I'm shocked by how many people on TheMotte seem to have such a visceral disgust reaction to Aella.
For my part, I'm disgusted that so many people seem to think it's okay to cyberbully celebrities. Punching is OK as long as you're punching up? That's the logic of someone who just wants an excuse to punch people. The knowledge that thousands of people who barely know anything about you have decided to hate you as a social activity is damaging to the human mind. It's cruel to do that to someone. I also think it's unhealthy to participate in an internet hate mob. It makes people petty and frivolous.
All around it's a negative for everyone involved. If I find out that someone has wrapped their identity around performatively hating someone they've never met, it lowers my opinion of them. That holds true whether the target is Elon, Aella, or Adolf Hitler. There is just no good reason to invest your emotions in someone you have never met and will never meet.
Sunshine
21d ago
Talking shit about people is not "cyberbullying".
In your opinion, what is the difference between talking shit about people and cyberbullying?
It's a bunch of people getting together and harassing an outsider as a form of entertainment and group bonding activity, and they're doing it over the internet. Sounds like cyberbullying to me.
If you ever get a chance, do a self-driven review compare / contrast of ancient human-sacrifice rituals for different religions with different stakes in humans harm. Even if it's just the Aztecs cutting out hearts to prevent the universe from ending, or the Carthaginians burning babies alive in honor of Moloch, the overlaps and distinctions in what they think human sacrifice will accomplish can be enlightening.
And then, once you've read that, presumably you will somehow have changed your mind and believe human sacrifice is a good thing instead of a senseless waste of human life. You will probably even want to sacrifice your own children to Moloch, when the time comes. I know I haven't provided any reason why that should be the case, but apparently that's how this works now.
One thing is for sure, though: I have a higher opinion of the moral and ethical foundations of Aztec priests cutting the still-beating hearts out of the chests of POWs than I do of the sorts of people who teach ethics classes. At least the Aztecs had the excuse of not having access to better information, something that cannot be said of someone who works in a modern university.
I believe they should review different professional ethic systems to understand how they differ in what they emphasize.
Before we continue this discussion, I believe you should read all 7 Harry Potter books. I also believe you should read the Bible and the Torah. I believe you should read the Dead Sea Scrolls. I believe you should have an AI translate all 7 Harry Potter books into Swahili and read them again. Learn Swahili first if you have to, time is apparently no object. I believe you should read every word ever written by Thomas Aquinas. I believe you should re-read them, but this time reinterpret them as the works of Thomas Aquinas's black trans lesbian housekeeper, plagiarized without credit.
I think you're operating under a misconception. You seem to think I disagree with the concept of reading things. I do not. My point of contention with you is that you are not making any actual arguments in favor of your position. Telling people to read more books is not an argument.
It's not that I don't know enough about ethics, or that I haven't considered the possibility that other people might believe different things than me. My point is very simple: If you're here to make an argument, then make it. If you're not here to make an argument then you should at least stop trying to give people homework.
The presumption that the only reason anyone might disagree with you is that they haven't done enough research is not charming.
Sunshine
2yr ago
The whole idea of there being groups is smuggling in so many assumptions, though.
Consider this toy example: The US population is 10% black descended from slaves captured from central Africa and 3% first-generation-immigrant black descended from the coastal warlords who enslaved the previous group (fake numbers I just made up). I, the official making the statistics, invent the concept of "black people" and decide that both the slave-descendents and the warlord-descendents are "black people." Since 13% of the population are "black people," I make sure that Harvard consists of 13% warlord-descended immigrant elites and 0% slave-descended locals. The slave-descended black people now have "representation," but the people representing them are the descendents of the people who enslaved their ancestors. This is supposed to help make up for the fact that their ancestors were enslaved.
Consider this other toy example: Atlantis contains many immigrants from countries around the Atlantic. 20% of the population of Atlantis are "British" Immigrants - 5% Irish, 5% Scottish, 5% Welsh, and 5% English. For the board of directors of my hedge fund, which has 10 members, I decide that 20% should be "British" so that there will be "representation." I choose the English son of the CEO of Lloyd's of London and the English daughter of famous football player David Beckham and famous musician Posh Spice. Are the Welsh, Scottish, and Irish "represented" by these "British" members of the board of directors? Are the English even represented by these two millionaires descended from other millionaires?
I say no. There is no such thing as British people. There is no such thing as black people. There is no such thing as white people. I would argue that there is such a thing as Jews, and in order to get that kind of reality into any of these other groups you need to slice them at least as finely as you slice the Jews. At this zoom level you'll find many groups that are just as overrepresented as Jews are. You'll discover that 1% of highly-connected families have almost all the power, and only some of those 1% of families are Jewish. The rest are "white" (or "Chinese") and smuggle their power in by unfairly grouping themselves with millions of random shmucks with whom they have nothing in common except skin colour.
If you think human sacrifice is good, then you should say so outright and explain why you believe that. If you think that ethics classes are not "total non-sense taught by dimwit professors" as the above poster claims, then you should say so outright and explain why you believe that.
But please don't gesture vaguely in the direction of doing further research to nay-say the value judgements of those who have stronger opinions than you.
There is no amount of research that will convince me that human sacrifice is good. It's not because I'm stubborn or closed-minded, it's because I have a coherent moral worldview. Reading about it may be interesting but it will never change my mind.
If the best argument in favor of university-level ethics classes you can muster up is that I should do more research so that I can discover for myself an argument in favor of their existence, then that suggests that they are truly without any value whatsoever. It's a rare and pitiable thing to see a position so devoid of merit that even its defenders can't bear to speak in its defense. If nothing else the Aztecs were at least capable of making arguments to justify their actions.
EDIT: To give this post more substance, I'm going to add a breakdown that I wrote for a reply further down. This is a timeline of events as I see them, which seems to demonstrate that the woman threw the pot of boiling water at the officers prior to being shot:
Tmestamps are from this video if you want to check it yourself: https://youtube.com/watch?v=U2rMB2fYjuY&rco=1&ab_channel=PoliceActivity
10:37: She clearly takes both hands off the pot and raises them above her head.
10:38: She crouches behind the counter. The pot is visible on the stove. She is no longer holding the pot.
The bodycam is briefly blocked by the officer's arm.
10:40: She is now standing up again and she seems to have picked the pot back up and is now hoisting it over her head. To repeat, she put the pot down, crouched down, took cover, stood back up, and then picked the pot back up again, holding it above her head. I cannot imagine any reason she would have for hoisting a pot of boiling water over her head except to throw it.
also 10:40: The pot leaves her hands. Roughly simultaneously, the officer shoots her. It's hard to tell the exact timeline of events, except...
10:41: The pot lands on the chair in front of her. For this to happen, it must have had considerable forward momentum. It looks to me like she had at least begun to throw the pot when the bullet connected. If not then it should have landed on top of her, not on the chair in front of her.
It's possible (again, hard to break down this 1-second period from Youtube footage) that the cop interrupted her throw by shooting her, which means it quite possibly could have had more momentum if he hadn't shot her. If so, it's possible that if he hadn't shot her it would have hit him and inflicted life-ruining burns. It's also possible he didn't shoot until after she completed her throw, in which case it wouldn't have hit him regardless. Either way, it's clear that she had attempted to inflict life-ruining injuries on him at the time she was shot.
Original unedited post begins here.
Since there seems to be a lot of back-and-forth on this point I want to add my take to what I see as the correct side. I watched the video in slow motion, and this woman clearly tried to attack the cops with boiling water. Boiling water is extremely dangerous and is capable of inflicting permanent disfiguring injuries. The woman attacked the cops before any shots were fired, and that makes the shots justified. Her death was her own fault.
Once you attack someone in a manner that could plausibly inflict a serious injury, they are justified in immediately killing you. Yes even if they're a cop. Them that take the sword shall perish by the sword.
It bothers me a lot that some people seem to expect cops to de-escalate after they've already been attacked. That's ridiculous. Cops aren't Superman, they can't just stand there taking unlimited punishment until their attackers run out of steam and then execute a flawless nonlethal takedown. Cops are fragile human beings. Any attack could kill or cripple them. Every weapon is a deadly weapon.
I would rather see ten guilty people gunned down by cops than one innocent person injured. There should be zero tolerance for any aggression of any kind, ever, no exceptions, the end.
Sunshine
1yr ago
I have no dog in this fight, but I don't think we should keep anything "highly hated." Hate is a bad thing. I think that there is probably an optimal level of social scorn we should direct towards pedophiles in order to minimize the amount of pedophilia in the world, and I think we should calculate that amount rather than just go nuts and hope for the best.
My best guess is that the target should be just enough scorn to dissuade them from committing crimes, but not so much scorn that we dissuade them from seeking professional help. I'm reasonably confident we've overshot the mark. It's quite possible that a modest reduction in hatred directed at pedophiles would actually result in fewer children being molested.
Speaking as someone who is against the draft, I am also against forcing women into performing an equivalent sacrifice.
We're in the age of automation and exponential productivity growth. Surely the solution is simply to guarantee security and flourishing for everyone. I cannot imagine any version of the world where solving that engineering problem is actually harder than convincing millions of women to sacrifice their security.
For goodness sake, we're already most of the way there!
As for being conquered, I'm willing to bet everything on NATO. A planet-spanning military alliance that spends more on weapons than the rest of the world combined will not be overcome so easily. China might get Taiwan back, but they're not going to land troops in San Francisco any time soon. In the long run, AI will change the nature of the game in a way that makes population dynamics obsolete long before any power rises that can credibly challenge NATO.
Sunshine
2yr ago
Well Jewish people tend to concentrate into a few cities, such as New York and Washington DC, so you would want to compare Washington DC to one of the other cities that contain large numbers of Jewish people. I expect that an AP math class in Beijing won't have very many Jews, for example. Cities that you could compare it to include Philadelphia, LA, Boston, and Chicago, all of which I'm sure have the expected demographics in their AP math classes.
Sunshine
1mo ago
Insider trading? Family members selling access to the President? I am shocked, shocked to find that corruption is going on in here...
Well, not that shocked. Isn't this just business as usual? The sums are pretty small compared to the size of the Federal budget, and it's not like corruption in Washington is a new phenomenon.
Sunshine
1yr ago
No. Again, hate is bad. Hate does not help you make good decisions, and hatred-based law enforcement mechanisms are not known for their efficiency. The appropriate angle to approach social engineering problems like "How do we stop people from committing fraud and/or murder in the manner that gets us the best value for our tax dollars," is heartless rationality, not hatred.
Hatred is for suckers. It makes you easy to manipulate and prone to error.
Sunshine
5mo ago
Nobody is afraid that they "missed the fascism", except possibly you because your brain is fried from huffing too much politics. Any "fascism" that is so subtle that you can fail to notice it while it's taking place in the cultural center of the world in the midst of a global political media circus (i.e. the election) is no fascism at all.
Fascism is not a mystic totem which once invoked will trigger Armageddon. If it's too subtle to notice, it's also too subtle to affect anyone's life in any way. If it's too subtle to affect anyone's life then it doesn't matter, no matter what scary words you use to describe it. If we can live in a fascist dystopia without noticing or being affected by it, then maybe the problem is that the word "fascist" is being used too lightly.
Sunshine
10mo ago
Optimal for what purpose? In order to optimize you must first have a goal.
Well, the foreign policy administration of the US Government disagrees with you on that. Now-President Joe Biden once made a speech in which he argued that Israel is "The best $3 billion dollar investment we make," and that “If there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one to make sure our interests were preserved.”
You could argue that he was lying for some reason, and that he actually thinks Israel is a bad investment but is trying to mislead the American people. That strikes me as a bit too conspiratorial to be true. I don't think the US Government has that many layers. It would require that Joe Biden, current president of the United States, is funnelling huge amounts of government money into a project that he secretly believes is bad for America, in order to support a foreign country, for some reason. You could also argue that he thinks that what he's doing is right, but that he's wrong. That's certainly possible, but then it becomes self-defeating; if the United States supports Israel because the President thinks that's good foreign policy, but he's actually mistaken, that would be pretty normal. World leaders sometimes make mistakes. It certainly wouldn't make the alliance somehow illegitimate or unworthy of consideration.
Supporting Israel is in-character for the USA. They support lots of countries in order to spread their influence around the globe. They've supported South Vietnam, South Korea, West Germany, Taiwan, various South American military dictatorships, and let's not forget about Ukraine. They've put bases in Canada, Japan, and Germany. They like to have leverage they can use to exercise control. None of this means that South Korea ought to give up and let Korea be reunited under the Kim family, or that West Germany should have fought a one-on-one grudge match with East Germany to decide once and for all who should get to form the united German government. The whole point of American power is that they can use their advanced training and military hardware to pick winners, ideally without putting American boots on the ground.
You're saying that "Western interests" should "compel a single-state solution," but, like, why? The Palestinians have nothing to offer the West. The result of a one-state solution would be a sudden regime change as the Islamist majority inevitably elects a new Islamist government in the new state of Palestine. Do you think refugee crises and regional instability would be less likely after a genocidal Islamist government takes over a previously Jewish-majority nuclear power? If so, why?
If there's one thing you can say about Israel, it's that they definitely won't nuke Istanbul. I could not say the same about Hamas.
That was what jumped out at me, too. Frankly it makes me think that I really ought to try Tinder again with some better photos, if this is all it takes.
Sunshine
1mo ago
If Israel were to do everything they could to kill as many Gazans as possible without losing what remains of international support,
See, now we've gone from talking about facts to reading minds. How do you distinguish someone who wants to kill as many Gazans as possible but is held back by the international community from someone who acts in line with the attitude of the international community because they're part of it? You're essentially blaming them for things they aren't doing, but which you assume they want to do.
Sunshine
1mo ago
I believe the point is that if America did kill 36 million Chinese civilians, the Chinese would nuke Los Angeles and America would have only itself to blame.
The moral of the story is: Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Sunshine
2mo ago
As an aside, I think it's in bad taste to use the term MAGA as if it was some kind of entity or group. You only do it once in the top-level post, but you use the term frequently in your replies below.
First of all it's extremely vague. There is no club of MAGA card-holders. You're just using the term to vaguely gesture in the direction of Donald Trump's supporters. When you say "MAGA won" what exactly do you mean by that? What is MAGA and what did it win? If you're referring to the Republican Party's trifecta victory in the 2024 election, I think it would be more appropriate to refer to them by their proper name. If you're referring to something else, then I think you should define what this "MAGA" entity is and what exactly you believe it won.
Secondly, it's disrespectful to refer to an entity or group by a term it does not use to refer to itself. I would say the same thing to someone who went around ranting about "SJWs" or "Feminazis" or "the Deep State." If you have something important to say about the United States civil service or a particular group of activists, your point is not diminished by calling them by their proper name. If you need to refer to them by a derogatory nickname to make your point then that's a clear sign that you don't actually have one.
The case for a right-of-conquest is seriously undermined by the fact that Israel owes its existence - its entire conquest as such - to foreign powers and continued foreign aid in its defense, and foreign intervention in destabilizing or outright destroying its adversaries.
No? The case isn't undermined by the fact that Israel has allies. Why would it be? It would be seriously undermined if Israel didn't have allies. Allies make you stronger, and right-of-conquest is about being strong. This isn't some kind of faux chivalry thing where it only counts if it's a fair fight between equals.
The whole point of my argument about right-of-conquest is that, when it comes down to the quality of life of the people who actually have to live there, it doesn't matter how you came into possession of your new territories. Right-of-conquest is just an acknowledgement that you do possess those territories and that you aren't going to give them back, so the sooner everyone accepts that the sooner everyone can get on with their lives.
At the end of the day, most of the borders that we accept as lawful were only drawn over the strenuous objections of the defeated. Having allies often helps you win, and many of the borders that exist today were drawn by coalitions of powerful nations. The Dutch are independent from their larger neighbours, France and Germany, in large part because the British kicked the French out in 1815 and the Germans out in 1945. The Dutch certainly didn't defeat either France or Germany in some kind of absurd no-allies-allowed fair fight. They made a strong ally over religious ties and shared interests and that strong ally backed them up when it counted.
Almost all modern wars are fought between coalitions of allies, and both the Israelis and Palestinians have drawn on coalitions of more powerful allies in their various conflicts - just as Israel's allies often draw on its support in their various conflicts. In fact, if anything, Israel is almost unique among modern nations in that it fought some of its wars without the support of allies, an extremely rare event in the modern era.
I'm a free speech absolutist, but I am willing to sacrifice Kanye West's free speech if it helps us win. I could tolerate a world where speech is free except for one unprincipled carve-out banning antisemitism. Twitter probably has to do that anyway to comply with German laws against Holocaust denial.
I guess the question is whether it helps. I think it does. The ban might reassure moderates. It's probably better to let this one go by and wait for a more favorable example to fight over.
Sunshine
16d ago
Is there another nation-building strategy that has been proven more effective? I only said it was the most effective strategy that has been tried so far. I didn't say it was neighborly.
Sunshine
7mo ago
As a regular Motte reader and occasional poster, I think your standards for posts are too overbearing. The Motte's biggest problem is the lack of content, and the reason for the lack of content is that the mod team is strangling it. The Motte needs more lower-quality posts, not fewer higher-quality posts.
You're not going to run out of space.
The idea that any given demographic should have the same number of slots in any given position of power based on their representation in the overall population is dumb, whether you're talking about Jews or blacks.
Jews aren't overrepresented, they're just represented. White people may make up a majority of the USA population, but a big chunk of those are useless or stupid and so don't count. If you look at an AP math class in New York and compare that to the makeup of White House staffers, you'll see a more realistic comparison of Jews to whites.
White people and Jews are not the same kind of race. They're wholly different zoom levels, different layers on the cladistic tree of humanity. If white people are a kingdom then Jews are a genus. Jews have way more in common with the average Jew than whites have with the average whites. Whites include people from all corners of Europe in the same category for some stupid reason, Jews only count a single insular subgroup. If Jews are a race, then Anglo-Americans descended from people who lived in Ulster but aren't descended from Irish stock should also be a race. And if those Anglo-Hibernian Americans are counted as their own race, you will see a truly shocking overrepresentation among US Presidents (shocking if you assume that every European ethnicity should be equally likely to be President, which is a weird assumption).
Groups are different. White House staffers are not recruited by lottery. It is normal for their racial makeup to be biased one way or another by the makeup of the sorts of people who would apply for those positions. Also "white people" are a fever dream invented by racist nutjobs and everyone needs to stop pretending that "white people" exist. They don't.
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