I don't know. There was a peak Darwin, too, and if he's back in a constructive way then that's worth celebrating, even if the ban evasion isn't.
I'd take that as another argument against permabans, although perhaps a mixed one given the reëstablishment of old beefs when his ban expired. But if he was already on an alt by then, maybe the productive discussion was continuing there and the main was just for fighting? I'm just a nerd on the Internet, probably not the best to analyze forum dynamics. But, for that reason, I'd like to welcome good folks back without needing plausible deniability or cloak-and-dagger nonsense.
(I know that sometimes even un-banned folks choose to rotate usernames. And while my life might be a bit nicer if they didn't, I acknowledge that there can be legitimate reasons for that.)
Hieronymus
2mo ago
I agree. But the various steelmen Scott got in reply convinced me that there's no way to rescue that framing that lets you discuss intended and actual consequences at the same time, let alone different levels or stages of intent. There's got to be a better set of terms to discuss those ideas.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
SEL (social emotional learning)
What's your take on this? I remember some pitchforks and torches raised a few years ago by socially conservative parents of grade-school kids that it amounted to a program of socializing students into the teacher's ethics while framing it as a skills thing. I haven't looked into it enough to understand it.
I do remember when a bunch of placards sprang up in my early '90s public elementary school listing all the traits they expected to develop in students. It read like a list of virtues as conceived by a committee of bureaucrats.
My reaction was more or less, "What qualifies you to teach me virtue?" I must have been a very humble child.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
Man, if you're right and this is HIynka then that explains some things, but it makes me feel like we're losing out. There were meaningful insights in his post, but they were buried in a structure that prioritized flame-counterflame rather than laying the groundwork (which was mostly in the post!) first and then discussing the arguments clearly if passionately.
If the style and structure of this post had been within a standard deviation of peak Hlynka, it would have been excellent. Why did the mods switch from year-and-a-day bans to permabans? Were too many folks returning in the style of Darwin, with the bone to pick dominating everything else? Hlynka, when he could discuss his experiences openly and not be cagey about ongoing disagreements, was usually better than this. Yeah, there is a risk of spiraling again – we're all human, and he has a temper. But peak Hlynka was irreplaceable.
Clearly I don't follow meta-level Motte issues the way mods do, so maybe I'm missing something obvious. Call this a tentative request to reconsider permabans in general and his in particular.
We need a term for the set of things that people and movements push for in practice after all the social dynamics have been accounted for, as opposed to the things they want in principle. Revealed preferences is close, but it comes bundled with a theory of mind I reject. (Revealed preferences are not preferences.)
The only item on your list of goals that anybody would support in principle is separating kids from their parents, and only some would endorse that. But as a practical matter that movement ends up fighting for the whole list.
There’s a lot of “we have the kids we have, not the kids we wish we had,” which is literally true but often used as an excuse.
That's a meaningful improvement over the training some friends of mine went through. Are they still teaching Gardner's multiple intelligences? And a few years ago, the district where I had gone to school adopted a commitment to achieving the same outcomes for all students regardless of their gifts or circumstances.
An acknowledgment that not all children are the same, and that their different gifts cannot be made to produce the same outcomes in the classroom, is actually a big deal.
Inner city crime ridden areas. Not sure what to do when you have too high of a prevalence of violent people. I am willing to say that civilization has broken down in those areas, and then reiterate that gun rights are civilizational rights. If you don't have civilization, you can't have that right.
Since I haven’t seen any comments on this, I want to note how far it goes. It is a fully general argument against liberal democracy in those places. You may or may not be willing to see Los Angeles as a colony ruled by an appointed, authoritarian governor, but the principle points there.
Violent people don't always stay violent people. Testosterone is a hell of a drug, so young men are often more violent than older men. Not sure if ex-convicts should be allowed to have guns, but maybe if you don't trust them to own a gun you shouldn't trust them to be out of prison.
I am extremely sympathetic here. Reintegration of former prisoners into society should involve the restoration of as many rights as possible as soon as possible, rather than keeping them second- or third-class citizens forever. I am ignorant of a lot of details, so I wouldn’t want to present an uncompromising principle. My casual take is that if you trust him to vote, you should trust him to have guns, and if you don’t trust him to have guns, you shouldn’t trust him to vote.
The common thread is one of respect and trust. Gun control is intended to be, in a very literal sense, disempowering: If you are armed you have the power to do these things; we do not trust you with that power, and so we will disarm you. I think that living in a bureaucratic society has desensitized us to this, because respect is inefficient and illegible to the bureaucracy.
Hieronymus
2mo ago
That makes me curious: Do armed police inspire the same reaction?
Hieronymus
2mo ago
Of course, if America has an ideology, it is the ideology of the American dream. The idea that an immigrant who arrives with little more than the clothes they are wearing can through hard work thrive in the land of capitalism and freedom.
It’s hard for me to see this as other than a placebo ideology – an ideology against any common ideas, a standard against standards. It has no unifying power except that of money. Upward mobility for immigrants is a great thing. But it is not the only thing, and it shouldn’t replace the American heritage.
I remember a clip of a TV interview with a black Alabaman and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans during the George Floyd protests. He was counter-protesting demands that Confederate monuments and symbols be torn down. He had been adopted by a white family; their heritage became his heritage, and he was defending it. He’d become a true member of a family into which he was not born. But it’s not as though he had somehow ceased to be black. I think about this often as an analogy for immigration.
Some nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century immigrants went further in this direction than I could ever ask – for example, refusing to pass on their birth tongues once they’d learned enough English to raise their children in it; I don’t think I could or would have done the same in their shoes. Or consider the spirited embrace of Columbus Day in some Italian-American communities, because it emphasizes the intersection of the Italian and American heritages.
We could do worse than to prioritize those immigrants willing to respect the culture and heritage of the society they are joining.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
I think you misunderstood me. Most of the concern in my post is directed at the unimplanted embryos at the end of the process. That is also where polygenic screening becomes a focus of discussion.
I do think that the post-fertilization attrition rate is morally relevant insofar as it compares unfavorably with natural conception, and I said so, but that's not what I meant by destruction.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
From a consistently pro-life perspective, I think the gravest moral concern here is the potential to normalize and expand IVF.
In vitro fertilization involves creating more embryos than you intend to implant and then destroying the rest. If you are, as I am, a consistent prolifer, you recognize those embryos as people. IVF as practiced is therefore already a moral nightmare. If you were to fertilize one or two embryos and then implant them with a level of safety similar to natural conception, the moral valence of IVF would change dramatically.
Embryo selection does just the opposite. It doubles down on creating and destroying embryos – people – to select the one that seems to have the best genes.
As bad as current IVF practices are, they are mostly restricted to couples who cannot have children naturally. Embryo selection changes that dynamic. It encourages any couple who can afford it (at apparently less than a year’s college tuition!) to produce ten children and then slay nine of them. That’s why Scott’s reassurance rings hollow:
I think the strongest objection to selection would come from someone who is anti-abortion. If they think life begins at conception, then actual harm is done to a frozen embryo if it is not selected (and so probably eliminated).
But even this isn’t an argument against polygenic selection. It’s an argument against IVF in general, which usually involves production of more embryos than the couple intend to bring to term. …
Hieronymus
3mo ago
Tucker Carlson may have worn out his welcome with those things, but the explanation of the firing I trust most is the one Rod Dreher gave: that his Heritage Foundation keynote weirded out Rupert Murdoch by sounding much too religious. It seems like a stretch, I know, but if you watch the keynote I think it's easier to see.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
I was replying in the context of Puritan Massachusetts, which @TIRM alluded to.
As I said, I suppose that most folks got away with it even there. But the Puritans were aware that they were doing something weird and difficult with the society they were trying to build, so they were willing to do some things differently. Their courts were way more willing to get involved in family matters than most, for good or for ill.
If you haven’t read it, I recommend Edmund S. Morgan’s book The Puritan Family. It’s very readable and very interesting.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
Fornication was usually punished with a fine, though it could be punished with whipping when the fine was too far out of reach. Both men and women were prosecuted, with an exception that took me embarrassingly long to understand: When accusing a married couple (for conduct before the wedding, naturally), it was common to prosecute only the groom. This is an unspoken discount for the couple out of respect for their subsequent marriage, without having to admit it and undermine the social norm.
Even if we assume that most fornicating couples got away with it (a fair assumption, I think), it still reflects a very different set of norms than those of modern dating.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
I wish there were such an outcry, but I am skeptical; I can't recall one in my lifetime. Institutional U.S. policymakers don't want to be called crusaders or lose any more support in the Muslim world, and I don't think I have ever seen that policy come back to bite them domestically. Ted Cruz told a gathering of mideast Christians that he would never support them unless they supported Israel, and he only got a little pushback from the very online set.
I'm not sure why this is. The explanations I've seen floated are mostly bogus stereotypes of American Christians.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
The Reader’s Digest condensed version: The Old Testament ritual for purifying Jewish priests to serve in the temple requires the ashes of a spotless red heifer. Rabbinical tradition adds a bunch of criteria to the biblical law (as rabbinical tradition is wont to do) such that qualifying cows are absurdly rare.
Some Jews who want to restore the temple would like to breed qualifying cattle. A few eccentric dispensationalist Christians, who believe that the rebuilding of the Jewish temple is part of the unfolding of biblical prophecy, want to help them. This isn’t a common thing, but it has geopolitical relevance, as rebuilding the Jewish temple would require tearing down the Al Aqsa mosque.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
Prosperity-gospel televangelists exist, but evangelicals broadly regard them as heretics and scammers. For example, Mike Winger has a whole playlist condemning Benny Hinn.
Evangelicals didn’t support Trump in the 2016 primary but did support him in the 2016 general election. Appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe bought him some political loyalty among us, though.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
UTF-16 and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. But having typographically correct characters and the ability to casually mix languages are very nice.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
This may be a personal aesthetic thing. I don't like the dash to connect to the strokes of the adjacent letters. Depending on the individual letter shape, that may require a touch of kerning.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
In running text, it's reasonable to use an em dash without spaces and an en dash surrounded by spaces the same way. The latter may get you your typographic fix. Em dashes on screen often collide with the adjacent words anyway.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
Just to clarify, is this because she met someone new, or is that her vague expectation on how she'll proceed?
She's engaged to be married, but whether they have set a date I do not know.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
Yes, of course; that's why I mentioned it. It's a funny story, and in some ways the pastor made nerdy, clumsy me feel like a paragon of social grace by comparison. It's not an example to imitate.
And yet... I don't know. The whole service was so incredibly earnest in a way most weddings, even Christian weddings, are not. It wasn't a show. It wasn't just a party. It wasn't a chance for the bride and groom to show off. Great is Thy Faithfulness may never have been sung more sincerely.
The liturgy would not have impressed Cranmer. The preaching would not have impressed Edwards or Baucham. But God was glorified anyway.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
I mean, I agree. It was weird. But looking back on it, it’s kind of adorable nonetheless.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
I usually wonder about this kind of thing in a different sense, because men in spheres bemoaning lack of trad values often mention virginity but I'm never clear on if they're offering the same virginity themselves. And also if they're offering to respect their (prospective) girlfriend's desire for virginity until marriage and would indeed marry her without having sex.
I am reminded of a pastor who praised a groom during his wedding for bringing his bride to the altar a virgin. The pastor’s homily was kind of tacky, and his exegesis wasn’t great, but I think his heart was absolutely in the right place.
There is a Dewey-esque impulse among many education reformers to use the schools to shape the next generation into something their parents would not approve of. Nineteenth-century opponents of Roman Catholic education were in that vein, as was Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I think that's what he was getting at.
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