Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
Hello back frens
User ID: 2022
Interesting topic in a thread below
Consider: a society of just downies and Henrys* wouldn't even be a society, while a society of Enron, Google, and AXA is just ... our society.
A society of my aunt and Henrys would necessarily devolve into hunter gatherers who would be in a precarious position.
A rival hunter gatherer society of entirely Enron, Google and AXA professionals would be a tribe that my retarded aunt and Henry with comparable numbers of similar nature would probably subjugate easily, eventually integrating violent strong men or wise old women, humiliating the rest in servitude.
I think this is probably a point of disagreement for many here and so worth discussing on its own. I see two larger topics that this could become a test for: One is the model of "general competence"/IQ maximalism, expecting successful people to be successful at ~everything, vs a tradeoff between abstract thinking and practical or social skills. Second, whether our current elites are in some sense a paper tiger - bullshit jobs, Overcredentialism, etc.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Yes, but that doesnt mean its true. Black activism has always mostly looked how progressivism at the time thought it was supposed to look, and its successes were mostly given to them by white people either directly or by giving them things that materially imply them.
I mean, if our elites decided that riots will no longer be tolerated, what do you think happens? You of all people should know better than to think a reverse of the old race relations could really happen.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Why there wasn't really a fight over trans men joining isn't really the point, I think. I'm arguing that trans men don't get any privileges by acting like cis men.
Those are the same point. They dont get any privileges that way because they already had them as women. If theres any advantages to being a man, weve gotten outraged about and tried to eliminate them a while ago.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Huh. I do none of the things you listed, and cant really think of any replacements either. It doesnt feel difficult to me, and indeed not even like Im resisting the tentacled grasp of technology or anything. Its just... sort of how things play out. I dont think this has made my emotional states more different from those of normies. It feels weird to read this in the tone of "we as a society" rather than maybe "I might have a bit of a problem".
I can’t find the limiting principles.
Most people just dont actively seek out ways to adjust their emotion, they just drink their coffee in the morning and their beer on friday night and stuff like that because those are just kind of what you do, and leave it at that. Thats pretty effective at preventing you from becoming unrecognisable in your lifetime at least.
Part of me thinks that this is enhancing me, making me more human
And part of me wonders if I even know what real is any more.
This seems like youre just saying real because its kind of the most generic word and you dont know better how to say what you have a problem with. I think this is much less about particular tools being "over a line", and more of a worry that tinkering will turn into (or indeed, inescapably already is) true optimisation, and where that might lead you. That maybe, if you were given enough options, you would end up making yourself not so human. Not for any failure of will, but because there genuinely seems to be no argument against each step.
And then the problem of others...
I mean, that paragraph sounds a lot like stereotypical stoned thoughts, irrespective of the mood organ path that got you there.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
there’s an occasional conspiracy theory in homeschooling circles that whole word learning is intended to teach children that meaning is completely arbitrary and thus communism or gender ideology or whatever.
Im sure it wasnt designed explictly with that goal, but theres more reason to this belief than just "cause it sux". How do you think people got the idea for whole word learning, if it doesnt work? Theres various ideas floating around about explicit knowledge not being so important, things being more fluid and contextual, "patchwork" methods over systems, etc. Those propably contributed to the idea. You could attribute them to constructivism, or pragmatism, or poststructuralism, but all of that falls under "fake and gay".
See also a comment further below.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
It's simple- look at the political and cultural power other ethnic groups enjoy by organizing along ethnic lines and fiercely advocating for their group.
I think in the modern context this success is almost entirely down to the authorities humoring them. US blacks are not such a threat that the government has to make all these concessions to them, they could absolutely turn it off if they wanted to. China does that sort of thing all the time. The "concessions" are things the elites already wanted to do. I mean, a lot of those organisations doing the "fierce advocacy" arent even run by black people. Their ethnic power is a kayfabe for progressives.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
You ask «Why would one choose to identify as a powerless victim», but the crux is that if you don't have systemic power, you don't get to choose your identity
or fight for the slice of the pie the collective identity you have been defined into gets.
Do you think blacks got their current status in western society by "winning" it from whites?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
This is going to sound mean but one of the reasons I've largely stopped participating in conversations about sex, gender, relationships, etc... is that so many of the surrounding it is so, for lack of a better term, "autistic".
Some of this propably is a lack of social understanding from the people involved, but I think a good bit also comes from arguing in a formalistic way. Where, instead of "being reasonable", and using your common sense to grease the understanding, they try to be very literal about everything. Theyre doing this on purpose, not because they dont have common sense, but because, to stick with the metaphor, greasing well might let you get work done even with a mistake in the gears that you dont notice.
Potentially finding that mistake is prioritised because you dont particularly care about getting to the "practical" outcome. Theres propably many cases of red- and blue-pillers arguing with each other who handle their real-life relationship very similarly. The goal is to understand "what things really are", in some sense. To nerdy liberals, whether men or women are "really" treated unfairly in relationships is such an abstract question, not necessarily related to practical recommendations for anyone, but very important morally. And I think its clear why such a "reality" could be interesting on the trans topic.
This isnt intended to convince you such arguments are a good use of time, they propably mostly arent, but you might appreciate knowing it.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
also – possibly – by guilt-tripping the cream of the crop of «white culture» inferiors into maintaining automatic weaponry and such.
That doesnt really sound like retreating to ancestral homelands to me.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
My point is just, people think the bundle leads to a certain kind of politics, and heres an example where it very much didnt.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
I don't think "shared characteristics of Minorities" dominate the discussion outside of ethnonationalist or HBD circles.
I think many progressives would say that blacks and hispanics being poor, uneducated, and having bad relations with the police causes the kind of politics they have in the US, and potentially extend this schema to other groups.
Every people has a need for self-justification: "why do we rule this land and not you?"
"Because we started a city in a swamp with a bunch of bandits, and then raided our neighbors for wifes." - this is not quite "because we won", but it sure is getting there. Also this is coming from the greatest state of ancient europe that everyone else is legitimating themselves from.
EDIT: Actually, this is another thing that goes against the theory: All the europeans who claimed a right deriving from the roman conquerers, as opposed to "We lived here so long" - most of them until the age of nationalism, and a few persisting.
The spartans did not write much, so we cant be sure what they thought, but I think they had a similar mentality. Certainly the part where they officially remained at war with the helots would suggest it.
I dont know where I got this from, but: "Straussian reading is pretending everyone smart has always been a liberal".
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
7mo ago
There is but it's not particularly relevant to this discussion
I wasnt particularly disagreeing with you; I genuinely would like to know what you think is in there.
secular progressivism with at least two-scoops of Marx and Hegel
How much do you know of Hegel? My impression is that while he caused a lot of brainrot, you are closer to his object-level positions than to Hobbses.
Also Holy thread necromancy Batman.
Im here so rarely now, I pick out the pearls.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Why would you need to be trans for this? You can just not care about your appearance and not spend time with the chick cliques. If youre enough of a nerd to be on here youve probably seen a few girls like that.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
8mo ago
Having just returned after a while, I notice that theres no easy way to find recent quality contributions posts from the front page. I know to look on reddit, but maybe we would want them more prominent for new users?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
The higher IQ applies to the ashkenazim and is thought to be from selection in the late middle ages and after, but the pattern of concentrating in certain elite professions and the majority getting mad about it applies to jews much more generally, and so is presumably not explained by it.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
So there is no dissonance in people's minds.
I meant within german progressives, or the overall coalition. As in, turkish opinions on the treatment of the armenians is something progressives would have a problem with, but is not immediately relevant here and now, so absent the loyalty conflict they could have ignored it.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Sorry if this wasnt clear, Im austrian. But I think its somewhat surprising you dont hear about them in america as well. You certainly heard about the "syrian" refugees, and I would guess youre at least aware that the turks are a topic here?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
When was the vaccine mandate rational? I remember when the debate got big here in Austria, there were already multible countries with 90%+ vax rates that had new flareups.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
I dont think regret particularly matters, because its a backwards-looking measure. Its possible that youll regret all or none of the possible decisions, after you actually make them.
Its more about the idea of the "real self", and how the social environment needs to "let it develop". This is common among liberals and especially in the trans discourse, so I was surprised by you position seeming to give it little weight.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
You make two claims here, first that it doesnt need to be true, and second that you dont need to believe it. Youve only given an argument for the first.
To give maybe a bit of a different perspective: I think you come to your conclusions in part because you evaluate the benefit of religion in a way thats already independent of the content of the beliefs. That way, the benefit can only be to make something happen that already ought to have happened - the typical "solving coordination problems" line of rat-adjacent cultural evolutionism.
As an analogy: Imagine there are two people on an island. In world A their goals are convex, so that both of them are better off controlling half the island than with a 50% chance of controlling it all. In world B, their goals are concave and they would rather go for the coinfilp. People in A will live together relatively peacefully, and people in B will immediately fight to the death. But it would be wrong to conclude that "Peace is a benefit of believing you live in an A world" (as statistics might lead you to). Peace is in fact bad in the B world, for both of them, irrespective of what they believe.
Basically, it seems to me that a lot of the "benefits" of religion are just things people would want to do, if the world were a more fortunate one.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Oh, Japan has lots of problems
The question is, why do the strengths and problems seem to balance out so much? If you have multiple independent factors, then the total variance sets an upper limit on the effect size of individual factors. So whenever someone says that a factor like housing or regulation or something else that some countries already get right, has a huge potential for economic growth, I look at the small variance between first-world countries, and conclude that either the factor doesnt have that much of an effect, or theres some sort of interaction effect that eats away most of the first-order-effect.
So, I found your claim that Japan actually is doing much better in the whole economy very interesting.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Is there some sort of gross statistic that bears out this impact on the whole economy, other than your disposable income one? In terms of GDP and GDP growth, Japan looks like bottom of the first world country. The "conventional wisdom" is that Western countries are mostly the same economically.
My reaction at this point:
So I checked your points against both the latest 7 top-levels in the thread 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and my memory of popular comments.
Not true of any of the top-levels. Some popular comments are like this but some are also earnest presentations of a situation that doesnt fit any mayor narrative, or being vocally angry at the outgroup.
Not true of any top-levels nor of popular comments. Long arguments tend to make their points in more detail rather than make more points. Including multible examples for something. Adding visceral details to a situation youre asking people to consider. Countering first-order objections. Even just repeating yourself in different words. Very long comments mostly invest in parallel rather than serial argumentation.
Not true of any of the top-levels. Occasionally in popular comments.
True of one of the top-levels, and I would guess a similar rate for popular comments. I think the author of that one top-level is ESL and that probably contributes. Then again so am I, so maybe comments that dont seem pretentious to me (or my own) do seem that way to natives.
Not true of any of the top-levels. Popular comments are sometimes very long and a struggle to get through, but its not clear that they could be effectively shortened into a list of references. The last multipost I remember is this, if you want to try at compression. Its also built around a literature reference and has a pretty decoupled premise, but its doesnt seem bad to me.
OK I think at this point there are two people doing this and only one of them where you actually find it annoying.
Depending on how you count it, up to 4 of the top-levels. Id say one of them is mainly about that. It seems hard to avoid criticising academia, MSM, HR, or government in CW posts, and "normies" doesnt restrict the description very much. I think this is actually a bit less common/intense in popular comments.
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