ZanarkandAbesFan
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User ID: 2935
ZanarkandAbesFan
11d ago
I'm also blocked by them. I'm honestly surprised anyone thought I was noteworthy enough to block.
My outsider perspective is that the Democratic party considers its outgroup to consist of Israel and Republicans, and therefore supports an Iranian victory against that outgroup.
ZanarkandAbesFan
20d ago
The retard right finds the motte.
ZanarkandAbesFan
22d ago
Might makes reality
ZanarkandAbesFan
22d ago
That's fair enough - that's the sort of perspective I don't have.
ZanarkandAbesFan
22d ago
Every identity conceals a hidden struggle, a compromise, a division. America is red tribe blue tribe, white and black, male and female. It is only by forging a common identity that supersedes those divisions that people can get on the same side. But that identity in turn needs opposition to form it. We are Americans, not Mexicans or Canadians. The conflict, resolved at a lower level, simply moves up the chain.
What sort of global opponent, short of an alien invasion, would rebuild a strong American identity in the near term? The American left wing media seems to mostly be actively cheering on Iran ("Death to America" and all that) in the current conflict.
ZanarkandAbesFan
22d ago
I think in most cases, politics are about values.
I think that's a significant part of it, but there are other meaningful elements. The Green party in the UK has until recently attracted voters whose main issue is the environment, despite their very outspoken about anti-nuclear position, because environmentally-minded voters are attracted by the vibes of the party rather than their values (of course, you could get into a discussion about whether these voters' values are actually reduced carbon emissions or just the positive vibes themselves). Similarly, I know people who I don't think would ever vote for The Conservatives, even if they aligned with the party on most of their values, because of decades of conditioning by the left-wing media ecosystem telling them that such parties are evil.
ZanarkandAbesFan
23d ago
I had a Finnish friend whose surname was Suomi ("Finland" in Finnish)
ZanarkandAbesFan
24d ago
In that case, what would you have Iran 'do' for it's security against western attacks?
ZanarkandAbesFan
26d ago
of course, with something as complicated as chess, it's not just a matter of scaling some number down by 50% or whatever.
That's basically the issue.
ZanarkandAbesFan
26d ago
That said, I do wonder if chess engines, given their clear superiority over any and all humans, might enable the best of both worlds, but also, as an outsider, I could be missing some important distinctions.
Chess engines are simply too strong to be used as sparring partners. People improve most when they have the chance to play consistently against players at their own level or a bit higher. The main benefit of chess engines is their use as analysis tools.
ZanarkandAbesFan
26d ago
It seems obvious to me that the best way to grind hours of experience playing chess is by playing online, which is not gender segregated. Perhaps even more valuable is playing against an engine and doing analysis of games.
Online games are faster and more casual, and typically don't involve both players analysing the game afterwards (a crucial part of chess improvement). The best way to gain experience is generally to play OTB (over the board) games at classical time controls (>=1 hour per player).
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
You won’t arrest the heads of US companies if they come to your shores. You know it and so do we.
You don't think that Euros make similar witty remarks about each other's countries when talking about each other?
No, they don't. Most europeans don't have any opinion about the healthcare systems or racial relations in other european countries, and would be a bit confused if you made a derogatory joke on the topic expecting them to join in.
There are some commonly understood stereotypes, like the French always being on strike or bureaucracy being bad in places like Italy. But if you made a humerous comment about something like that, the response would be something along the lines of "Haha yeah, I've heard it is pretty bad there". That's quite different from remarks about America which sound more like "Don't those morons realise that their system is terrible and they're stupid for not fixing it".
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
This is my main question. At this point it seems clear that Europe is basically fine with Iran being an irrational, belligerent regional power that funds terror wherever it can, but will we/they really accept paying energy taxes to Iran indefinitely just for the sake of spiting Trump/Republicans?
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
I'm a gender-realist but I honestly think that the situations you've desrcibed are caused less by women making worse decisions than men and more by the fact that men are stronger and more violent. A man in a relationship with a mentally unstable woman is less likely to experience physical abuse/murder than the other way around. It's easy to say that it's silly of women not to bear these sorts of dangers in mind when picking partners but the simple reality is that it's very hard not to have sex with someone you're attracted to, and if women were as strong and violent as men I think we'd see just as many of these stories where the man is the victim.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
Little Don knew his IQ tables and bell curves as soon as he learned to read.
Well, knowing group average IQ scores might prime someone to be favourable to Jews.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
It's not a question of a separate underclass. At the same socio-economic level, native Brits get the book thrown at them for stuff that's tolerated when done by Muslims. Hence our PM's nickname "Two Tier Keir".
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
Except that America is freakishly good at assimilating people and most of the migrants are from groups that aren't that different and also regard American white identity as aspirational.
Doesn't the second part of this sentence undermine the first? It's easy to be good at assimilating people when the people are already co-operative. The recent Somali fraud scandal seems to illustrate that when America tries to assimilate the type of immigrants that European countries get, they get European outcomes.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
Is it? Looks like authoritarian multiculturalism with none of the redeeming qualities Singapore has.
I think it's even worse than that, because authoritarian multiculturalism suggests to me some uniformity of enforcement. I think what we're seeing emerge in the UK is a unique form of caste system, where the favoured groups (Muslims and third-world migrants) aren't subject to the usual laws yet still perform overwhelmingly negatively in most outcomes due to their extreme dysfunction.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
The UK is careening toward authoritarianism, but it's hard to predict what flavor it will take, or whether it will quickly disintegrate into a failed state.
I think the flavour is already clear: anarchy-tyranny, where certain demographics (i.e. Muslims) are essentially above the law, while everyone else is subject to ever increasing repression.
There's plenty of non-anti-semitic anti-Israel people that exist, but this place is kinda warped.
I think third-worldism is the animating factor among those people (to be clear, I'm talking about politically engaged people, not normies).
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
After several years of being a part of this website my position is that >90% of Israel-critical takes are straightforwardly motivated by antisemitism. Those that don't make direct references to Jews being evil and conniving etc. are almost universally either bad faith ("Israel is evil because they can't guarantee zero civilian deaths among their enemies"), quite obviously false ("The Muslim world would love America if not for Israel") or complete non-sequiturs ("Jews should never have been there to begin with!")
There are a number of issues on which I have different positions from most users on this site where I still feel I could fairly reasonably steelman the alternative point of view. The general attitude towards Israel here isn't one of them. I know it's trite to equate criticism of Israel (or "Anti-Zionism", which I think is a dumb concept in this day and age but I digress) with hatred of Jews, and on the left I think it's probably more due to general Third-Worldism than anything else, but on the Motte it's really the only explanation that makes any sense to me.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
It sometimes amazes me that there's anyone who actually pushes back on the redpill observation about "Hypergamy."
I accept the basic idea that women are on average more selective with their sexual partners than men, but what push back on are the more extreme versions of this argument that tend to claim things like most women are cynical status/money/height-maxxing machines who'll only grudgingly accept settling for a non-chad once they're nearly 40 (and who'll they'll cheat on with an authentic chad whenever they get the chance). I've just met too many ordinary, average people in what appear to be genuinely happy relationships to be able to entertain this model of the world.
Good point!
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