JTarrou
4mo ago
Look, this is just normal human behavior. People don't want the skill, they want the social perception of a skill. They want to indulge their consumerism. They want an excuse to socialize. The skill is a MacGuffin. It doesn't matter. These are known as "hobbies".
Now, if you're a person to whom that skill matters, this seems like silly weekend-warriorism at its worst. People spending lots of time, sometimes lots of money never getting any better at something. You ever go golfing?
The majority of participants and most importantly customers in any hobby are not really interested in it. They have no commitment to it, which seems mad to the people who actually do the hobby and see it as intrinsically worthwhile. This creates the common "Hardcore vs. Casual" dynamic of the resulting culture, which is prevalent in most amateur pursuits.
JTarrou
4mo ago
And apparently that's the skillset that wins the presidency.
What's your point?
JTarrou
4mo ago
"Been involved in" is a nice way of saying has been the single most common target of lawfare since the founding of the country.
Whatever lawfare he's doing in response is certainly downstream of the legal shitflinging that has been the response of the educated classes.
JTarrou
4mo ago
Both are monetizing sexuality in a fairly direct way, one is just a bit further along the spectrum. If you're saying the two can be distinguished, sure. If you're saying one is disqualifying for public office while the other isn't, I disagree.
JTarrou
4mo ago
I always found that focusing on principles more than technique helped me link things together better. The move of the day stuff sometimes lines up with what you need, but not often. It's worth learning that stuff, but my advice is to focus on things that connect to parts of the game you already know decently well.
So, if you're confident defensively in half guard, maybe try learning a couple sweeps and subs for that position, preferably ones that branch off each other. That gives you a simple choice matrix for that position.
My own progress really took off when I started to focus on staying in and advancing the control position. Six months I learned to sit in mount, six months on back mount. Still working on Kesa/Side Control. Once you understand how to progress the position, submissions sort of fall out of the process. About a third of my subs now are unintentional, before I start chasing anything.
JTarrou
5mo ago
If war becomes increasingly technological, as seems the trend, we can expect a re-feudalization of our politics produced by this basic military necessity. Not in our lifetime, of course, but soon. Mass politics is necessary to get masses of men into the field in an age when how many men you can put in the field determines who wins. This five hundred year cycle of "democracy" has really been the political concessions necessary to get large numbers of men into the army.
When the question is "who has the ability to call a drone strike?" The answer does include a few dozen corporations, major police forces, criminal organizations, terrorists and a cracked-out teenager from Burbank, but does not include a majority of nations. A new sort of feudal system must necessarily form as military capacity is disengaged from political organization.
JTarrou
5mo ago
That's why people have unrealistic expectations of the physical differences between sexes.
The question was how to teach people the difference. Your way is the reason we're here.
JTarrou
5mo ago
How do you teach them to actually understand the difference?
Easy. Inter-sex physical combat.
And forget "teaching them to understand", this is one of those truths you have to feel in your bones. Every school could do it for gym. Perhaps Freshman year?
Feminists to the front.
JTarrou
7mo ago
I maintain
1: Virtually no one passes in person, definitely not in a communal shower.
and
2: Any scenario in which this could theoretically be an issue is so vanishingly rare as to be not worth worrying about as a societal problem. This is trans angels on the head of a pin.
JTarrou
7mo ago
But to deny people who can pass while naked
I am quite skeptical that anyone at all can pass while naked IRL, so the whole argument seems silly to me.
The intersection of an exceptional individual who must have spent an enormous effort to look like the opposite sex with a situation in which they are forced to use communal showers seems even less likely. Certainly nothing we need legislation for, it won't happen often.
JTarrou
7mo ago
So your scenario is an oil field roughneck who transitions so well that he passes, but goes back to his job?
You got even one example of this, or are we purely hypothetical?
JTarrou
7mo ago
Forcing someone who underwent HRT and surgery and passes as female even naked to shower with the guys also seems bad.
Where does that happen? At what point in any trans person's life will they be through the transition process so well that they "pass", and also still sharing showers with sex-segregated people? I can only think of a couple, and they're either voluntary organizations that can make their own rules (like gyms) or places like prison where they don't have full civil rights anyway. What's the scenario here?
JTarrou
8mo ago
Was that the tacit agreement?
If so, it makes a certain limited and temporary sense for Germany and Japan.
It makes no sense at all for the rest of Europe. The US is just going to project power across the continent permanently so none of these countries need a functional military?
And we're going to do that based on a "tacit agreement"?
JTarrou
8mo ago
At least Israel will fight their own battles.
90% of NATO countries couldn't fight a fat kid on adderal.
JTarrou
8mo ago
There is always and forever a pool of disaffected young men who want to make a splash in the world and don't mind getting attention the negative way.
How this tendency is expressed depends a lot on the sociopolitical situation, carrots and sticks etc. A hundred years ago, they'd have been Anarchists, fifty years ago they'd have been lefty terrorists, some are now school shooters, far right or muslim terrorists, trans AI doomers etc. etc.
The particular expressions are memetic, mass shootings, car attacks, arson, assassination, bombings etc.
The population is the same.
JTarrou
8mo ago
When the elites will not lead the people in the direction they want to go, they will find other leaders, who will be mostly grifters, because that's who is left.
JTarrou
8mo ago
Because of a treaty that isn't worth the paper it's printed on. You know this stuff.
However, in this scenario it's the US invading Russia, right?
JTarrou
8mo ago
1: We fund the Ukrainians until they can't fight anymore, then they get a worse deal or none at all.
2: We enter the war on the side of Ukraine, mudstomp Russia for six minutes before the nukes fly, and we all sing Kumbaya as the bombs fall.
3: We strongarm Ukraine into making a bad deal and hope it gives us time to strongarm Europe into maybe starting to think about having a military at some point in the future.
4: Pre-emptive nuclear strike which will fuck Ukraine worse than the Russians.
Any other ideas?
JTarrou
8mo ago
I think the most disturbing part is how little everyone with such strong opinions knows about Ukraine, Russia, and the conflict between them.
Russia is absolutely in the wrong for invading, but let's look at the actual political and military realities when we're talking about the issue.
The eastern provinces had a strong enough Russian-aligned sector of the populace (with some surreptitious Russian help) to functionally secede from Ukraine and fight the Ukrainians to a standstill for years before the invasion. Ukraine hasn't had any real sovereignty over those territories for over a decade now.
Yes, it's a violation of their treaty for Russia to take their territory. This may shock people, but governments often violate their treaties. For instance, virtually everyone in NATO is violating that treaty.
The military situation has been fairly static for years. Neither side seems to be on the verge of winning. Both are having trouble with getting enough troops to fight, but Russia can draw from a much larger population, plus allies like North Korea. Ukraine is supplementing with mercenaries, but that's expensive.
The economic sanctions on Russia have failed to impact their economy enough. In fact, it's basically just made Russia less exposed to economic sanctions from the west, and more in hock to the Chinese, who now provide most of their consumer goods.
I support Ukraine primarily in this matter, I support funding and arming them to resist the Russian invasion. But I also think we need to be realistic about what peace will look like absent major escalations on our part. The Ukrainians haven't been capable of recapturing their lost provinces militarily. How long should they keep fighting for territories where most of the remaining population don't really want to be part of Ukraine?
Ultimately, it is the Ukrainians who have to answer these questions, not us. At the end of the day, they still live next to Russia, and we don't. I really hope this war reaches its conclusion soon, and I hope the Ukrainians don't lose anything more than necessary. But unless the military situation changes drastically, the Russians aren't just going to give back the territory. And no one can make them without risking nuclear war. That's the realpolitik situation.
JTarrou
9mo ago
The entire analysis, from both you and Scott, is simply one level too tactical. Scott runs through all the psychological reasons why people will always push themselves into conflict with other people, regardless of the issues or the facts. And then says that mistake theory wins because many of the tactical positions taken by the two sides of an eternal conflict are essentially random.
Individual and group status competition is the constant. That is conflict theory, and it is objectively correct as the only reality humanity has ever known. Mistake theory requires something not yet observed.
The individual issues of politics are ridiculous, and the sides often change over time. Basing your view of human interaction on the irrationality of the issues obscures the reality that political conflict is inevitable anywhere there are three or more people.
We may be mistaken about the reasons, we may increase or decrease our level of conflict (social, political, violent etc.). We may change teams or stress different identities. But the conflict will always remain, because roughly half the power of any given society is balanced against the other half, and politics is the result.
All this business of trying to analyze individual political issues as "conflict" or "mistake" is very much missing the forest for the trees. The forest is at war, and always will be. The issues don't matter, they are only temporary battlegrounds for the political will of the population. There are plenty of mistakes in conflict.
Think of any long term relationship. There is always conflict, and it is rarely about whatever incident inspires a fight. There is conflict because it is two different people who have to live together. So it is in the home, so it is in the nation, so it is in the world. Our human nature forces us into conflict with each other, and we channel that into our lives and our politics. Because of our cognitive biases, we make a lot of mistakes, no matter how smart we are, or think we are.
If you want to solve a problem, you have to find ways of extricating your issue from the conflict. This can be done, in the manner Scott describes. But the conflict will go on, using different issues. Many issues that were important long ago are gone from our political conflict, but that has never stopped the politics. Once an issue is "solved" it is no longer useful. Humans are never short of things to disagree about.
JTarrou
9mo ago
Some amount of the variance must necessarily be the heightened definitions of bad behavior when your dating pool is feminists and other man-haters.
"Sexual assault" is one of those fun terms that depending on strict definitions may be literally any behavior.
Probably easier to get caught "sinning" when you're banging nuns.
JTarrou
10mo ago
Yeah, it's a fun feeling, but I don't generally want surprise to be in the mix when my gun works properly.
Now imagine you loaded your carry piece a month ago, you've been riding through the west since then, and you need to use it. What are the odds of that first cylinder going off, you think?
I imagine most gunfights were decided by who found a working load first, rather than speed of draw.
Oh, a throwaway line about NPR hosts getting flogged.
I suspect my recent comment of the week about race and IQ to be the real culprit, but they got Capone for tax evasion.
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