OliveTapenade
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User ID: 1729
OliveTapenade
15hr ago
By 'radical' I meant 'in the local minority'.
On the scale of the Motte, you are a minority. On the scale of the whole United States, most Motte consensus views are unpopular minority views. On the scale of the whole world, most American consensus views are unpopular minority views.
In a large essay, I do nitpick things, but in general I think a good essay-writer will try to provide multiple justifications for their important points, so if one or two of those justifications are a bit weaker, I try to be generous. The basic point "trans issues are not a confection of the right" is correct, and the supporting evidence "look at the way that left-wing organisations and actors have tried to push public awareness and discussion of trans issues" is correct, and "organised celebrations like Pride Month are an example of this" is also correct. I do think that FtttG and Wesley Yang overstep themselves a little by citing every claimed day or month, but that's not the kind of overstep that makes me dismiss them entirely. I don't think that's unreasonably gullible or charitable of me?
It's, I suppose, a type of gotcha. I think the gotcha is true, but I also think the claim can easily survive it. FtttG could very easily concede the point that not all those days are meaningfully celebrated without it harming his overall argument.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
I suppose it's easier to identify as an individualist, a heretic, a brave defier of social orthodoxies, etc., than it is to actually tolerate individualism or defiance when they arise. Just as the Motte is radical compared to wider society, you're radical compared to the Motte. You have a minority, unpopular position, sure, but I don't think your arguments for it are noticeably worse or more bad-faith than the modal Motte post on other subjects.
My point isn't "magicalkittycat is great". People can disagree on that, like you, dislike you, whatever. That's up to them. It's that I think you are not below the average level of discourse quality on this website, irrespective of one's position.
For what it's worth, on this particular issue, I think FtttG's Substack post is generally correct in its conclusion, and the comparison between Freddie's take on trans and Freddie's take on DID is damning. There clearly is room for good-faith hesitation, skepticism, or even opposition to various policies that trans advocates have, demonstrably, asked for. That said, I also agree that the Wesley Yang list of calendar days is a weak argument. There are specious days of awareness for pretty much everything, because there are no rules about who can declare them, and no governing authorities recognising them. The only month-long events I'd heard of in November are Movember, NaNoWriMo, and, er, the one about masturbation, but Wikipedia has a huge list of observances, most of which are obviously trivial. Consider the likes of No Music Day, which appears to just be one guy grinding an axe.
The point FtttG is making overall is, I think, correct, in that it's a bit rich to accuse conservatives of politicising the transgender issue or drawing attention to it. "You brought it up!" is the correct response for conservatives to make, perhaps with a side order of, "If it's so trivial and unimportant, why don't you just give in?" But the proliferation of completely vacuous days of remembrance or awareness days that nobody has ever heard of or cares about is indeed a phenomenon. The argument survives that - Pride Month, which is observed and recognised, is sufficient for FtttG's point - but I acknowledge your nitpick is valid.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
Heaven forfend!
Imagine somebody having an extreme viewpoint on the Motte.
Or someone being subtly wrong on the Motte.
Come on, people having extreme views and being wrong on the Motte is something restricted to days that end in Y. Being extreme and wrong describes almost all of the Motte. The Motte might productively be defined as a place where you can be extreme and wrong.
Sunday is the Lord's Day, because it is the day on which Christ returned from the dead. It is therefore the site of the primary Christian liturgical celebration. It seems as though it started to be honoured in this way very quickly - see Acts 20:7, for instance.
Whether that makes it 'the Sabbath' or not is... kind of semantic? I have seen both "Saturday is the Sabbath, but for us the Lord's Day is the day of rest" and "the Sabbath has been moved to Sunday" as positions held in the wild.
If you ask me, my guess is that the earliest Christians likely observed both the Saturday Sabbath and the Lord's Day, and that over time the Saturday observance fell away. I'd like to think that the modern custom of treating both days of the weekend as days of rest is a good way of returning to that tradition of honouring both, and that we can even nuance them a little, with Saturday for rest and silence and Sunday for gathering and celebration.
As I understand it, in Islam Friday is not called 'the Sabbath' or any similar word. Friday is, however, the day chosen for gathering, preaching, and communal prayer. It's the day for jumu'ah, the weekly sermon at 1 PM Friday, which is the closest Islamic equivalent to the Jewish Sabbath service at sundown Saturday, or the Christian mass or worship service on Sunday morning.
That said, it plays a different role in the life of the community. For instance, mass is considered obligatory for Catholics and they must attend every Sunday (barring reasonable exceptions), but the daily prayers of the hours are not. Praying the liturgy of the hours is commended, but not required (unless you are a monk or priest), and therefore how much of it to do, and when, belongs to the conscience and good judgement of the individual believer. In Islam, it's reversed. The regular daily prayers are obligatory, but attending the jumu'ah is optional, though recommended, and up to the conscience and judgement of the individual.
This tracks with what I experience on the ground. Devout Catholics tend to be conscientious about mass-going, and there are people who attend more frequently, all the way up to daily mass-goers, but the daily prayers are not that well-known, and if you do them you are unusually pious. By contrast, conscientious Muslims usually make all the daily prayers, sometimes add dua at unscheduled times, and then if you go to the sermon every Friday, you are definitely committed. If a Muslim has to drop one thing, they will usually drop the Friday gathering, not the daily prayers.
That said, in practice Muslims are just like Catholics in that it is extremely common for people to regularly miss daily prayer/Sunday mass/whatever while still internally thinking of themselves as 'good Muslims' or 'good Catholics' and feeling no guilt.
Sorry to use Catholics as the Christian example - they are just unusually legible and public in their requirements. I understand Orthodox to be similarly strict to Catholics, but I am less familiar with them, and I think they are in general less likely to write down a single list of obligations enforceable on all people. And of course Protestants are much more likely to reserve all of this to conscience, culture, and practice. Historically what devout Protestants have done de facto is treat Sunday worship and a daily prayer (usually in the evening, prior to going to sleep) as obligatory, but Protestantism in general is much more skeptical of the utility of legislating specific obligations. As a Protestant myself I do practice weekly worship and daily prayer, and I think the decline in these practices among Christians has been tragic, but I do share the tradition's skepticism of trying to establish a one-size-fits-all timetable of prayer and worship. That, it seems to me, should be a matter of Christian liberty. That said, Galatians 5:13 - liberty should not be a justification for laxity.
Isn't 'rationalist', in this sense at least, practically defined as 'fan of Yudkowsky and the Sequences'?
Personally I agree that the Sequences are garbage, and that reading them is an immense waste of time, and I have always taken that to immediately rule me out of the rationalist crowd. Rationalist just means "people who buy into Yudkowsky's silliness".
Arguably it's expanded a bit beyond that, and now it also includes "people who are Scott Alexander fans", or perhaps in general, people who like or identify with the extremely weird subculture around people like Yudkowsky or Alexander. But I would still tend to think, just intuitively, that if you don't like the Sequences, you're not a rationalist. Rationalism is a movement with a guru.
(I would actually nuance it a bit more than that - liking Scott Alexander's writing is not enough. If that was how it worked then e.g. Ross Douthat would be a rationalist, and he's pretty clearly not. Treating Scott Alexander like a guru, perhaps?)
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