Negatory
2yr ago
People getting things wrong in good faith is one thing.
Blatantly disregarding clarification is an order.
There’s still enough diversify of thought here that any given stance is going to risk an inferential gap with someone, and consistently striving to pass an ITT is the best we can do.
Negatory
2yr ago
So a mistake I was making based on my exposure to the anti-woke sentiments I’ve read in the US is that the term “Identitarian” was specifically left-coded, which is apparently not the case, as the term originated to describes European right-wingers.
A lot of posters here in recent HBD arguments explicitly claimed to support race-blind individualism, which would not make them Identitarian, but I’m not sure what the breakdown is.
I am aware a group of posters here are implicitly or explicitly right-wing Identitarians, though I was not seeing that being particularly relevant to the arguments being made about the descriptive factuality of intellectual differences between populations having a genetic component.
Hlynka apparently caught a ban because I drove him to incivility, but his constant labeling of those who think there is truth to HBD/race realism/hereditarianism as Identitarian in arguments with those of us who reject that stance was annoying.
Negatory
2yr ago
Most of us HBD types here are not neo-Nazis as far as I can tell.
Moreover, the term “Identitarian” typically refers to left-coded ideas, even if we accept horseshoe theory is real. (Edit: seems I’m wrong about that actually in a global context.)
Brave of you to accuse me of being a troll here.
Negatory
2yr ago
I spent 15 years in the Deep State and I assure you that the US IC did a lot more in the Cold War than you’ve pointed out here. For HUMINT in particular, a lot of the evidence remains classified.
The Soviets were good, the West was a more permissive environment, and communist ideology motivated many. The penetration of the Manhattan Project is perhaps the most successful intelligence operation ever, given the stakes.
But HUMINT is not the only game in town.
Like you mention VENONA, but never any other agency than the CIA.
Overall I think you'd really struggle to make an argument that the US accomplished more of its intelligence goals than the USSR.
I mean the USSR is no more, the US and its allies clearly outclassed the Soviets in nearly every arena, and now Russia is a shadow of its former self in its ability to dominate its region, and people constantly theorize that the CIA turned Russia’s neighbors towards the West.
So I think you have it exactly backwards.
Negatory
2yr ago
I assure you that in the IC some significant screw ups, eg 9/11, Iraq WMDs, and Snowden, did lead to significant changes in my previous job. Some of them were good, even.
You can argue those changes were insufficient, bad, or counterproductive, but they happened, and they were substantial at least in the sense that they caused real changes in day-to-day operations.
I fully agree about diffused responsibility and that demonstrated incompetence is not sufficiently punished, which is a major reason I switched careers. But outright malfeasance is typically dealt with.
Leaders who are associated with screw ups tend to have their career progress cut off, but that’s an organizational politics situation.
Negatory
2yr ago
Religion is silly compared to positivism.
The way you can tell is that almost no on identifies as such after philosophers took a hammer to it for logical inconsistencies. And yet so many religions continue on, resolute in their beliefs that contradict what we know about reality.
Religion is way more wrong than logical positivism. Several orders of magnitude more wrong, both regarding the level of claim made relative to evidence, and the fact positivism was hoisted on its own petard and actually died off.
Religion gets a privileged position because it’s normal and people have strong emotional attachments to it. The evidence is laughably weak or nonexistent, and many religions practice a kind of epistemology that is directly opposed to reason and science. Apologists can’t prove skeptics (or competing religions) wrong by producing strong evidence, so they play philosophical special pleading games and hide their gods in the gaps and “non overlapping magisterial” as secular knowledge expands.
The fact that religions themselves can’t agree on core ideas and prove their case to other religions, let alone to militant atheists and fundamentalist skeptics, remains telling. The “there there” is humans on average prioritize emotion over reason and religions have developed to exploit that fact, while providing some adaptive (at least historically) benefits.
Negatory
2yr ago
The existence of mystery should not excuse holding beliefs without sufficient evidence, is a basic point of reason.
The most humble ontological view is perhaps one that assumes no deity, or anything else, without sufficient evidence.
So much of classical philosophy is simply special pleading and god of the gaps.
Negatory
2yr ago
but the pain teaches us, and God has also unjustly granted us countless joys to pad life out and outweigh even the worst of our pains.
Who is “us” here exactly?
Countless humans and sentient creatures have not been granted “countless joys” to outweigh their suffering. Your theology deals with this moral inequity by saying god will make up for it in the afterlife.
Only problem there is the lack of evidence for said afterlife.
Negatory
2yr ago
With what framework do you establish your deontological rules? How are you smart enough to establish them?
The optimal level of asshole leadership is very far from zero, but workers tend to only tolerate it willingly when there’s a cult of personality.
Negatory
2yr ago
Consequentialism does not demand ignoring intent, because intent is frequently important and not treating it as such would lead to bad consequences in many cases.
That’s the great thing about consequentialism, when it leads to bad consequences you can adjust it to lead to better ones.
Your own thought experiments bear this out. Moral uncertainty and the fundamental randomness and contingency of future events plague all systems.
Rule utilitarianism, or something like Cowen’s “economic growth plus human rights”, attempt to strike a balance between baseline rules and considering the effects of any given act. The US constitution sets forth rules, limitations, and rights in a framework of promoting the general welfare, directly in line with rule utilitarianism.
If your god inspired the US constitution, he’s clearly a fan of rule utilitarianism.
Negatory
2yr ago
You gotta admit it’s a hilarious arc for a forum spun off from an atheist blog spun off from another atheist and explicitly antitheist blog to become a safe haven for the devout.
Negatory
2yr ago
The rationalist project has failed because it refused to engage with human greed, selfishness, and delusion.
What on earth are you talking about? Have you even browsed the Sequences?
Negatory
2yr ago
Many atheists are delusional.
“Atheism” is a weak label in that all it means is a lack of theistic belief. Plenty of people who lack theistic beliefs hold delusional beliefs.
Famously, Marxism was atheistic and antitheistic, and I think it is commonly believed here that Marxists were/are delusional about economics, among other things.
The atheists who supported injecting progressive politics into the movement to create “Atheism+” were delusional in my view, and many remain so in their beliefs that diverge from the actual science, say evolutionary psychology and gender differences (which is super ironic given how much we all love to criticize the religious for not accepting evolution).
Negatory
2yr ago
Can you point to anyone on the Motte who is an Identitarian?
I’m not seeing anyone making Identitarian arguments regarding the HBD debate.
The reason HBD/race realists/hereditarians tend to bring up Ashkenazi Jews is because they are a clearly defined population with the highest recorded average IQ, and a massive track record of success in many fields, from science to business to Hollywood and more. Of course, that track record of high achievement began before standardized testing became prevalent in modern times.
It’s not a coincidence academia had to discriminate against Jews and East Asians in admissions.
This, naturally, puts HBD at odds with antisemitism and white supremacy, because it’s a non-conspiratorial explanation for why so many antisemites get fixated on Jews being so successful.
Of course, if you actually understood the arguments provided by posters here such that you could pass an ITT, you’d already know that and wouldn’t have to resort to lazy psychological theorizing where you try to pretend we are Identitarians.
You mark a lot of well-established scientific findings regarding IQ as questionable, in a way where we cannot even focus on a particular point of disagreement where you get off the ride. It’s a common technique to avoid clarity and precision when the evidence is against you, and you are also tying to obfuscate by constantly and inaccurately trying to lump Identitarians with hereditarians, when they tend to be utterly opposed on the 6 points above (again, regarding descriptive claims).
The ironic thing is that you’re the one making arguments that directly align with those of progressive left and Identitarians regarding IQ/genetics/race.
You have an incredibly idiosyncratic position here, which is not internally consistent, combined with an inability to directly engage with the points made against it and a tendency to project labels and positions onto your opponents they do not accept, and often directly oppose. This is pointed out by posters who don’t accept HBD.
It’s so incredible I almost believe you’re doing a bit.
For instance, I think I’m generally representative here and I’m a classic liberal strongly opposed to the progressive left’s war on meritocracy via blank slatism. I want a return to the generally race-blind individualism I was taught as a child. I’m extremely philosemetic, which is just one more thing that puts me at odds with today’s left.
Negatory
2yr ago
From an intelligence/security POV the US lost the Cold War.
What?
By what standard? According to whom?
Negatory
2yr ago
The observation that fielding substandard troops results in outsized friendly casualties is not revelatory
What predicted the substandard performance?
Why did and does the US military use it as a predictor?
Negatory
2yr ago
The blue-tribe professional and academic classes seem to regard him as this brilliant visionary who used his education and intelligence to optimize all the things, bring balance to the Force foreign policy, and rationality to the military industrial complex
This is not remotely true. He’s largely associated with expanding the Vietnam War, which did not go well, and Taylorism, which has long been out of fashion.
Negatory
2yr ago
Who benefits from Id Pol, HBD Awareness, and Intersectionality? Who benefits from the dismantlement of Anglo/American norms about equality of opportunity and equality before the law? I can tell you who does not benefit in anyway. Those who possess genuine individual merit
You lumping together those three categories and then saying they all are detrimental towards individual merit remains baffling given the arguments made by people in this very forum using HBD to defend individual merit against idpol and intersectionality.
Do you agree affirmative action hurts individual merit?
Do you agree HBD awareness hurts affirmative action?
Negatory
2yr ago
See also: Reality Winner, Private Manning.
The two biggest leaks in the last few decades were both ideologically motivated, as were many if not most during the Cold War.
basically nothing happened after he blew the whistle.
Well that’s because he (and Manning) were emotionally unstable idiots who thought they had found some major malfeasance and then leaked massive amounts of data not actually showing that.
Negatory
2yr ago
I don't know precisely how you could balance out the interest of "we are a clandestine organization that needs to operate with minimal exposure to the public and maximal discretion to act without immediate accountability" and "there needs to be someone NOT beholden to the organization keeping an eye on us to jerk the reins when we misbehave."
The US IC falls under the Executive Branch. There are various layers of internal overseers, but ultimately it is congressional and judicial oversight that checks the IC or any other Executive Branch entity. The agencies have consistent incentives to keep the president happy because he’s the boss, congress happy because they pass the budgets, the courts happy because they sign off on warrants, and the US public happy because they elect and influence the first two branches directly.
The post you link to focuses on elected officials, which is a very different kettle of fish from career civil servants, the uniformed services, and contractor worker bees.
Negatory
2yr ago
Having a perfect record on stopping terrorism is not realistic, though in the years since 9/11 the track record is a lot better than most people would have predicted.
While the IC is not blameless for the invasion of Iraq, the vast majority of the blame is on the Bush admin for cherry picking and massaging reporting to support their preconceived notions soon after the intelligence failures of 9/11. Nobody had definitive evidence Saddam didn’t have a WMD program and the general prior was that he did have something because he sure did have one previously.
In contrast, the US demonstrating publicly it had evidence of the Russian invasion and insight into Putin’s inner circle is a basically unprecedented move because of the risk it posed to sources and methods.
Of course, as you point out, successful intelligence by definition being covert does not leave any footprint, whereas intelligence failures are public owing to the consequences of said failure.
It’s funny you say this when upthread someone makes the point that the IC can cover up its failures. The reality is that either can be the case, though on average I think successes are less likely to be disclosed in near-real time.
Negatory
2yr ago
I don't know how US counterintel is dealing with this problem. Presumably, they could choose to simply deny clearances to folks who have too much family that they are too close with back in China. Alternatively, they could still grant those clearances, yet try to flag those relationships as being of sufficient concern for some sort of extra monitoring.
That sums it up yeah. It’s not a secret. You can google getting a clearance with foreign associations and learn the basics.
Negatory
2yr ago
For B, compared to whom?
Feels like saying “the US military isn’t very good at the moment” or “the US economy isn’t very good at the moment.”
I may be misreading him but I took this as pointing out Christian philosemitism is much larger than Christian antisemitism in modern times.
So it’s not really “bizarre” because he was matching the framing of the previous comment to say “shame most Christians disagree with your views.”
Though I guess it’s unavoidably culture warring in that responding in kind to a comment blatantly breaking the rules is still going to break the rules. But it didn’t strike me as over the top, so I would think this was more of a warning situation (unless you have other violations as a pattern).
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