TracingWoodgrains
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User ID: 103
TracingWoodgrains
4mo ago
I don’t think it works to treat that passage as not specifically about sex when he emphasizes it is why he will not bother to address sexual ethics. What does Singer think about sexual ethics? That. That is the core of it.
I don’t precisely disagree that utilitarians, in their daily lives, are conscious of duty to the near. I disagree that they have a philosophical justification for it that amounts to more than just stapling the same instinct all people feel onto their framework. More, I disagree that their advocacy for increased duty-to-the-far can or claims to come without tradeoffs. Attention is limited, and utilitarian arguments—Singer’s in particular—constantly focus on the need to assign less of it to the near and more of it to the distant.
So—yes, in their daily lives, they have friends and family members, and yes, when pressed, they come up with utilitarian-sounding justifications for it. But that, I argue, is a second- or third-order kludge to reconcile human instinct with a moral system that does not inherently account for it or treat it as relevant.
I expect people to have insightful comments on every domain of behavior they claim authority over. Singer claims authority over all of ethics and should be held to that standard.
TracingWoodgrains
5mo ago
I very frankly do not care who someone is "adjacent to"; I care who they are and what they say. Your favored public thinkers, whoever they are, are extremely unlikely to talk about things as in the link above. Know why I can say that? Because I follow just about everyone who talks visibly about that stuff. People should talk about it more. That he does so is a credit to him and a strike against those who complain that I would so much as mention him.
Your line about "Jews" betrays your own ignorance about him, incidentally. He's anything but antisemitic, and inasmuch as I have disputes with him on that broad topic, it is that he sees Israel's hands as rather cleaner than I personally do. Your opponents do not all fit into a single bucket that you can label "fascist" and have done with it, and I have little patience for dark insinuations of this sort.
TracingWoodgrains
2mo ago
While I maintain my reservations, I also generally enjoy the company of the people here and have nothing to hide in terms of associations. In this case, I was referring to his original posts and to Substack, as @FirmWeird accurately noted. I'm mostly just too distractable to post to multiple platforms simultaneously with any regularity, and yeah, Twitter is in a bit of a golden age for Mottelike effortposts atm, so I've been enjoying my time there.
TracingWoodgrains
2mo ago
TracingWoodgrains
2mo ago
TracingWoodgrains
4mo ago
Oh, I see a lot of open questions and a lot of room for my judgment to shift in a number of directions—but few beyond complete falsehood that are highly exculpatory for Singer. Your hypothetical is not impossible but even in a scenario like that the mixing of career benefits and an affair is morally fraught.
TracingWoodgrains
5mo ago
There are absolutely competent people within it, inasmuch as there are people within it at all. The issue I'm pointing to is one of raw numbers, not one of competence.
TracingWoodgrains
10mo ago
It's the same set of 4 charts I embed towards the top of my article, showing the relative rankings of students of different races on academic, extracurricular, personal, and overall axes.
TracingWoodgrains
1hr ago
I post attribution to the things I link. In that specific case, what I linked was a Substack post that someone else had linked here, and I attributed it to the original post and told people where I found it as it was relevant. Inasmuch as you have a grievance against those who have left here with bitter feelings, turn inwards and accept that this place could have been the incubator you envision, and you and yours fumbled that. It will not be what it could have been, your own choices and efforts at culture-building contributed to that, and you can resent those who left if you'd like but you can't rebuild lost goodwill by wishing it were otherwise.
That's all I have remaining to say to you on any of this. I wish you the best of luck finding more people who want to spend time around you.
It is a reflection of that sense of betrayal. I'm not sure what's odd about feeling betrayed by a large chunk of your online community rallying behind the idea that they don't want to share a country with you. That you would struggle to understand it is a bit baffling.
Like, c'mon: "I don't even want to live in a group of hundreds of millions of people that includes both me and you. Your ideals disgust me on a fundamental level. But hey, now that you've broken out, where's the promotion for us hometown lads?" Surely you can see why I'd find that a bit rich. You cannot at once reject someone as unworthy to share a polis with you and expect them to treat your companionship as meaningful.
The friend-enemy distinction matters. Put bluntly, I see you personally as wanting to put me on the enemy side of the friend-enemy distinction, repeatedly defend that choice, and then post in resentment about a lack of friendship resulting from that. Choose one.
I don't at all think I'm reading too much into a single word, no. It's obnoxious for people to treat me as a representative of a coalition that rejects me and that I reject, and it is a specific coalition, not simply a relative term. Using it suggests neither understanding nor a wish to understand, and I find it much easier to simply build elsewhere than to bridge a determinedly unbridgeable gap.
Re: the FC thing—that was mostly relevant as a reminder that if that sentiment was broadly shared here, then I should not put my energy into building this space. If the zeitgeist of a space is “we don’t even want to live in a country with you,” it sure isn’t the sort of space I want to put my creative energy into.
As for the map—the map is that I spend the overwhelming majority of my politically relevant time online pushing against prog excesses, I have never self-identified as one and continue not to, and at this point I literally work for a law firm that is overtly anti-prog, but due to a few high-level traits, a loud subset of people cannot help but map me into that category regardless. The map is that after years of watching you and yours form overtly and obviously incorrect models of who I am and what I do, then cling to them after you should very well know better, I prefer to spend my time engaging with people who don’t do that. The broader map is that some form of this sentiment, spread over a hundred excellent former regulars here, is why there are a hundred excellent former regulars here, and the problem is not with them.
That was one of the moments that holds the most salience for me, yeah, alongside this from @FCfromSSC. This forum was very much the place I came into my own as a writer, which made it much more painful for me to hear how people saw me when I strayed from the anti-prog line. It's no small thing to watch a large crowd in your digital hometown, so to speak, cheer someone on as he emphasizes he wants nothing to do with you or yours, and no small thing to watch many of that same crowd go on to cheer others as they frame you as a lying agent of the Cathedral who should be banned from the space and whatnot. Many people I respect took issue with my LoTT prank; I remain uniquely disgusted with the reaction I got from this forum in a way that's not easy to shake. The shift from "my online home turf" to "just another forum I visit and post in sometimes" was a gradual one, but that settled it pretty unambiguously. And I'd be lying if I didn't look with grim satisfaction at the place others said would turn into a progressive monoculture and see that it has, despite being quiet, remained precisely the thoughtful discussion space I hoped it would be.
I have always been exactly who I claim to be, and always aimed to do exactly what I claim to be doing. Part of aiming to be honest and open in my self-presentation, though, is that it stings quite a bit when people I think should know better treat me as something I'm not, or reject me for who I am. Things get heated, yes; people don't mean quite that by it, sure; but I do remember.
You mentioned previously a concern about an attitude of "I'm going to cash in on a post from my niche hangout, and not give credit, because I'm afraid I'll get cancelled." I do think my behavior demonstrates pretty clearly that I'm not afraid of controversial associations, not even of attaching my name and career to them. I talk about rDrama in public regularly, where I'm a known regular; I go on podcasts with Richard Hanania and Alex Kaschuta and Walt Bismarck and anyone I think I can have a good chat with; I cover stories and topics sensitive enough that most won't touch them with ten-foot poles. I'll talk with anyone who will talk with me, and build alongside anyone who wants to build alongside me. But I also take very careful note of how people act when the chips are down and my back is against the wall, and when I see people place me on the enemy side of the friend/enemy distinction, I take that seriously.
It's funny, because in many senses I get along well with FC personally inasmuch as we interact; I've appreciated my interactions with you personally; I get on well with many people here and have a lot in common with many of them. In a sense, though, that's what makes it tricky: if my own experience here left me feeling burned, despite making many friendships, usually being well-received, and having a great deal in common with many here, how could I possibly recommend this place as a good conversation spot to anyone who doesn't share the dominant viewpoints here? If, every time someone gets frustrated and leaves this forum, the collective local mind sees it as an issue with that person, not crediting their critiques, what am I to think?
Unsurprisingly, I stand by my long-held critical analysis of this forum. I think it is torn between two purposes, one implicit and one explicit, and the implicit one has been winning for a very long time. Explicitly, it wants to be a respectful meeting place for people who don't share the same biases. Implicitly, it is a place for people who don't like progressives to chat about politics and culture. It works great if you want to be criticized from your right, or if you have an anti-progressive or a more niche idea to share, but people are doomed to disappointment at the gap between its implicit and its explicit purposes unless they share its biases, and if they share its biases they will only entrench those biases further.
I'm sorry to watch this forum stagnate, because after everything it still holds a special place in my heart, and out of respect to it and recognition that I already struck a blow against it once, I've refrained from encouraging people to join the space I think has broadly succeeded in the culture-building project this place envisioned (the postrat oasis on Twitter). If posts from here strike me, I'm more than happy to share them with attribution. When it's relevant, I'm more than happy to talk about this place and the role it's played in my own journey. I personally like, get on with, and respect a great many people here. And yes, of course if the users or mods explicitly want me to promote it in some form, I'm happy to take a look. But yeah, my memories of the Motte have been bittersweet for years now.
TracingWoodgrains
1mo ago
Not really something I have the bandwidth for atm, unfortunately, but I'm happy to provide the questions as a base template for anyone wanting to run it again.
TracingWoodgrains
2mo ago
That's the pipeline for you. I was surprised it went quite that far, but it's a good story!
TracingWoodgrains
2mo ago
I had an argument with him once that abruptly and very significantly changed my mind, my values and my entire perspective on a whole host of issues, all in a single sentence.
This is healthy for me to hear. He and I had a falling out some time back, and I admit it's colored my impression of things; I'm glad to have such a clear reminder of what he could bring to the table at his best to balance against my own sentiment.
TracingWoodgrains
7mo ago
Not yet, but I’d like to polish it up a bit and post it on substack/disseminate it further.
TracingWoodgrains
11mo ago
while it is true that speakers of tonal languages are substantially more likely to exhibit AP, even among musically trained children it's not really an "almost everyone" thing
I do think it’s worth emphasizing the difference between “musically trained children” and “children trained in absolute pitch.” It’s a specific skill related to musicality but neither fully contained within it nor necessary for it; knowing that children receive musical training says relatively little about their specific pitch training.
It’s possible that I’m stating it too strongly! It’s an understudied, underutilized training process, since people have broadly treated it as a mysterious divine gift rather than a specific, trained skill. I think the most precise statement would be “far more people than generally acknowledged can develop absolute pitch during early childhood with relatively low effort.” But mostly I just think people should move from completely ignoring it to studying it enough that we know how prevalent it can be.
TracingWoodgrains
2mo ago
What are you talking about here? Last time I recall mentioning systems on Twitter it was to marvel at the way some people take the whole thing seriously.
I freely admit association with the Motte as appropriate. This place was a big part of my own intellectual journey and I have nothing to hide about it. In this case, Twitter throttles Substack links as if they're ads, so I couldn't link the Vitalist's blog without my posts getting throttled into oblivion. I even mention my connection in the replies to that post.
TracingWoodgrains
4mo ago
I think the two are inherently connected in important ways—that a world where people share more of Singer’s ideals is one where they share more of his behavior as well. For an ethicist, their life is and must be their message. We all know about the sexual misadventures of Mohammed and Joseph Smith. Secular ethicists, too, must be judged by more than simply their abstract ideas.
TracingWoodgrains
4mo ago
Sure. Of the things I listed, I think lying to your affair partner is rather less significant than most other parts of the story—I just wanted to establish that it was one of the points demonstrated by the email.
TracingWoodgrains
4mo ago
“I don't see how that is shown by the email in question.”
“If you were thinking you were the only one, and if that was crucial to what you felt about our relationship, I’m sorry, that isn’t true.”
That is: he lied by omission by not mentioning multiple simultaneous affairs. I don’t find your “emotional cheating” reading plausible; in context, it seems strained to read it in any way other than “actively pursuing the same sort of relationship he has with her, as the opportunity arises based on distance.”
TracingWoodgrains
5mo ago
Did you? I barely noticed that happened on my timeline. It didn't really pop up except from, like, a BARPod listener tagging me.
TracingWoodgrains
8mo ago
I believe I address this adequately in my article, so before I answer I’d appreciate hearing your understanding of my opinion given my article’s commentary on the matter.
Nah. So far as I’m aware it would have been prohibitively difficult to doxx me given the paucity of info about me online. I didn’t work too hard to hide my identity, all things considered, but no potential doxx was anywhere near my radar.
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