Titus_1_16
17d ago
Well look, you used it naturally enough that I couldn't have told the difference
Titus_1_16
3mo ago
Why do you think humans have infinite moral worth compared to animals?
That's a pretty unusual viewpoint for a modern westerner to espouse (though in a "revealed preferences" sense I guess it's very common). Christian background, Cartesian background, contrarianism, Chinese background.... how come?
Titus_1_16
11d ago
Listening and very much enjoying, nice job
Titus_1_16
17d ago
one man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens
Really nice turn of phrase
Titus_1_16
3mo ago
And are you referring to Irish colonisation by the Viking kingdom based in Dublin in the late first millennium, or are you referring to an Irish colonization that happened much earlier?
The latter. There were Gaelic polities that preceded the big Viking one - this is how Scotland came to speak Gaelic, and how the Picts were pushed east prior to Viking invasion
Titus_1_16
3mo ago
Yes, this is exactly the sort of "context" I was gesturing at (but failed to actually write) in my comment.
Strictly speaking, in the 1840s, the median Irishman was undoubtedly at a lower "civilisational level" than the median Anglo - but there are truer explanations for this than "the Irish are eternal untermenschen".
For example, you mentioned the Border people of the Scottish lowlands, and the Scotch-Irish of Ulster, who played an important role in US history - go back a thousand years for the second half of the first millenium though and you'll see that these peoples are descendants of Irish colonists in western Britain, which is at odds with the eternal untermenschen hypothesis.
For that matter, the median Irishman today is a little bit higher in a material/human capital sense than the median Englishman (though this is only a development of the past 20 years or so)
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
Does anyone really have anything against actual Romanians? I don't think so. It's almost always the latter, and the difficulty is compounded by the High Wokish word for "Gypsy" (that is, "Romani") sounding so like "Romanian"
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
Sorry, that was a failure to convey tone correctly on my part - I agree with the busywork proposal, I wasn't being facetious. Perhaps some holy commandments like an obligation to pray x number of times per day etc
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
Right, so the AI creates busywork for humanity.
Titus_1_16
3mo ago
The Rest Is History podcast is really excellent, wide-ranging and not super ideological
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
As an experienced pedatn, I enjoyed the fact that the line morphed from the grammatically correct "How would you feel now if you hadn't eaten breakfast?" to the strictly incorrect "How would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast?"
Obviously look it's variation in dialect, blah blah prescriptivism, but I still found it funny
Titus_1_16
7mo ago
That's super interesting, have you ever been to Europe? There's a lot that's distinct about White Americans (the capitalisation makes sense here to draw attention to the group, they're not just Americans who happen to be white) compared to other Euro nations. If I'm to trade in unkind European characterisations, White Americans can be a bit insincere, plastic and not-quite-there. Maybe "hollow" would be a better term than "plastic", actually.
I wonder if these traits are what you noticed; "automaton-like" is not a bad match for this set of traits
Titus_1_16
7mo ago
Poland in full war mode would likely crush Russia.
What on Earth makes you think that? Is this a typo?
Titus_1_16
8mo ago
Fair play
Titus_1_16
21d ago
A couple of points: first, in terms of English proficiency being a cultural solvent - English already is the lingua franca of Europe, as it is in many other parts of the world. When an Italian meets a German, 9 times out of 10 they will speak English. When a Finn meets a Spaniard - English (although the Spanish are generally pretty bad at English). And so on.
If Europe is to achieve some manner of proper confederation and thereby preserve itself as anything other than a relic over the next century or two, it needs a language with which to do this. English in Europe (and remember it is after all a European language) doesn't just mean Americanisation, it also means the coalescing of pan-European consciousness.
So English proficiency is not purely a malus, or purely a tool of globohomogenisation.
Secondly - I know you're talking about Latvia as a long shot in terms of migration and integration, but actually its neighbour just to the north, Estonia, explicitly is pursuing a strategy of welcoming ambitious foreigners from the likes of America. They've set up an E-residency scheme that's kind of notoriously open to abuse, but it's meant a lot of foreign tech setting up shop there. Estonia is a more reasonable shot for someone of your profile to move to and integrate into, if you're interested
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
Which Jesse Singal article, the trans kids one?
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
This is a wittier version of the same point I was going to make - bravo
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
Would the USA be "more democratic" if toddlers could vote?
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
You might not believe this, but he's not.
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
Personally I think a 50 year limitation seems fair.
Do you agree that Israel should stop accepting their annual "sorry" payments from the German government, pursuing old men who were Nazis, etc?
It strikes me that it's basically impossible to make proper restitution for millions murdered, but relatively easy to make whole someone that's had their land connived and stolen away from them. If anything, all the Israeli schmaltz and guilt about WW2 should stop well before the Palestinians give up on regaining their rightful homes.
Titus_1_16
21d ago
Russia looks pretty white to me, just saying.
Russia is only about 70% ethnically Russian, from memory. Eyeballing it, at least half of the countries in Europe would have a higher % of their primary ethnicity.
Titus_1_16
4mo ago
Super interesting, and you're quite correct: relatively mild criticism as it goes
Titus_1_16
4mo ago
That's really interesting, what would be some anti-Jewish stuff in the New Testament?
And actually, do any of the books of the New Testament ever go after other groups (ie Roman pagans, Persian Zoroastrian monotheists?)
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
Interesting euro/American contrast here - fewer Euros would tolerate living in a place where you can only "exist" (ie do normal stuff like go to work, go to school, see friends, buy groceries, etc) with the help on a car, so this dilemma doesn't arise as much over here.
That is, I fully accept that freedom of travel should be a fundamental right, but also agree that driving a car is not - it's something you do on the state's sufferance.
These two principles don't often conflict in Europe, but it's a damn hard dilemma. Probably it's easier to solve with AI driving than by rebuilding most of your cities
Nordstream was a Ukrainian op
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