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Primaprimaprima

US government confirms the existence of aliens in 2026: 100%

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joined 2022 September 05 01:29:15 UTC

"...Perhaps laughter will then have formed an alliance with wisdom; perhaps only 'gay science' will remain."


				
User ID: 342


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
Primaprimaprima


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
US government confirms the existence of aliens in 2026: 100%

				
				
				

				

					5 followers  

					follows 0 users  

					joined 2022 September 05 01:29:15 UTC
				


				
					

					
"...Perhaps laughter will then have formed an alliance with wisdom; perhaps only 'gay science' will remain."



				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I suppose the evidence (e.g. prison sex) indicates that there is a distinction to be made. Although in the majority of contemporary cases, it’s being used as a cope.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m rather confused by this post.


Are you trying to say that there are no “gay men” because “gay” is an “identity” and “identities” are “for women”?


Do you believe that there’s a legitimate distinction to be made between “gay men” and “men who have sex with men”?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Legitimately based.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's been stated before that the amount of evidence you provide should be proportionate to how inflammatory your claim is.


One sentence post that says "I hate feminists" = low effort and inflammatory = not ok.


Thorough, thoughtful post that offers "I hate feminists" as a thesis statement and goes into the history of how you developed this attitude, how you contextualize it in broader culture war discussions, what you think this means for the possibility of future dialogue etc. - maybe ok?


Hate is a part of life, it's a natural emotion, and I would hope that TheMotte's rules recognize the possibility of discussing hate in a constructive and civil manner.  But I don't know if all the mods agree and maybe some of them would just think that the word "hate" was a violation of the rules on tone no matter what.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Samuel was essentially a troll who delighted in the criticism of his arguments by other Jewish intellectuals in the Jewish press, from Dissent to Commentary.




Do you have any further sources on this?  Not doubting you, just curious.


I think his book is great, so if it was written to troll people, that would be unfortunate!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


geography




Sure, the continental US is a valuable piece of land. But as the saying goes, there’s no magic dirt.




demographics




For now. But you have to look at the trend line.




the structure of their economy




Ultimately dependent on and a product of demographics. A high quality population produces high quality conditions, and vice versa.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It means becoming like a Latin American country in terms of racial demographics, standard of living, general texture of the social fabric, etc.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
@2rafa?  Your response?


DOGE sets its sights on Medicare and Medicaid:




Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is quickly expanding its reach through the federal government. It recently accessed systems at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Musk and his team are now looking at key payment and contracting systems for Medicare and Medicaid - that was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. On X, Musk posted, he believes that, quote, "big money fraud is happening."




Mostly just talk and speculation at this point, but there are clear indications that medicare/medicaid have not escaped the notice of the DOGE.


In spite of the perceived celerity with which DOGE is eviscerating government programs, I'm still mostly in the "nothing ever happens" camp.  "Cutting government spending" at this point is akin to rearranging deck chairs on the sinking Titanic that is Western civilization.  The slow Brazilification of America is irreversible either way.  Nonetheless, I am enjoying the apoplectic response that Musk's antics have occasioned.


EDIT: Oh, and social security was named as a potential target alongside medicare/medicaid as well.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You know I was actually typing up a reply that argued against @SecureSignals's thesis, as it runs somewhat contrary to the conception of Judaism that I've traditionally held, but then when I referred back to Maurice Samuel's You Gentiles I found this (pg. 74):




But in the Jew, nation and people and
faculties and culture and God are all one.
We do not say: "I am a Jew," meaning, "I
am a member of this nationality": the feeling
in the Jew, even in the free-thinking Jew like
myself, is that to be one with his people is to
be thereby admitted to the power of enjoying the infinite. I might say, of ourselves:
"We and God grew up together."




which does seem to lend support to his position.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Fair enough.  But that is what I'm here for.  I'm happy that there's at least one community on the internet that encourages long-form writing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Can you name anything (non-fiction) 5,000 words long, written by anyone anywhere, that you do appreciate?  Or is this just a hard limit that no level of quality could surmount?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There is no conceivable award system that WON’T devolve into super upvotes for comments you agree with. This is a human universal. You can tell people to vote on quality and not ideological alignment, but they (typically) won’t. There will always be a bias towards perceiving comments you agree with as being intrinsically higher quality. And that’s fine. Let’s face it instead of hiding from it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Right, there can be limits obviously. If all available options are so morally repugnant to you that you can’t stand any of them, then you can just not support any of them and you’re entitled to make that choice. But you need to accept the consequences of that choice as well, and you should understand that your calls for enlightened centrism will likely fall on deaf ears.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The choice you’ve made, is to cast your lot with the fascists currently ransacking our government. To pretend as though the Trump EO on DEI is in any way a reasonable response to a genuine policy concern, rather than the pure expression of bigotry that it actually is, is inexcusable.




Ironic, given that just a few days ago we had people accusing TracingWoodgrains of being too leftist.


As someone whose positions are also sufficiently idiosyncratic that I don't fit in perfectly with either "side", I'm not unsympathetic to him.  But this is simply the fate of all "centrists" - that's the reality of it.  It would be like someone during WW2 saying "I don't support the British, or the Germans - I'm just neutral!"  He wouldn't be looked upon with kindness in either country.


Ultimately if you want to avoid getting crushed by the tidal forces of politics, you have to decide which issues are most important to you, join the side that is most aligned with you on those key issues, and table your disagreements for a later date.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I also got 5/5 but #1 had me nervous. It was so straightforward that I felt like there had to be some sort of trick I was missing.


In regards to #3, it’s marked as “logical reasoning” but I think it’s more of a “common sense” question. They want you to predict the most likely response that a reasonable person would give to this irl.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
New piece by Judith Butler: Trump is unleashing sadism upon the world. But we cannot get overwhelmed:




It is easy to forget or sideline the executive orders of the previous week: bans on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and discourse as well as “gender ideology” in all federally funded programing, as new obscenities flood the news cycle. Threats of deportation to international students who engage in legitimate protest; expansionist designs on Panama and Greenland and proposals to take over the total and forcible displacement of Palestinians in Gaza from their land are announced in quick succession. [...]






The exhilarations of shameless sadism incite others to celebrate this version of manhood, one that is not only willing to defy the rules and principles that govern democratic life (freedom, equality, justice), but enact these as forms of “liberation” from false ideologies and the constraints of legal obligations. An exhilarated hatred now parades as freedom, while the freedoms for which many of us have struggled for decades are distorted and trammeled as morally repressive “wokeism”.






The sadistic glee at issue here is not just his; it depends on being communicated and widely enjoyed in order to exist – it is a communal and contagious celebration of cruelty. Indeed, the media attention it garners feeds the sadistic spree. It has to be known and seen and heard, this parade of reactionary outrage and defiance. And that is why it is no longer a simple matter of exposing hypocrisy that will serve us now. There is no moral veneer that must be stripped away. No, the public demand for the appearance of morality on the part of the leader is inverted: his followers thrill to the display of his contempt for morality, and share it.




Now, in one sense, her basic point is entirely correct.  There clearly is a sadistic element to right-wing politics, plainly.  Beyond formal concerns about limited government and the rule of law, Trump's followers have a libidinal investment in seeing illegal migrants be deported, and in seeing the "leeches" among the federal bureaucrats be exposed for their indolence.  (This is not their only motivation of course, which is where the leftist analysis starts to go wrong -- people are complex, their motivations can be multifaceted and overdetermined -- but it is a motivation).  To be clear, I am a follower of Trump, and part of my evidence for the thesis advanced here comes from introspection on my own psychology.  It feels good to define yourself and your own as Inside, and others as Outside, and to apportion to each what is rightly due.  Not many people give a rat's ass about fairness in women's sports qua fairness in women's sports; but lots of people give a rat's ass about maintaining the purity of a symbolic space which has been constructed for a distinguished population, and punishing those who would attempt to transgress these symbolic boundaries.


Fox News recently broadcast a "helicopter ride-along" to the southern border, where they accompanied border agents at night as they scanned the riverbanks for intruders.  The searchlights trained on a man who was attempting to lay low in the brush; he made a run for it, but was inevitably captured.  The camera lingered as he was handcuffed and put in the patrol truck, to ensure that the viewers at home got a good look at their hard-won trophy.  Even for an amoral Nietzschean overman such as myself, there was something slightly nauseating about how brazenly exploitative the whole ordeal was.  Your moments of desperation, packaged and commodified by a foreign mega-conglomerate and sold as entertainment.


Now, the narrative that the left constructs for themselves is that they're somehow above all this.  This is false.  There is plainly a sadistic element to left-wing politics as well (and, we may as well drop the qualifiers, a sadistic element to politics as such, and ultimately to life itself -- "nature is exploitation").  They too have their Inside and Outside, and they derive just as much libidinal satisfaction from exercising such distinctions; they simply use different terminology and establish the groupings using different criteria.  "Legitimate targets" are pursued with an uninterestingly human amount of sadistic glee - not a diminished amount, nor an excessive amount, but simply as much as one would expect.  Who could believe that they (and I include Ms. Butler here) don't enjoy the thought of deplatforming, debanking, and de-home-ing the reactionaries, neo-Nazis, and bigots?  Even after the final revolution, if there is a shortage of actual reactionaries, they will simply be fabricated and the definition of "reactionary" will be expanded to include a new outgroup, as the libidinal machine demands to be fed with an unceasing series of new targets (North Korea's appropriately named "Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Law" initiated a harsh crackdown on TV shows, movies, and music from South Korea -- I guess K-pop stans are all reactionaries now.)


I disagree with Ozy's old post (and, I suppose by extension, Haidt's conclusions as well) about the differences in the moral foundations of leftism and rightism.  Leftists are actually operating on all the same moral dimensions that rightists are.  They, too, have ingroup loyalty -- they simply define their ingroup as "BIPOC", or "allies", or "the oppressed", rather than in terms of (their own) race, (their own) religion, or (their own) nation.  And they're certainly no strangers to purity either -- racial slurs become shamanic totems, anything that could be perceived as right-wing propaganda must be aggressively purged and cleansed lest it contaminate the space.  I am not, of course, advancing a facile version of horseshoe theory.  Plainly there are fundamental moral disagreements between right and left, otherwise there would be no impetus to distinguish between them in the first place.  But some of the particular narratives that people like to tell themselves about what distinguishes them from the other side leave something to be desired.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If anyone here is still perplexed as to why Marxism has historically been such a popular ideology, and remains such a popular ideology: this is why.  This same fundamental desire will always continue to reemerge in various forms, as a natural biological response to suffering: the yearning to be freed of the burden of differentiated subjectivity, the transcendence of the individual/collective distinction, a suicide without death.  The only difference between singulatarianism and Marxism is that today's transhumanists think the Soviets were too early; they jumped the gun, the necessary scientific advancements hadn't materialized yet.  But the underlying impulse is the same.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Rule Change Discussion: AI produced content
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But the idea that you can literally already do what was suggested by just using an LLM on your own is simply false.




I acknowledge that "my terminal value is that I'm ok with reading 100% AI-generated text as long as human hands physically copy and pasted it into the textbox on themotte.org" is a clever counterexample that I hadn't considered.  I'm skeptical that any substantial number of people actually hold such a value set however.


At any rate I'm universally opposed to "containment zones", whether related to AI or not, for similar reasons that I oppose the bare links repository -- one of the functions of rules is to cultivate a certain type of culture, and exceptions to those rules serve to erode that culture.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Rule Change Discussion: AI produced content
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, it is qualitatively different. Which is precisely the reason why people don’t want AI content here in the first place.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Rule Change Discussion: AI produced content
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You can just ask your LLM of choice what it would enjoy reading, what it deems as meeting the threshold of being good enough to share, etc, and go from there. And/or ask it to simulate a wide variety of personas of varying tastes and proclivities.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Rule Change Discussion: AI produced content
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You can literally already do that by just having a conversation with your AI of choice.


You can even tell it to pretend to be different people to simulate the real forum experience!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Rule Change Discussion: AI produced content
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In debates over whether it's ok to use AI for X, it's helpful to ask "instead of asking an AI to do it, what if I asked another human to do it?  Would that be ok?"


So the equivalent here would be, instead of dumping AI output as a top level post, what if you just copy and pasted an article from someone else's substack and offered that as a top level post?  And that's already not ok.  It would be considered low effort and essentially no different from a bare link.  We're here to read your writing, not some other entity's writing (whether that entity is human or not).


Failing to attribute the source doesn't make it any better, and if anything it just makes it worse.  IIRC people have gotten banned in the past for copying other people's articles and posting them here without attribution.


Of course the use/mention distinction applies and I don't think anyone has a problem with quoting AI text when it's relevant in a discussion about AI.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Last week there were a few ‘performance piece’ top posts that utilized AIslop to demonstrate a Goodharts law adjacent concept about the problem with effort posts as too simplistic a concept.




Which ones?  Neither Dase nor Mihow were trying to make a point about effort.  Was there another AI post that I missed?




Unstated as it were, I am quite confident that the implied intention of both was to make transparent through the remaining dichotomy, the need for a return of the Bare Links Repository (not to be confused with unrelated calls for an unprecedented Bear/Lynx Repository).




No.  Both posts were completely unrelated to the BLR.




The original BLR was likely only retired because of jealousy at its success




Yes, that's exactly (one of the reasons) why I don't want it.  I am afraid that it would become more popular than the effortposts and it would grow to encompass the majority of the traffic to the forum.  You are completely correct.


The tendency of all internet forums is towards low effort ragebait.  They're naturally pulled that way by gravity.  A culture of thoughtful, in-depth posts has to be actively cultivated and maintained.  TheMotte is very unique in that it maintains both high quality standards and a culture of free speech (almost every other internet space is either one or the other, or neither).  The mods recognize the value of the unique space we've cultivated here which is why they've consistently been against reviving the BLR.




Of course nobody wants uneffortful top posts but a BLR, is something entirely different.




No, that's exactly what it is.


(This debate is always somewhat bizarre because the existing effort standards for top level posts are not particularly strenuous.  3-4 sentences is all it takes.)




The fact is, the BLR in its return would bring necessary life to this forum




The last two weekly threads got over 2k comments each, which is basically what we've been expecting since the site transition and is probably a bit above average.




counteract the slow momentum erosion the site has suffered since losing Reddits network effect




If the forum can't survive in its current form then so be it.  It's better for it to simply die out than become something it's not.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Which ones do you have in mind?  I know there are a lot of Chinese names on ML papers now, but I don't have a good sense for how many of those papers count as truly fundamental (the Attention Is All You Need paper had no Chinese authors, for example).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


On the hardware side of ML the most innovative chips are all manufactured by one 95%-Han-Chinese island that everyone else is struggling to catch up to




That's not really what HBD advocates have in mind when they talk about "innovation" though.


There's a hierarchy of innovation/creativity with some advances being more fundamental than others.  The Chinese may be great at manufacturing chips, but they didn't invent the computer itself.  The dominance of Taiwan in chip manufacturing seems to be, again, yet another example of "the Chinese are great at executing and improving upon fundamental ideas that other people came up with", unless perhaps their designs and manufacturing process are reliant on substantial advances in fundamental physics that they came up with themselves (this could very well be the case and I'm just ignorant of the facts, please educate me if so).


Granted, the opportunity for ideas as fundamental as the computer (or even the transformer) don't just come along every day.  They can only occur under the right historical conditions.  But even accounting for that, the sustained European dominance in the area of such fundamental ideas has been striking, and deserves an explanation.