Totalitarianit
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User ID: 3448
Totalitarianit
20d ago
The same geographical gap existed for SARS which originated in Guangdong, but whose origins were in Yunnan too.
Chinese studies don't have a good reputation at the best of times, even on non-political issues. It's extremely naive to believe a study on something so controversial would be done by the book, and with no pressure to come to the politically correct conclusion.
The 2022 study Worobey study was an international collab that involved western scientists and that was also peer-reviewed. I'm not oblivious to the fact that people have political leanings, but this isn't just about China. If it is a lab leak, America has a hand in it too. Bottom line is that Bayesian analysis works for both sides.
Totalitarianit
23d ago
I think this point makes it hard to lean definitively on the other side of this debate, but do I think there is a reasonable Bayesian counter to the lab leak:
- SARS likely originated from a market
- While wet markets do exist all over China, Wuhan is a massive transportation and population hub.
- Wildlife trafficking into Wuhan from places where bat coronaviruses occur naturally was very common and very poorly regulated, meaning even though these bat species weren't local, the market supply chains were.
- Studies from 2022 show early case clusters centering around the Huanan Seafood Market with positive environmental samples
This doesn't prove zoonosis, but the presence of illegal wildlife trade, specific species susceptibility to Covid, the crazy density of these environments, as well as the historical precedent all provide for a decent argument in favor of zoonotic spillover.
Totalitarianit
23d ago
Fair enough. My point in saying exceptionally deadly was to make a relative comparison to other modern and common diseases like the flu. It was statistically more deadly than the modern flu both in absolute and relative terms. Higher hospitalization rates, higher death rates. If the word "exceptionally" is too strong then I can use another word. It was notably or demonstrably more deadly than the flu.
As far as our reaction, yes, it does sort of track that way. Before it had really spread across the US, the world was watching Covid destroy Italy. Our country's reaction in March and April of 2020 was totally understandable given what we knew at the time. What was less understandable were the prolonged lockdowns with exceptions for racial justice protests that were backed by open letters from medical professionals, demonization of Ivermectin (like it was poison), accusations of racism for entertaining the idea that Covid might've leaked from a lab, constant narrative shifts on the efficacy of the vaccine, etc.
Totalitarianit
23d ago
But it wasn't a nothingburger. It was a somethingburger. The mainstream lied, often and badly, but that doesn't mean Covid itself wasn't siginificant.
Totalitarianit
24d ago
We don't disagree that diversity has been used manipulatively and that it has become a loaded term. The deeper point here though is about the loss of a shared version of reality, and our liberal framework's helplessness when it comes to stopping it. Diversity of opinion and thought is great, but not at the expense of an epistemic unraveling that was built over countless generations. State capacity can be quite a burden if it's no longer representative of its people, and in a society that can't decide what it represents, state involvement is obviously becoming more and more in the way. The problem with the liberalist notion is that the absence of a state or central authority results in a vacuum that will inevitably be filled whether you'd like it or not. To that, I would say the state isn't created and maintained out of desire. It's created and maintained out of necessity.
I can't tell if you're addressing me personally, or the idea of people in general pushing Christianity, but if you're presenting that as the only alternative then, yes, I would support that change in direction, at least temporarily. I see a world where people crave meaning, and while the response doesn't need to be some 1950s style cultural Christianity, my intuition and experience tells me there probably should be some type of fundamental moral architecture that can't be uprooted so easily.
Totalitarianit
24d ago
I don't have a direct answer to your question, but I also don't think there's really any way around the fact that Covid was exceptionally deadly when compared to the common flu, and that given what they knew at the time the public health response was somewhat reasonable. That being said, a widespread tailored approach that focused on vulnerable individuals with at least one comorbidity probably would have softened the blow to the global economy, but almost certainly would have killed more people. The blowback to their approach coupled with the political environment was probably unavoidable, but the disgusting behavior of the Western media apparatus made it worse. Every dissenting opinion was met with accusations of racism or conspiracy theory. It was so difficult to wade through all of it at the time because the shear magnitude of manipulation and moral blackmail that was occurring through the media caused me to warp my own perception of what was medically true and what wasn't. The Ivermectin trend I latched onto had me reading all types of studies and meta-analyses that I thought were sufficient enough to support the efficacy of it. It took me a while to emotionally accept the dubious nature of those studies because my hatred of our mainstream and expert class was so deep at the time.
I was less emotionally invested in the lab leak theory although, due to the media's treatment of it, I also ended up digging into it as well. I found myself more fascinated from a curiosity standpoint with the lab leak vs. market origins than my continued efforts at trying to find a grain of truth supporting the efficacy of alternative treatments and prophylactics. Admittedly, this probably had to do with the fact that there no longer seemed to be a light at the end of the Ivermectin tunnel. Overall, I wasn't greatly affected by the lockdowns, or the Pfizer vaccine I took, but I felt and still feel deeply affected by everything the mainstream did outside of that. At the time, I was unable to distinguish between the lies and the medical truths that were being shelled out by the same group of people.
Totalitarianit
25d ago
It is true that forced duty can backfire and create resentment. In fact, I think my own repudiation of the progressive left's control of our institutions made me doubt all structure for a time due to me seeing how structure was weaponized against me. However, as my intuitions and experiences evolve, so does the realization that structure is necessary, and that to always err on the side of freedom over any structure removes all durability from society.
A "culture" that prizes individualism above all else will eventually treat its own moral frameworks and shared norms as arbitrary and/or oppressive. The meaning of words, morals, etc. are challenged and end up being replaced or evolve at a rate that doesn't allow the members within this "culture" to adapt to or internalize. The obvious strength of liberalism is the freedom it allows and pushes for, but the not-so-obvious weakness is that it offers no internal mechanism to preserve that freedom or the culture that allowed to exist in the first place. Over time, this pursuit of individuality erodes the foundations that made "free" expression possible, which results in the ultimate irony of Liberalism unintentionally serving as the driving force behind a new structured (and sometimes more oppressive) system replacing the old one.
I'm no advocate for a hyper-structured or authoritarian society. That being said, a society with no sense of shared purpose, no accepted moral vocabulary, no uniting telos, is one that drifts toward decadence. Liberalism, in its purest form, ends in fragmentation. Fragmented societies typically don't do well.
Totalitarianit
2mo ago
This would be a great Halloween costume if it were more popular. I could totally see myself running around at party dressed up like this and screaming that over and over.
To me, this speaks to the size of each group's mainstream influence (or the percent at which they are represented in media) rather than their actual size. Factoring that in makes this sort of mistake far more understandable. They don't know the raw numbers, but they see the representation distribution throughout the mainstream, which is an inaccurate depiction of the country's true demographic. On the other hand, minorities may recognize the representation they get in media, but then they walk outside, or go to the grocery store, or church, or anywhere else in public and see that they, in fact, are still a minority.
The problem isn't just speech, although that is part of it. It's also the fragmented culture and supercharged social media algorithms that allow bad-faith actors to exploit our free speech norms that undermine the society that protects them in the first place. It's a constant stress test for free speech. It's not really a healthy culture anymore. It's hyper-partisan factions or individuals, often times anti-Western ones, operating freely within a cultural bubble that was designed for good-faith debate and disagreement without totally trashing our society. We do not maintain that bubble anymore. We either need to get back to maintaining that bubble by enforcing a double standard against foreign, anti-Western dissenters, or we can slide toward some form of soft authoritarianism just to keep the wheels on. We are trying both it seems:
• The Dems and the left played their totalitarianism-light method by policing speech and suppressing right leaning ideas to achieve a more egalitarian one-size fits all environment, aka equity.
• The Republicans and the right are more keen on re-establishing and applying a double standard when it comes to Westerners and Western ideals in general. They're especially this way when it comes to Israel-Palestine.
I believe both societal trajectories are authoritarian, except one prioritizes the well being of its people while the other prioritizes an idea that ultimately suppresses its people. I prefer the double standard method. It's imperfect, but it establishes a national identity and what is and is not accepted on a cultural level. I do find it highly irritating though that this double standard is applied selectively for one ethnic group and one country that isn't this one.
Totalitarianit
2mo ago
...the iron fist in the rainbow glove
I like this. I'll probably steal it and use it the next time I get in a political argument.
Totalitarianit
2mo ago
I had a pretty surface level comment about this kind of narrative pushing in the last thread. The scope of my comment leaned more into journalists latching onto stories that fit their narrative, but your comment talks more about these streaming services pushing a narrative which I find to be just as important, maybe even more important. A lot of these newer shows produced by these platforms are really just delivery mechanisms for socially approved moral instruction, particularly when it comes to social issues. It's a pipeline of content designed (whether intentionally or not) to reaffirm progressive narratives, not challenge them.
I haven't seen the show, but I just read the CNN article about it. Like you said I think there is a recognition that there is a problem. They really try to explain its roots being mostly due to social media, which I agree is a major contributor, but they sort of leave out the passive, yet continued attempts at the feminization of the males in our society so that their violent tendencies can be increasingly shifted to the more indirect emotional and psychological kind. In this show, the female utilizes her ability to maximize psychological harm without being too direct, while the male causes direct harm. One is socially accepted and media-protected, the other is criminalized.
What is the message? Based on the article, it seems like the show creator is trying to strike some balance between the two types of aggression (direct-masculine and indirect-feminine) and how social media (which empowers feminine aggression) is a major problem. No disagreement there. He really does seem to want to help the younger generations, but seeing how we all have to tip toe around certain realities, it makes addressing the male "problem" a difficult one.
The optimistic take would be that the "adults in the room" are recognizing the problem, and are laundering it as a white issue to make it more palatable for left-lib sensibilities. But I don't believe it.
I do believe this except I find this delivery method to be unacceptable, and, based on Western countries' current voting trends, I'm not the only one. People are becoming quite tired of whitey being the face of certain negative trends, and that has been expressed many times (see Brexit and the elections of Donald Trump).
Totalitarianit
2mo ago
Yes. Effective policing runs the unavoidable risk of a copper billy-clubbing or shooting a black person on video. Then mainstream media covers it, college campuses and urban areas protest over it, and our streaming services make movies, shows, and documentaries about it. Then Democrats swoop in like heroes to implement policy that will kneecap law enforcement, and the societal burden of impulsive criminals will shift back to law abiding citizens, a lot of whom voted for Democrats in the first place.
That said, I blame our media apparatus and academics far more than I blame Democrats. Dems generally just lick their finger and stick it in the air to see which way the cultural wind is blowing and they position their sails accordingly. Journalists, on the other hand, dedicate their lives to exposing unfairness; except the unfairness they uncover almost exclusively involves the kind that benefits their belief that current power systems must be dismantled. What they rarely consider is the new unfairness that emerges when their version of justice is implemented. When equity replaces order the burden doesn’t vanish, it just gets redistributed and usually onto the very people who can't afford to carry it.
Totalitarianit
3mo ago
I think almost everything you say about China is true, except for this:
If China moves to take it, there's a very good chance they start with ballistic missile strikes on Japan.
I would be surprised if China took this approach. I think they're just biding their time and patiently waiting to outgrow the US to the point that the gap in military capability and logistics insofar as it relates to Taiwan will be too obvious for the US to want to defend it. The U.S. is already making moves to secure semiconductor production at home in order to wind down the strategic importance of Taiwan, so the writing is starting to be put on the wall.
There's also a strong likelihood that when Democrats come back into power, they'll have another Mark Milley type chairman who will tuck his tail and submit to the will of China. I think China is banking on the cost-benefit calculus becoming too lopsided for the US, and in this scenario all they have to do is wait it out a little longer.
I’d be interested to read any argument against this scenario. I’m curious if there are angles I’m not seeing.
Totalitarianit
3mo ago
Ideological victory is upstream from other victories. Slashing at the bureaucracy, even if it is symbolic, it at least a step in the direction of dismantling certain entrenched ideas. I would choose a bureaucracy and institutions that were constructed in the same way if they simply leaned in the other direction ideologically. I'd choose it over either side right now. That does not seem to be an option though. Next best option is to root for this administration to do as much damage as possible to the progressive left. Chemotherapy.
Totalitarianit
3mo ago
As long as they continue to attack the neo-lib blob, then I'm good with it. Everything else was just wishful thinking. I'm good with (or at least tolerant of) many kinds of Democratic plans toward the budget, or taxes, or green energy. I'm not good with progressive totalitarianism and demonization of everything this country was 15+ years ago. The suicidal introspection embraced by Democrats and the left is insufferable, but they won't budge. It's behind why so many people are continuously willing to roll dice with Trump. So down we go I suppose.
Totalitarianit
3mo ago
We probably agree on what the cause is. My emphasis on their when talking about Europeans is due to the type of immigration rather than me casting any blame at them for trying to fix their impending demographic problem. In the U.S., much of our immigration comes from Latin America which is largely Christian, with cultural values that overlap with American society. Europe on the other hand has imported large numbers of immigrants from cultures with very different legal, religious, and social norms. Both the U.S. and Europe face this degenerative population disease, but Europe’s prescription has made assimilation much harder and fueled deeper cultural fragmentation.
Totalitarianit
3mo ago
Are you talking about developed countries' dwindling populations and their attempts at alleviating that problem?
Totalitarianit
3mo ago
I agree with the trajectory, but I disagree with your claim on what's causing it, at least from the American perspective. I think it has more to do with some combination of a geopolitical changing of the tides and the fairly obvious cultural suicide that Europe has allowed to occur with their mass immigration.
Totalitarianit
3mo ago
This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I think you are correct, but as I said I think conflict is inevitable whether the sides prophesize about it or not. The extent and magnitude of conflict can be mitigated but it cannot be avoided. I don't want to project any sort of tough guy attitude, or the idea that people should engage in conflict. I also don't want to promote any sort of paranoid conflict theory. I just believe that circumstances will eventually dictate that conflict happens, even if no one actively wants it.
I am completely on board with mitigation, along with more people embracing a mistake-theorist lean over the conflict theory lean. I just have a fundamental belief that some of what occurs, even conflict, is a matter of circumstance and our nature which are simply baked into reality. It seems to me that the dominant Western policy mindset is heavily saturated with mistake-theory thinking, which ironically has created an environment that’s actually more prone to conflict. Some of these left-leaning policies and ideas (particularly the social ones) are driven by utopian assumptions that ignore structural realities. The effect that has had on our institutions and social cohesion have become pretty evident in my opinion.
It’s not the best analogy, but I always think of it: When shit was hitting the fan in 2020 people made a run for bulk items, especially toilet paper. It was absurd to watch people panic buy toilet paper of all things, but it didn’t matter how rational or calm any individual person was. Once enough people started stockpiling the shelves were empty and at that point even the most reasonable, community-minded person had to join in if they wanted to avoid being left without.
The point I’m trying to make is that some conflicts work the same way. You can personally favor cooperation, good faith, and compromise but once a critical mass of people (on either side) start treating the situation as a conflict, you’re pulled into that dynamic whether you want to be or not.
You don’t have to want conflict, or even believe in conflict theory, for conflict to find you. It’s not always a prophecy sometimes it’s just how cascading events play out when people act in self-interest under uncertainty.
Totalitarianit
3mo ago
I think mistake theory more specifically applies to current progressives and the social left, whereas conflict theory generally applies more to conservatives and the right. In reality, both exist. I believe conservatives are more correct in their approach to the inescapable reality that conflict is inevitable. Even the social left with their utopia-seeking plans often concede that they will need to get through some sort of conflict before they can implement their utopia. With that said, I am not a huge fan of the right wing segment that seems to happily embrace conflict.
Overall, it is a mixture of the theories. Conflict isn’t the result of some grand evil plan, but a natural consequence of competing interests, resources, and shifting circumstances. It is unavoidable. Progressives really buy into the idea that they get a get out of moral jail free card if their intentions are good, even if their ideas create problems. Conservatives, on the other hand, largely accept the unavoidable and attempt to address issues in a realistic, sometimes amoral way that does not interface well into the liberal-progressive framework that is deeply programmed into most of us Westerners. You cannot win rhetorically as a conservative once you start admitting what harsh reality needs to be done to fix problems. The only way to win as a conservative currently is to let the bad ideas of the left reach their logical conclusions, then present those receipts to the public after the damage has been done.
Mistake theory definitely explains the left's drawbacks in the current era, and I think it greatly affected the 2024 election.
I think the cultural poison that has spread across Europe is a Western problem more than it is solely an American one. Obviously, Neo-lib American influence played a major hand through the things you mentioned, but the progressive policy that our annoying American neo-libs try to implement are usually modeled after some European country's system. European countries have leftist policies that are highly touted by the American neo-lib establishment. I think it's more of a symbiotic relationship between European and American progressives that is being characterized by a lot of people, including @anti_dan, as a conflict between Europe and America. That's not how I see it though. It's an ideological war between progressivism, liberalism, and conservatism that affects all Western countries. We're having the same issues with Canada.
Progressivism gained tremendous momentum over the past 15-20 years because it was protected by the ideals and moral framework of Western liberalism. Liberalism could never properly defend or maintain itself, and once it became fully embraced it was destined to be consumed by whatever trending illiberal ideology the masses would be most tolerant of. That ideology was progressivism, and it has effectively Trojan Horsed itself into Western society and its institutions. Its supporters have leveraged those institutions in a way that proliferates their ideas and oppresses their dissidents and ideological opponents. It has gotten to the point that political moderates (mostly liberals) have started to be negatively affected.
We all get confused by making it about countries, or race, or income. These claims aren't entirely untrue. They have their own share of problems and issues to contend with, but they're less true right now than the suicidal, progressive ideology that has captured the Western mind.
Totalitarianit
4mo ago
The idea of fixing systems, whether they be bureaucracies within the government or institutions outside of it, would ideally start on a very fundamental level. That said, I'm not convinced the anti-progressive or moderate segment in our country has that ability right now. The progressive movement maintains that ability because, as you mentioned, they still have the institutions. Things like Entertainment, Higher Ed, etc. aren't conservative in the slightest. They're not even really moderate. As a result, our conveyor belt of future government workers all align themselves on one side. Therefore, the notion of operating within these systems that progressives have taken over (and will continue to replenish) doesn’t sit well with many people, myself included. It seems harder to win that way.
I will acknowledge that what matters to a lot of people are the services that are being provided by the government, and that some people really need those services. I can see how Elon and Trump proposing and implementing drastic measures is concerning to those people, but I still believe the goal is efficiency, not pure destruction. It's fat trimming, except this time it may be done with a cleaver instead of a fillet knife because the fillet knife just doesn't seem to work. I'm also not interested in making political opponents suffer for the sake of making them suffer. I am interested in strategies that will actually address a problem without getting bogged down in the system that is designed to bog things down.
Totalitarianit
4mo ago
I think some people would disagree with it, either because their livelihood directly depends on it or because their livelihood indirectly depends on it (see Democrat politicians). Between those two types, there will be enough squeaky wheels to conflate the real issue of administrative bloat and Elon & crew's mishandlings of its reduction. I think its coverage and the reactions will largely depend on how badly the Trump Admin and Elon manage to piss everyone off in the moderate camp. Your concern about them replacing one biased regime for another is fair, just so long as you can openly admit that the one being ousted was also biased.
I doubt the goal is to weed anything out in a surgical manner. In fact, I think the idea is to not get into the weeds, but simply cut right through them.
I'm not convinced of either, which is why I think it is so interesting. There was clearly a political angle that tried to suppress lab leak.
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