Westerly
2yr ago
What would it take to convince you
How about her successfully killing herself on her own, for starters?
Westerly
2yr ago
Many such cases. Similar to the Oberlin bakery.
Westerly
2yr ago
Seems a fitting illustration of my earlier comment that mentioned the recurring theme of suicidality of leftism and endless, unquestioning affirmation. If you would affirm and aid a teenage girl in cutting her breasts off, why not aid her in committing suicide? Who is to say her desire is invalid? She is just speaking her truth.
In discussing transgenderism in teenage girls, such as in Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage, analogies to other forms of self mutilation like cutting and anorexia are frequently brought up. To those (such as myself) that question gender affirming care, there is the fear that we are effectively engaging in cutting-affirming care. I can easily imagine a future with suicide-affirming “care” for teenagers being the logical endpoint. I can even imagine the arguments like “They are going to commit suicide anyway, you might as well make it legal and as painless as possible” (see: abortion and drug arguments)
Westerly
2yr ago
Was this a known effect of fluoride when it was introduced to water supplies?
Seems possible, but it feels like “I invented a character that disagreed with me but then realized my opponents were stupid and I was right all along.” On the other hand, is using an example of a real person much different? Sure, it reins in the most ridiculous excesses, but there are so many people with such a variety of contradictory experiences in the world that maybe even cherry-picking a real person isn’t all that different from inventing a character out of whole cloth.
Westerly
2yr ago
The traditional SSC response would be something about ingroup and outgroup and how when they say “white people” this is code for red tribe white people aka bad white people unlike themselves. I do not believe this. I believe there is a legitimate undercurrent of self hatred and suicidality to a lot of left-leaning beliefs. I believe the honest answer would be that white people should (ideally voluntarily) just die out.
Westerly
2yr ago
That’s the feeling of your brain growing. Keep at it, you’re doing well!
This is just bitchy and unnecessary
Westerly
2yr ago
I may have misread the original comment, but I don’t believe he suggested affirmative action caused BLM, but rather that blank slatism did. And that blank slatism also causes affirmative action
I believe the argument would be like this. Blank slatist observes more black men are shot/killed/imprisoned by police and the justice system. Because of blank slatism the only conclusion can be that this is a result of systemic racism, as opposed to any difference in criminality or violence in the affected populations. This same reasoning is leveraged for affirmative action and BLM: that any different average outcomes can only be the product of racism because of blank slatism.
In my view this is an accurate diagnosis of the faulty reasoning underlying both movements
Westerly
2yr ago
Huh. I thought therapists were for talking about why you were sad or whatever. I don’t mean to be rude but this just sounds like a paid friend where you just chat about whatever you like. Would he play xbox with you if you asked? Is there a reason you don’t just talk to a free friend about this instead? Once again, not trying to be rude but I had no idea people used therapists this way and it is very shocking to me
Westerly
2yr ago
Just out of curiosity, how does this even come up with your psychiatrist?
Westerly
2yr ago
We can now see that the incessant fears of “AEO” and “Sneerclub trolls” were always just ways to shut down discussion of certain topics. There is literally nothing to worry about now that we’re no longer on reddit but the accusations haven’t stopped
Westerly
2yr ago
Hardcore fans are defined by their slavish devotion to some IP, if any group especially lacks taste it is hardcore fans. The tasteful enjoyers move on from a product when quality declines, the cultlike fans are the ones still buying iteration 37 even though quality went down the drain
Westerly
2yr ago
How does one look at the current entertainment landscape and conclude we need even more remakes?
Westerly
2yr ago
As someone who also honors the traditions of his people
Bro you’re getting seething mad at an internet mod, you can drop the macho trad act for a second
Westerly
2yr ago
This is the truth. Women are infamous for hating guys that have tinder photos “holding fish” or standing in front of their truck, being classic low status red tribe indicators. If you are on The Motte you shouldn’t be reading as visibly red tribe, and unless you sperg out they will just assume you’re leftist because of the confusing tribal signals.
Westerly
2yr ago
leftists are always on the lookout for things to subvert. Because extreme leftists fundamentally cannot create, only destroy
Oh come on this is ridiculous. While leftist entryism seems to be a real phenomenon, blanket stating that leftists are just fundamentally evil like this requires a little justification
Westerly
2yr ago
At least for me this is confounded by demographics. Any “reasonably nice” hobby I am involved with is overwhelmingly made up of college-educated whites and jews. That alone tells you what the slant of the place will be outside of explicitly contrarian spaces like TheMotte
Westerly
2yr ago
But that’s not the point of his post. If he had to establish white nationalism was desirable first he would never be able to get to the questions he wanted to ask. I do agree that he could have probably gotten to his questions without revealing his personal preferences to such an extent though
Westerly
2yr ago
The absolutely autistic behavior is not going to help him get people to engage with him. It is clearly inadvisable to engage with him, you just keep walking and look down
Westerly
2yr ago
If I say I will bomb your house if you post on the motte one more time, then you post and I follow through by bombing your house, wouldn’t it be fair to call my action “unprovoked aggression”? But hey, I warned you your motte posting was a red line and you did it! You brought this on yourself! As I see it, whether or not this is “unprovoked” hinges entirely on whether the demands/desires/red lines are reasonable or not, and I’m not passing judgment on that, just pointing out that it doesn’t matter what Russia said in 2008 unless it was reasonable
Westerly
2yr ago
Involvement on its own doesn’t mean anything. Ironically this is somewhat analogous to claims of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 elections
Westerly
2yr ago
A somewhat related question, but just how does this outright denial of intelligence as a concept square with every day experience? I don’t even understand how this quasi religious taboo can hold up. I mean, are dogs not less intelligent than humans? Do dog breeds not differ in intelligence? Have they ever interacted with someone vastly less or more intelligent than themselves? When you interact with someone maybe 40 or 50 pts lower than yourself the difference is just glaring, I just don’t even understand how you can hold to a denial of intelligence in light of such experiences.
Westerly
2yr ago
I just had this experience in a discussion with someone, and I saw a pattern or script of responses I’m sure some of you have seen before. Intelligence came up, and I was met with “everyone is unique, with their own unique set of abilities, there is no such thing as intelligence.” [Mention IQ] “Oh, wasn’t that debunked by some studies recently?” [Disagrees] “Well IQ tests are just biased towards rich people that know about regattas.” [Deny the regatta myth] “Well all they are measuring is ability to take IQ tests” etc etc etc
I’m not really expecting to persuade somebody to change their mind, but the feeling of going up against this was so daunting. I just felt like I was going up against a castle built by decades of anti-intelligence messaging, and in a Bayesian sense their priors against the very concept of intelligence were so strong that just nothing I could say would even budge them. How do you respond to this? Probably the answer is just walk away. I’m not even sure what I am looking for since I know persuasion really isn’t on the table, but just how do you respond when this comes up in conversation? The person I was speaking with was extraordinarily civil, and not at all upset by my statements fwiw
Westerly
2yr ago
So we set the precedent that threatening nuclear annihilation gets you any concessions you ask for? Sounds like a way to guarantee we get more frequent threats of nuclear annihilation. If it worked once why shouldn’t he keep doing it? Isn’t this where the “don’t negotiate with terrorists” adage comes from? I don’t see how this averts any threat, it just kicks the can down the road by virtually guaranteeing such threats become more common. Now maybe that makes sense if you have some reason to believe you’ll be better positioned to resist them in the future and you just need to buy time, but that isn’t obvious to me
I don’t even understand what argument you are making and neither do your interlocutors seem to. What is the point of the haggling over the price comment if it has (apparently) no bearing on anything?
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