OliveTapenade
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User ID: 1729
OliveTapenade
19hr ago
I agree with the sentiment, but for what it's worth, most modern books don't have this kind of longevity. If you go to a bookstore today, everything you see inside is going to be printed on cheap paper that will decay and become unreadable after a couple of hundred years. Mostly we don't care about this because we have no aspirations of these books lasting that long.
If you go to a museum or academic library and ask the curators about some of their really old books, the ones that have survived are on more resilient media. The Book of Kells is still readable today, in part because vellum is significantly more durable than paper. But this is true of paper as well. If you find, say, a Geneva Bible from the 16th century, those were printed on thicker paper than most mass market books today, and thus have survived in a readable state even with heavy use.
OliveTapenade
20hr ago
This an interesting example, really.
If you buy or otherwise legally obtain a book, you have the right to destroy it. That seems uncontroversial. If you destroy it for a good purpose, that's obviously fine - this principle only seems to run into limits when it comes to extremely rare or valuable books, and it doesn't sound like any of those were involved here. To the extent that there's an ethical issue here, it's copyright. Do Anthropic have the right to use these texts in a way that they were presumably never intended for? Our principles around buying, copying, and destroying physical books seem like they assume that the book is singular. Buying a book, copying it, and then selling copies at scale is generally considered against copyright, and this seems closer to that.
Even so, the problem there is just AI companies illegally harvesting data, and we know they've been doing that for years. That's bad, but this is just the companies continuing to be bad in the way that we already knew. No additional condemnation seems merited.
On the other hand, this conjures up the image of a soulless AI company grinding up books to feed into the machine. That is a horrifying image. Never mind that books are very cheaply produced and regularly thrown out - they are proverbially valuable. Destroying books is immediately understood as a sign of evil in popular culture. What's more, destroying real cultural artifacts in order to dump them into a machine brings to mind the Apple 'Crush' ad. Even if not entirely rational, the image brings to mind every bit of fear and loathing and contempt that people have towards these technologies.
I admit that I feel that response. I hear this story about destroying the books to digitise them and in my gut, I feel outrage. It seems like a perfect symbol of how, not to mince words, evil this technology is, and what these corporations are doing. It is the kind of thing that you would expect to see a supervillain doing in a film or comic, so viscerally horrifying an image it is.
If I set that aside, I do stand by the first half of this post. Books are cheap, books are thrown out all the time, there's nothing wrong in buying a book and then using it for some constructive purpose that involves physically destroying it. The only problem here is the one that we've known about for ages. This should not change your opinion of Anthropic or of its bots either way.
But... man, as an image, it is practically designed to make the company look loathsome.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
Likewise with Jay Clayton in the clip above. From watching the clip, I imagine many progressives (and perhaps also many conservatives) will conclude that Clayton thinks Trump won in 2020, but refuses to say so outright, knowing that it's an opinion most people rightfully consider absurd.
Would they?
I thought the obviously correct interpretation of that clip is that Clayton knows that Biden won in 2020, but also knows that Trump thinks that he won and will not tolerate anybody telling him the truth. Saying that Trump won in 2020 is the calling-a-deer-a-horse loyalty test of Trumpism.
Clayton can't answer the question because if he says "Biden", Trump turns on him and he needs Trump's support, and if he says "Trump", he is firstly saying something on the record that is verifiably false, and secondly alienating everyone who isn't MAGA.
Surely it's a well-remarked-upon fact, at this point, that an awful lot of Republicans quietly, behind-the-scenes, think that Trump is crazy, but are willing to insincerely mouth agreement in order to keep their jobs, in the hope that by 2028 he'll go away and they can go back to normal? Maybe they're wrong - certainly the ongoing transformation of the Republican party will have effects, and it won't just reset back to where it was in 2012 - but I'm pretty confident that's what a great many of them are thinking.
OliveTapenade
3d ago
Well, looking at Reddit, I noticed threads like this. That's from June 15, about a week into CHAZ's existence, but prior to the murders that I think turned most people against it. There's also this one from the 18th, again early on but prior to the shootings. Also consider this from the 11th, which is mostly communists pointing and laughing at the anarchists.
I think the responses can roughly be split into three camps: 1) CHAZ is great, I'm thrilled, 2) interesting idea, wait and see, 3) pointless, it'll do nothing. (There are also, as far as I can tell, a few non-communists who jump on to criticise, but I'm not counting them here.)
OliveTapenade
3d ago
Yes, it's of course trivially easy to find left-wingers in general criticising it at the time. Plenty of outright communists, even, criticised it as bad praxis. So in the broadest sense, the statement that I made is correct.
You've now narrowed the claim. I don't think that's bad faith, since setting goalposts is necessary, but you did just narrow it to federal elected official, which is a significantly narrower category than 'Democrat'. I do not have an example of a federal elected Democrat who took a strong stance opposing it. My read is that this was mostly polarisation - Republicans were strongly condemning it, and Democrats generally don't want to say the same things as Republicans. Since in this case they had the option of dodging the question by saying it's a local matter, they took it.
For local Democrats, well, they eventually sent in the police and shut it down, but I'm guessing you wouldn't count anything from Jenny Durkan or any of the police?
OliveTapenade
3d ago
I think that would only be possible with a pretty idiosyncratic definition of left and right-wing.
OliveTapenade
3d ago
Can you find me a SINGLE prominent lefty who denounced the general celebratory reactions to Charlie Kirk's murder? Just one!
Most prominent Democrats condemned the murder. It is tricky to find specific cases of one condemning people who celebrated the murder, but that's particularly because there are so few prominent people who celebrated it. I notice college Democrats and Republicans collaborating, and their statements seem to imply, to me, that celebrating political violence is bad. Sometimes Democrats have opposed attempts to crack down on and punish people who celebrated his death, but that's a free speech issue, much the same way that defending the vulgar woman in the top-level comment does not mean you support swearing at black people.
However, in that interview, Chris Murphy said this: "First, it is important for us to recognize and say that political violence is unacceptable. We don't yet know the full motives of this shooter, but there have been political assassinations and political assassination attempts that are due to right-wing radicalism and left-wing radicalism, and there should be no one in this country and no one on the left that is celebrating what happened here."
I take that as a clear denunciation of people who celebrate Charlie Kirk's murder.
Meanwhile, the right is vociferous and active about expelling those who might be too Nazi-esque.
How do you define 'Nazi-esque'? Does, say, Tucker Carlson interviewing Darryl Cooper, and remaining an influential figure on the right, count? Cooper certainly seems Nazi-esque.
(I should say that I don't think that's an issue unique to the right, and it seems to me to be isomorphic to tankies on the left. Darryl Cooper defends the Nazis, Hasan Piker defends Mao, you can see the same pattern working out regardless of side.)
OliveTapenade
3d ago
When are you talking about? 2020 or thereabouts? That was when the Motte was still on Reddit, right? How many left-wingers did the Motte even have then?
OliveTapenade
3d ago
I seem to recall left-wingers and Democrats criticising CHAZ, for instance, while it existed. There were people who praised it, and plenty more who were willing to tolerate it, and I think that is worthy of condemnation, but you set the bar at literally zero, and there were more than literally zero who criticised it.
Were there not enough? Certainly. Did the incident show the weakness and timidity of the party? Absolutely. But - more than zero.
OliveTapenade
4d ago
Sorry, how does any of that even apply to what I said?
The United States is not an ethno-state today. There is no route to it becoming one, and the reason is because there is no way that the American people would ever support it becoming one. That is not a universalist claim, but a specific, local one. The people of the nation you are talking about would not support that policy.
I don't think I gave you a definition, but no, the United States was not a white ethno-state in the 1960s. I commented on the US just before - the US has frequently had an implicit ethno-religious foundation, but it has not had such formally. The Hart-Celler Act, incidentally, passed with massive democratic majorities (318-95 in the house, 76-18 in the senate), and therefore I'd suggest that the Hart-Celler Act does represent what the American people of the 1960s wanted. Opinion polls at the time showed the majority of Americans in favour - wiki claims 51%, though I can't read this page specifically. Therefore I think what I said was correct. Even if you think that Act was the end of America as an ethno-state, it was that because that was what the American people wanted.
As I've said, I think different nations have the right to constitute themselves as they wish, and to set their own terms for entry. The United States has chosen to be open to migrants. Just as Japan is allowed to have very little immigration, the United States is allowed to have a lot of it. This is permitted! And to that end, firstly, Jews did not singlehandedly foist this on a population that didn't want it, and secondly, if you don't like it, you are free to advocate for reversing it and trying to transition the US into being an ethno-state. You'll fail, because Americans genuinely don't want that, but you are free to try.
But that's exactly the thing, that framework is universalist and totalitarian. It applies to all. So when a person like you or Adam try to carve out an exception that contradicts that entire framework on the basis that the survival of a specific ethnic group is actually super important, and they can't coexist with any other ethnic groups because those ethnic groups are unchanging in their hatred of them, then yes, I do wonder if this is not just the Dual Morality that's alleged to afflict many diaspora jews rearing its head yet again.
Firstly, I'm not Jewish. Secondly, I'm not carving out any exceptions. I'm saying that every country and every people has the right to a kind of self-determination that includes setting its own boundaries and defining its own policies on citizenship and migration. That includes both the right to be an ethno-state and the right not to be an ethno-state.
The same standard applies everywhere. I don't know why you think I'm treating Israel as exceptional when in this conversation I have noted other ethno-states, and other countries with restrictive migration policies. I have no special interest in Israel because I think that Israel is basically a normal Middle Eastern country.
The case for open societies was never made on a case by case basis. It's an absolute and complete moralizing ideology. Saying that you believe in it for one case and not another doesn't work.
Please don't try to debate an imaginary person or ideology that you see behind me. I am not saying that there is a single correct way for a nation to be. I am saying that different nations constitute themselves in different ways, and that I think this is acceptable. I do not accept responsibility for positions that I do not hold and have not argued for.
OliveTapenade
4d ago
I mean, they are okay. It's just demonstrably true that there are a huge number of them in the world and even liberal Westerners treat most of them as legitimate.
I take the subtext of your complaint to be that you think the United States should be an ethno-state, and specifically a white ethno-state. It's true that most Americans don't want that. It's true that liberals generally consider the idea of turning the USA into an ethno-state to be grossly immoral. If you ask me specifically, I think the idea of making the USA an ethno-state is ridiculous - it requires going against the last few centuries of American tradition and it's extraordinarily impracticable.
Perhaps less centrally, maybe it's also that you think European countries should be ethno-states, and my view there is that some are, many are not, and I agree that institutions like the EU think that ethno-states are bad and that EU countries should not be that way. I also think there's a significant groundswell against that point of view, and over the next few decades I expect that groundswell to get stronger.
To get even more provocative, I think that probably you are a neo-Nazi, or at least neo-Nazi adjacent, hence your bizarre attempt to drag neo-Nazism into this discussion. The impression I get is that your worldview is that countries, especially white countries, ought to be ethno-states, that an international progressive liberal consensus forbids this, is gradually destroying the identity and heritage of white countries, and that this consensus treats Israel as an exception to the rule, because this consensus is heavily Jewish and Jews are hypocrites who promote their own racial welfare while undermining that of whites. I trust you don't need me to explain why I think that's wrong.
But ultimately going back to the top-level comment, my feeling is - you, me, and Adam Smith all agree that ethno-states are okay. It's rather bizarre of you to be angry that Adam Smith holds a perspective that you and I both share. I think your real complaint is this:
To all the Adam Smiths of the world. Why is having an ethnostate good for the jews but not anyone else? Why don't jews benefit from diversity in their western style open democratic society like everyone else?
In other words, this is just garden variety anti-semitic rambling about the supposed Jewish conspiracy.
The United States is not an ethno-state, and there is no plausible pathway to making it an ethno-state. This is not because of the Jews. They did not do this to you. America is not an ethno-state because Americans don't want it to be. It's not some sort of Jew-influenced false consciousness, and if you remove the Jewish influence the people will rise up, like what Marxists think will happen if you remove the capitalist class. No, it's genuinely that most of your countrymen disagree with you. Deal with it.
OliveTapenade
4d ago
The case you are making for Israel is the case every neo-nazi has made for their own country.
I don't think that's the case. Neo-Nazism is a much more specific, narrow family of ideologies than that. The analogy to neo-Nazism is not helpful or relevant here because neo-Nazism is obviously not the same thing as ethno-nationalism simpliciter.
You're not engaging with the contention. We can agree between the two of us to any illiberal view on the world for the preservation of our peoples and whatever else, but what's the relevance of that to the discourse relating to the reigning powers that be who are liberal and don't agree with us at all?
You're talking with me, though. I don't have an army of ghosts behind my shoulder, and I'm not going to take the heat for this imaginary audience you appear to be bothered by. It's not an argument against me if some other group of people somewhere else think ethno-nationalism is always wrong. I don't think ethno-nationalism is always wrong, clearly the Israelis don't think ethno-nationalism is always wrong, Americans who support Israel don't seem to think that ethno-nationalism is always wrong, and as far as I can tell a great many people all around the world don't think that ethno-nationalism is always wrong.
I already explained why this line of thinking is invalid. Ethnostates can only be alleged to be common as a result of history and circumstance. But nigh every first world nation, including Japan, is transforming away from that. That is the direction of modern liberalism. Israel is unique in that it's demanding a different direction for itself for profoundly illiberal neo-nazi reasons.
Well, I don't accept that Israel is unique in that regard - there are plenty of other nations that are ethno-nationalist, some in a quite assertive way. You just don't seem to think they count. At any rate, I think that nations may constitute themselves in an ethno-nationalist way if they want. That's true for Israel, Azerbaijan, or indeed Japan. Who cares about 'the direction of modern liberalism'? Okay, it's true, there are people and organisations in the world who think that ethno-nationalism is always wrong. But those people are not everyone or everywhere, they're not me, and they don't appear to be controlling the situation in the Middle East.
What more do you want me to say? If 'modern liberalism' forbids ethno-states, then modern liberalism is wrong. That was easy.
To highlight this further with your example of Azerbaijan, if Azerbaijan was becoming an economic powerhouse, with opportunity that would make the life of foreign immigrants better, would they or would they not be obligated to open their borders to immigration under liberal priors?
What difference does it make whether they're rich or not? That's not germane to the point under discussion.
Which one of these do you disagree with? What do liberals call people who disagree with their core values? Who do you think you are to them?
I'm sorry, is this meant to be a gotcha? I have said already that I think ethno-nationalism can be acceptable and that ethnic or national groups can set the terms of entry. That implies, for instance, that I think the statement "immigration is a universal good" is false. Certainly it means that I disagree with the statement "immigration should always be permitted". I think it is acceptable to have a preservative conception of an ancestral ethnic identity - come on, I just said that I think you can't blame Jews for wanting to maintain 'Jews' as a distinct ethnic, cultural, and religious group, and what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Should I keep going through it? I think you've come up with this aggressive maximalist, even strawman, conception of liberalism, and you're... uh... who are you disagreeing with again? You don't appear to be disagreeing with me.
You're clearly angry at someone, but that someone is not me and does not appear to be in this conversation.
OliveTapenade
4d ago
The Palestinians' current hatred for the Jews is a product of Israel's actions for the past 80 years.
That's true, at least to within a certain approximation, but irrelevant. Today a one-state solution is impossible because the Palestinians and Israelis hate each other.
It's doable with an international peacekeeping force to keep things in control until they stop hating each other.
Whether that's true or not, it's also irrelevant because there is no such peacekeeping force, nobody appears to be willing to provide one, and even if they were, such a massive garrison force would destabilise the region (even more so than it already is) and be hated by all of Israel/Palestine's neighbours.
I just don't think there's any point either arguing would'ves and could'ves, or arguing for ideal solutions that have zero chance of actually happening. It isn't 1948, and there is no giant neutral army prepared to come in and enforce a solution. Can we please be serious?
OliveTapenade
5d ago
Where are you getting neo-Nazis? Do you think that any group that wants to remain ethnically/culturally/religiously distinctive, in any way, is neo-Nazi?
I think a one-state solution in Israel is impossible for pragmatic, historically contingent reasons. This group of people and that group of people are unwilling to co-exist in the one state. You can judge one group or the other or both immoral, but I'm not making a moral judgement. I'm saying that, like it or not, you cannot jam Israelis and Palestinians together into the one state. Neither group will accept that.
I do not blame Jews (or members of any group) for not wanting to go extinct. No group has an obligation to embrace its own obliteration.
You then bring up 'democracy' for some reason even though I didn't touch on that in the slightest. I think that ethno-states are common, and I did not say that ethno-states are morally impermissible. I think that national communities have a right to self-determine and that includes the right to be an ethno-state. The Japanese people are morally permitted to constitute themselves as an ethno-state, for instance. This is a different and unrelated question to that of democracy. You can have a democratic ethno-state, a non-democratic ethno-state, a democratic non-ethno-state, and a non-democratic non-ethno-state. They are unrelated axes.
I don't think Israel is unique in being or wanting to be an ethno-state, and there are plenty of comparable nations. I just mentioned Azerbaijan, for instance. You can say that ethno-states shouldn't exist if you like - that's your own judgement. But I'm not forbidding that. Some countries are ethno-states and some countries are not ethno-states and I'm fine with this.
OliveTapenade
5d ago
I think that would be reasonable, though at some point we're just arguing about labels. I don't think we have a meaningful disagreement about what Israel is. Israel is and understands itself to be, collectively, the state of the Jewish people. This does not rule out the existence of some non-Jewish Israelis, but it is obviously essential to Israel's existence that it is majority-Jewish and it is run with specifically Jewish interests in mind. In a sense the state of Israel is meant to be a kind of servant of the nation of Israel, that is, the Jewish people as a whole. 'Jewish' is a category is a bit of an odd category that cuts across simple concepts of race or religion, but I think we have a rough idea of what it means for Israel to be a Jewish state.
The United States is not that kind of state. The United States is formally committed to both racial/ethnic and religious neutrality in a way that Israel is not.
I think there is a plausible argument to be made that the United States has implicitly been founded on certain ethnic, cultural, and religious assumptions. The US is the child of a kind of Anglo Protestant establishment. That may not have been written into law, and definitely the US has included other faith communities from day one, but the unspoken assumption has been that the mainstream would remain the mainstream. The US has been able to assimilate minorities that are compatible with those assumptions to an extent, but it has often been a rocky road - Catholicism is accepted in the US now, but it was a difficult process and Catholics themselves changed as well, to accommodate themselves to the country. I take some of the current distress to be about the sense that the implicit Anglo Protestant foundation of the US is falling away.
In that light whenever this argument happens, I think there's a visible envy of Israel. It's a pretty common observation that the most vicious anti-semites often seem to have an envy of Jews, or quietly feel themselves inferior. Sometimes I see something similar in the political realm. Israel explicitly names its religious and ethnic foundations. The United States does not, even though you can argue that the United States has religious and ethnic foundations no less than Israel. I can understand wishing that the United States would say something similar.
In practice I think it would be harder for the US, particularly because British-descended people and Protestants are both minorities at the moment. Maybe individual American states could attempt something like it. But I can understand the yearning.
OliveTapenade
5d ago
My read on Russia is that it's a bit like China in that it is officially multi-national, but there is very obviously a single dominant ethnicity. If the Russian ethnos ever looked likely to cease to be the one in charge of Russia, much like if the Han looked like they might cease to be in charge of China, we would see that definition start to fade very rapidly.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
I think most people would say that Middle Easterners are closer to Europeans than South or East Asians, Africans, and so on, yes. Arabs are not white, but Arabs are closer to white than Indians or Chinese people.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
The US census considers MENA people white, but I think that if you asked the average competent user of English, "Are Arabs white?", "Are Turks white?", or "Are Iranians white?", they would answer "no", and if so, then I think Mizrahim cannot count as white either.
In general I think the central example of 'white people' is northern and western Europeans. Nowadays I think most people consider Slavs white and consider Italians white, but it starts to get a bit hazy when you ask if, say, Greeks are white. And then Turks or Arabs are definitely not white.
You're free to say that you count them all as white, but I would argue that is a non-standard usage. Mizrahim are, I would say, definitely in the same category as Arabs, Iranians, Turks, and so on, and most people do not consider them white. At the very least, they are not in the same category as northwestern Europeans.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
The idea that the United States is not and should not be an ethno-state predates 1977.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre is in no sense responsible for American civic nationalism. What on Earth are you talking about?
Well, I think the Israeli case is somewhat complicated, because Israel understands itself as the state of 'the Jewish people', and that category is somewhat woolly. 'Jews' as a category includes lots of people who are usually considered white, and also lots of people who are clearly not white. In a sense Israel isn't an ethno-state at all, but a religious state; but of course, Jewishness is both a people and a religion. The racist right generally wants to reduce peoplehood to genetics or descent, and that doesn't really work in the case of Jews. Jews are clearly in some sense a people or an ethnos, but defining them genetically or in terms of traditional racial categories is difficult. Aliyah includes everyone from Sephardic Jews in Spain to Bnei Menashe in India, from the obviously white Ashkenazim to the obviously black Beta Israel.
I find it helpful to compare Israel to its neighbours. Is, say, Saudi Arabia an ethno-state? Not... really? It sort of views itself as a nation for Arab people, but not all Arabs belong there. It imports a large non-Arab underclass while enriching its Arab citizens. It's also a religious state, to a higher and stricter degree than Israel is. Ultimately I'm not sure the word 'ethno-state' actually helps us that much. Compare, say, Azerbaijan regularly getting shirty about Iranian Azeris and saying that all Azeris ought to be part of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan clearly understands itself to be the national homeland of the Azeris, it encourages Azeris outside the country to identify with it, and it does horrible things to non-Azeris on territory that it thinks rightfully belongs to Azerbaijan. That seems a lot like Israel.
I think that Israel is a state founded upon a particular religion and a particular ethnicity, with the explicit goal of maintaining the supremacy of that one ethnoreligious group in a particular territory. In that light I don't think it's particularly unique; most of its immediate neighbours in the Middle East are similar. The clash with the Palestinians is notable because the Palestinians are no different to Israeli Jews in this respect. The Palestinian cause is that the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean is firstly Arab and secondly Muslim. The Israelis are not unusual for their region, save perhaps in having more money and guns than their rivals.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
Well, at least this time you're admitting openly that you think that Jews are malicious.
It seems to me that you're taking a large and common sensibility that is shared across most ethnic groups in the US - that the US is not and should not be an ethno-state - and then implausibly blaming that entirely on Jews/Zionists. The causality here is not at all clear. It's true that Jews generally support Israel, and Israel is an ethno-state, but they are far from unique in that light (that is, people in the US being positively-disposed to a foreign country that they share heritage with), and it's also unclear that there's any particularly strong correlation between 1) supporting Israel, and 2) wanting the US to not be an ethno-state.
I would point out, for instance, that group in America that hates Israel the most is also the group most opposed to the idea of the US as an ethno-state. Support for third-world immigration is surely highest on the left, especially the radical left, and those are the people who hate Israel most.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
Well, firstly, Israel doesn't qualify, surely? Let's say that Ashkenazim are white, but Ashkenazim are, though dominant, a minority in Israel. The plurality of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi. If you count Israel as a white ethno-state, then I think you have to count pretty much every Middle Eastern country as a white ethno-state.
Secondly... no country considers itself a white ethno-state. Ethno-states tend to define themselves more narrowly than that. Russia is in a sense an ethno-state, but the dominant ethnicity is Russian. When you say 'white ethno-state', presumably you mean 'states that organise themselves around a particular ethnicity that falls within the broad category of 'white'', and some of those do exist? To pick the most infamous one at the moment, surely Hungary qualifies?
OliveTapenade
6d ago
Sorry, I should have specified - recent African migrants to the United States. The European situation is different.
I agree that those migrants are heavily filtered. That's the point. It's like Indian migration to the US. You can selectively take motivated, educated, high-achieving migrants. The same thing with Asian migration, actually.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
I believe that's only true of ADOS, who are functionally a different ethnicity and demographic to modern African migrants. First and second-generation African migrants today are very different and have assimilated more successfully.
I'll be honest - I am repeating what I was told by a library curator years ago. I remember that modern books will decay relatively rapidly, while many older books are more resilient, but I do not remember the scientific explanation.
So thank you for the correction! I appreciate it.
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