Tanista
2yr ago
Guys who take the black pill genuinely do believe what they say, they aren't merely making excuses to avoid overhauling their lifestyle and routines.
It wouldn't be a good coping mechanism if people didn't sincerely cling to it. I'm not sold that it's just an empirical judgment and not a result of the fact that trying to dig oneself out requiring high investment and being more than a little demoralizing.
To put it another way: if you see fat activists who've "taken the blackpill" that weight is just genetic and there's nothing they could have done would you trust this as a mere reasonable response to the data?
Tanista
2yr ago
Would it be a better world on net?
As stated above: no one can answer that.
But, let's say it wasn't: should we necessarily care? If you're the guy missing out on university and job placements and harangued for keeping the blacks (but not the Asians somehow) down, you may just want it over with and fuck the world (who honestly cares about "the world on net" in any serious way besides EA-types tbh?)
Tanista
2yr ago
But I don't think it stands up to millennia of people in much worse economic conditions having many many children.
Because kids were useful labour that'd help you be more secure during the times when agriculture sucked up most of the human capital.
It matters because gobbling all of Ukraine fits the theory of people (e.g. Julia Ioffe) who want to see this as Russia pressing on and on until someone stops them, taking Eastern Ukraine and forcing Minsky/other concessions could be seen as Russia trying to militarily recreate the political situation like before the revolution when the Ukrainian government had to lean in Russia's direction (obviously achieving this militarily removes the democratic veneer)
Revisionist power aimed at NATO vs declining power trying (and failing) to shore up a core interest (as it sees it).
Funnily enough, the "patriarchal old geezer" (direct quote - LOL) added that 'he was not in favor of women having children at a young age because "a woman has to mature into a mother"'.
I think he's earnest, it's only that he has an idea of "young age" in this case that is probably radically different from that of his liberal critics.
Or traditionalism is dead because even the right wingers won't vocally defend the easiest way to get back to the high birth-rate world they want.
Voter protections are still largely left-coded
When I say "liberal" I mean it in the sense that both sides of the American political spectrum qualify, not in the sense where it's synonymous with "progressive" (or left-liberal)
What are liberals doing to tie up the populace?
They already did it. The structure of the US system allows, for example, judges to invalidate any laws when they've decided they've fabricated a basis for it. Given the current political realities the most obvious way of counteracting this - a Constitutional amendment - is basically impossible so the public has to take the long route to overcoming some of these rulings.
Roe is simply the most notorious example in which even left-liberal legal minds acknowledge issues with the ruling and, more importantly, the populace simply refused to tolerate this novel reading of rights to invalidate the laws of dozens of states and so mobilized for 40 years just to get back to status quo. And, even then, they basically got lucky. A slightly different election and Roe stands.
That sounds like tying up the popular will to me.
If you want an example of this left-coded anti-populism see the Left-Liberals acting like judges returning one of the most consistently controversial issues to state legislators was illegitimate. The federal governments increasing power also gives it levers here; iirc Biden threatened the funding of schools that enacted policies counter to his view of LGBT children's rights . So your school board and governor are onboard? Tough.
But it's not specific to left-liberals. It's a general principle of liberalism itself, with America in particular having a lot of bulwarks against popular enthusiasm.
Tanista
2mo ago
Grant that crazy attracts crazy, and whoever originated the more fantastical miracle stories may have likewise just been psychotic at the time, or something.
Or you ignore the traditional narrative that the Disciples wrote the Gospels in which case you don't need a hoax, or delusion. It's just later believers believing what they're told or extrapolating from what the Hebrew Bible says the Messiah will do, an old tactic and not a sign of being insane or mendacious.
Except for the original resurrection claim of course. Strangely, the Disciples may be better candidates for delusion than Jesus. It's possible that Jesus really did think he'd bring about the end of Roman rule in some political sense with God's help like many other unfortunate Jews of the time. But at least some of the Disciples clearly believed that he was resurrected , which is noted by Paul to be very odd by the beliefs of the time, and were willing to be martyred despite having a front-row seat to the mother of all disconfirming events.
I've actually seen this used as a modern version of the Lewis argument by secular Christians who can't appeal to miracle claims: the Disciples had first-hand knowledge and were devout Jews. It's insane for them to go with the divinity of a crucified criminal. Unless...
Do Americans care about what happened in Europe? You would assume so, given how people speak of the Dutch protocol, but a lot of people seemed to try to find ways to dismiss the Cass Report and the slow pullback across Europe seems to have had muted impact.
I instinctively disagreed with Singal but he may simply think that there needs to be a parade of local disconfirming evidence to stop a whole swathe of ideologues, parents and practitioners who were led down the path by the US academy from blaming Trump for their lack of evidence and retreating to fight in the wilderness for decades.
Problem is that we've gone so far down that road people said "fuck it" and now you have spicy social democrats claiming to be socialists now and kids larping as pro-Soviet communists because they follow Hasan Piker on TikTok.
Tanista
10mo ago
I can buy that blue tribe is driven by an ideologically motivated positive outgroup bias.
But it isn't just blue tribe or it would have ended when they lost elections. What about the Tories? What about the business owners?
Tanista
11mo ago
If they had already calculated Biden wouldn't be the nominee, surely that factored into their VP pick?
Yeah, that's the point. Losing after having advanced warning would be particularly inexcusable.
Did you overlook when I said I don't hold these beliefs?
I was using the generic you in the example. It was less about you holding the beliefs yourself, I disagreed on how much charity you were granting.
Like, I didn't assume that you personally were for bullying Rebecca Tuvel or any unfortunate who asked about transracials...
It is not a coincidence that the Jewish foundational myth entails their presence as a fifth column in a host civilization, within which an influential and trusted political figure spread plagues throughout the land- including the ritualistic murder of the firstborn sons of the gentiles by the Jewish tribal god Yahweh, culminating in a slave revolt followed by their ultimate expulsion from their host nation.
Leaving out a lot of context why the Golden Age of Egyptian Jews fell apart here.
Tanista
2yr ago
because you need to got so many details right and the audience is far more astute than just shareholders or other employees
The audience may have more aggregate wisdom but that doesn't necessarily mean much: I know some stuff about programming but, when I listen to Last Week Tonight talking about Turkmenistan, I have no idea how right or wrong they are. But I like (or liked) John Oliver so it feels more trustworthy.
Which is why the sort of shamelessness Jim Cramer (to use 2rafa's example) has might be useful. You can't fool all of the people, but you can fool some of them a lot of the time. If you simply refuse to take responsibility for being wrong you probably last longer by not popping the confidence of the people who are sticking with you compared to a more intellectually honest person.
Tanista
2yr ago
The intent seems to be to put constraints on the scale of sexual success of men, in a way that is never analogously applied to women.
I suppose the constraint was applied by biology: women have less reason to go for maximal competition because they have a limited number of potential total offspring. Men do not.
Russia's primary money maker is exporting fuel and other natural resources. The parts of its industrial sector that rely on Western inputs are going to suffer from sanctions or, worse, be made unproductive.
Not a great environment.
He might have actually have been independently wealthy (though I'm suspicious of this - he speaks like a rapper in some ways) but it would have been through illicit activities like pimping or pseudo-illicit ones (since it just collapses into pimping) like running a webcamming business.
Tanista
2yr ago
Extremely hard disagree. I very much hope that general adherence to social norms is not used as a criterion of judgement by actual criminal trial judges.
Except that is literally the opposite of my claim: that courts may need to be held to a higher standard to achieve important social goods, but this doesn't mean that we're all obligated to do the same.
Basically the same argument for why "innocent until proven guilty" can be an asinine response. For a recent example, see Kevin O'Leary's apology tour on FTX and crypto.
Tanista
2yr ago
Arguments over whether transgender, fat, autism, etc. are diseases seem like rhetorical techniques in order to enforce a preferred aesthetic on society.
Yes, that is the activists' argument.
The problem they run into is the diminishing returns of the social constructionist theory. This all works well and good to explain why, for example, dreadlocks aren't unprofessional.
But it's simply a much better founded belief that being fat is unhealthy. Unfortunately, activists can't pivot from their sophomoric "it's just a lens for the dominant power structure" one-size-fits-all explanation. So they spend time pettifogging you with debates about whether Kate Moss was a healthy figure, as if that changes whether Lizzo is.
I imagine the disgust reaction to transgender and fatness happens first, and the designation of disease happens second
Again: this would be true if there was no fact of the matter - no link between weight and health. But there is so this is a toothless point.
Our fear reaction to snakes predates our scientific understanding of venom. But our fear is still tracking something truth-apt and evolutionarily valuable.
Similarly, I think there's an obvious common sense intuition towards "if you wish to mutilate your body because you find it fundamentally unpalatable you're probably mentally ill". It actually takes a lot of "education" - aka decades of sexual revolution/LGBT social engineering - that suppresses our natural incredulity here.
Tanista
2yr ago
Maybe Trump's personality makes this all worse, somehow.
"Somehow"?
Literally just take out his game of footsy with election denial and I would argue it'd lower the temperature.
Tanista
5mo ago
Oh, would you or any of the natalists prefer to live in the high TFR paradise of Niger? Ridiculous to pretend that's the only meaningful metric.
Why would this specifically victimize males?
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