute - women think ur adorable and want to protect u
Then u slowly watch urself turn into a Ugly Hairy Ape Gorilla Monkey and most women want you to die and call u a creep weirdo
This is either a man who has a deeply inaccurate perception of social reality or is hardcore engagement-baiting, or both.
If it's the former, and maybe even if it's the latter, then there's a good chance that this man's troubles with women have at least as much to do with his mental issues as it does with the transformations of puberty.
Goodguy
12d ago
I don't think the loss of sexual attractiveness is steep for essentially all women. A woman who takes good care of her body will generally see a slow decline in sexual attractiveness over time in her 30s.
Goodguy
12d ago
Well, I imagine that probably makes for a bad backrooms movie if true. Horror fiction that touches on the weirdness that can happen in romantic relationships can be very interesting, I think, but that is not what the backrooms is about.
Goodguy
15d ago
Maybe you haven't been exposed to any decent anti-HBD arguments. Personally, I think there probably is a genetic component to racial differences in criminality. However, I think that pro-HBD people often overstate their case.
@2rafa's recent post about Irish Travelers is interesting when it comes to the explanatory power of HBD.
There are also many examples in history of savage, unintellectual people later becoming great intellectuals without, perhaps, the genetic stock changing much. If one used a time machine to observe the founding Indo-European-speaking stock circa 2000 BC, one would probably find it hard to imagine that 1500 years later they would have descendants like Thucydides and Euclid. If one observed the Germanic people around 0 AD, one would find it hard to imagine that their descendants would include many of the world's foremost scientists and mathematicians.
Goodguy
15d ago
It is not actually obvious at all to the average intelligent person who might make a good Motte commenter but comes from a sheltered liberal or moderate-conservative background. The vast majority even of intelligent, generally well-informed people have never looked at the relevant statistics, and many of them have also been exposed enough to the "the racist law enforcement system is the reason for such statistics" theory that the bare statistics wouldn't even be enough by themselves.
- What do you want him to do, post FBI crime statistics for the millionth time?
It might be a good idea. It just takes a link (which @sleepyegg actually has in his post, maybe he added it after @netstack's comment). If posters assume familiarity with such things, newcomers might be bewildered and turned off. FBI crime statistics aren't like "the sun rises in the morning", which you can assume everyone other than insane people acknowledges. Vast numbers of people, including many intelligent ones, have absolutely no idea about the FBI crime statistics you are talking about. It's not that they've even been exposed to the information and rejected it. It's that they have absolutely no idea the information exists. It might not be good for the site to turn (even more) into an insular group of users who assume familiarity with controversial and relatively obscure information.
- Then enter the heritability debate with the gaslighters again?
Arguing against HBD doesn't make someone a gaslighter.
I've never been diagnosed, but if I am at all autistic, I am only very mildly autistic at most, I think. I was probably more autist-like when younger (when it comes to social awkwardness and issues with eye contact), but I grew out of it over time as I had more social experience.
I also suspect, while having no solid proof, that doing MDMA a few times in my 20s might have helped permanently make me a little bit less autistic. WARNING THOUGH: You cannot expect to do MDMA and become less autistic. It is a potentially dangerous drug and it can have very different effects on different people.
In any case, most of my social improvement had more to do with social experience than with drugs, I'm sure.
I've never had an unusual degree of sensory sensitivity compared to the average population. I don't have any significant issues with social interaction or reading people's facial expressions or subtext. I still have some minor issues with eye contact if I am feeling stressed out or overwhelmed, but I think that's probably pretty common with neurotypicals. Overall, I might actually be more socially adept and socially comfortable than the average person.
I do tend to get heavily into "nerdy" interests from time to time, but not in a compulsive way and not to the detriment of my general functioning, I think.
I tend to be uncomfortable with change, but for what it's worth I also don't particularly like rules and structure.
I do have some psychological issues, but they resemble things like anxiety and ADHD more than autism, or at least autism as I understand it.
The American involvement was predictable risk of being at war with the UK. Hitler rejected the UK's ultimatum to cancel the invasion of Poland anyway and after he did that the UK declared war, as did France.
Even if American non-involvement could have somehow been guaranteed, going to war with the UK and France was a very risky move. In the real timeline, most things went well for Germany in the first 3 years of the war. However, the UK and France together with their colonial holdings were economically stronger than the Axis powers and because of the English Channel and the power of the UK's air force and navy, Germany had no way of knocking the UK out of the war. It's possible that if a few things had gone differently, if the French had made some better decisions, Germany would have gotten bogged down when trying to invade France rather than gaining a swift victory. And there was always the Soviet Union looming in the background.
Basically, Hitler's foreign policy failed to honor the "only go to war when success is reasonably likely" maxim and should be evaluated as a massive failure despite Germany's successes in the pre-war period and in the first 3 years of the war. If he had stopped after Czechoslovakia and then managed to attain a durable peace with the other relevant great powers, then one could evaluate his foreign policy as a massive success. But he didn't stop.
As for democracy, I agree that it is not a panacea and that its successes are partly correlated with having good human capital. I prefer living in a democracy, though. I don't want to live in Pinochet's Chile, Saudi Arabia, or Hitler's Germany. I'd prefer not facing the possibility of imprisonment, torture, state murder, and so on for expressing my political ideas, for example.
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