Negatory
2yr ago
Yeah, but this is better explained by “traditionalism” getting some key things right that we’ve moved too far away from in modern society. The religious can say “we told you so” on some current societal ill, but that’s picking winners and ignoring losers on the track record of religion overall on any given issue.
Also you have to consider that the progressivism most of us here strongly dislike is highly compatible with certain strains of religion, and indeed its worse aspects are directly comparable to those of a religion (so to with Marxism and other ideologies that seek power beyond the level of their epistemology).
Religion being so kooky while it tries to defend traditionalism is arguably making it harder for secular traditionalism to appeal to the youths. See also: the Republican Party.
The supposed pragmatic benefits of religion (typically cherry-picked to hell) are not very relevant to the epistemic status.
Negatory
2yr ago
Having read your linked thread, it seems you are a Mormon.
Tl;dr: Proper epistemology can save you 10% of your lifetime earnings (and more!) if you let it.
BLUF: Independently researching and leaving Mormonism was the hardest intellectual/emotional thing I’ve ever done. Trapped priors, anchor beliefs, upbringing and social pressure all make it very challenging, because you have been emotionally conditioned to perform confirmation bias to develop a testimony since before you could talk, and to avoid “antimormon” sources and evidence (the very opposite of an isolated demand for rigor). Try pretending you were born a Muslim or a Buddhist and consider how this version of you would be, religiously. Would you end up leaving your childhood faith and somehow finding Mormonism?
I gotta say, even by Mormon standards, those “answered prayer” stories are weak sauce.
“I was dealing with a problem, I prayed real hard for help, and so the omnipotent creator of the universe stretched forth his finger to help me find my keys” is a classic in the genre, but brings up the issue of why the power of prayer is seemingly so limited to things like not getting lost in the woods, healing from an illness, or encountering your ex, instead of solving larger-scale problems. God is so powerful, but his preference to work in mysterious ways really gets in the way of effectiveness.
“You are the easiest person to fool” and so “Bayesian” “analysis” of your prayer outcomes is just so remarkably divorced from a worldview based on keeping beliefs proportional to evidence (the antithesis of “faith”). Try running an experiment at scale on say prayer/faith healing at hospitals and then we can talk about Bayesian analysis. Or provide concrete evidence of a soul/The Spirit.
My favorite thing is that Joseph Smith claimed he possessed gold plates and other ancient artifacts, like a sword from the old world, and couldn’t just produce them as evidence. He had them, just take his word for it. He even had “witnesses” make formal claims they saw them (with their “spiritual eyes” as it turns out), and yet he wouldn’t let say outside experts examine them.
Strange way to go about establishing credibility. “I’ll let you see the relics but only if you already believe me.” It’s a level of credulity most children won’t demonstrate—Santa at least does provide presents.
Mormonism has no way to reconcile evolution, the archeology and genetics of the Americas, and the conspicuous lack of evidence of living prophetic power with its claims and doctrine—to a unique or stronger degree than trad Christianity, due to literal claims made by the Book of Mormon and early prophets. The apologists try to fit various camels through needles here, but it usually means contradicting claims and doctrine set forth by older prophets, which isn’t exactly good for establishing credibility. Early Mormon sausage making is just too well-documented for most moderns to accept, and Mormonism’s plunging conversion rate shows it.
Of course, the modem LDS church can’t settle the issue and make me look foolish because the plates and certain other artifacts were turned over to an angel. Tellingly, the one sacred relic the church does possess is a regular old seer stone, which was mostly ignored until recent times and is a point of controversy regarding exactly how it was the “translation” was done by Smith (it mostly did not involve looking at the plates, though most pictures depict it that way).
It’s a preposterous situation that would not survive scrutiny today (at any real scale), but people today—many of them very intelligent—can pretend it was a reasonable thing for a prophet of god to do in 1830 or so because they were raised believing it.
Negatory
2yr ago
You have upset the hive mind and will be downvoted accordingly.
When Trace split off I kinda thought he was being a pansy. But now I kind of get it. I’m pretty right-wing these days on a lot of issues, and get upvoted when I express such sentiments. But defending the left at all from unfair accusations or criticizing the right at all tends to bring a lot of downvotes.
I think we are a bit right of a sweet spot to avoid a groupthink spiral.
Negatory
2yr ago
If you don’t have a clearance the scenarios previously discussed wouldn’t apply to you.
Worrying about a progressive surveillance state unbanking and imprisoning you is worrisome if present trends continue (and Europe already does this at times for speech), but the Jan 6 mostly peaceful insurrectionists did about the dumbest thing possible in putting a giant red target on their backs for the feds to go after.
Negatory
2yr ago
There are an abnormal amount of rich people in government and intelligence that were not rich when they started.
Are there? How do you know? Are you including elected officials in this group?
The rate of hard corruption (e.g. outright bribery) in the US is not zero, but it’s pretty low.
One reason it’s low is that we have real competition between two major parties who share and switch off power, and always have an incentive to nail the opposing side for violations.
Negatory
2yr ago
There are over one million people with clearances.
Chinese robbers and all that.
Negatory
2yr ago
You strike me as incapable of passing an ITT for the Motters here you argue with because you consistently fail to engage the points being made and instead make outlandish allegations.
Which part do you disagree with here?
(Note that these are descriptive statements. The normative implications are a distinct issue.)
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IQ is real and measurable.
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IQ correlates positively with a wide range of life outcomes, such as income and job performance.
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IQ is significantly heritable, as e.g. height is.
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Similar to height, genes set potential, and environment can prevent reaching it via e.g. malnutrition or head trauma or being raised by wolves.
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There is a longstanding achievement gap on IQ between populations. A common ordering in a US context is Ashkenazi Jews > East Asians > Whites > Hispanics > Blacks.
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Evidence exists that the differences in 5 cannot solely be explained by environment, and so, as with height, there seems to be a genetic difference between certain populations, on average.
Blank statists deny most or all of these. White supremacists tend to dislike the order represented in 5. Smart people trying to stay out of trouble definitely stay well clear of 6 and even 5 is dangerous to acknowledge (despite the issue being the whole point of affirmative action).
Negatory
2yr ago
Yeah I think you’re right about the micromanagement of truckers (and other areas with ubiquitous monitoring. We already have cheap cameras/trackers/recorders and now AI can make analyzing the data cheap too. Privacy will be so very dead in most areas of life/work soon.)
The deregulation in the 70s was more about competition between firms.
Negatory
2yr ago
On average, yes.
But major counter examples exist. Trucking, airlines, and beer all got significantly deregulated. We are coming up on a century past the New Deal, and a lot of big gov overreach peaked in the 60s and then Carter started the neoliberal turn.
Housing is perhaps reaching a turning point as Blue cities/states face reality that zoning is bad/racist. Not sure if building infra is going to improve in that left-on-left fight over green energy/rail vs. environmentalism.
Negatory
2yr ago
You’re conflating “having beliefs that appear the same” with “the same people.”
Negatory
2yr ago
DoJ is traditionally quite independent of the presidential administration. Biden doesn’t make prosecutorial decisions.
Any federal prosecution of J6 peaceful protesters and Trump was going to happen under any Dem, because federal prosecutors have independence, and so it’s not evidence against Biden being moderate relative to his peers.
Also Biden is also a moderate relative to his peers on the border.
Negatory
2yr ago
I’m not a progressive so you don’t need to convince me.
As you can see from looking around, putting a thumb on the scale in their favour just leads them to believe their own hype and demand more and more. They are ironically too stupid to understand that they didn't get where they are through merit at all.
Keep in mind the real demand signal frequently comes from well-off do gooders, who on average are quite intelligent, in the US at least. The underclass doesn’t have political power.
Negatory
2yr ago
Well the progressive worldview is exactly the opposite.
We should help the most needy the most. (Marxists and Christians of the world, unite!)
The low value proposition is the high value morality.
(For the record, people can and do hold these views without being a blank statist. Freddie deBoer, for example.)
Negatory
2yr ago
Why are you failing to understand that the race-blind meritocracy we have tried ends with predictable racial disparities, which leads to DEI to combat “systemic racism”?
Most of the posters I see here support race-blind individualism and recognize that the hereditarian reality will have to be acknowledged such that “systemic racism” won’t move elites and institutions to jettison the meritocracy.
Again, and I cannot emphasize this enough, most of us here want individual assessments of merit, not race-based discrimination.
Negatory
2yr ago
The self-reports from the polling I linked to above shows people changed their minds most from exposure to the gays, not science lies.
You’re still not presenting a theory for why, consistently, a small percentage of the population shows a predisposition for homosexuality, even when it conflicts with their religious beliefs and/or risked major repercussions.
When we look at people who engage in high-cost/risk activity, we don't say, "They must have been born that way."
Kind of funny thing to say on a forum that takes biodeterminism so seriously.
Also, I didn’t say the science was completely irrelevant. If you read what I actually wrote I think it had some effect, but, it was mostly a lagging indicator.
My whole point is that the cultural power preceded the scientific lies, which is why the latter is not so incredibly relevant as you seem to believe. The main relevant factors were things like changing views on sexuality and marriage, alongside increased awareness and direct exposure to gay people.
Why would I bring “here’s some science” to an argument where I think the science is basically irrelevant? It’s not just my opinion, it’s a lot of “lived experience” of myself and others whom I trust. I certainly don’t trust the NYT or institutional science much these days, but I do trust the reported experience of the gay people I am familiar with, many who would have chosen in a heartbeat not to be gay if they could have.
Overall, you place way to much faith in how influential science lies propagated from on high are, relative to people having their own personal evidence. (This is generally true for the limits of propaganda.)
Negatory
2yr ago
The funny thing here is you’re blatantly wrong about the present dynamic among progressives/youngins.
Go read about age gap discourse and get back to me.
Also, progressives already don’t live by a strict consent-based moral framework. They frequently believe the right of consent should be taken away (organ donation for money, and anything else they perceive as involving a potential power imbalance that could involve “exploitation” of the oppressed).
Negatory
2yr ago
Please don’t conflate “one opinion column” with “the NYT says”. Moreover, the people who needed to change their mind on gay marriage to go from 30% to over 50% weren’t exactly NYT readers.
Briefs to the Supreme Court are too late in the game to explain the change and not aimed at the public. It’s a lagging indicator.
What changes people’s minds it is hard to show in the best of circumstances. Self-reports are about as good as you can do. The self-reports back my position, not yours. That is to say that I’m sure the “science says” bit did help change minds, just not nearly as much as the other thing.
So I’ve demonstrated the kind of evidence I would accept. It just doesn’t help your case.
Here, by the way is an article on your side. I like the top comment.
You just brushing off people being gay back when it was a high-cost activity, even leading to prison/execution in many places still today, is indicative your model is wrong because it can’t incorporate this common phenomenon. See also: children being identified as gay very young (as another poster brought up).
Did Alan Turing ruin his life because someone lied to him about how being gay works? Do gays in much of the Islamic world risk serious penalty because it’s just a fun thing to do? Some people clearly have the strong predisposition others do not.
Negatory
2yr ago
Let’s be very clear about something:
I am not asking to focus on one narrow area. I was responding to someone who brought that up. It is, I think, illustrative of the fact winning elections is good actually, and that if the GOP could do what it does on guns on other issues the world would be a better place (it helps that guns are more popular than polling tends to suggest, unlike abortion bans).
Long term demographic trends doom everything unless the changing of minds happens. That’s a fully general problem.
So you’re a reactionary and not a conservative. Obviously you would prefer/predict things will get worse before they can get better, presumably under some newfangled system. When the Dems win it’s good news, in the long run, because they will make things worse. When Republicans win they’ll fail to really turn back the tide, at best they’ll just prolong the inevitable (Trump is a fun wildcard because he is an agent of chaos).
You don’t say what other things can be done in the present, and I was going to suggest “why not both” with respect to trying to win elections, but perhaps winning elections is actually bad, for the long run.
Do reactionaries commonly believe it’s actually good to vote for the bad side? The same question goes for lefty revolutionaries.
Negatory
2yr ago
Oh sorry I meant to refer to the Covid lockdowns, no anything with Monkeypox.
While I agree that the Blue Tribe protests and permission from health authorities were extraordinarily hypocritical, that’s the only thing I’m aware of where tribal bias gave an exception. So I don’t quite grant your whole point, because most blue tribers weren’t actually protesting. If it were a general exception instead of the limited one then I would agree.
Negatory
2yr ago
Libya voluntarily stopped its nuclear weapons program.
Saddam most definitely did not. His reactors got bombed into oblivion and then he pretended to still have a program and didn’t cooperate with inspectors, even though it got him invaded. Basically everyone thought he had one going and he kept up the pretense to appear strong.
The US and NATO providing security guarantees is not something Russia has to like. But the fact that they don’t like it so much is kinda the whole reason countries want to join, and that case seems stronger than ever. Reasonable people can disagree about what exactly was the best way to handle Russian aggression, but please don’t pretend the West caused Putin to regress to the USSR/imperial mean. He has agency.
European incompetence is immense on many fronts, security and foreigner policy high among them. If I thought some US policy stance could fix it I would advocate for it.
I don’t think you understand how the US viewed Russia. No one was thinking Putin was going to try to conquer Ukraine until suddenly that’s what he was doing. Sure, a little invasion here and there to annex a slice of any given country, but not a full-on war. Being a Russia hawk went out of style a while ago (except for Mitt Romney in 2012), then Trump screwed up the traditional US political stances on top of that.
Once it was clear an invasion was coming, almost everyone thought Putin was going to win pretty quickly. The Ukrainians have outperformed expectations immensely, and the Russians underperformed. Unfortunately, that means a bloody quagmire for the indefinite future. (Which they judge better than being Putinized.)
The US military has not been very focused on countering a Russian land war for over 30 years. We are trying to focus on China after so much time in the Middle East. We let our traditional artillery production fall off too much during that time and rebuilding capacity doesn’t happen instantly.
You phrasing things as if we think “we’re invincible” is not even wrong. We, the United States of America, are not being threatened by Putin. We have never had more of a military advantage over Russia in century or more because Putin is burning up so much of his military in Ukraine. You’re simply assigning beliefs to the US national security apparatus with little bearing on reality. We spend an immense amount of money on the military, but no one was excited to spend that on artillery production capacity (old, boring) and not say an F-35 (new, exciting).
Russia invading its neighbors is a tale as old as time and the US is almost an irrelevant variable, except for the part where becoming a formal member of The West is an alternative and insurance policy for counties at risk of Putinization. Ukraine was moving towards the EU and Putin did not want that trend to succeed.
Negatory
2yr ago
Somehow I doubt the thing that put NK over the edge was the rhetorical Axis of Evil. The point is that they were in violation for a long time and chose to exit when they were close enough to success that dealing with inspectors wasn’t going to work.
Blaming an outcome decades in the making on Bush is asinine.
NATO is a defensive alliance and believing that a tiny country bordering Russia joining is an actual threat to Russia, vs. the real problem of taking away Russia’s ability to dominate, is simply not justified by any understanding of Russian foreign policy for the last century. You do a good job of not being very charitable to US leaders, but they’re saintly compared to Putin.
Blaming Putin’s regional aggression on Bush is asinine. (You can observe that whatever its faults our war in Iraq was clearly not territorial conquest.)
American foreign policy is far from perfect and the Bush administration was a particularly bad case (only superseded in modern times by the administrations that dragged us into Vietnam IMO), but that’s without needing to exaggerate or misplace blame.
I do agree backing out of the Iran Deal was stupid and there was a pretty strong bipartisan consensus on that (even among those who had opposed initiating it). But Trump was Trump.
When you say “after you attacked two other countries that halted their nuclear weapons program” are you referring to Iraq, Syria, or Libya?
Negatory
2yr ago
Eh, the lockdowns and other measures applied to all tribes.
I think the most relevant distinction here is women. Namely, there weren’t all that many women dying from their bathhouse adventures in the 90s. So the men kept doing their high-risk behavior.
Covid on the other hand involved all of society, so the neurotics wanted to give it all they had.
Don’t blame utilitarianism for situations where it clearly is not being applied!
Negatory
2yr ago
I guess I don’t understand your point.
Gun rights are clearly better off by a lot because the GOP won enough elections to appoint judges who recognize the individual right to bear arms. It has put super blue places on their back foot. Red states tend to have pretty good gun laws and so keeping the Feds from screwing with that is an ongoing victory.
Blue states trying to impose bans that will probably lose in court is the mirror image of Red states/counties saying they won’t enforce gun laws they consider unconstitutional. It’s par for the course and Red tribe is largely winning here (and in a way that doesn’t backfire, like winning on abortion does).
We’ve never had better gun rights in the modern era, with expanded right to carry and state reciprocity and no real chance anytime soon of a fed ban on sporting rifles and magazines, which we used to have in the glorious 90s.
The present state of gun rights exists because of GOP victories. It seems clear a future where the GOP gives up on winning election will not be good for gun rights.
This seems to clearly contradict the original point that winning doesn’t or won’t matter (the instant the left could it would at least take us back to the 90s). But yes, it was funny that Trump actually did support some gun regulation (which might get overturned!),in the same way it would be if he had a tax increase.
So I’m very confused why you think 2A rights of all things is a good example against winning within the system when we’ve had like 20+ years of mostly victories on that front. And, if you’re a conservative, avoiding a bad change is a victory itself.
I agree fiscal responsibility is one hell of a problem because trying to fix it is a political dead end and so it seems both parties have agreed to drive off the cliff and then the crisis will take the blame off of anyone in particular. I’m just also sad the GOP has largely given up even pretending to care.
I also generally agree with your description of the social and institutional decay we’ve seen and that the large part of it is Blue Tribe Elites overplaying their hand and violating important norms. I just think gun rights are a pretty good counter example. See also: drinking/brewing.
Of course, I would have blamed the progressive left a lot more for their share of the overall problem pre-Trump, when he played right into their narrative and flagrantly ignores norms and laws (for no actual victory, mind you), and now that so many constitutional conservatives dropped the first word (along with fiscal).
If the culture war situation was, on average, where it is specifically on gun rights then I’d be a goddamned optimist, because when push comes to shove Blue loses on that issue and things have trended in the direction I prefer during my lifetime.
Negatory
2yr ago
Ironic to bring that up when the courts are deliberating over Trump’s bump stock ban right now.
I promise you things would be a lot worse without all those GOP-appointed judges upholding the 2nd amendment.
Sure, places like NY/CA/NJ are doing their best to fight back against freedoms, but consider that those states are places where the GOP doesn’t win very much.
The real loser of an issue despite the GOP winning is fiscal responsibility, not the 2nd amendment.
Quibbling about what “air” is and whether it exists in the same way as phlogiston, and then bringing up Kant and positivism, is almost a parody of trying to avoid the obvious point that if we suck all the air out of your lungs or put you in a room without oxygen you will die, 100% of the time. By “metaphysical” you seem to mean “made up and you can’t disprove it with your wimpy naturalism.”
In contrast, divine power resists all attempts to study it in the same way Bigfoot eludes capture and Santa avoids showing up on radar. People do try though.
It’s very brave to bring up falsifiability as a standard when religious claims almost always avoid it. Religious faith and reason cannot be reconciled because the former is explicitly based on believing things without sufficient evidence as a virtue. “We don’t have demonstrable evidence and that’s a feature, not a bug.”
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