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MaiqTheTrue

Zensunni Wanderer

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joined 2022 November 02 23:32:06 UTC 

				
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MaiqTheTrue


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Zensunni Wanderer

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 November 02 23:32:06 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The internet led to a small resurgence of pagan LARPing among largely young whites in a way often tied to Nordic black metal. Not all of this is far-right really, but much of it is. Varg Vikernes is obviously a major figure in both worlds and a pagan missionary of sorts. Naturally these people blame Christianity for destroying ancestral European paganism, and they blame this for hurting Europeans in various ways for arguably religious reasons. There is also obviously a hostility towards the fact that in Christianity an aspect of God is embodied in an unambiguously Jewish man and that much Christian ritual and scripture is descended from Judaism.




I think the lack of a religious alternative makes the idea of trying to remove Christianity from western culture more or less a nonstarter.  Until there’s a robust religion that comes out of Pagan thinking in a real pagan way, with an unapologetic pagan way of think (that is, a religious and philosophical movement in authentic paganism that doesn’t have its origins in either Christianity or as a reaction to Christianity), then you can really build outward from it.  Judaism is its own thing and always has been, and it’s not really a LARP of a dead religion that exists only in distinction from Christianity and Islam.  Jews have their own thing.  My experience of paganism is that it’s a LARP that no one takes seriously, and certainly don’t behave as though they believe in Odín, Thor, Zeus, or Athena.  They don’t have a sense of reverence for their deities, the sense of them as having wants that you might not like.  No sense that you can’t just pick and choose.


And I think that matters because like it or not, the best innovation the Abrahamics have is that their texts are canon and inspired and thus it gives a bulwark against it being twisted into whatever form the elites want.  The Torah, the Bible and the Quran are explicit in what they say, and thus cannot be easily interpreted to not mean what the text says it means.  Islam can never allow pork.  It’s in the book, and the book is from God and not changing for the whims of the rest of the world.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it’s a reasonable framework for ideological thinking.  A “slave” ideology would be one that places value on passively accepting fate, on not being assertive or demanding of other groups.  A master ideology would do the opposite and be demanding and assertive and less concerned with helping others.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think this is the correct answer.  It’s a power move plain and simple.  The powers that be want to be able to shut down things they don’t like and are forming “relationships” with the people running the choke points.  If a site can’t process payments, it can’t survive long.  And if ISPs refuse to direct traffic to them, again they can’t survive.  But because it’s not the government, and nobody gets arrested, it’s not technically censorship so there’s nothing wrong with it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think a lot of this could be somewhat curbed if there were reasonable requirements to get various helps from the government.  If you want assistance, it should be assistance and therefore you should have a job.  That doesn’t seem controversial to me.  And it would work.  If having sec 8 housing required having a full time job, then people would be much more likely to find and keep a job.  Add in a requirement that nobody living at that house commit a felony and a lot of these sorts of problems get handled.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ll agree to the decline in quality of entrants.  But I think the bigger issue is student loans and the ease with which those institutions can make money by reducing rigor even in high rigor subjects.  A butt in the seat of any university makes them 30,000 a year.  This is putting enormous pressure on schools to not only admit anyone with a pulse, but to reduce the difficulty of coursework so students don’t fail or drop out.  So you basically remove the difficulty from the courses, handhold everyone in the class, and offer more extra credit to shore up flagging grades.  Which means students are no longer thinkers, innovators, readers, or otherwise able to do anything beyond regurgitating whatever is in the study guide.


Another issue, which I think has also reduced the usefulness of college is that really, the ability of any program at any school to be held to any sort of account for not actually teaching students to do the things that are a major part of doing that work.  As it sits now, what students and employers know about what the program does is what the school says it does.  If I’m looking at a program in biology, I honestly have no way to know whether a program I’m looking at is going to teach me to do the labs, or to teach me the fundamentals of biology or statistics used to analyze the results of an experiment.  I can use reputation as a proxy, but it isn’t a very good proxy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Except that I’ve never ever seen this drive more people to support these causes.  In fact, it’s almost always a negative publicity to the point that it would often do the cause better to not protest at all.  Your protest blocked a road, now everyone is pissed because they were late to work, or missed a flight, or other activities they needed to get to.  Are people talking about the cause as in “does this idea have merit” or in terms of “what a bunch of inconsiderate losers making people late for work and making people miss their flights.  It’s negative at least around me.  People outright cheered when the people blocking roads in Europe got pushed out of the way by SUVs or were manhandled to the side of the road by outraged drivers.  Not one person seeing the souping of the Louvre paintings got curious about the cause, they were upset about the destruction of the art.  So on net, it’s more likely to turn people away.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think, if schools wanted to, they could absolutely teach people how to actually think and solve problems.  Plato and Aristotle and other philosophers could do so with nothing but a bunch of eager students meeting outside in the agora and listening to him talk.  We’re actually shockingly bad a thins. I honestly think high school students in the 1950s and 1960s were actually better thinkers than college graduates and in some cases college students in the 21st century.


I have my theory as to why this is.  I think the classical model of education worked much better than modern educational methods.  I also think that the demand for rigor and precision in thought and the need to actually understand rather than simply memorizing the correct answers to questions is more or less dead.  The value we used to place on dispassionate inquiry died long ago and has been replaced by narratives determined by the culture.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
First of all, the person who makes a positive claim is the one obliged to provide evidence.  This is simply elementary logic.  Negatives cannot be proven, so it’s not on me to prove that no conspiracy happened, it’s on you to provide some evidence that there is a conspiracy.


Second “it’s obvious” isn’t evidence.  If it’s obvious, proving it should be easy.


Third, I don’t accept YouTube as a source.  Find me a newspaper or other print source so I can check on the facts presented.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I tend to agree with the idea that the meme itself is artificial, and I think the aim is to give the public a meme that simply dismisses the idea of conspiracy out of hand.  I don’t believe in any particular conspiracy personally, but I find the meme obnoxious simply because dismissing a claim out of hand is a dangerous thing simply because it means not even bothering with the evidence.  I think the proper and critical thinking response to a conspiracy claim isn’t dismissing it out of hand, but demanding proof.  If the earth is actually round, it will still be round even if I question it.  And provided that the evidence is available, truth will eventually win.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My understanding is that he can’t serve more than two consecutive terms. Since Theresa gap, he gets two more.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think that Nate Silver’s approach is correct, though like you, I don’t think his math is right.  Probability modeling is just simply more accurate than gut feelings.  Or as Ben Shapiro likes to say “facts don’t care about your feelings.”  And this is something the left especially has missed quite often.  In fact they missed out on putting a liberal on the bench because RBG didn’t retire with a Dem majority.


And if the polling data is showing that Biden loses in 2024, you’re talking about minimum 2029 before we could replace a justice with a liberal judge.  If Trum does really good, he might win in 2028 thus making the next replacement window at 2033.  That puts her at near 80.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the big and frankly unmentioned part of the phenomenon is that we in the WEIRD west have long been accustomed to defining ourselves and choosing our lifestyles and interests accordingly.  If you’d been born in almost any other era and any other set of countries, your life would have been largely predetermined before you could walk or talk.  There were exceptions, but for the majority, what you were was handed to you, and in some cases still is.  You practice your ancestral religion, you worked at whatever it was your parents and grandparents did.  Your ability to go to school was determined by social class.  Your roles and expectations were largely defined fairly rigidly full of expectations for the roles you were born into. Religious rules.  Gender roles.  Job roles.


Fast forward to today and we really don’t have any of those things.  You can become anything you darn well please.  The son of a welder can become an artist, or a doctor, or an actor.  You can freely choose your religion or lack thereof.  You can dress any way you like.  You can take on or abandon social roles with little regard for what other people think.  Gender is really the final frontier of this process.  It’s the only reality of yourself you don’t get to decide on.  Everything else, religion, job, hobbies, clothing styles, education, etc. can all be bent to the whim of the individual.  So why wouldn’t gender be something a culture like ours would try to negate with medical science?  Why wouldn’t a society that treats every other identity as if they’re fashion accessories not try to make gender and sex into yet another consumer choice?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Bailey Podcast E036: White Right
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In general I think formalism is a good thing.  If we’re to have a debate on the merits of a certain social system or political ideology, we must know what it is that we’re actually talking about.  If I’m advocating for “democracy” or “white nationalism” or “communism” it’s absolutely important to know what the terms actually mean.  The first reason this is important is that it prevents people from speaking past each other.   If “communism” is formally defined as “state ownership of capital” then we can be sure we won’t get lost in the weeds of talking about things that look like communism that actually aren’t like Kibutz or monasteries or nuclear families.  It also avoids the issues of changing definitions and snuck premises.  If we don’t define Communism, then either one of us are free to change the definition in ways that suit us.  If I don’t agree with communism, I can redefine it to be only totalitarian socialism and dismiss everything else as “not really communism” even if it would meet the definition.  If I’m in favor of communism, I can do this in reverse and start including Sweden as a communist country because some utilities and the health care system are state run.  It also prevents to snuck premise problem where I talk about things that I really wish were part of the communist system but aren’t.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
True, but then again, we expanded NATO eastward to a difficult to defend border after it told Russia it had no intention of doing so.  Even if Poland wanted in, it’s hard to ignore that having NATO troops and military equipment on the border of Russia is at least somewhat provocative.  And given that it’s all of Eastern Europe and soon Ukraine as well, Russia is going to be basically surrounded.  It’s about equivalent to Russia forming an alliance with Mexico and Canada.  I can’t imagine a universe in which the USA would not view that as a threat.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
He annexed Donbas and considers them a part of Russia, which makes any attempt to retake them an attack on Russia proper.


The other thing that I think is dismissed too lightly is that him losing the war is likely to be fatal to him.  Russia has a history of killing or deposing rulers who lose wars.  If the only way to win in Ukraine is to use nukes then he’s likely to at least think about it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But compared to the USA, Russia hasn’t been a globe-trotting military power imposing its will on other countries.  This is the first large scale military invasion of a sovereign nation by Russia since the end of the Cold War.  Compare that to America who has invaded Iraq twice, bombed Libya, invaded Afghanistan, and expanded NATO to include almost all of Eastern Europe.  Whether or not you agree with either the geopolitical position (not wanting a NATO member along a difficult to defend border) or the stated aims (removing Nazis from Ukraine) or not, it’s not exactly the military adventures of the USA.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I totally agree.  The stuff that grabbed me about Fight Club, and The Martian is just how close Palahniuk and Weir seemed to be able to get the mindset of ordinary working class people stuck in extraordinary circumstances.  A lot of sci-fi seems to assume that everyone is PMC and that ships in space or colonies are going to be large and clean and have lots of cool gear.  They’re cruise ships built for luxury run by people who cry but rarely experience a real hardship.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ll say We, as in NATO would be stupid to do it.  Putin has nukes and has said repeatedly that NATO in Ukraine is his red line.  If Putin is backed into a corner where either option is “lose and die”, the restraining force of gentility just isn’t going to stop him.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My working hypothesis on bad writing is at least in part due to the hyper-professionalization of movies and games.  In both cases, the people making them don’t come from all walks of life.  They come from a rather insular world of people who have gone through specialized training at university, and they then go on to live in the same town and hang out mostly with other people like themselves who went to the same professional schools and so on.  They’re rarely if ever outside that bubble.  They rarely know anyone who came from outside that bubble.  And as this goes on for generations, the lack of contact with the normie world makes it impossible to create movies and tv and games that feel realistic.  Nobody in Hollywood shoots guns, and probably very rarely would they even know anyone who collects or uses them.  When it comes to writing a story about the kind of person that owns or shoots guns, they aren’t referencing their own lived experience with gun owners.  They’re referencing other works about the topic, they’re referencing their political views about guns and the people who own them, and maybe stereotyping they’ve seen about gun owners.  That doesn’t allow for much depth.  It’s like a copy of a copy of a copy — every step away from the real thing makes it less like a real person and thus less interesting.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If that were the extent of the advice, I think it would be fine.  Put sunscreen on is good advice.  Don’t let your kids play outside is batshit insane.  In fact, to my mind the benefits to children from playing outside are substantial enough that if I thought talking about sunscreen would keep a kid indoors I’d never tell parents about sunscreen.


The physical benefits are that a kid gets actual exercise, running around, playing.  They develop better coordination.  A kid who’s playing is basically getting hours of aerobic exercise, building muscles, and so on.  A kid stuck inside gets none of that.  They sit and stare at screens and get fat.


Then there’s the social benefits.  Making actual real life friends improves mental health.  It embeds a child in a social network of peers and other adults.  It teaches social responsibility and empathy and a whole host of social skills that simply cannot be learned by chatting over a headset.


It teaches good problem solving.  Kid wants to get across a stream, he might accidentally learn something in trying to figure out how to do that.  He might want to play a different game than the other kids and have to learn to negotiate with the other kids to get that.  He might learn how to practice a skill so he can get good enough to play with the other kids.


If children only got one single benefit, I’d still be in favor of having the kids play outside.  Even if the only benefit were preventing obesity, it’s an easy trade.  Cancer at 70+ is bad, but if caught early is fairly treatable most of the time.  Obesity is a chronic disease that often causes heart attacks in fairly young people.  Taking 5 years off retirement or 30 years?  Easy choice.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s not a scam it, like solar is overrated for large swaths of the globe simply because the weather and geography often make those solutions impractical.  Solar only works in places that have a lot of sunny days.  And transmission can only go so far.  Wind has a similar problem— if the place isn’t windy enough, there’s no power.  Add in the space requirements for either solution, and it’s a minor source of power that people overhype because they want to believe you can get free-ish energy that’s perfectly green and leaves no waste.  I think it’s a step backwards simply because for most of the globe nuclear fission is so much more efficient per meter of space used and produces so little waste that anything that stops people from wanting more nuclear energy is a step away from green energy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for April 12, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it’s a self-preservation thing.  Lots of people just have this odd need to believe that AI isn’t really going to take over the art scene, from movies to music to writing and painting and so on.  And it will end those pursuits as a viable career simply because it will be orders of magnitude cheaper to have an AI write and make the next Star Wars movie than it will be for them to waste that money on human writing and acting and so on.  Just a few humans to tweak the output is all you really need, and that’s essentially one guy doing the fixing.


It’s already getting hard to tell the difference between a human and a bot, and that’s tools that are pretty stable and probably were developed and trained 3-5 years ago.  Give it five more years and the professional arts will be dying because they’re no longer different enough from AI to justify the price.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Aren’t most of us doing this now?  I mean most people are assuming that this was negligent simply because a shooting occurred.  But my contention is outside of buying a troubled teen a gun and taking him to gun ranges to practice with it (which is negligent) a lot of the things they did would not be that unusual for a family that owns guns.  And I think that matters because you shouldn’t be able to convict someone of not taking extraordinary measures to prevent a crime.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s unreasonable to hold someone responsible for choices that other people make unless they’re knowingly making choices that a reasonable individual would see an enabling a crime.  If I leave my keys on the counter, that’s not participating in the roommate using my car to drive to his girlfriend’s house and shoot her.  If I know he’s going to get her in some way and I knowingly give him the keys, sure I get that.  Any person watching would interpret that as me giving the guy the keys to go harm his girlfriend.


I think it has to go through that reasonable man test.  If a reasonable person looks at the situation and says that the parents knew or reasonably should have known that he wanted to kill people, and they knowingly provide him a weapon and ammo and refuse to secure it, yes, they’re involved. But if it’s “there are guns in the house,” not really.  And especially if the kid gets into a safe or something, at that point, they’ve done everything reasonably doable to keep the kid from getting a gun.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But at least in the case of a getaway driver, the driver absolutely knows and is an active participant in the murder.  He knows he’s driving someone to a place where they fully intend to shoot someone, and they know after the fact they will be helping them escape.  If an adult I share an apartment with takes my car keys and drives to someone’s house and shoots them, I’m not involved.  I had no reason to think that a crime would result from me leaving the keys on the counter.