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MaiqTheTrue

Renrijra Krin

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MaiqTheTrue


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Renrijra Krin

				
				
				

				

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean other than trying to conquer the entire planet, sure.  It’s kinda strange that Anglos invented the idea of conquest for liberal democracy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think this description is pretty accurate.  I don’t see the left thinking anything can or will be actually fixed, and when someone proposes doing the thing it’s not enough because nothing is ever enough.  We could deal with climate change through a combination of energy efficiency and investment in nuclear power.  We could attempt to fix the inequalities by addressing things like education and culture (psst:  if you want to get rich, your best bet is to learn math, science and engineering) and work ethic (rich people tend to work consistently where most people who end up poor also have terrible work ethics).  Of course any attempt to do such a thing is going to be called racist or something.  Or there will be all kinds of “structural reasons” to believe that no poor kid should be expected to do his homework while suffering from poverty.  And you just can’t expect poor people to just keep working even when they just want to stay home.  So poverty continues because while we know the things that need to happen to make a person more likely to be rich, we can’t do that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Everyone would eventually do this given the ability.  It’s in the nature of humans to form hierarchy and enforce their ideas of morality on society.  It’s been that way for most of human history.  I don’t think we’re that different.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The general idea is that the thing in question has an internal experience of itself.  It has desires, thoughts, and ideas of its own.  Like a person might have negative sensations around some task, or might think of something as good or bad.  It might want something it has not been told to want.  Like I have negative sensations when I injure myself.


But my issue with any of this is that it’s a question of whether or not some being has such internal states when direct observation of the internal states of another being is impossible.  I simply cannot know what any other mind is thinking.  I can observe it, I can ask it questions and observe the answers, but I cannot actually answer the question of whether or not an LLM has any internal subjective sense of itself as a separate being with its own wants and needs apart from whatever im trying to do with it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t think there is a way to answer the question simply because we really don’t have a good definition of consciousness, nor a good test for what kinds of things actually indicate that a given object or creature has consciousness.


Am I conscious right now?  You could ask me and I could give answers that sound like consciousness, but could have just as easily been that some entity had told me to say (or think) that.  Going further into lower animals, it’s hard to say that even things like dogs, cats, chickens, or fish are conscious beings.  The best behavioral test we seem to have is a mirror test, which honestly doesn’t seem that indicative of consciousness but more of an understanding of what mirrors do — which means the animal lives around enough mirror like surfaces to understand the concept of reflection.  Your most distant ancestors would have failed the test before the invention of mirrors.


The qualia concept isn’t terrible, except that it requires the person applying the test to make huge assumptions about the internal state of another creature.  The usual phrasing is “is it like something to be an X”, but all you can actually do is observe behaviors and if the creature can think, ask it questions.  You don’t have access to its actual internal sense of itself.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Extreme thinking in general tends to correspond to mental illness in a lot of cases.  It’s not just the resulting panic about people disagreeing, but it takes a certain mindset to become obsessed with a topic long enough to be radicalized.  You need to be isolated, you need to have a strong need to be obsessed, you need to have few connections to the rest of the human world, and really I find most people into radical politics are after a sense of power and control.  A normal person with good real-world relationships, hobbies, sports interests, and a good job probably isn’t going to follow politics enough to become a radical.  They have too many other things they care about.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean I’ve noticed this trend in all major political movements for a while now, and while it’s not literally everyone in a political “tribe”, it’s becoming much more common for people to orient their lives around their political beliefs even if they’re nominally religious.  Tell me your political ideology, and I can probably predict a lot about your other beliefs and habits.  Liberals tend to fetishize the products of other cultures— food, fashions, and art especially.  They play up their differences from their neighbors and especially in their sex, gender and sexuality.  They are much more likely to smoke weed (this might be just people I know).  Conservatives very much favor Americana, especially things associated with country living, cowboys, and emphasize their similarities with their neighbors.  Theres no reason that such a thing has to be.


By contrast, you very rarely (with the exception of fundamentalist Christians) find Christians orienting themselves and their beliefs and practices around Christianity to the degree that it impacts how they dress or behave in public.  Theres no correlations for most modern Christians.  There are for Muslims, or at least serious believers.  They won’t violate their religion for conformity to politics.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think honestly for a lot of people, politics is religion, it’s a complete world view that they take on faith that colors and shapes the rest of their lives.  It comes with assumptions about what is good or evil, who and what humanity is, and how we deal with the environment and poverty and technology and so on.  So it only makes sense that people now treat political differences the way someone would treat religious differences in an earlier era. There was a time when the denomination you followed was important enough to break relationships for.  We don’t do that even with religion anymore— mixed religion relationships are perfectly acceptable in most cases.  But if you lived in 1626, it would have mattered a great deal whether you were Catholic or Lutheran or Anglican and it would have been unthinkable to be close friends of anyone who didn’t share your faith, let alone a Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu or something.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m mostly thinking of the House and the electoral college.  In both cases, California gets 50 votes, and thus can have a large influence on how things will happen.  If you live in a less populated state, say Idaho with a whopping 4 electoral votes and 2 members of the House, you, for most practical purposes do not matter.  No one looks at a piece of legislation and worries about pissing off Idaho.  If something would harm a large state like CA, NY, PA, FL, it’s going to be hard to get the party to agree to do it.  Most of the cultural issues are issues because they play in the urban core and big coastal states.  If it were backward, and trans issues were viewed negatively in California but positively in Idaho, no one would be forcing the issue of things like bathroom bills.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m not sure that it’s possible to have a democracy and have rules about what parties can exist.  Nor do I think democracies can survive when millions of people vote for parties of an authoritarian nature.  I don’t see any way out of that conflict though.  I’m almost to the point where you can have a stable democracy if you have the kinds of centralized media that used to exist, or you can have modern decentralized media and let democracy die of whatever populist movement that ultimately ends it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think in order to get Haute Couture in any type of art you need a civilization that still buys its own narrative and one that expects the future to be as least as good as the past.  The people building cathedrals imagined that their descendents would be burning incense before the host at the altar a thousand years in the future.  They imagined themselves at the beginning of a grand future that would see their descendants living lives they could only fantasize about.  If we legitimately believed that our civilization would eventually build a future like our science fiction utopias, and that our civilization was basically right about how to get there, we’d have no problem producing great buildings and great art and great stories.  China can produce great works.  The bird nest dome at the Olympics was pretty cool I think.  We are getting the Olympics, and im mostly expecting them to mostly push the homeless people out of the main venues for two weeks.  But we don’t really believe our own mythology anymore, we don’t really think our great great grandchildren will explore the universe in a starship easy chair.  We don’t really take our religion seriously anymore (the fundamentalists do, but they’re not a large segment of the population).  Why would a civilization that is disillusioned and thinks it’s best days are in the past bother to build or create?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Congress is more and more of a rump every term.  The regulatory agencies and the president are doing most of the work that Congress used to do.  It’s one reason I don’t exactly hate that Trump is ignoring the process.  Congress is as useless as the old Roman Senate which became a glorified debate society long before Caesar showed up.  Ours is basically there, and so I expect nothing less, if Trump isn’t the founder of the Empire, the founder is coming.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think most blocs are cultural in at least some sense.  It’s just like anything else.  Rural Americans have been conservative for a long time now.  Evangelicals in many churches would consider a vote for a democrat to be sinful.  Is that a sober analysis of political positions?  It’s part of the culture.


As to the ridiculous division of power in the country, honestly I think our current system is too flawed to work.  It really seems to solidify the ideas of some blocks over others.  Yes the individual voter in a large state is disempowered in the senate, but he’s also overpowered in the House and the presidential elections.  California has 54 electoral votes.  Pennsylvania has 20+.  Those states have outsized influence over national politics.  If you lose all of the big population states, you lose.  Heck, if you lose the northwest corridor you have an uphill battle, especially if you’re a Republican who won’t have the 54 electoral votes CA brings.


Electorally I think it’s past time to allow each congressional and senatorial district to issue its own electors.  State by state winner takes all overpowers the large states too much in national policy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Minority grievances are the point in my mind, and in fact fostering grievances is a big part of the project of liberal democracy.  If I can convince you that you are being wronged by those guys over there, you’re mine for life.  You won’t go anywhere else especially to those guys over there who you believe are oppressing you in some fashion.  And fixing those things would mean the grievances go away.