Supah_Schmendrick
No bio...
User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
Look at just about anything on television or any movie, music, etc. The resounding themes are family is a drag, parents are idiots or don’t care, and that the point of life is hedonistic pleasure which things like family and religion are drags on
Yeah "liberatory" culture and increasing wealth definitely work hand-in-hand on this.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
This is extremely inaccurate. Lebanon is famously split between feuding Sunni, Shia, and Maronite christian groups to the degree that their constitution sets ethnic quotas for power-sharing. Afghan is also split between many warring tribal-ethnic groups as well, including Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazara, and Uzbeks.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
What is really the best way for a government to decide policy?
To have virtuous and wise people doing the deciding, and public-spirited and moderate people doing the implementing. Personnel is policy, and all the procedural gilding in the world won't save a government made of the petty, venal, and stupid.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
There isn't any good ethical basis for privileging one human being over another based on their proximity—genetically or geographically—to you.
There absolutely are several.
(1) Practicality. An ethics which people are not likely to follow will not be implemented widely or for long. However noble its aims, such an ethic fails by its own terms. By contrast, an ethics which people are likely to follow, even if slightly less noble, will be implemented widely and for a longer period of time and thus result in more good. As you said, there is a biological bias in favor of genetic or geographic (and I'd add "sociocultural" as well) proximity. If that bias can be taken advantage of to build solidarity, care, and harmony, then it should!
(2) Accessibility. Proximity Bias is a simple concept, common to most human civilizations. It is simple to explain, and thus easy to spread. Moreover, it is also simpler for people of all different capability strata to implement, even without supervision. It's not perfect, and people being people it will sometimes be implemented poorly. But it's easier.
(3) Iterativity. Proximity Bias stresses that individuals should spend their resources on people and things close to them, which are likely to be things which the individual will interact with frequently. This provides for frequent feedback between all parties and frequent assessment of progress. Thus, it limits the ability of middlemen to grift or divert efforts and resources away from the object, as well as generally unlocking the beneficial dynamics present in iterated games more generally. It also allows for short feedback loops to identify and address unforeseen consequences rapidly.
(4) Resiliency. Though Proximity Bias may be less globally efficient, it does allow for the building of general reserves of both physical and social capital which can be leveraged to counteract/mitigate emergencies. Further, because it is decentralized, there is no single point of failure in the system.
If you want to participate in morality, you are just as ethically bound to them, you just don't feel it.
Sorry, nope. Ties go both ways, or not at all. I am bound to those who have some duty to me. Beyond that, I have a duty to cause no unnecessary harm. If, after I have fulfilled my local duties, I still have resources left over, then, and only then, can I look outwards to perform charity on complete strangers. But that's a very high bar to clear.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
like us
Ah yes, but along which axis? Same hair color? Same favorite food? Same clothes? Same language? Other socio-cultural markers? We, to a certain extent, get to define what it means to be "like us" and who "us" is. Staying stuck on racial grouping is profoundly limited thinking.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
I don't think the Ukranians should surrender. If someone was invading California, I like to think that I would be brave enough to volunteer to fight. I do think that the U.S. needs to take escalation concerns seriously when analyzing the risk-reward of providing various weapons systems, information, training, or support to the Ukrainian war effort. It's not as simple as "oh, someone waggled a nuclear dick around, they automatically win" - its a question of determining whether what we expect to reasonably be able to achieve by the desired policy is proportional to the risk being run of nuclear or other serious retaliation. And that determination requires (1) a clear statement of what the U.S. expects to achieve from its policies, (2) an evaluation of how important those goals are worth, and (3) an analysis of whether those goals are worth the potential costs imposed by Russian countermoves, up to and including nukes or other action targeting civilian infrastructure in the U.S. or in vital partner-countries/treaty partners.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
I am less convinced than you are that Trump couldn't have done this the "right way" with actual laws.
Respectfully, are you an administrative lawyer? How familiar are you with the Administrative Procedures Act and the dozens of legislative and executive actions which together, in concert, have intertwined to create the tangled mess that is the current administrative state? How familiar are you with the history of the legislative veto and INS v. Chadha?
It's not reducible to schoolhouse rock-tier "you need congress to pass a law," and you shouldn't minimize the legal and bureaucratic infighting that's taking place.
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
why does the same reasoning not work to justify the Palestinian Oct 7 attack?
What was the inciting incident demanding recompense on the scale of kidnapping, raping, and murdering partiers at a disco festival?
Israelis and Palestinians are locked into a multigenerational civil war/blood feud that can only end by one side being wiped out
Israel has offered peace multiple times, and when its offers were accepted it honored those agreements. Meanwhile the Palestinians continue to refuse to take "yes" for an answer and insist on further fighting. That's not the recipe for "a pox on both their houses."
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
There is a 0% chance of Jews subject to actual antisemitism not getting asylum in a nice western country without Israel. This has been true for Israel’s entire existence,
That's a convenient elision of the fact that the Jews trying to escape the Nazis were in large part turned away from those nice western countries. Even years after the end of WWII, hundreds of thousands of European jews were still sitting in Displaced Persons camps guarded by allied soldiers because no "nice western country" would take them, and were only able to leave after the establishment of Israel as a national homeland for jews (those "nice western countries" still weren't willing to take them).
And I wouldn't count on most of Europe being too safe for jews in the future. France is already markedly unsafe, and as Britain islamicizes over the next couple decades anti-jewish sentiment is likely to increase.
Yes, there is a line where prohibition makes sense, but I don't think any human society comes close to crossing that line when it comes to alcohol.
The following winter (this was the year in which Cn. Pompey and M. Crassus were consuls [55 B.C.]), those Germans [called] the Usipetes, and likewise the Tenchtheri, with a great number of men, crossed the Rhine , not far from the place at which that river discharges itself into the sea. The motive for crossing [that river] was, that having been for several years harassed by the Suevi, they were constantly engaged in war, and hindered from the pursuits of agriculture. The nation of the Suevi is by far the largest and the most warlike nation of all the Germans. They are said to possess a hundred cantons, from each of which they yearly send from their territories for the purpose of war a thousand armed men: the others who remain at home, maintain [both] themselves and those-engaged in the expedition. The latter again, in their turn, are in arms the year after: the former remain at home. Thus neither husbandry, nor the art and practice of war are neglected. But among them there exists no private and separate land; nor are they permitted to remain more than one year in one place for the purpose of residence. They do not live much on corn, but subsist for the most part on milk and flesh, and are much [engaged] in hunting; which circumstance must, by the nature of their food, and by their daily exercise and the freedom of their life (for having from boyhood been accustomed to no employment, or discipline, they do nothing at all contrary to their inclination), both promote their strength and render them men of vast stature of body. And to such a habit have they brought themselves, that even in the coldest parts they wear no clothing whatever except skins, by reason of the scantiness of which, a great portion of their body is bare, and besides they bathe in open rivers.
Merchants have access to them rather that they may have persons to whom they may sell those things which they have taken in war, than because they need any commodity to be imported to them. Moreover, even as to laboring cattle, in which the Gauls take the greatest pleasure, and which they procure at a great price, the Germans do not employ such as are imported, but those poor and ill-shaped animals, which belong to their country; these, however, they render capable of the greatest labor by daily exercise. In cavalry actions they frequently leap from their horses and fight on foot; and train their horses to stand still in the very spot on which they leave them, to which they retreat with great activity when there is occasion; nor, according to their practice, is any thing regarded as more unseemly, or more unmanly, than to use housings. Accordingly, they have the courage, though they be themselves but few, to advance against any number whatever of horse mounted with housings. They on no account permit wine to be imported to them, because they consider that men degenerate in their powers of enduring fatigue, and are rendered effeminate by that commodity.
C. Julius Caesar. Caesar's Gallic War. Translator. W. A. McDevitte. Translator. W. S. Bohn. 1st Edition. New York. Harper & Brothers. 1869. Harper's New Classical Library. Hirt-Gal 4.1-2.
The Gauls are exceedingly addicted to the use of wine and fill themselves with the wine which is brought into their country by merchants, drinking it unmixed, and since they partake of this drink without moderation by reason of their craving for it, when they are drunken they fall into a stupor or a state of madness. Consequently many of the Italian traders, induced by the love of money which characterizes them, believe that the love of wine of these Gauls is their own godsend. For these transport the wine on the navigable rivers by means of boats and through the level plain on wagons, and receive for it an incredible price; for in exchange for a jar of wine they receive a slave, getting a servant in return for the drink.
Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History. Book V, Part 25.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Funny how the ADL and AIPAC have been pushing hard for the polar opposite of nationalism for us. Mass migration and open borders to Europe, an ethnostate for Israel.
Why, it's almost like diaspora populations have strange relationships with the host nation and the metropole. Of course, if you actually look at the people who are doing the on-the-ground work of the mass-migration you get a lot of Catholic groups, not Jews.
Yes, we need to get rid of the AIPAC and ADL influence
Ah yes, the gentiles who actually hold office are just helpless little mice before the terrifying might of...completely ordinary lobbying groups. And it just so happens to aaaaaaallllll be the Jews...couldn't be the Turkish lobby, or the UAE, or the Saudis, or the Iranians.
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
Do you really think this passes an ideological turing test and accurately models the reaction of marginal democrats and independents? Also, why do you think a 30-year-old sex scandal would hurt Harris when multiple such scandals haven't hurt Trump?
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
There was no conceivable act of individual heroism that could have shattered the power of the Catholic church at the height of the Inquisition
Bad history. The Inquisition was set up precisely to stop idiot rubes out in the sticks from freaking out about nonsense like "witches making the cows' milk dry up" and burning people. The Spanish crown then won a political struggle with the Papacy, asserted control over the office in the area under its secular jurisdiction, then started using it as a secret police against perceived fifth columnists and as a revenue source.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
It sounds like you can't even in theory imagine a world where it's actually true; such a world would not just give you a sense of purpose but an actual purpose!
What is the distinction between a "sense" of purpose and an "actual" purpose? How would a human person know how to distinguish between the two in the wild?
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
Roughly as many jews live in the U.S. as do in Israel.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
But it's weird to me that the video game industry is so woke considering that the user base is so anti-woke. Why aren't there anti-woke game publishers?
(1) Ethan Strauss's "Undecided Whale" effect: The majority of money spent on AAA videogames is spent by young men. However, women control far more total discretionary spending than men overall, and can be spurred to spend on some games. Therefore, there's a significant incentive for executives looking to expand their sales figures to try and appeal to women, which given the recent massive leftward political shift of young women, often results in the insertion of hamfisted political messaging.
(2) Overrepresentation of Trans and other sexuality/subculture minorities in STEM. This one isn't complicated; transwomen, furries, and other nerds with odd subcultural affiliations around gender and sexuality are overrepresented in programming and among the type of monomanaically-focused near-autist who are more likely to go into intense knowledge-work professions like game design and creation. Thus, they're perfectly positioned to influence products from within.
(3) Standard labor law and NGO pressure-group tactics. See Hanania and Rufo.
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
Ah yes, because legitimate prosecutions of totally-real crimes are what an opposing-party DOJ will prosecute and indict a hated former-POTUS for...I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Also also, the Founders almost certainly didn't intend this because they knew their classical history, and knew that exactly this kind of post-office lawfare was a primary spur to the rise of Caesar and the Principate over the Republic.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
So the Pride flag is officially on the same level as the National Anthem now? I thought that was just a dissident right twitter meme about "globohomo" and the "GAE." But good to know, good to know.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
I deny that human morality is math at all. People are not indistinguishable, interchangeable, widgets. The essence of humanity is sociability - our particular relationships and cooperation with each other. Your cold math at best ignores it, and at worst denigrates it as pernicious. That's a recipe for trouble.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
The physical africans who get bed nets are no more or less abstraction-ish than, say, money you donate to a homeless person in your city.
No, you might actually see the homeless person in your day-to-day life, and he you. You interact, and can make each other's day directly better or worse. You can converse, have a relationship, etc., with very little resources needed to facilitate the communication. That's real. The African, though literally real in a physical sense, is thousands of miles away. Barring intensive intentional effort, you will never see them, speak to them, or have any relationship with them or they you.
Cities, and 'communities', are as arbitrary as 'the world' is - they're contingent groups of people determined by geography, economic history, shared customs, etc!
Not from the standpoint of actual human lives, they're not. Well, okay, the word "community" is so overused it's done to death and is on the verge of becoming meaningless. But it originally described a true thing - a group of people who share things together, potentially including not just location and resources, but habits, language, ancestry, etc., and possess a sense of holding each other in special regard and solidarity; not quite as close as actual kin, but definitely set apart from the rest of the world. That's a meaningful division, or at least used to be before modernity came along and undermined it with "organized delight / in lotus-isles of economic bliss / forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss / (and counterfeit at that! Machine produced, / bogus-seduction of the twice-seduced!)".
I mean, is "my community" the city I live in because it had good schools? Is it people I talk to on the internet? Is it the base of economic production (most of the planet)?
Which of those do you have meaningful, reciprocal relationships in? Which of those supplies the people you'd turn to if you lost your job, or got ill, or had your domicile burn down? Which of those has people for whom you'd pitch in if they had one of those things happen? Which of those has people who you share your leisure time with? Which of of those do you rely on for your daily sustenance?
Most of us lack community. This is not an unnoticed phenomenon. Perhaps we should start building them again?
As for 'art' - how would you propose funding art? You're not gonna find great artists in your hometown
Why do you need your hometown's art to be "great"? What makes art "great?" Just skill in craft? What about history and love; a particular representation of a particular time and place, or of particular people investing what skill they have along with sweat and time into beautifying the spaces they share for their neighbors and descendants? Why not have this on every house and public building? Why not have lovingly-tended flowers along park paths? Why not have well-built and attractive playing fields and sports yards? The Colosseum is art, after a fashion.
As for infrastructure - even if you have a few billion, how can you compete with the hundreds of billions of infrastructure investment per year (vs wealth that you'll have over a decade), by motivated organizations that know a lot more than you?
Do they, though? They may have money, but a lot of motivated organizations do terrible jobs of knowing what they're doing, or doing it at all. Just look at my poor Golden state for countless examples. High speed rail, badly-done forestry, potholed roads, lazily-maintained power lines, unupdated water infrastructure - it all bears the hallmarks of people who are extremely wealthy and very excited about big, global political causes (the environment! Global Warming!), but care much less about the particular places they live and those that live there with them (often because their wealth and modern technology allows them to, and there is no countervailing force pulling them back).
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
Is there a good way to describe a group like this?
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
Republicans have a failure mode of cult of personality;
How quickly we forget the "Is Obama Enlightened" discourse, and even the "Cocaine Joe" and Bernie memes of the late Obama era. Not for nothing did Bill Clinton quip that that when it comes to picking Presidential nominees, "Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.".
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
They don't have to, and shouldn't have to just because people don't actually understand the state of the law and the left is willing to strategically misrepresent and/or lie about it when it suits their purposes (for the record the right isn't much, if at all, better). Significant powers have already been delegated to the President, or arguably unlawfully usurped from its constitutional power as commander in chief (e.g. protection from at-will removal).
The difference is, "woke" history is "whig" history - trying to read back present day moral notions and fashions back into the past as if they were objective (they're not). Actual good history doesn't sugarcoat the past; it immerses you in it so you can understand the actual norms and mores of the time and thus figure out for yourself who was being a giant piece of shit given the society they were in.
It's like trying to have a conversation across a language barrier. Woke history assumes that the phonemes " /ˈnɪɡə(ɹ)/" are always and forever a fighting-words-tier slur, because they are in standard contemporary American english...but doesn't bother to figure out whether or not the person they're talking to in fact speaking chinese or korean.
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