Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
"...Perhaps laughter will then have formed an alliance with wisdom; perhaps only 'gay science' will remain."
User ID: 342
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
11mo ago
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
11mo ago
However, I also believe in rehabilitation.
As far as I can tell from all my direct experience and historical research, this is a very historically aberrant notion. The majority of people across time and space support essentially unlimited punishment for anyone who has been defined as a "criminal" (the exact nature of the crimes can vary of course - "criminal" as a category here just means "the bad people" essentially, the bad people who have been exiled from the symbolic order and are deserving of oblivion).
Christian forgiveness was a radical idea 2,000 years ago, and it remains a radical idea today.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
11mo ago
It's a cogent and civil argument that doesn't come close to violating any rules.
I think that calling your political opponents "low human capital people" and "human parasites" could reasonably be interpreted as a violation of the boo outgroup/waging the culture war rules.
I certainly don't think that Count should be permabanned over this post. But even on a less inflammatory topic, I would expect a post like this to catch a tempban.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
11mo ago
Maybe it's because we've talked one on one, but I'm pretty convinced these are your real opinions.
I have no doubt that these are his real opinions. But the sincerity of one's convictions doesn't preclude one from posting in bad faith.
Count's posts on race/immigration are designed to be maximally inflammatory while not technically violating any rules, in an effort to provoke banworthy responses from other users. It's a more rhetorically elaborate version of "I'm not touching you". Even if that's not his conscious intent, that's certainly the effect it has. That's where the accusations of bad faith posting come from.
Personally I feel it's important that minority viewpoints be protected on TheMotte however. There's nothing about Count's viewpoint in the abstract that's against the rules. So the best thing that people can do is simply not take the bait, and only report posts that contain actual rule violations.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
11mo ago
Lots of leftists, democrats, and others would, as you note, be happy to describe themselves as weird.
...would they? Still, in 2024? Rebellion used to be a cardinal virtue of the American left in decades past, but not so much anymore. They've rebranded as the faction of moral propriety. Less free love, more #MeToo.
Is it really "weird" to be gay or trans now? Is that how the left wants to frame it?
At the very least, calling yourself "weird" while also calling your political archenemies "weird" has to incur some serious cognitive dissonance.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
11mo ago
To this day, humping my bed remains my preferred masturbation method. But, I already know that I'm an extremely weird individual. Always have been, always will be.
We've ended up in an unusual situation where disaffected libertarians and social conservatives have both been grouped under the same heading of "rightist", simply because that's how the left has chosen to label them, despite the internal divisions between those two camps. It's not a particularly stable coalition. But either way, if the Republican party gets reshaped into the Party of Weird, then I'm more than happy to embrace it.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
11mo ago
(and I do expect her to win in November, as a direct result of the corporate news media being the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party--the fix is clearly in).
The fix was in in 2016 too. What makes this time different?
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
11mo ago
Wow - it never occurred to me to frame political peer pressure as a matter of cognitive strain, rather than simply as a matter of personality traits or commitment to principles. I never really considered the fact that it could be physically difficult for people to maintain a set of public-facing lies, and that over time this could have a palpable effect on their actual beliefs. To me, it's water off my back to say that I'm voting for Kamala when I'm actually voting for Trump - I get a thrill out of constructing elaborate lies anyway, I view it as a sort of theatrical performance - but is this the case for everyone? Almost certainly not. It's something to keep in mind, anyway.
And if this does have measurable large-scale social effects, then that's a tough blackpill to swallow, because it implies that any "silent majority" that opposes wokeism will shrink over time, and the perception of wokeism's dominance will more and more become reality.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
11mo ago
BotW sucks. Most open world games do imo, for the types of reasons that you outline.
Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask are far superior to BotW as Zelda titles.
Nintendo is far past their prime. Most people would put their glory days somewhere in the 90s/early 00s. But, there is admittedly an irreducible element of childhood nostalgia required for fully enjoying any of these games anyway.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
10mo ago
No mod actions in the last week! Aside from a couple outright deletions (which I assume were for bot/spam comments or something similar).
What happened? Have all the troublemakers simply been banned at this point? Or have the topics under discussion become more anodyne? I would have thought that things would be heating up with the election approaching.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
10mo ago
Why does everyone forget that there was a 3 year gap between GPT-3 and GPT-4?
Give it time. At least wait and see what GPT-5 brings before declaring their premature demise.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
10mo ago
What I wonder about is how hard it seems to be for American conservatives to believe that there exists a non-astroturf sentiment supporting American liberalism organically.
I think you've identified a genuine sentiment here, and it's related to the accusations of NPCism/groupthink that the right frequently levies against the left.
Other replies have brought up good points that I endorse. I'd like to add that there's a certain asymmetry to these accusations in general which could be taken as evidence of their veracity.
Both sides use plenty of generic insults that are little more than emotive expressions of sentiment. Rightists say that leftists will usher in an age of civilizational decline, that they're only doing what they're doing out of self interest, that they hide their true intentions until the right opportunity presents itself, etc. And vice versa. Precisely because these accusations are symmetrically employed by both sides, they don't reveal much interesting about the actual policy positions of the right/left or the psychology of rightists/leftists. There's little signal to separate from the noise.
The NPC meme, in contrast, is used far more often by the right than by the left. Why is that? If it was just a generic insult, if it was just a synonym for "stupid" or "uninformed", then we would expect leftists to use it too, given that it has proven itself to be a meme of rather potent virility. But they don't - not nearly as much, anyway. And I think that indicates that the left doesn't really believe it to be true about their opponents, whereas the right very much believes it to be true about their opponents. And the best explanation for a widespread asymmetrical belief of that sort is that belief having some actual correspondence to the facts of reality, however attenuated that correspondence may be.
Certainly there are versions of the NPC accusation that are employed by the left - it's common to hear rhetoric about Trump supporters being fascists who all march in lockstep, for example. But the tenor is different. There is a much greater focus on the morally deleterious content of the Trump supporters' beliefs rather than the form of their thought itself (the old "rightists think their opponents are stupid, leftists think their opponents are evil"). I think there's also the implication that the alleged fascist Trump supporter marches in lockstep because of some fundamental moral deficiency which draws them to fascism specifically, whereas the prototypical NPC could be made to follow virtually any ideology if the Cathedral declared it to be The Correct Belief.
All this is a very roundabout way of saying: I'm not going to evaluate the first-order claim that "support for Kamala/liberalism/etc is astroturfed", and at first glance I'd agree that that claim is not entirely fair. But the mere persistence of the claim indicates that there is some phenomenon here that is worth investigating. People don't just make shit up. If enough people are repeating something, there's usually some reason for it.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
10mo ago
I think it was a great top level post. Plus it’s retroactively validated by the amount of discussion it kicked off.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
10mo ago
Is it? That never occurred to me. I don't think that the type of person who is apt to criticize someone for not being traditionally masculine is also the type of person to care much about epistemic hygiene. But perhaps I'm off base here.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
10mo ago
We are always told “discussion doesn’t validate whether a top level post is good or not.”
Yes, that's a valid point to bring up. A bare link that occasions a fascinating reply doesn't itself become a good post - but I would nonetheless be thankful in retrospect that that bare link was posted, if the reply it solicited was good enough.
What makes you think it is great?
It's an earnest and straightforward anecdote about an interesting and relevant topic.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
10mo ago
So, suppose you're in the Ukrainian military, and one of your compatriots is discovered to be relaying detailed plans of troop movements and locations to the Russians (or you can switch the nationalities if you want, doesn't really matter, whichever side you have more sympathy for). It's clear that what he's engaging in is "mere" speech - he's not causing any physical harm himself, he's merely communicating words and numerical coordinates to others. Should he face any consequences whatsoever for his actions? Would you say "well shucks, it's plain that what he's doing is materially hurting the war effort and is directly causing the deaths of our fellow soldiers, but because it is just speech, we can't legally do anything"?
Are you even permitted to fire him from his post in the military? If you are, that already seems like a step down from "absolutism" to me - it may not be jail time, but it's still a consequence of some sort.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
10mo ago
From all the possible gotchas, this is probably the weakest.
It's not a gotcha. It's an argument.
In the military you have duties, and not aiding the enemy is one of them.
OP said "I believe any speech whatsoever should be legally permitted". If he wants to amend his position to "any speech whatsoever should be legally permitted, except for speech that materially aids the enemy in a time of war", or perhaps "except for any speech that violates your previously agreed upon duties", then he's certainly welcome to do so. But that does, prima facie, appear to be an amendment of the original position.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
10mo ago
Unironically, what would be Trump’s best response to “I’m speaking now”? If you were wargaming strategies with him, what advice would you give?
Is it just unbeatable because of the broader cultural optics? Part of the problem is that I have no idea what the psychological profile of an “undecided” voter could possibly look like at this point, so it’s hard to craft a strategy that could appeal to them (because winning over Kamala supporters in any non-negligible amount is a non-starter).
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
10mo ago
major antisemite but supports woke prosecution
Damn they should come in for an AMA.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
10mo ago
You might find this interesting - if not for the purpose of developing effective propaganda, then at least for your own edification. It has a bit of a bibliography for further reading.
John Rawls and the death of Western Marxism:
So what happened to all this ferment and excitement, all of the high-powered theory being done under the banner of Western Marxism? It’s the damndest thing, but all of those smart, important Marxists and neo-Marxists, doing all that high-powered work, became liberals. Every single one of the theorists at the core of the analytic Marxism movement – not just Cohen, but Philippe van Parijs, John Roemer, Allen Buchanan, and Jon Elster – as well as inheritors of the Frankfurt School like Habermas, wound up embracing some variant of the view that came to be known as “liberal egalitarianism.” Of course, this was not a capitulation to the old-fashioned “classical liberalism” of the 19th century, it was rather a defection to the style of modern liberalism that found its canonical expression in the work of John Rawls.
If one felt like putting the point polemically, one might say that the “no-bullshit” Marxists, after having removed all of the bullshit from Marxism, discovered that there was nothing left but liberalism.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
10mo ago
Is Yvette Falarca a liberal?
Based on the details of her criminal record, she doesn't appear to be.
Would you agree that there are now large groups of communist thugs in America, with institutional support and cover, committing organized violence against their perceived political enemies?
I think that Antifa would qualify as such, yes. My impression is that lately they've been less active in terms of large public actions than they were during the height of the Trump years, but maybe I just haven't been paying attention as much.
Would you agree that these communist thugs are engaged by the police and the justice system generally much less than we would expect for a random person committing the sort of violent crimes they routinely commit?
Yes.
Would you agree that most of these thugs originate, directly or indirectly, from the higher education system? That is, they were students or employees of the higher education system, or they received their ideology from students or employees of that education system?
I don't know. That's an empirical question that I don't feel prepared to answer. Determining the causality of large-scale social and historical phenomena is always a tricky business.
Generally, I'm in a position where I want to believe in the capacity of cultural production and academic thought to have impacts outside of their own provincial spheres, but I don't know if the evidence actually supports such a claim.
The author of the linked post may be suffering from a bit of myopia. He gives a historical account of certain trends within analytic philosophy departments. But you can certainly still find people in non-analytic philosophy departments, people in non-philosophy departments (English, sociology, the menagerie of "Studies", etc), and people outside of academic altogether, who call themselves Marxists. (Of course, the authenticity and seriousness of such commitments are always open to questioning.)
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
10mo ago
There are times when prolonging the life of an organism is the correct decision, and times when it is not.
If an otherwise young and healthy person is afflicted by a serious but curable condition, then they should of course be treated to the best of our abilities. I don't fetishize "letting nature take its course" just for the sake of it. But when the elderly are sustained long past their expiration date - when there is nothing left to live for, when there is only the fear of death to struggle in vain against - then sometimes the most dignified option is to simply pull the plug.
When a particular cultural stratum, race, civilization, or species is failing to perform its basic functions (reproduction in this case), a similar analysis must be performed. Is it a temporary condition that can be alleviated? Or has the social organism simply exhausted its powers, put its best days behind it, and entered a stage of inevitable terminal decline?
All things die - ineluctably we will feel nostalgic for certain forms of life that we have become accustomed to, but this is no excuse for abandoning our sense of perspective. Let us simply hope that something new will be born to replace what is lost, and that this new form of life will be, if not "healthier" in an absolute sense, then at least more vigorous.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
10mo ago
Every Sunday there's a Small Questions thread that serves as an ideal home for these types of posts. But the range of topics allowed in the Culture War thread is very broad, and there are some interesting culture war implications in how academia treats "pure" and "applied" fields, so the post is fine here.
Generally I'd say that more abstract sub-fields are held in higher esteem (especially "abstract" in the sense of "fundamental", as in the results have wide-reaching implications in multiple areas of mathematics), in accordance with the general esteem that pure math itself is given over applied math. But this has its limits. Even some pure mathematicians balk at things like category theory, or the study of large cardinals, as "abstract nonsense". I think you're right that there is a certain mistrust of the foundations of mathematics - anything that carries the stench of philosophy is ipso facto suspicious. So it really depends on who you ask.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
10mo ago
· Edited 10mo ago
but is much improved
No it isn't. This is much worse than what you had in your OP; the "improved" version is horribly stilted and unnatural. What you had in the OP was already fine and it wasn't in particular need of any further corrections.
"Be concise" is one of the most actively harmful "principles" of "good writing" in common circulation, almost on par with the utterly nonsensical "show don't tell" (a word is worth a thousand pictures - there are many "tellings" that are more profound than any "showing" ever could be). Concision is principally valued by those individuals who have neither the constitution to digest substantial amounts of authentically individuated writing, nor the ability to produce it. In some cases, a norm of terseness may function as a defense mechanism. When we tell the empty-headed dullard that he should "be more concise", what we are really telling him is that he should simply not write as much, so that we can spare ourselves the exposure to his writing. But this does not thereby transform the bad writer into a good writer - it merely makes him less of a nuisance. A minute quantity of poison is still poison in its intrinsic constitution, even if it has been reduced to a level where it is no longer dangerous.
Burn all the style guides; they're no good. Read your own writing in good faith, and honestly evaluate the degree to which it is in conformity with the law of your own taste. If you have good taste, it'll lead you right. If you have bad taste, then everything is hopeless from the start, so it doesn't really matter what you do.
This one doesn't bother me. The sentiment / revealed consensus of TheMotte is a valid topic of discussion for TheMotte, and past comments can serve as important data for many conversations.
This one I agree with. LLM summaries shouldn't serve as a replacement for your own analysis and commentary, even when they're marked as such.
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