burkeboi
4mo ago
The British aristocracy were over-represented among the dead in WW1 and WW2 (and, as far as I am aware, in most of the 19th century wars). That is, of course, to be expected for a group that justifies its privileges by claiming to be a warrior elite. As far as I am aware, the same was true for the Germans. (The Prussian aristocracy was uncomplicatedly a real warrior elite in WW1. In WW2 the Waffen SS did more dangerous stuff than the Reichswehr, and Nazi elites' sons were more likely to be in it).
I've looked into this, and those are good counterexamples to the rule I posited in the above post. I suppose feudalism would be another case where the 2nd estate did most of the fighting despite being the ruling class. The early 20th century US was another example of all classes sharing a similar burden in terms of military service.
My point about more powerful people in society avoiding service, or altering their service to make it better, probably needs a bit more refinement and may be more circumstantial than universal. I do think my central point about coercion still stands though; all agrarian and industrial societies I know of relied on coercing a lot of men to do their gender roles in regards to military. People skirting those requirements is a perennial source of complaints.
That the planter class in the Confederacy widely dodged the draft would be surprising to me, if true. They tended (as do their descendants in the red tribe elite) to see themselves as a warrior elite.
They didn't really engage in illegal draft dodging; it was primarily about abusing legal ways of avoiding service, or making your service better. Substitution, being employed in an essential industry, and volunteering for a better assignment were common ways it was done. I don't know if statistically the planters were more likely to do this than the middle class or, when they were able to, the lower class, but it was a source of resentment that many Confederate men were able to skirt the draft and avoid the worst service.
burkeboi
4mo ago
but women joining the workforce and participating in society in at least some different ways is hard to make a rational case again.
A bit of a nitpick, but I don't think women working is necessarily feminist. Women work in the informal economy is practically every single nation in the world. The labor force participation rate for women going up is seen as a positive in the third world less in terms of 'women working is good' and more that a higher LFPR for women means more women in the formal economy, which provides a lot more protections than working in the informal economy.
Patriarchy historically tends to be more about restricting women's ability to get into certain, often high status, jobs rather than restricting their employment in general.
burkeboi
4mo ago
Agreed with your points. One point I like to expand on is the following:
Politicians sons who supported the war joined the National Guard to avoid service in Vietnam, and in more serious wars there is of course a long history of politicians and their friends landing desk jobs that mostly avoided combat while still getting a pretty uniform to pose in.
While draft dodging is the most visible part of avoiding service, probably even more common in history is manipulating exactly which job a person gets in the military to avoid the worst of combat. As an example, my granddad was actually considered unfit for service medically during WW2 but, since he knew not serving would be socially problematic post war, he became a military policeman stateside and went to dance halls with the wives of servicemen who actually risked life and limb for their country. This is also played out in propaganda since it's honestly true; while the infantryman faces the worst odds and dangers, more socially connected people generally get better postings and often get to stay behind. Even in states engaged in 'existential wars', you see this effect. Draft substitution in the Confederacy, connected people getting better positions in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.
Overall, I suspect the man who actually 'does his duty' and faces maximal physical danger is a minority phenomenon; the big bulk of soldiers historically were coerced to a greater or lesser extent. I'll note in the US Civil War once people realized the war wasn't going to be short and that modern combat is very bloody, both sides immediately had to switch over to drafting people since volunteers were insufficient.
burkeboi
4mo ago
Reactive vs spontaneous desire essentially.
This right here really is the core of many 'man vs. woman' sex 'conflicts' in relationships. Many men often project their spontaneous sexuality onto women, and many women their reactive sexuality onto men, and treat their partner as defective for just working different. I do think more people understanding how those two types of sexuality work would lead to people finding a middle ground and working with each other in relationships more.
burkeboi
4mo ago
Cluster B, and really colloquially "crazy" women in general, IME and from what I've read anecdotally, seem to have a significantly higher sex drive than normal woman (statistically). Many men are drawn in to stay, despite the issues, partially because the sex is plentiful and often of higher quality/excitement. "Crazy" women tend to also be more promiscuous. I suspect the "crazy" angle is another reason a lot of men go for the "hoes".
Part of it also that having sex with a guy early is a high variance play; you may get a guy who disregards you as a 'slut', but you may also get a guy who appreciates it and stays focused on you. Having sex with a woman early certainly gives an ego boost both that the man is attractive both to her and in general.
burkeboi
4mo ago
AAQC. Thank you for that post. I find it interesting how arguments of sourcing for the Canon existed both before the Reformation, and how the policy of treating the Deuterocanonicals changed a lot after. I suppose the drift towards a more "conservative" Canon makes sense from a Sola Scriptura standpoint; if you are unsure of the canonicity of a given book, it's better to list it as relevant but not divinely inspired than accidentally list it as an authoritative book.
burkeboi
4mo ago
Everyone is expected to die fighting the Russians, but it's wholly acceptable to make choices whose aggregate consequences ends with Sweden going the way of the Dodo?
Would everybody do it, though? I think it's a very open question if your average Swede would risk his life vs. either leave or accept life under Russian occupation. The Ukrainian experience shows that quite a lot of men would say "no". I can't blame them; as an American I would keep my head down and/or flee were I in their shoes.
burkeboi
4mo ago
Does anyone have a simplified explanation of why the Protestant Bible is shorter/different than the Catholic Bible? I know a lot of the difference is Masoretic Text vs. Septuagint, but I've read other facts like Martin Luther considering ditching Revelations. I imagine other early reformers like Calvin had their own opinions of Canon. Was there a point where, at least for least Mainline Protestants, the Canon was stabilized and a justification given for the choice?
burkeboi
4mo ago
ChatGPT sycophantically praising me when I ask it for code.
That's the best part of my workday right there. Some hours I use more tokens self-glazing than solving the problem.
burkeboi
4mo ago
I have three cats. Being a cat lover is like becoming an Epicurean, or a eunuch; you don't go back.
burkeboi
4mo ago
The sort of "The universalist egalitarian HBD denial" you describe has little to no influence on the US Left and is overwhelmingly associated with the religious right and so-called "Moral/Silent Majority".
I think even before we get to questions relating to HBD, we have the fact that the right treats inequality of outcomes differently than the left. Thomas Sowell mentioned how there are tons of arbitrary inequalities. in the modern world such as mountain vs lowland, first vs. later born, birth month, and a bunch of others. Middlemen minorities who succeed despite often being discriminated against are another example of inequality despite there being no discrimination in favor of, of there is discrimination against, the middlemen. The standard American conservative position is 'There are tons of inequalities in the world, and if there is a clear injustice it should be remedied, but we can't rip up society to try the quixotic task of making everyone equal."
If you take that position, instead of the position of trying to remedy all inequalities, whether HBD is true or not doesn't really matter. If you aren't gong to uproot society to try and force equal outcomes, the presence of a gap between two groups being environmental or genetic doesn't really change how society and the people within it should relate to each other.
It is kind of interesting how, even with real atrocities, authority figures sympathetic to the victims almost always publish fiction that is more gruesome than reality. The reign of terror was a tragedy, but many of the stories such as republican weddings were false. Similarly, many Holocaust stories told by survivors were fictitious exaggerations of things such as human skin lampposts. You also have right wingers giving demographically impossible overestimates of Stalinist crimes. Over-exaggerating crimes seems universal.
Is there some Israeli abuse of Palestinian prisoners? Probably. Does Israel have a military department solely dedicated to training dogs to rape prisoners? Only in my AI Generated pornographic novel.
burkeboi
4mo ago
I think as a general rule I agree with you; people without intelligence clearance could tell Iraq was a Quagmire after a year for instance. At the same time, I think it's so early in Iran that it's hard to tell the long term impact. Especially since, lacking the intelligence our leaders have, we don't know how real or fake their nuclear accusations are.
This is where I think we have to fall back to our priors. I don't trust Trump, Neocons, or the Israeli right on having a foreign policy that benefits the US or the world so I'm naturally predisposed to dislike this war. I also don't trust their truthfulness regarding foreign policy facts, such as how advanced the nuclear program is, so I'm skeptical that Iran was aiming for building a bomb right now rather than aiming for the ability to build a bomb quickly. I also don't buy 'seriously not literally' as a communication strategy, so how this war has been communicated makes me skeptical of the enterprise as well. As a result of the above, the war seems like a bad idea to me and I don't trust any promises of victory. The epistemic uncertainty for me comes in that I don't know a lot of the relevant data, and I suppose it's possible in a year data could come out that shows this war was necessary and/or it actually worked out well for the world. I wouldn't bet on it though.,
Above sums of my opinion of the war. If you look at it, almost all of it is just flowing from my priors. It hasn't been updated in the past month; I don't think the events could've moved it. The flip side is if someone was predisposed to trusting the authorities I mentioned above, then their priors would make them like the war. My main point is that one's opinion of the war is more based on priors than anything else, so I think discussing priors is actually more fruitful than discussing the facts in this case.
burkeboi
4mo ago
I think an issue with the immigration discourse, much like the abortion discourse, is that it's dominated by philosophical extremes, partially because that's who puts the most effort into the issue, when most people tend to be somewhere in the mushy middle. Abortion is dominated by people who either think life begins at conception, or close to it, and everything after it is unjustifiable homicide or people who believe in basically absolute bodily autonomy for the woman and that the fetus has no interests we should take into account at any stage. Most people tend to thing there are some abortions that are morally permissible, life of the mother being the least controversial example, others that are morally gray or not really a public issue, like an early stage abortion for lifestyle, and some that are outright wrong, such as Kermit Gosnell's abortions.
I think immigration has a similar structure; you have people who are either outright for open borders, or are de facto pro open borders, on one side and philosophical nativists who view immigration as bad in itself, which the bad only sometimes being outweighed by the virtues of the individual immigrant in certain cases, on the other side. Most people instead balance a lot of different factors, such as cultural assimilation, economic benefits, economic detriments, crime, and other factors when debating if immigration is good or not. Compare Ukrainian refugees/immigrants vs. Syrians; the Ukrainians tend to be benefits to the host societies, while the Syrians tend to be detriments. You can see Europeans react to this fact by one being far more controversial than the other.
A lot of political behavior on both Abortion and Immigration, really the rest of the culture war too, is describable by individual issues often being a ratchet. Red states and blue states on issues like guns and abortion are able to add up individual decisions which on their own aren't necessarily too objectionable into de facto banning certain actions, or at least making them incredibly difficult. Immigration is often the same way; letting in immigrants our economy needs is generally popular when you phrase it like that, but once you start fiddling with the definition of 'what our economy needs' or 'genius' or the help they get when they are here things get contentious quite quickly.
burkeboi
4mo ago
I think looking at this from a meta perspective is interesting. It seems that to evaluate the wisdom Iran war comprehensively, we need three things:
- What are the overall costs of the war.
- What are the eventual benefits of the war.
- What is the truth of the justificiations for the war that were initially given.
The first two are by definition not known not right now. The last one seems to be only factually resolvable by classified information, but since we don't have that we have to rely on the dual heuristics of 'What figures do we trust?' and 'Do we trust the structure of the arguments made for/against the war?'. The answers to the indirect questions seem to rely on tribalism, especially the first. You have officials with similar arguing for both sides of this war, and for other security issues like everything surrounding Russia, and which officials general you give credence too tends to rely on which officials either match general your 'tribe' or best match/flatter general your personal ideology.
I bet if you took each personal who isn't directly involved in this conflict, and you had a list of that person's ideology and personal 'tribal' affiliation, you could 99% guess what their take on this war is and who they consider credible. Once everyone states their priors, there really isn't that much discussion to be had about Iran right now.
burkeboi
4mo ago
In the mixed-sex PMC circles I've been in, if a guy articulates that while he is personally dominant and works best with a partner that gives him deference but states he doesn't think this applies to all men or women, he generally doesn't get messed with much. Part of it was probably the guys who I've heard articulate this were pretty socially adroit/attractive, but framing things as "this is a me thing" vs. "this is a sex thing in general" seems to be pretty effective in avoiding criticism.
This is speculation, but I think a guy saying "this is a me thing" lets feminists who may be insecure about what type of relationship they like keep distance from it, while them saying "this is a sex thing" makes them feel a need to dispute it since by definition, "sex things" have to do with all members of a sex.
burkeboi
5mo ago
I like the Mexico/Latin American comparison. Those nations are a mix of clearly western populations, criollos mestizos, and pardos, and non-western populations, the unassimilated indios.
burkeboi
5mo ago
Do you consider Israel culturally part of the West? Partially part of the West?
I've been thinking about this, and I think it's an interesting and not necessarily straight forwards question. I think secular Jews and those in the Reform tradition are undeniably Western; one of the core points of the Reform tradition was to integrate Judaism into Western Traditions and vice versa. The Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox I think are their own distinct, more ancient civilization. My answer to the above question is I think Israel is mostly Western, given the cultural roots of the Reform/Seculars, but not entirely.
burkeboi
5mo ago
This may be my understanding of biology being limited, but while the biological tendency for the 1:1 sex ratio is well understood my understanding is that there are a lot of genes involved in actually causing the human roughly 50/50 sex ratio. My concern is more that messing with the genes could cause unintended side effects due to their, and their interactions, complexity.
burkeboi
5mo ago
Law being like math I believe should definitely apply to judges. Legal theory can be useful for a lawyer who works for a Senator who is writing legislation. Then legal theory has a purpose of designing the equations to get a law that does what you want.
I don't think our law system was ever meant to be mathematics or purely procedural. The point of trial by jury is that, instead of an agent of the state (judge) judging you at best by the letter of the law or at worst by his personal whims, you get a jury of your peers judging you by local common sense/prejudice. Les Mes gives the theatrical argument for this. The benefit of Common Law is that, instead of the application of the law solely being dictated from above, you get precedent of how the law was applied in reality and hopefully that contact with reality makes the application of the law better and more sensible.
The above system works great ... when you share most values with your countrymen. If you think your neighbors lack common sense and/or their prejudices are wrong and/or harmful, then their influence will move both juries directly, and precedent indirectly via the judges their representatives vote in, in directions you don't like. A cliché example of this would be being judged by an ethnic outgroup. I'll note European countries which don't have common law also have the problem of internal values conflict and the problem of sharing a state with people you fundamentally disagree with is a perennial human issue, so common law and trial by jury are not the issue.
Once I realized the law as practiced is not mathematics I switched my judicial philosophy from some form of originalism to Ketanji Brown theory.
I think a lot of the Constitution worship you see among boomercons is cargo culting. I think the constitution, and it actually sticking, is one of the greatest social achievements in human history. Ask the French or Latinos how easy keeping a constitution is. At the same time, the founders consciously knew that the Constitution was a tool and agreement to promote values they cared about and create an agreement that would let the states function together. Treating following it as an end in itself, like it was the 10 Commandments, was never how they viewed it. Most leaders of the early republic, including later ones like Andrew Jackson, recognized that keeping the social constructs that the 'union is perpetual' and 'the constitution is supreme' were foundational to the functioning of society, but the end-goal was always securing people's wellbeing and liberty rather than following the constitution for its own sake.
To that end, everyone agreeing to treat the constitution and union as inviolable while still manipulating procedural outcomes seems to have been the dominant trend/strategy in our history across the strong majority of factions.
burkeboi
5mo ago
It does seem obviously wrong but I can't pinpoint any specific moral principle it might violate.
Chesterton's Fence is the obvious one: the sex ratio, and the genes that cause it, affect so many things that its impossible to predict the effects. Doing such a big change without being able to predict the effects is imprudent.
Even so, I don't really think Inceldom is a problem big enough to justify 'removing' men. If Incels lives really were so bad, they are fully capable of killing themselves. Given that most haven't killed themselves, I think it shows that even for them the issue of being an Incel isn't a life-or-death one. There are counterarguments, such as suicide != never existing, but at that point we are going into Schopenhauer anti-natalist territory and that is a bigger question.
It seems fine from an purely utalitarian perspective.
Two very common issues with utilitarianism as practiced is the issue of calculating utilions, it's very non-trivial and I'd argue practically impossible at scale, and the fact that the world is so complex that calculating n-th order effects quickly becomes practically impossible for tons of activities, especially the more granular you get. I think those two issues are often why utilitarianism, where is a very good heuristic to use when pair with others, often morphs into horror and/or 'I wanted to do this anyway and I can fabricate a post-hoc justification for it using utilitarianism" when it's the sole "guide" or morality or action.
Isn't this post a contradiction? The manosphere/machismo culture guys make a pitch that is a variant of: "You are weak and that is contemptible. Follow my view of how you should be, and you will no longer be weak and contemptible." You are basically making the same pitch, just swapping out what actions/beliefs are indicative of weakness. The core part is that both this post and the machismo ideology relies on shaming men for being weak, thus implicitly asserting that to be a good man you must be strong. That is an enforced gender role.
Here are your last two paragraphs, changed to be something a manosphere guy would say.
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