TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
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User ID: 616
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
3mo ago
I can understand people on the left being worried about Trump based on how speech has changed. Personally I don't think it's because Trump is censoring speech, in fact I think it's the opposite.
The progressive left heavily censored speech in the U.S. for the better part of a decade, ramping up especially in the last few years. We have the receipts, it's common knowledge at this point that the FBI and other government organizations colluded with social media sites, news outlets, et cetera to push a pro-progressive message, and sideline or outright ban even relatively centrist people with dissenting views.
If there is a lot of genuine concern, I think it comes from people on the left getting a distorted view of what the information landscape looked like, via their censorship. As things bounce back towards a more representative information environment, of course people will feel shocked.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
4mo ago
Feels like the government is just dismantling the world I’ve spent my life working to become a part of, and I can’t say that I quite understand why.
The academy allowed itself to be hollowed out and started playing politics instead of searching for truth. Yes, hard sciences included.
No, just wanting to keep your head down and “do the science” is not an excuse. I’m sorry for you personally, but academia made its bed and now it will have to lie in it.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
5mo ago
It seems that the vibe has definitely shifted in politics and general social spaces, as many folks last week commented on here. People are more open to using language that used to be termed offensive, right-wing political statements are more in vogue, etc.
I'm curious specifically what all of this means for feminism, and the gender war subset of the larger Culture War. I saw an interesting piece which blew up on X lately, that, in discussing the Neil Gaiman situation, argues:
Shapiro spends a lot of time thumbing the scale like this, and for good reason: without the repeated reminders that sexual abuse is so confusing and hard to recognize, to the point where some victims go their whole lives mistaking a violent act for a consensual one, most readers would look at Pavlovich's behavior (including the "it was wonderful" text message as well as her repeated and often aggressive sexual overtures toward Gaiman) and conclude that however she felt about the relationship later, her desire for him was genuine at the time — or at least, that Gaiman could be forgiven for thinking it was. To make Pavlovich a more sympathetic protagonist (and Gaiman a more persuasive villain), the article has to assert that her seemingly self-contradictory behavior is not just understandable but reasonable. Normal. Typical. If Pavlovich lied and said a violent act was consensual (and wonderful), that's just because women do be like that sometimes.
Obviously, this paradigm imposes a very weird, circular trap on men (#BelieveWomen, except the ones who say they want to sleep with you, in which case you should commence a Poirot-style interrogation until she breaks down and confesses that she actually finds you repulsive.) But I'm more interested in what happens to women when they're cast in this role of society's unreliable narrators: so vulnerable to coercion, and so socialized to please, that even the slightest hint of pressure causes the instantaneous and irretrievable loss of their agency.
The thing is, if women can’t be trusted to assert their desires or boundaries because they'll invariably lie about what they want in order to please other people, it's not just sex they can't reasonably consent to. It's medical treatments. Car loans. Nuclear non-proliferation agreements. Our entire social contract operates on the premise that adults are strong enough to choose their choices, no matter the ambient pressure from horny men or sleazy used car salesmen or power-hungry ayatollahs. If half the world's adult population are actually just smol beans — hapless, helpless, fickle, fragile, and much too tender to perform even the most basic self-advocacy — everything starts to fall apart, including the entire feminist project. You can't have genuine equality for women while also letting them duck through the trap door of but I didn't mean it, like children, when their choices have unhappy outcomes.
Now many linkers and commentators on X are basically arguing - why yes, women don't have agency, and that's why most cultures have reflected that in law and social practice. I think this sort of smugly satisfied mocking of women is in quite poor taste, and not likely to be productive, but there is a deeper point in there. Unfortunately it seems that, even after decades of propaganda, rewriting of tons of laws, giving women voting power, dismantling "oppressive" cultural structures like religion, etc. etc., we still as a society are not able to treat women as adults with agency, and consequences for their actions.
Now a progressive might come in and say - ok, fine we do still struggle with this issue, but hey, it's because of bad social programming! Just give us another 100 years and we will totally hold women responsible just like men, we promise!
That has basically been the progressive line to justify going further and further to the left with social and legal programs. Problem for them is, with the vibe shift I mentioned earlier, I think that argument is running out of steam. The average person no longer seems to be convinced that this is just a cultural problem which will go away.
So, where do we go from here? Do you think feminism will actually be rolled back in a meaningful way? I'm skeptical myself, but I'm also skeptical we will magically start holding women accountable. Not sure what happens next...
There's a fun dramatic little scissor statement happening in the rationalist / post rationalist corner of twitter at the moment. Started by @_brentbaum talking about his girlfriend's high agency:
i learned something about agency when, on my second date with my now-girlfriend, i mentioned feeling cold and she about-faced into the nearest hotel, said she left a scarf in a room last week, and handed me the nicest one out of the hotel’s lost & found drawer
I, and many others, chimed in saying hey wait a second... this is actually kind of concerning! Some of the negative responses:
- not to burst your bubble but isn't this kinda stealing?
- you can just steal things
- I suspect your about to learn a lot of things
and my personal favorite:
- was it shaped like a giant red flag?
As I said though, this is apparently a scissor statement because a ton of people also had the OPPOSITE reaction. Some examples:
- God damn
- She's a keeper
- my wife is exactly like this
etc etc.
Now the reason I find this fascinating is that it's one of the clearest breakdowns between consequentialists and virtue ethicists I've yet seen in the wild. Most people defending the girl of 'scarfgate' are basically just saying "what's the harm? nobody ever goes back for those scarfs. besides they're like $20 most of the time anyway."
Unfortunately a lot of folks get drawn into this argument, and start saying things like well, what if somebody comes back for it later and it's gone? Or what if someone's grandma knitted them that scarf?
To me, going down the consequentialist route is doomed to fail. You can justify all sorts of horrible things in the name of consequentialist morality. (Same with deontology, to be fair.) My take is that this is wrong because she directly lied to someone's face, and then proceeded to steal someone else's property. The fact that most people think it's cute and quirky is probably down to a sort of Women are Wonderful effect, imo, and then they use consequentialism to defend their default programming that women can't be bad.
Either way, curious what the Motte thinks? Is scarfgate just salty sour pusses hating on a highly agentic women? Or are there deeper issues here?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1mo ago
Copying over @RenOS's post from the old thread because I want to talk about it:
Let’s assume you’re a car mechanic. You love your job, even though it is dirty, hot and physically straining. You go through a bookshop, and stumble over one book in particular: “Why being a car mechanic is great”. It explains the importance of the job for society, it talks about the perks, and so on. You look up the guy who wrote it and yep, he runs a car shop. You buy the book and recommend it to many of your friends, maybe even some teens who might consider the path.
Fast forward, the writer is on some talkshow. Somebody asks him how he handles all the grease. He reacts, uh no, of course he doesn’t get greasy, that’s his staff. He just really likes talking with customers. Maybe he does one car once in a while, if the work isn’t too hard and the car is really nice.
I can’t help but think this after reading Scott’s latest book review of “Selfish reasons to have more kids”. No, we don’t have nannies and housekeepers. In fact, almost nobody we know has them. Some have a cleaning lady coming … once per week, for an hour or so. Tbh, this significantly lowered my opinion of both Scott and Caplan. If you want a vision of a more fertile, sustainable future for the general population, it should not involve having your own personal staff. Two hours is nothing.
And I find this especially frustrating since I think it’s really not necessary; Yes having small kids is really exhausting - after putting the kids to bed around 8-9, my personal routine is to clean the house for two hours until 10-11 every day, and then directly go to bed with maybe an audiobook on (but often I’m too tired for even that, and enjoy falling to sleep directly) - but it’s doable, and the older the kids are, the less work they are, at least in terms of man-hours. The worst is usually over after around 3 yo. And the time before that in the afternoon can be a lot of fun.
At least for me, one of the biggest draws of kids is that it’s, to use poetic terms, “a glimpse of the infinite” that is available for everyone. Everyone wants to leave something behind, political activism is sold on making a change, careers are sold on becoming a (girl-)boss managing others. Yet, the perceptive (or, less charitably, those capable of basic arithmetic) will notice that only a tiny sliver of the population can ever cause the kind of innovation that really changes culture, or who can come into positions of substantial power over others.
Kids, however, everyone can have them. And they really are their own little person (especially my stubborn little bastards). And they will have kids as well, who will also carry forward some part of yourself. I’m not just talking genetics here, though that is a large part, the same will go for how you raise them. Unless you leave that to the nannies, I guess, but that’s your own fault.
I wouldn’t have written this since it’s mostly venting tbh, but I’ve seen some here mentioning wanting to discuss it, so I thought may as well start. What do you think?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
8mo ago
SpaceX just caught the booster of the Starship rocket, launching a new age of man made space exploration.
Despite this getting relatively little news in the mainstream media, I am convinced this development marks the beginning of an entire paradigm of space. The cost of kg to orbit should now go down about an order of magnitude within the next decade or two.
This win has massive implications for the culture war, especially given that Elon Musk has recently flipped sides to support the right. Degrowth and environmental arguments will not be able to hold against the sheer awesomeness and vibrancy of space travel, I believe.
We'll have to see if the FAA or other government agencies move to block Elon from continuing this work. If Kamala gets elected, I worry her administration will attack him and his companies even more aggressively. This successful launch, more than anything else in this election cycle, is making me consider vote for Trump.
What are your thoughts? Do you agree with my assessment?
NOTE: I'm going to repost this tomorrow. If I forget, somebody pls steal it and repost for me.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
10mo ago
In general I’ve always disliked freedom of speech. At best it’s a useful tool for dissidents and political opposition to the current prevailing ideology, given I dislike much of that ideology.
At best it's a useful tool for dissidents? Come on, this is an extremely weak take.
The best version of free speech is that the best ideas, and people, can float to the top. Even if you believe in the orthodoxy, if the reigning elite are smart and not tyrants they can use free speech to suss out their own weaknesses, and address them proactively.
Free speech allows for information to flow from the bottom to the top of a hierarchy in a quick and healthy way, letting society pivot and be nimble.
On top of this, it lets people in a society feel they are being heard, and have something to do besides just be ruled over with an iron fist. This means they're more productive, more fulfilled, and can help with social cohesion if people are able to coordinate over the identity of being a citizen.
I'm now curious about what @coffee_enjoyer would say about this as well?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
10mo ago
It really is, at this point, one man standing against the impending total-internet censorship of the Dissident Right. People were making fun of Musk for overpaying for X, but it's an important lesson, a lesson already known by many, that you can't put a price on memetic control over the collective consciousness.
It truly is amazing how quickly freedom of speech has been utterly abandoned by most of the West.
I'm genuinely curious how this happened. Does anyone have a good model for it? Are we just lazy now, and unprincipled? Do people actually believe that 'hate speech' shouldn't be protected.
I don't know, it's just absurd to me on a very basic level that people think free speech isn't under massive attack.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
10mo ago
During the conversation on X between Musk and Trump, they floated the idea of Musk leading a 'government cutting commission' or basically a setup where Musk would come in and cut the fat from the government.
This idea fascinates me, and while I'm sure there are all sorts of reasons it may be terrible, I fear that financially the U.S. may need to do something dramatic like this in order to get the debt under control, etc etc. Also I, along with many other mottizens, am just pretty bearish on the efficacy of most government. Especially federal officials.
The question for me is - how would this work? Which areas do you think would get cut the most? (education was mentioned here specifically) Which areas are critical and should remain mostly untouched? (post office?)
On top of that, if this were to happen, what would be the primary blockers? Do you think Elon is the right man for the job without political connections? Are there ways in which the President can be prevented from firing large swathes of the federal admin? Potential disasters that could happen if critical employees are in fact fired?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
3mo ago
This was one of the paragraphs I almost added in the initial thing. Tradesman is sort of an option. It's not as bad as coffee barista, but breaking six figure incomes seems pretty difficult.
On the ubiquitous internet advice to do this, after getting fired from my tech sales job I applied and worked as an electrician's apprentice for two months last year.
It was absolutely awful. Backbreaking work, in extreme heat. Digging ditches all day to run pipes and wires. Being in crawlspaces, just the worst. Long, loooong hours.
Also, all of the older men had horrible health, tons of injuries, were addicted to drugs and missing teeth, etc etc. The trades are not nearly as glamorous as they are made out to be online.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1mo ago
Absolutely! She actually has a section describing some of the arguments she's dealt with, and good Lord it sounds awful:
Imagine every time you started or ended a relationship, you had to establish every social norm from scratch.
Is it OK for partner to have sex with your best friend?
Is it OK to kiss somebody else in front of your partner?
What about them having sex in your bed when you're out of town?
Is it OK to have sex with another person then tell your partner the details?
Is your partner allowed to bring his lover to Christmas with your family? What about your kid’s birthdays?
If your partner’s lover is having a mental health breakdown, is it OK for your partner to go comfort her when it’s your day with him?
The list is endless, and so will your arguments about it.
I especially don't see how you can raise kids in a poly relationship, without having all sorts of humongous issues and problems. With both parents typically needing to work nowadays, having kids is already extremely demanding on a family's time. Add in other relationships on top of that, and it basically seems like a non-starter.
I agree with the net negative on society, for another reason though - polyamory being seen as even slightly social acceptable destabilizes every monogamous relationship. Now monogamous people have endless thoughts and temptations about "oh maybe we should be poly" which fractures and already crumbling marriage rate. It really is just... bad, in my view.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
3mo ago
Yeah this is just another piece in the endless stream of propaganda blaming all social ills on violent white boys and men. Not even very interesting or a new take.
Fails to have any nuance into the root of the problem it seems, basically just blaming the kid for being gullible enough to fall for evil propaganda. Boring.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
10mo ago
Does anybody else feel like the Motte is their internet home?
I go to other websites. I probably spend more time on them than here.
But the Motte just feels cozy to me. It's where I usually check first, and where I get most excited if I see a lot of activity. Something about this place pulls at my heartstrings.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
8mo ago
Okay wait, am I reading this right? Is 1 million times $20,000 actually TWENTY BILLION?
Good Lord, well I guess if you're going to give a naked bribe don't go small. But still. That is an INSANE amount of money to just casually throw out to a small part of the populace...
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
8mo ago
... and that this is in many ways a much worse thing. Public officials dealing with an emergency can't treat complaints like they're political conspiracy theories, not because such foul play is unimaginable -- I can give examples! -- but because the alternative is imaginable. Disasters are by definition the breakdown of normal systems, with lives on the line dependent on our ability to respond to those gaps.
Yeah I think this is my main issue. When the default response becomes "the other side is trying to smear us with insane conspiracies" then the government becomes basically immune to any criticism.
Extremely worrying development.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
My point at this point, which I think is quite clear, is that ownership is essentially and definitionally the right to deprive others. That's it. I don't like that. In fact, I detest it with passion and rage. I hate it. So, I want an alternative.
You can detest it all you want, you still didn't answer @aqouta's question, which is what is your alternative?
There is a reason we have property, and why it's central to all human civilization. Provide literally any alternative and we can discuss, but you are just saying you hate it and then asking antagonistic questions here.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
3mo ago
Kudos to you for updating after seeing a particularly bad case of massaging the science for political outcomes. I also genuinely don't know how you reform academia and medicine when they are willing to be this blatantly political in their "science."
It's a shame because I love the Academy as an institution and an ideal, but it has become so corrupted it's shocking to me even on the 100th example. I hope for all our sakes we can find a way to save science without burning down too much.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
4mo ago
Another spicy new idea from the Trump administration: Gold Cards!
The idea, as I understand it, is that global citizens will be able to pay a one time fee of $5 million USD, and enjoy a much shorter and less strenuous vetting process to become U.S. citizens. The gold card will effectively function like a green card that is paid for.
In the hearing they mention they want to use this money to pay down the deficit, which I actually think is a great idea. I'm sure it will filter for much higher quality immigration than our current setup of mostly illegal immigrants, anyway.
I'm sure the left will hate this and see it as privileging the rich. And to be clear, it absolutely is! It's extremely unfair for people who want to immigrate and don't have the funds, will never even possibly have the funds, to pay $5m USD. That being said, I like the idea because it very much singles the U.S. shifting towards wanting immigrants who actually pull their weight, and provide something to the country.
While yes of course not all rich people will be a net benefit to the country, by and large I would have to imagine if they can apy 5 million dollars they will be relatively high quality. Plus, as Trump points out, this will massively incentivize people to move their businesses to the U.S. You're a wealthy founder in China, Europe, or Latin America? Just buy a gold card and move your business over!
Anyway, I know we have a lot of libertarians here so I'm curious for thoughts on this? I was personally quite surprised he went ahead and did it - didn't even know this was on the table.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
5mo ago
As clean and safe and whatever else it may be, there is no way around the price. It consistently ranks among the most costly sources. And budget being the tightest constraint, I cannot imagine it being an important part of the strategy for energy transition - maybe some minor and localized cases, but not more than that.
As another commenter asked, are you calculating the insane and targeted regulatory burdens as part of this price? Most nuclear plants that have gone up have undergone extreme lawfare designed to put them out of business. Without all of that, do you suppose the cost might go down?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
8mo ago
I'll go for a more psychological take, and I'd be curious what @coffee_enjoyer thinks as well.
Generally though I'd say that Trump's personality represents the aggressive masculine behavior that is most repressed in the modern PMC / progressive class. Direct confrontation, bravery to go against the crowd, and immunity to personal attacks and shaming are all extremely destabilizing to the progressive psyche.
There are complicated reasons for this, but the most basic way I can think to put it is that feminism became a strong force because the masculine side of world society went way overboard with WW1 and WW2. Society psychologically needed a balanced and reacted strongly with fear of the masculine, fear of anger, fear of aggression, etc.
When you see something or someone that represents parts of yourself that you repress, it often creates really judgmental or shameful feelings in you. This is sometimes talked about as projection but that's a whole nother complicated thing.
I think on the flip side the reason the Clintons pissed off the Republicans so much is that the demographic that hated them was also repressing what the Clintons represented - namely rich, cosmopolitan, intellectual, and polished coastal elites. But that's a bit more complicated as well.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1mo ago
It seems lately that within the rationalist / post-rationalist diaspora on twitter and elsewhere, polyamory is starting to come into the crosshairs. I've seen a few 'big' accounts in the tpot space come out against polyamory, but the biggest one has to be the recent post that Kat Woods put on the Slate Star Codex subreddit, Why I think polyamory is net negative for most people who try it.
I wont summarize the whole article, but recommend you go read it. The TL;DR is:
- Most people cannot reduce jealousy much or at all
- It fundamentally causes way more drama because of strong emotions, jealousy, no default norms to fall back to, and there being exponentially more surface area for conflict
- For a small minority of people, it makes them happier, and those are the people who tend to stick with it and write the books on it, creating a distorted view for newcomers.
Also, a rather hilarious quote from the middle:
When your partner starts dating a new person, that person can’t just have drama with your partner. They can have drama with you. And your partner can have drama with their other partner.
It gets complicated fast.
I remember once I had drama caused by my boyfriend’s wife’s boyfriend’s girlfriend’s girlfriend (my meta-meta-meta-metamour)
In general, I think this is a continuation of the vibe shift against social experimentation within the rationalist communities, trying to push them back a bit more towards 'normal' social standards. It has been happening for quite a while, and I'm not surprised it continues to happen. My basic view is that while the experimentation and willingness to shrug off societal norms led to a lot of fascinating and good new ideas within rationalist groups, unfortunately, as always happens with these sorts of things, issues arose that reminded people why these ideas were fringe in the first place.
For those not steeped in rationalist lore, there have been many 'cult-like' groups that have hurt people arising in the rationalist and especially EA space. Some of the early and notable ones were Ziz, the whole Leverage fiasco, and then of course later on you have the highest profile issue with SBF. But these are just the most notable and even news worthy. On top of these there are dozens, probably hundreds, of smaller scale dramas that have played out in day to day life, similar to what Kat talked about above.
I actually think her point about drama scaling with more surface area in polyamory to be quite salient here. In general one of the purposes of societal norms and rules is to make sure everyone knows how they and others are supposed to act, so that arguments over constraints and less annoying and difficult. When you throw out major parts of societal norms, things get complicated very quickly.
Of course the whole polyamory issue ties into the broader culture war in many ways - notably the push back we've seen against wokeism, and the radical left more generally. I think overall the appetite people have for radically changing social norms has shrunk dramatically over the last few years. Sadly, I am not sure that necessarily means we'll go back to a healthy, stable balance. Looking at the people on the conservative side, the loudest champions of a traditional moral order seem to be grifters, or at least hypocrites where they say one thing, and do another in their personal lives.
That being said, I am hopeful that the uneasy alliance between the new conservative, Trumpian movement and traditional Christians is finally fracturing. To bring in another CW point, Trump recently posted an AI generated image of himself as the Pope. This understandably pissed off a lot of Christians, and led to them ending their support for Trump's antics. (I happen to be one of them.)
To which his response is, basically, "why can't you take a joke?"
Anyway, I am curious to see where all these social norms shake out, especially with regards to relationships and dating.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
4mo ago
Update on the continuing dramatic saga of DOGE: apparently the Department of Education no longer exists.
Now this could be a sensationalist media headline, but if not I am shocked that the DOGE team and Trump's cadre et al are going this hard, this fast. They must basically be saying they're going to get a ton of legal challenges anyway, so they might as well do as much as possible and keep up the momentum, destroying everything before the dust clears. It's a bold strategy, and frankly as a spectator it's incredibly exciting, I must admit!
Curious for people's thoughts on the Dept of Education getting shut down? Personally I think it's a good thing - our education system has had terrible outcomes with no accountability for far too long.
In other related news, FEMA send $59 Million dollars to house immigrants in luxury hotels in NYC last week, and Social Security has been sending money to dozens of people over 150 years old, among other issues like the system for SSNs not being re-duplicated.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
5mo ago
I think the general harm is more of a human capital / social capital / cultural capital issue overall.
Mass immigration risks eroding the culture and trust that built so much wealth and dominated the world. That’s a bad thing if it does happen. It’s not guaranteed, but mass immigration of low skill and low IQ people is one way to get there.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
5mo ago
This all seems very odd. If this is in response to a foreign threat of some kind it seems like a very credible and serious one indeed. It is also of course sending bolts of static electricity through the creases of my tinfoil hat, but I have no idea how to interpret them. I would appreciate hearing anyone’s thoughts on this.
I just want you to applaud you for the beautiful prose of this paragraph.
What really pisses me off is that the head of the DoT Pete Buttigieg is calling Elon Musk a conspiracy nut for claiming this, and dozens of other articles are calling it misinformation and 'blatant lies.'
And yet if you go to the Asheville regional website it literally says that no flights may land without prior permission.
I know at this point I shouldn't be shocked anymore by the blatant lies of the media, but it continues to baffle me how blatant and idiotic they are about it.
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