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TheAntipopulist

Voltaire's Viceroy

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joined 2022 September 05 02:32:36 UTC 

				
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TheAntipopulist


								
								
									
								
								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Voltaire's Viceroy

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 02:32:36 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 373


					
					
					
				

			




		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


My experience is that being (relative) high value




Being "high value" is "caring what women want". A lot of the advice places like TRP dispense are things like "pump iron" and "buy clothes that fit", which are things women care about since modern dating is very dependent on physical attractiveness. But then, TRP will say goofy things like "but don't do it for women, do it for yourself".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I will say that building your masculinity on the attention of a particular woman or women in general is cuck behavior, and needs to be discouraged wherever possible. Even the MGTOW dudes still construct their whole identity around women, you gotta stop that shit.




All evolutionary pressures ensure that men absolutely should care about what women want. The men who don't... will just not reproduce and die off.


But appearing to care, or caring in the wrong ways (e.g. being subservient to women) are both unattractive to women and unfashionable to other men. The secret is to care enough to entice women, while pretending not to care.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				The Case for Ignoring Race
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don't believe race adds a ton of information over other available pieces of information.




What's your response to FBI crime statistics like these?  There are about twice as many Blacks in the US compared to Asians, yet Blacks commit over 50x the amount of murders that Asians do. That is absolutely a relevant datapoint.


In your examples there's enough info to make a decision regardless, but the real world isn't cleanly split into perfect examples like the ones you listed.




In America, I agree seeing an Asian guy instead of a black guy would add some useful information




Ah, so you're agreeing with me then? Race is a useful proxy, at least in general terms in the USA. If it's useful there, then why can't it be useful in other contexts? No reasonable person says race should be the only proxy for behavior; it's just one of many including the ones you listed (like which part of town you're in, the person's body language, their sex, etc.).


If you're agreeing with me, it seems like the central premise of your post ("The Case for Ignoring Race") is turned on its head.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				The Case for Ignoring Race
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think you're using motivated reasoning here to work backwards from a position you wish were true, and selectively looking for evidence that supports your view. It's extremely unfashionable in high society to notice racial differences in any negative way (at least towards blacks), and the fact that your position ends up agreeing with this is a bit too convenient. It would be one thing if your arguments were convincing, but it's pretty easy to see the cracks.


Your "guy walking down the street" example doesn't explicitly say why stereotyping based on race is bad, but you heavily hint at either one of two conclusions: You believe either that stereotyping is bad because race adds no new relevant information, or that it's just morally repugnant in and of itself and we usually have enough other data to make predictions from. But you don't actually do any work to justify either of these. The former is blatantly untrue with how massively inflated the violent black crime rate is compared to other races. The latter is a problem when someone simply asks "why"? Why is it so terrible to stereotype based on race, but not gender, or age, or body language, or clothing, or anything else? In either case, walking in a bad part of down will always be risky, but I'd feel pretty different if I knew the guy was, say, Asian instead of Black. Asians do commit violent crimes, but at vastly lower rates than blacks, so I'd automatically feel a bit less threatened by an Asian. I'd think he was maybe delivering food or perhaps coming home late from studying at the library or something along those lines.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I was using the "Soviet territory" term more broadly. Poland wasn't a part of the USSR specifically, but it was kept in the Warsaw Pact (which were the USSR's client states) at gunpoint.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is just saber rattling for the moment. Putin has used expansionist rhetoric against all former Soviet territories, and it's foolish to think he wouldn't try to reassemble the borders of the USSR if he could. However, Poland is protected by Article 5 which Russia has shown is a red line it won't cross. That said, if anything were to happen to NATO, or if A5's protection were called into question, then the Baltics would almost certainly kiss their independence goodbye, and Poland would likely be in the crossfire next.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I actually remember your post. You got banned because you took someone else's post, inverted a bunch of the language without telling people, posted it as your own, and then started sneering in the replies. There was a moderator post detailing most of that among the replies.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Why Don't Normies Trust Cryptocurrency?
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The decline in value of currency is usually small year-over-year, with a target of around 2%. If people want a safe way to simply hold value, TIPS have existed for a long time now.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Well my, my, isn't that a convenient restatement of the position? "Oh yeah I totally could take you with one hand tied behind my back, but I have to go water my hydrangeas right now!"




No, this is a blatant strawman of my position. I'm saying I'm not a gnostic atheist here.




Benny-ben?




Come now.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The two words can be used interchangeably in some cases. Most atheists are agnostic by design, while most Christians are gnostic. It's usually Christians making the first claims.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That's not how it really works. The atheist view is typically a response to Christian arguments, not a pre-emptive strike declaring 100% certainty that no gods exist.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That Christianity gets treated with the kid gloves here is a blatant double-standard. The modding happens because the Christians don't even bother trying to defend their superstitions since they know they'll get trounced, so instead they fight with oversensitive interpretations of the rules (declaring anodyne statements to be "unnecessarily antagonistic", "bad faith", stuff like that).




Nobody wants this place to become either a platform for evangelizing or /r/atheism.




This forum should be open grounds to challenge any view.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This post is an interesting little mirror to this sub's CW leanings. Imagine if the positions were reversed with a left-leaning interlocutor instead of a right-leaning one. Say you told a story where they were making snide passive-aggressive remarks implying you were racist. The response you would have gotten would almost certainly be cheering alongside you. I highly doubt they would be as unanimous in their scorn, claiming this post breaks rules, that your previous compromises means you somehow deserve this, or that snide remark essentially saying "we're not your therapist, bro".


The fact that Christianity's cultural side is inextricably linked to the superstitious side is clearly causing some amount of cognitive dissonance. But instead of resolving it (either by severing the two sides, or by rejecting Christianity entirely if doing so is infeasible), this sub... tries to ignore it as much as possible. This sub pretends it doesn't exist, and then gets really conspicuously oversensitive whenever someone reminds them of it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


So how do you want me to interact with this post other than saying "nice blog bro!"? We aren't here to be your therapist.




This part is needlessly antagonistic. Plenty of other people found ways to interact without sneering, including those who replied before you. Surely you could have read their responses for inspiration.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Harry Enten and Nathanial Rakich were and are pretty good respectively, so not all of them were woke activists. But they'll probably be the last of their kind at the site.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Nate says in his footnote that Morris wants to move 538 in a more explicitly progressive direction, so I expect more woke advocates like Clare Malone to be the norm. Without Nate's models or his push for data-driven rigor, the site will likely devolve into having an occasional statistical chart here and there, but otherwise being functionally indistinguishable from Vox. A sad day indeed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, there's a solid wokist tilt to a lot of their writers, although some like Harry Enten and now Nathanial Rakich were pretty solid. Still obviously left-leaning, but more Silver-esque in trying to use data to arrive at good conclusions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


there was no technological ability to meaningfully conquer outside of or into the subcontinent.




Hogwash. The Himalayas form a powerful shield but they're really only an extreme barrier to the northeast. To the east is SE Asia which Indian states rarely bothered with, which stands in contrast to China's centuries of bashing on Vietnam. Invasions from the northwest happened several times (Alexander, Mongols, Ghurids, Timurids, Mughals) while invasions from Indian nations rarely happened in the reverse direction, and when they did they didn't go far. Finally, in the south was the rich trade of the Indian Ocean. If the Greeks and the Vikings could send colonists and military expeditions hundreds or thousands of miles from their original homeland, then the technology certainly existed for India to do something similar, at least more than just Chola.




And yet, you're still not explaining why they should, which was the point of the question.




Because an emboldened China would presumably be bad news for India. One could ask why Poland and the Baltics are sending every gun and tank they can spare to Ukraine, but I'd say the reasoning is pretty obvious. Yet those countries have Article 5 to fall back on if Ukraine collapses, while India has nothing similar. China still claims hundreds of square miles of Indian land in the Northeast, and border disputes flare up pretty frequently these days. India has a vested interest in seeing Chinese revanchism flame out in Taiwan rather than on its own territory, either in the Northeast or by a China-Pakistan alliance doing something in Kashmir.




this just sets up the point that your understanding of India's priorities and interests and the Indian government's are not aligned.






but that's not what I asked ('needs'), or a position of what India believes its needs are.




This is a non-answer.


"Why isn't India more geopolitically active?"


"Because it's government doesn't want to be. "


"Why not?"


"Because it doesn't think it would gain much"


"Why not?"


If the response is that India is perfectly content to free-ride on Pax Americana, that explanation goes out the window when China seeks to explicitly overthrow that order and bring about a Chinese Century.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


India buying great volumes of Russian is the sanctions working as intended.




This is a sentiment I hear often, but it's a cop-out to some degree. During the early days of the war, there were many who wanted the sanctions to entail full isolation of Russia, and India's refusal to sign on caused a few minor diplomatic incidents. Eventually the West decided that the oil price cap was all they could reasonably achieve, but that in turn has meant that Russia's economic situation is far more stable than it otherwise would have been. Saying after-the-fact that "we never actually wanted a FULL oil embargo" is Western cope more than anything.




There also hasn't been a polity known as India for most of recorded history, which makes this a bit of a just-so narrative.




I meant that no Indian power has tried to conquer outside of the subcontinent. I wasn't referring specifically referring to the modern state of India. For the most part it's true for the thousands of years of recorded history, apart from brief incursions trying to control Himalayan passes like Kabul, and notably the Chola empire which I had never heard of until this thread.




And why should it, when not even the US has done so? The number of treaty allies Taiwan has is 0. The number of international agreements to help defend Taiwain is 0. There's no agreement to join.




I wasn't specifically referring to binding treaties here, but rather future intent. The US clearly signaled an intent to defend Taiwan IF Taiwan actually chooses to resist (which is still an open question at this point, admittedly). Japan has also indicated that its open to the idea. There's near-zero interest from anyone else though, including Europe and India.




What major international aims does it need to have?




You could ask a similar question to basically any geopolitically active country. For India it could be countering the BRI, countering Chinese influence in SE Asia, building a Middle Eastern network to isolate Pakistan, forging diplomatic and economic links around the rim of the Indian Ocean to turn it into an Indian lake, etc.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You've blocked me, although I'm not sure why since we haven't had any particular conversations I recall.


In any case, this article has been making the rounds recently that presents a more pessimistic look at the US-India alliance. India has historically been a friend of Russia, and while that friendship has been slowly melting as Russia kamikazes itself in revanchist furor, there are still several downstream ramifications. First, India has refused to join Western sanctions regimes against Russia and is actually probably the second-largest economic lifeline to Russia after China. Second, there's a significant amount of anti-US sentiment in India, often portraying the '03 Iraq war as just as bad, or even far worse than what's going on in Ukraine.


India is a curiously isolationist country. There hasn't been a single invasion going out from India in recorded history, and its generally tried to eschew formal alliances if at all possible. The USA wants to do to India what the UK did to the USA, i.e. use a nation with a bigger population to secure a favorable future. But thus far it looks like India has no real appetite to be a global actor. It's refused to join any agreement to help defend Taiwan and instead looks only to counter Chinese influence within its own subcontinent. It's kind of bizarre that a nation with the third largest GDP (by PPP) has minimalistic international aims, but it might be just something about the Indian character. In any case, it'll most likely take decades before any larger India-US alliance happens, by which point the world will look far different.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Your position is not backed up by recent evidence. If US politicians thought the missile shield would give them an overwhelming advantage, why were they so cagey against Russia's invasion? Why did Biden come out so quickly against sending US troops or establishing a no-fly zone? Why have people like Jake Sullivan had so much influence to make each weapon system like pulling teeth when it came to sending them to Ukraine (e.g. HIMARS, MBTs, Patriots, F16s). The cautious tiptoeing does not strike me as US politicians being blinded by hubris.


If anything, the endless Pascal's Muggings that have occurred around discussions of Russia's nukes have been one of the clearest incentives towards proliferation that we've seen in decades. A large-scale nuclear exchange would be absolutely terrible, but that doesn't mean the reaction should thus be to always back down in the face of nuclear blackmail. Doing so means vastly more nukes in the world in the long term, which means the likelihood of an eventual nuclear exchange goes up by orders of magnitude.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
US missile shields could never credibly protect from most, or even just many Russian nukes. They can protect from single strikes which eliminates some of the bargaining power of nuclear blackmail, because you'll be hemmed into all-or-nothing strats even more than normal. Again, it's about influence, not security.


Security and influence are two distinct concepts. They can interact in some cases, but it's not like Belgium fears getting invaded by Germany or France these days if it doesn't maintain Belgian Influence in those countries. Russian pipelines weren't getting bombed until the war started.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The USA assimilated most white immigrants quite well given enough time. France assimilated its fairly diverse white cultures over centuries (like the south and Bretons in the west). China took manifold Chinese peoples and turned them mostly into "Han". A similar process is occurring in India right now with Hindu Nationalism.


While pessimism is warranted towards assimilation in general, blanket pessimism is not. Assimilation can happen faster or slower given certain characteristics. Two big ones that make assimilation much harder are:


    

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    Differing religions. Religions evolved to be sticky and xenophobic towards other faiths. The total impact depends largely on how much conflict there are between the religions, e.g. Catholic vs Protestant used to be a huge faultline, but now its almost irrelevant in many places.
    

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    Obvious physical characteristics that can be used as a proxy for lower socioeconomic status. Think blacks in the USA, whose skin color marked them as lower-class. Anyone who isn't delusional will then use skin color as a shorthand for "poor", and take all ordinary precautions one would normally take with poor people, e.g. seeing them as more lazy, more crime prone, etc.
    

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


We haven't seen any modern war that was fought in the style of years past... until now.




Ukraine vs Russia is mostly fighting using old Cold War tech on both sides, and the troop concentrations are still far lower than they were in Barbarossa.




Would you be willing to pit a 12 man squad of modern soldiers with a single modern tank against 100,000




Bad example since population levels aren't falling by 99.99% like in this scenario. they're falling by around 20% in the most extreme cases by the end of the century.


I'm not saying population doesn't matter; rather, I'm saying it matters mostly in the economic and technological spheres. If Russia loses 20 million people over the next century then that impacts its ability to have a large economy to produce extremely lethal modern weapons. Worrying about population in terms of "nobody will be around to hold the guns" on the other hand is not particularly credible.




Especially now that we've seen that security threats can come from DOMESTIC sources, and I doubt Putin et al. were willing to nuke their own soil to stop Wagner.




This is a non-sequitur. Priggy's revolt was a case of internal Russian factionalism boiling over. There are some pro-Russian cheerleaders who think Prigozhin was a NATO plant in some 4D chess sort of way, but that's not particularly credible.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The impact of population is becoming less and less of a factor for militaries as technology advances. Modern soldiers are so ridiculously lethal that wars are fought with a fraction of the manpower that previous wars were. A nation's economy, human capital, and technology base are going to be far more important in wars to come, and all of these have been damaged in Russia's case due to this conflict. Future wars won't be won by conscripting a horde of musketeers like it's the 1700s.


Also, this completely ignored the points about nukes and the rise of China.




Because for comparison I'm looking at the United States' ability to maintain a conflict in Iraq, which it doesn't even share a continent with, for years.




The US's logistical capacity flatly outmatches every other country by far, so it's not a great comparison for a nation like Russia who's mostly going to be focused on conflicts near its borders. Russia's ability to supply absurd numbers of artillery shells to its units has been a key driver of Ukrainian casualties, and doing so while under fire was a big reason why the Kherson offensive took as long as it did.