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SophisticatedHillbilly


				

				

				

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joined 2022 December 04 20:18:48 UTC
				

				

				

				

				

				

					
				

				

				
				
				

				
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SophisticatedHillbilly


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 December 04 20:18:48 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 1964


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Same, and it bothered me a bit because I was like "I don't even remember interacting with them! What could it mean?"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The only human beings who have consistent principles are those you'd never want to live with or be governed by.




This honestly has not been my experience at all. Those with the strongest principles have consistently been the only people in my life worth keeping around. If someone doesn't have any values that they'll maintain when it's painful, then you're basically dealing with a particularly cunning animal.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Honestly I don't believe this entirely. The issue of try-try-try again-pass is real yes, but as Brexit shows it's an advantage inherent to the "Anti-Status-Quo" stance rather than inherently an advantage for progressives.


The problem is that conservatives believe you can just rest on your laurels and do nothing whatsoever to uphold your beliefs beyond voting, while progressives understand that to win you have to fight for your beliefs every single day. If conservatives tried half as hard to ban gay marriage as the progressives did to legalize it, it would be illegal.


Progressives collectively throw hundreds of billions of dollars towards their social goals, have numerous people whose entire lives and careers are dedicated to furthering the cause (many of whom abandoned more profitable avenues to do so) and have millions more who make art, put the values into their work, make public displays of loyalty, etc. Conservatives aren't even in the same ballpark of effort and commitment.


The sole exception would of course be Christian Evangelicals, who do all the same things progressives do to to actually attempt to win. And would you look at that, they did in fact get Roe v Wade overturned! Turns out conservatives can win if they actually care and put their money where their mouth is!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
An increasingly centralized EU could be a world power if it takes the direction that the US did early on and gradually become a single state. Barring that, no single EU state is powerful enough to qualify, and too restrained by the rest of the EU to flex the requiref muscles.


Russia will likely be more of a regional power than a world power, I agree. However, do not underestimate the psychological impact that backing the losing horse has on international opinion. Ukraine will likely lose the war, which means Team USA lost the war.


Doesn't matter how costly it was to Russia, it demonstrates that even very heavy US backing doesn't protect you against even a dysfunctional regional power, which means many smaller states will look elsewhere, such as forming their own regional blocks.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Currently that is the case, and my only response is "Yes, and if Conservatives cared enough they'd be stealing our money to fund pet causes too."


But it wasn't always true. The early progressive movements were largely funded by progressives, progressive sympathizers, and donations by those who supported the associated causes. Conservatives could do the same, but they don't. An expected counterpoint would be the funds seized from the trucker protest but 1. That's not America, and 2. You have to actually put money towards building power structures (like the Federalist Society), not just in response to a single politically hot event.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My main issue with this line of thought is that we aren't running out of people, and reducing the population by 75% or more seems positively wonderful. The US was plenty capable of a very rich and successful society with far fewer people than today.


Why would we want more? Do you want 1.2 billion people in the US, with the accompanying congestion, resource usage, and garbage? Why is 330 million the magic number? Surely 75 million is sufficient?


Sure actively lowering the population would make me question your motives, but if people just prefer cruise ships and video games to reproducing, why do you want to stop them? Why not just have kids of your own who get to inherit a cleaner, more open world with beaches that aren't packed with strangers?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't entirely disagree with your point, but:


Regression to the mean is a major issue here. The children of elites frequently do not have great genes, as the elites who spawned them was simply a statistical anomaly. They get to keep their elite status, however.


What we lack for the meritocracy you describe is downward social mobility. I want every high-class idiot out of their positions, but at the moment the upper class is far too secure.


If we had that then I'd be mostly fine with the system yes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think part of the issue is weird occurrences that have no satisfying explanations given, which people can then attribute to their own pet theory.


Take the Phoenix Lights for example. Super weird, seen by millions, and the only explanations given are "aliens!" and "super secret weird government shit." Given that to many people these are more or less the same thing, or at least connected, you end up with a lot of people that can then point to the Phoenix Lights as evidence of aliens.


Most serious alien believers are, in my experience, equally willing to accept "the government engages in numerous weird programs and experiments, often testing them on the unwitting public (or at least exposing members of the public to them) MK Ultra style,"  to explain these weird events as much as they will accept aliens, or demons, or synchronicities or kabbalah or whatever.


What they won't accept is "none of that happened, pay no attention to the strange occurrences, nothing happens that is not publicly available information."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
From my experience working in a job where the use of the quotes feature was vital: Google will randomly and without warning place users into experimental variations of their features as a form of A/B testing. If you get placed in the "Google prioritizes words in quotes" user bucket and not the "Google demands exact string match of words in quote" bucket, your search won't turn up the exact results and you're just out of luck.


I managed to escalate this issue quite high into Google support at one point, and the above was more or less everything they told me. Was quite stressful when I needed the exact match for my job.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't entirely disagree with this, though I would say it occurred largely because conservatives didn't care enough about their own values to maintain them. They could have done what progressives are doing now, but failed to do so, and instead let sinful behavior take control of the most powerful state to ever exist.


The solution now is to find new tricks, new takeover methods, that the opponent doesn't see coming. It is a war after all. You can't just reuse the old methods identically, but there are consistently functional principles that are timeless.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Wait, how do airline stocks work?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That's perfectly reasonable from an individual perspective. I suppose my concern is more with the "layabout poet son of a hedge fund manager" who ends up being handed a sinecure sort of job, or worse, one of actual importance. If that person gets paid $200,000 a year to be worthless, they have already had a worse impact on society than almost any petty criminal. The impact is double if their lineage somehow gets them into a position they're less-than-capable in.


I am much more okay with garbage humans living garbage lives than with mediocre ones rising above their deserved station unfairly, if only because I believe that "who sits at the top" has immense downstream effects on basically everything.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
While I agree with your point and generally am opposed to simply handwaving away all the details on how exactly we will par for things, I think the USA might actually be an example where this is true.


The state has immense resources at it's disposal, and almost certainly could give a comfortable life to everyone if it tried to do so without raising taxes or the like.. Of course, this would require cutting costs in other areas, and more importantly it would require cutting cost disease and corruption. Tough to provide for your citizens when the budget is stretched to its limit on $200 aspirins and $100,000 sinecures.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My position would be somewhere along the lines of: "If there is no way to evaluate the factor being considered directly, then discrimination based on proxies is acceptable. Voluntary proxies (like dress) are preferable to innate proxies (like race)."


Say redheads have an unusually high chance to spontaneously combust, and I don't want to hire them in my explosives factory. If I can measure an individual's combustibility, then discrimination against redheads is pointless and nefarious. If I can't, then yeah, sorry redheads.


Given that we can measure Big-5 personality traits and IQ in mere hours at most, effectively all proxies (race, education, class, wealth etc) are unacceptable nowadays, though they were fine before.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Not him, and don't necessarily support his claim, but I think the logic goes something like


    

  • ~0% of women want to sleep with your average incel (definitionally)
    • 

  • Some percent, say 5%, of women want to have sex with a dog.
    • 

  • Therefore there is a not-trivially-small group of women (millions!) that would prefer some dog action to poor old incel.
    • 



I think it's less about the idea that it has a major impact on the marketplace (though the complete non-existence of dogs would probably have some infitessimally small impact) and more just one of those realizations where people are hit with the fact that they are literally less fuckable than a literal dog.


Of course, this all falls apart if the focus is on "average looking" rather than "beta," as it only works if talking about incels specifically.


My own view is that what I laid out above is roughly true, but mostly just the fault of the bottom-tier men for sucking that badly. It's not even really a bad or shocking thing. As you said, furries exist, and they're a much larger group than loser-philes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Those systems tend to be framed as meritocratic internally though.


"Of course the aristocrats should run things, they are literally better than everyone else due to superior breeding (blood)"


"Of course we need to distribute things between the races, they are equal in their merits and so need equal rewards."


"Of course the most experienced people are in charge, they're the best at their job because they know it better than anyone."


Or for the credentialists:
"Of course those with the highest credentials should run things, the credentials show that they're the best in their field."


Or for the IQists:


"Of course the smartest should be on top, smarter people are better than everyone else due to their superior inherent abilities."


I can't think of a system which a typical adherent doesn't frame as meritocratic. The question is always how to determine merit, which if you ever hired for a job you know isn't particularly easy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Nobel prize winning scientists can't exactly imbue intelligence, which SATs generally measure, nor was he likely taking the time to instill test-taking skills. I don't see why it would.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for June 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What is the absolute cheapest way to acquire a decent house? Money is tight, but me and the girl are tired of living in an RV, and we're ready to upsize. Land isn't a concern because we have a family property, but it needs to last awhile and it needs to be larger than the 350 sq ft (!) we currently live in. I've been looking at the following options:


    

  • 

    Construct an A-Frame house. These seem solid, but the cost is somewhat prohibitive, at somewhere around 25k with me performing a significant amount of the labor. Not a huge fan of the shape either, as it seems to be pretty bad conceptually in the cost-vs-space sense.
    

    • 

  • 

    Do one of these sort of things: https://www.steelmasterusa.com/quonset-huts/. Cost seems comparable to the A-frame, but for more space and durability
    

    • 

  • 

    Buy a used mobile home. They can be surprisingly cheap. As low as free, actually. They won't last more than probably a decade, but hey, that's a future problem. Size is disappointing, but not unbearable. I grew up in a mobile home after all.
    

    • 



Any other ideas? Any actual home construction seems to move it into the 200k range, which seems not worth it to me relative to the steel building setup, though I'm open to other opinions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
None, short of murder, violence that causes permanent or long-term physical harm, or selling them into slavery.


The breadth of parenting options should basically range from "take them to the drag show" to "don't even let them look at a person of the other gender"


This is a case where I actually genuinely believe that "Everyone gets to follow their own values" is actually legitimately superior to "everyone adheres to my values." I have parenting methods that I think are best. But those are methods for parenting MY children, made of MY genes. If everyone did them it would probably be a disaster.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Force sale of X% of shares he held by his estate on the open public market at whatever the price was at his death (or some randomized time before it to prevent gaming) and the government collects its cut as those sell. Seems like a simple enough solution but I'm probably missing something.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Given how much effort they spend monitoring right-wing portions of the internet, probably actually yes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A few points:


I think you may be somewhat underestimating  the impact that the COVID election law changes had on turnout. Democrats are typically low-effort voters, and so gained hugely from the expanded access. Not sure how many of those changes are still in effect, but something to find out.


Good points on Jan 6 and Dobbs. I think some who are immersed in the conservosphere forget just how big those points are to the rank-and-file voters.


Additionally, I think conservatives have a habit of underestimating just how many blue-tribers the country has at this point. Like sure, they're mostly in a few cities or whatever, but it's probably 65-75% of the population of the country by now. The red tribe is vastly outmanned currently, though demographic trends will shift it back in 80ish years or so barring major cultural or tech changes. Blue-triber conservatives, meanwhile, tend to forget that they functionally don't exist as far as democracy is concerned.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Only a blackpill if you for some reason have no respect for strength or power, which would be odd given how important they've been for all of history.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't follow. What exactly is that no-cost intervention? Or is the point just that the question is: "Would he still hate black people if they are productive members of society?"


Honestly asking. I don't get what you're saying.


Edit: never mind, I get it now upon re-reading. Leaving this to mark my shame.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Now unlike the above, this is merely "something I read somewhere at some point" and not official, but:


I've read that it's worse than that. They've frequently messed around with search function, and how they evaluate the changes is how many searches a user makes. I.e, if you type in a search, immediately find what you need, and leave Google, that's bad, while you search 4 or 5 times to get Google to finally show what you wanted, that's good.


The A/B testing is specifically trying to make the experience worse for users.