OliveTapenade
No bio...
User ID: 1729
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
This is correct. Supporting Palestine is a separate question to that of one's affection for Palestinian people.
And I would also try to distinguish between support for Palestine as a symbol and support for Palestine in the sense of actually wanting to help Palestinian people in concrete terms. In the Arab world there is very high symbolic support for Palestine, but relatively little practical support for materially aiding them. If you ask the average Egyptian on the street whether the government should do something to help Palestinians, they will probably say yes - but I think the Egyptian people overall are unlikely to put much pressure on the government to that effect, and the government certainly doesn't want to.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
The short version is that a progressive politics, prizing compassion and equality, is compatible with belief in the scientific validity of genes and heredity. It's more-or-less the same position as Scott's Parable of the Talents, or Freddie deBoer's take on education, or anything that you might file under the heading of 'hereditarian left'. Both social interventions and targeted genetic enhancement are good.
I'm a bit skeptical of the conclusion for overall Chestertonian and/or James-C.-Scott-ian reasons, but I doubt many Motte posters will find much to disagree with. It feels rather Singerian to me, in a sense?
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Witness that Malaysia is for example much more anti-Zionist than Saudi Arabia or the UAE, even though Israel and Palestine are on the other side of the world and are inhabited by people ethnically and culturally very distinct from Southeast Asia(ns). But if you speak to Muslim Malays, they see it as their big and noble duty to the Muslim world to be anti-Israel, serving in this sense a function like a crusade.
It would not surprise me if proximity makes a huge difference here.
It's not exactly true that all Muslims coo over Arab culture and Arab states - ask some Iranians how they feel about Arabs one day - but at any rate, it also strikes me as noticeably the case that neighbouring Arab states are quite cool on the Palestinians. They tend to hate Israel (though are periodically willing to do deals with it for advantage), and in that regard are happy to use the Palestinians as a club against Israel, but they don't seem to care about the Palestinians as such. If you look at Egyptian or Jordanian or Lebanese policy towards the Palestinians, sure, none of them like Israel, but none of them like the Palestinians very much either, and they tend to be extremely opposed to letting Palestinians in to their countries or giving them aid. This is not helped by the fact that when they have let Palestinians in it has gone very badly - people still remember Black September.
If you're Malaysian, you are never going to have to deal with Palestinians yourself. Pragmatism doesn't come into it, since neither Israel nor Palestine matter much or you in material terms. So you're free to adopt this worldview where Palestinians are a nation of martyrs for Islam and Israelis are merely monsters. You can support Palestine-as-symbol in isolation from any real people.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
And he's playing a character named Leto Atreides, which is practically the equivalent of tattooing "I AM GREEK" on his forehead.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
I haven't seen the Dune films, but it does sound to me like there are a lot of things missing from them that are extremely important to the text, such as Frank Herbert's weird psychosexual theories, or the entire Arabic/Islamic/Middle Eastern element - I think they steered away from the word jihad? And I remember glancing at the cast list and being shocked by, well, pretty much every casting, as well as the total absence of Middle Eastern actors. It looks to me like every single human ethnicity is in those films except for the ones that are actually appropriate. I don't know how you take a story that's about a Greek family falling in with Arabic tribespeople in order to overthrow a Persian emperor and manage to not cast a single person who looks remotely Greek, Arabic, or Persian.
OliveTapenade
2mo ago
It is fascinating and dare I say even hilarious and satisfying to read a man discovering that the whole culture he made up, projected on to people, and invested in was in fact made up.
Why no, it turns out that most white people are not wannabe-Nietzschean-hustlers, and instead just want to find a nice partner, a nice job, and settle down to a quiet life and find meaning in family and friendship. The horror!
OliveTapenade
2mo ago
Don't you need to distinguish pornography here from any work that is about sex?
Simply containing a depiction of sex, or more than that, being about sex, relationships, desire, and identity is not sufficient to make something porn. Porn is not about investigating those things - indeed, a work that sincerely investigates or explores those issues in a meaningful way is practically by definition not porn.
OliveTapenade
2mo ago
I think there's no actual way to know what Sweet Baby Inc influenced in these games unless you work for SBI, the company, or there are leaks. Before SBI was put on as a face to the concept, though, the "woke" direction of the industry had been criticized for a long time, so the issue was never SBI specifically or even companies like SBI, but rather that devs actually seemed to want their narratives to receive influence from the type of ideology espoused by people working at or defending SBI.
Realistically, yes, SBI is only a symbol here. There's no way of knowing what SBI is actually responsible for, or if it was bad.
But sometimes the symbol is enough. The point is "wokeness in games is bad", and SBI consult on games and are (or at least the SBI employees who post on Twitter are) woke, so they stand for the whole fuzzy concept. If there's any kind of strategy here, I doubt the aim is to specifically end SBI influence on games, but rather to send a general message that the audience disapproves of wokeness. The goa may not be for SBI to change, but for the next developer to think to themselves quietly, "Hm, my audience doesn't like woke stuff, I guess I won't include that."
I would be very wary of using Wikipedia as a source for theology, and especially for the intersection of theology with politics. Wikipedia follows the reliable sources, and the reliable sources tend to be secular mainstream media filtered through an overwhelmingly secular user base, which is to say not very reliable at all. While writing my last message I found myself looking at the wiki page on millennialism, realised that the entire thing was unsalvageable nonsense, and concluded it would take too long to dismantle and therefore I just wan't going to mention millennialism or postmillennialism at all. This is unfortunately an all-too-common experience with Wikipedia and the subject of religion.
So that said...
It is basic Christian orthodoxy that Christ is lord of the whole of life - not just Sunday, not just the sabbath, not just whenever we're feeling pious, not just some imagined secular sphere. If one is a Christian, one is a Christian all the time. So I do not particularly associate that part with Christian nationalism - indeed, I think a general American Christian response to Christian nationalism worries has been to point out that they have always been Christian in the public sphere before, that Christianity has always shaped their values and political commitments, and that the unreasonable push is actually that would demand people cordon off part of their life and identity from their public commitments.
Similarly you mention that politics are inevitable for Christians and Christians must engage in them, must even fight - this too strikes me as, well, normal and the way it has always been for Christians. So that does not strike me as a Christian nationalist distinctive.
As for parallel societies... I have to admit I'm blanking here, because I'm not aware of where self-described Christian nationalists are doing anything like that. Dreher's Benedict Option flips between being a truism and being a headlong flight for the hills depending on what's more convenient for Dreher as an internet warrior in any given moment (and he will call you names if you disagree), but the Benedict Option at least commends a type of parallel society. Sometimes the postliberals give the impression of wanting to set up a parallel society, at least when they're not fantasising about a Hungarian-style top-down programme of public reorganisation, but they haven't done anything to meaningfully create one (except insofar as they exist within the Catholic media and cultural sphere, which does have a kind of internal society, albeit one rapidly fraying). Where do you see them building such societies?
More generally...
I understand Christian nationalism to be an argument about how to be Christian in the public sphere, not whether or not to do so. If they have made you more conscious of ways to be meaningfully Christian in public, and to build Christian community within a larger polity, then that is a good thing, but I would caution against signing on with 'Christian nationalism' as a project.
This is one conservative Christian comment on Christian nationalism that strikes me as useful - it recognises that the term is sufficiently indistinct as to be confusing, and it then more clearly lays out what is poisonous in terms of nationalism, but also what is required of Christians in terms of political and social engagement.
EDIT: Oops, posted too soon. To comment on specific policies, I'm not sure how much good symbolic recognition necessarily does for the church. The US constitution does not mention God at all, whereas the Australian constitution (my own) indicates in its first sentence that Australia forms a commonwealth "humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God", and every sitting of parliament begins with a public reading of the Lord's Prayer. Yet it is not clear that these symbolic acts have made Australia a more meaningfully or piously Christian society than America - if anything we may well be less so. So I would be wary of pinning too much hope on top-down state actions. If as Adams said the constitution is only adequate for "a moral and religious people", the only way to nourish it is to ensure that the people themselves are indeed moral and religious, from the bottom up. Symbolic statements strike me as, well, just slapping a sticker with 'moral and religious' written on it on top of something that isn't.
OliveTapenade
2mo ago
Well, Heidi Przybyla's definition was absurd on the face of it. She was the one who defined Christian nationalism as based in the common belief that rights come from God rather than the state, but that belief is more-or-less universal within historical Christianity, and to the extent that Christians doubt it today, they do so in ignorance of their own tradition. It is also, incidentally, a view that would be easily affirmed by a majority of religious Jews and Muslims - it is not even a Christian distinctive, much less a Christian nationalist distinctive!
Aniol's argument does not particularly touch on me - it reads more to me like he has an axe to grind around the baptism of children, which is certainly his right, but it has nothing much to do with Christian nationalism. It is, perhaps, an easy rhetorical line to try to dis-associate Christian nationalism from Baptists, but I don't particularly care about Baptist insecurities. He is wrong on the issue of infant baptism; nothing proceeds from that for me. So I find most of his essay irrelevant. But let's pass over Aniol, and focus on his summary of Doug Wilson's argument...
Well, Wilson wants some kind of public or legal acknowledgement of the truth of Christianity, via established churches. This seems odd to me as a definition of Christian nationalism. Aniol quotes him mentioning “a network of nations bound together by a formal, public, civic acknowledgment of the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and the fundamental truth of the Apostles’ Creed”, and... well, that's kind of it. I think the question I have here is whether this already exists. Does the United Kingdom for a starting point qualify as having made such a formal, civic acknowledgement? It has an established church, that church's ceremonies and rites are part of state affairs, and the sovereign was crowned in an explicitly Christian ceremony in which he vowed to defend and maintain the church. And then for a network of churches - well, the Porvoo Communion exists, and Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland all have established churches as well. If Wilson defines Christian nationalism in those terms, it would seem that Christian nationalism already exists and has done so uncontroversially for a long time.
Yet if I look at the arguments of self-identified Christian nationalists, particularly Americans like Stephen Wolfe, I don't think I see them saying that they want the US to be more like the UK or Denmark. As such, I take 'Christian nationalism' in practice to mean something more than that minimal definition.
At any rate, I asked you the question first. You said that you're getting more sympathetic to 'Christian nationalism'. What do you mean by that? Are you getting more sympathetic to the view that rights come from God? (In which case I would happily agree that rights do come from God, but would dispute that this has anything whatsoever to do with 'Christian nationalism'.) Are you getting more sympathetic to the idea that it would be good for there to be an established church? (That also doesn't seem to be the same thing as 'Christian nationalism', but nevermind.) What is it that you find compelling?
OliveTapenade
2mo ago
How are you defining 'Christian nationalism'? There are many ways in which a Christian could or indeed should assert that Christianity should be part of public life, or should inform the principles on which a nation is built, not all of which are typically categorised as 'Christian nationalism'. When you say that you're getting more sympathetic to Christian nationalism, what practical policies or reforms do you have in mind?
OliveTapenade
2mo ago
I'm not sure how compelling "game writing is bad if you remove it from the context of the game" is meant to be?
Yes, just reading a text dump of the game isn't very entertaining. But games are games, and the writing in it serves the purposes of the game as an integrated whole. It's like pointing out that just reading a film script is usually worse than reading an equivalent novel. Of course it is! It would be bizarre for it not to be!
Ironically I actually disliked Disco Elysium - I found it clunky and unappealing as a game, and I found its writing a bit too precious; notably I actively disliked the gimmick where your skills talk to you, as if you're a schizophrenic. But I think the point holds. Game writing ought to be evaluated in the context of an entire game, and it is no sign of bad writing that it doesn't stand up if removed from that context.
Let me take a specific example. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is often considered one of the best video games ever made, and I'd argue it has great writing. If you just read its script you might find that surprising, but I think its script contextualises its gameplay really well, and successfully contributes to the overall success of the game. Some of the game's most effective moments work because of the writing - stepping out on to Hyrule Field for the first time is a very memorable moment, and that's achieved due to the graphics, music, etc., but also because the story has contextualised what that means by making you spend the first hour or two of the game in this restricted, dense forest environment while reminding you that Link has never left this area, that nobody ever leaves the forest because they fear they'll die, and that Link is nonetheless adventurous at heart. The huge field rising before you, the horizon, the iconic swell of music is all powerful, and the writing contributes to it. Even if no one element by itself is that amazing.
To me, that's what good game writing looks like.
OliveTapenade
2mo ago
Does anyone actually get any pleasure out of this? Does anyone think it's doing any good? Can anyone point to an example of it doing any good in the past? Has culture war discussion on the motte ever actually led to anyone solving culture war problems?
It's always been explicitly part of the Motte's mission, as I understand it, to not do this.
If you want to solve problems, do not come to the Motte. It's right there in the top-level introduction: do not use the thread to wage the culture, and argue to understand, not to win.
"Doing good" is an activist concern. If you want to be an activist, go somewhere else. There are plenty of web forums and communities out there with the goal of mobilising activity and changing the world. The Motte, as I understand it, is not among them.
I don't see where I've ever repeated anything about the legacy of slavery here, nor denied genetic variation, including in the case of genes linked to intelligence. What specifically do you feel I need to comment on?
EDIT: Reading the study, I find it interesting enough, though I have questions about confounders and scope. Still, more data is better, so thanks for the link.
OliveTapenade
2mo ago
One of the problems is that terms like this often succumb to a kind of definition creep. Any postulated definition for 'HBD' shifts as the term is used.
'HBD' stands for 'human biodiversity'. The minimalist definition of it is something like what you said - being aware that there is genetic differentiation among modern human populations. That minimal definition is obvious, uncontroversial among all but the most radical blank-slatists, and also useless for most practical purposes. More importantly, it's not the way the term is used in practice. The category 'people who agree that there is genetic differentiation between human populations' is so vast and expansive as to massively outrun the term itself. When people talk about "being aware of HBD" or the like, they appear to mean something beyond just the motte of the term.
I would take a middling definition of HBD to be something more like, "1) there is genetic differentiation among modern human populations, 2) that differentiation more-or-less, if imperfectly, maps on to popular understandings of race, and 3) this has consequences for public policy". It seems to me that anyone who denies any of those three points is not really an HBDer beyond the most minimal sense of the term. There's room for debate about exactly what the differentiation is, how significant it is, what sorts of policy conclusions should follow, and so on, but the basic point is that race, in a genetic sense, both exists and is important.
And then past there I think there's a maximalist definition that accepts everything in the middling definition, but runs with specific implications for policy - this is the sort that just openly says that black people are genetically less capable and there's a dysgenic issue and so on.
The problem is that anyone criticising HBD (or more pertinently, HBDers-as-a-community) has a very strong incentive to portray the whole group as following the maximalist definition, and anyone defending HBD/HBDers-as-a-community has a strong incentive to portray HBD as only the minimalist definition. Probably most people who identify as HBDers are somewhere in the middle. Minimalists are unlikely to use the term even if they agree with the minimalist definition, because using it lumps them in with the others (including the maximalists, who most minimalists surely recoil from), and then of course even true maximalists have an incentive to water their views down and present themselves as moderates.
Anyway, realistically I just don't think it's a useful term. 'HBD' is too broad to be useful. I think it would be more practical if maximalists and the top end of moderates just ditched the euphemism and called themselves racialists or something - that's a more accurate label for what they are. Maybe they could use 'race realists'? That's a term that's gone around the block a bit. But as it is I feel like 'HBD' is a silly euphemism that people use mostly in order to avoid saying the word 'race'. Even though that is clearly what it's about.
OliveTapenade
2mo ago
I'm probably going to be corrected by some theology major (I don't care) but let me give my best explanation of Calvinism:
Then... what was the point of the pretend summary?
OliveTapenade
2mo ago
I'd largely agree with this when it comes to identification and advice, actually?
The claim that different selected groups of humans have some genetic variation between them seems obviously true but also not particularly interesting. Yes, there's some minor genetic variation across the human race as a whole. So what?
The interesting and controversial part is the answer to the "so what?", and the problem I have with so-called 'HBD' is that their answer to that question, as far as I can tell, firstly massively outstrips the evidence they refer to, and secondly frequently appears to be both malicious in its intent and destructive in its policy goals.
Are there people who identify with HBD who aren't malicious or destructive? Sure. No group is homogenous. But it seems to me that enough of them are, that the general direction of the vague group of people that we refer to here as 'the HBD movement', is such that for as much as the motte is apparently true, the bailey is such that we should definitely avoid it.
Nara Burns makes a fair point about individuals below. I'm not going after Charles Murray or anything. But when he says that he has "never personally encountered" a person who advocates HBD with racist goals, I'm just confused, because, well, I've read the Motte.
OliveTapenade
3mo ago
If we're going to have this whole discussion about regulation, it is perhaps worth noting that for many, this would have been understood to be a contradiction or at least a betrayal - the affair at best is an undermining or a betrayal of the marriage, or at worst, is a sign that he isn't validly married at all.
(Traditionally, valid marriage requires intent - to marry someone, both you and they must agree to marry each other, freely, with full knowledge of what marriage is. Given that Scott and presumably his partner did not intend sexual fidelity to one another when they said their vows, their vows are deficient - they were not made with correct understanding of what marriage is, nor with the intent to constitute a marriage properly understood. Ergo he is not married as such. This is still the formal position of e.g. the Catholic Church.)
At any rate, yes, I think it is probably true to say that Scott's situation is highly atypical, and not a good one to generalise from. Does he feel subjectively happy? No idea. But the rules that govern his relationships are weird, and would not work for all or most.
I feel like this whole Bay Area rationalist scene is a group that - and I don't mean this pejoratively, though I realise it may sound like this - would benefit from acknowledging their own freakiness. They are a small, highly-selected group of weirdos. They are bizarre. They should not generalise from themselves to humanity. This is the case for most small highly-selected groups, and it is always worth remembering. Most people are not like you.
OliveTapenade
3mo ago
For the curious, there was a mild parliamentary crisis about that a few years back - hilariously, it turned out that a significant number of sitting MPs were dual citizens and had just forgotten about it, because no one remembers or checks that.
That said, I feel that it's worth clarifying that the Australian provision here is only for MPs and the radical isolationism that KMC seems to recommend is a fair distance away from that. If nothing else, not caring about anything outside of America's borders seems like a recipe for disaster for America itself.
What explosion would this be?
Googling around, combining this piece and this piece, I get about about 8.1% of public school students were ELLs in 2000, 9.2% in 2010, 9.5% in 2015, and 10.3% in 2020. That seems like a quite slow and gradual increase over the last twenty years - hardly worth being called an 'explosion'.
There's more data here - the vast majority, over 75%, of ELLs are native speakers of Spanish, which suggests to me that we're mostly talking about migrants from South and Central America. I'd guess that the slow increase in English language education is probably just a result of the rate of immigration from Latin America increasing.
I see no evidence that the very modest increase is driven by second-generation immigrants living in ethnic enclaves and refusing to learn English. It seems entirely understandable if it's all first-generation.
EDIT: Wait, let me get this straight.
First person makes a huge and unsupported claim in one sentence.
Second person questions that claim, providing hard data that seems to contradict it.
The result is that the first person is upvoted, and the second person downvoted? What? What happened to rationalism? I don't think I was rude in any way - I was asking for evidence for a claim.
OliveTapenade
3mo ago
Which is an interesting way to frame it, actually, considering that Somalia is not an ethnostate. Only around 85% of Somalians are ethnic Somalis, and there are large populations of Somalis in neighbouring Ethiopia and Kenya; and, of course, Somaliland has been a persistent issue however much Somalia would like it not to be. The current constitution of Somalia (it is admittedly provisional; it's not the most stable part of the world) defines the country in terms of 'inclusive representation of the people' (Article 1), in Article 8 asserts that people of Somalia 'are one, indivisible, and comprise all the citizens', and in Article 11 outlaws discrimination on the basis of race, clan, tribe, ethnicity, and birth.
This may not be followed much in practice, but certainly de jure Somalia is not an ethnostate. It does not appear to present itself as the country of the Somalis, not does it seem to aspire to be that, at least officially.
It's possible that Omar is just choosing inapposite words, or appealing to national rather than ethnic identity in an awkward way. It is, at least, clear that Omar feels an identification with Somalia, and her statement that "Somalia belngs to all Somalis" suggests that she would like it to be an ethnostate, even if it currently isn't. Or maybe she's just equivocating between 'Somali' and 'Somalian' - imprecise language being the eternal curse of politics.
Really, I think we could all do with a bit more discussion of what she's specifically angry about - this seems like a reasonable intro. The short version today is that (formerly British) Somaliland is a large chunk of (former Italian Somaliland) Somalia, and it thinks it's independent and operates semi-autonomously. Somaliland recently made a deal to give Ethiopia a strip of land in exchange for progress in recognising its aspirations of independence; the Somalian position, naturally, is that this is illegal and Ethiopia trying to illegally acquire sovereign Somalian territory. Many Somalians outside of Somalia agree with the Somalian position here, and Omar is talking to them.
It's hard to think of a good analogous group in the US - the Somalian situation here is pretty unusual.
Remember Mike Pence's catch-phrase?
"I'm a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican - in that order."
That sounded to me like a statement that his solidarity with Christians overrides his solidarity with conservatives, and that this overrides his solidarity with his party.
Or do 'Christians' not count as an ethnicity in this context?
But if you want national or ethnic identity specifically, as far as I can tell foreign-born congressmen do often play that card? For instance, Ted Lieu was born in Taiwan, and he advocates on Taiwan's behalf. Young Kim was born in Korea and she describes herself as a "bridge builder between our two countries", and appears to advocate for greater US-Korean cooperation, apparently "lobbying the Biden administration to ensure countries that have free-trade pacts with the U.S., such as South Korea, receive better treatment under laws that award special benefits to domestic companies". That sounds like some kind of solidarity with the nation of her birth? Raja Krishnamoorthi seems to recommend strengthening the US-India relationship, including bringing India into NATO PLUS.
It doesn't seem that rare for US politicians born in other countries to retain a level of interest in their home country, and to advocate for that country's interests in partnership with the United States.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
Well, I suppose I see a tree something like this?
Are moral statements statements about facts? If no, you're a non-cognitivist, stop here. If yes, proceed:
Are any moral statements true? If no, you're an error theorist, stop here. If yes, proceed:
Are moral statements true absolutely, or only relative to a particular framework? If absolute, you're an absolutist or objectivist. If relative to a framework, you're a relativist.
I suppose you could frame the second one as "are any moral statements true or false?", and put error theory in terms of null rather than in terms of falsehood. To be clear, the position I'm taking is that an error theorist thinks that the statement "Murder is wrong" and the statement "Murder is right" both fail to refer to anything. Neither of them is true, because right/wrong statements cannot be true, because right and wrong are not defensible concepts.
It sounds to me like you're an error theorist who nonetheless takes a relativist approach to daily life?
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
I think the truth value of moral propositions, at least independent of an observer, is null, or as incoherent a question as wanting to know the objective best color.
That sounds more like non-cognitivism?
A moral nihilist or error theorist believes that all moral statements have a truth-value, and that truth-value is false. The nihilist position is that moral statements are attempting to say someting factual, but they all fail to do so, because there are no moral facts.
A non-cognitivist believes that moral statements are not trying to be statements about truth at all; facts don't come into it. A moral statement is simply a statement of approval or disapproval.
That's how I tend to feel whenever people make a political argument from... well, biorealism, race realism, HBD, whatever you want to call it. Even if we grant that Group X are on average 10% or 20% dumber than Group Y, it does not follow that Group X will be better off being governed by Group Y. If nothing else, Group Xers probably care about Group X's welfare, whereas Group Yers do not necessarily.
It's an argument I've had before with people from all sides of politics. Communists, woke progressives, postliberals and integralists, cultural conservatives, alt-righters, HBDers, you name it. There comes a moment where it always seems to come down to, "We just need to get a sufficiently enlightened elite to govern the whole, for their own good."
I think of C. S. Lewis' argument for democracy:
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