cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
1yr ago
We'd generally prefer if off site writing is supplemental rather than required.
A summary of the issue would probably be enough. Plus feel free to share your opinions on the whole thing.
cjet79
1yr ago
I've never been good about journaling, but I do like writing on websites as a way of putting my thoughts out there. Even if I don't write down about 80% of my thoughts, the process of putting them into a pre-written-draft in my head seems helpful.
cjet79
1yr ago
Based on my SAT scores, I'm probably more of a wordcel. But probably not as much of a drastic difference as you. I'm probably 95-99 percentile verbal. And 80-90th spatial.
In a different era I might have gone down the route of being a lawyer. Programming and spatial thinking was in too high of a demand though. So I ended up as a web developer.
Its been a weird career progression. I find that my intelligence set is not expected for a programming job, or it is expected, but I'm expected to quickly turn into a manager. I can keep up great in meetings, and communicate with a bunch of people on difficult topics. But then when I am left to do greenfield expansion into new areas (a place where the shape-rotators thrive) I'm left confused and lost.
But I found my way into a job that is more wordcel oriented and my shape-rotators skills are rarely called upon. It has been nice and relaxing.
The comment below is reposted from here.
I understand people think I'm a troll, but I'm not, just lazy by this forums standards I guess. If I were to describe my politics, I'm a reluctant liberal.
I want to genuinely engage with this forum on topics like this without being seen as a bad faith actor, but I really am not smart enough to offer rebuttals like others here. I just know white nationalism is wrong but I'd like to see other smarter people here provide arguments for why.
I reposted this comment to spur discussion. I'm not a white nationalist, but I'm also not smart enough to offer a rebuttal and I'd like users here, who are a lot smarter, to point out blind spots in white nationalist arguments. The comment in question presents white nationalism as benign and free association as harmless, but that strikes me as wrong. My engagement with places like American Renaissance, which is probably on the lighter side of white nationalism, suggests that white nationalists base their beliefs on a kind of crude, visceral hatred of non-whites, especially black people.
Why do discussions of white nationalism always feel the need to explicitly mention rejecting violence? It implies this is the drive that animates them, a hatred of strangers. Literal xenophobia, which conjures up images of racial superiority or a drive to subjugate others.
Most white nationalists view themselves as reluctant realists. They are in most cases pattern recognizers, not the racist stereotypes the Left love to promote. They look at mixed societies and conclude different people with different evolutionary paths have inherited different physical and mental traits. This makes living together difficult for all parties.
Some of those traits mesh well with European societies (the high IQs and restraint of East Asians), and some do not (ethnicities with significantly poorer self control and shorter time horizons). As multicultural societies mature we observe these traits are persistent. Third generation Chinese are still restrained and clever; other groups can live in Western nations for centuries and continue to behave like their distant cousins on another continent no matter what we do with education and quotas.
Whites also look at examples of what a diverse population endures, from Brazil and America to natural experiments in artificially reversing emergent power structures. In Rhodesia and South Africa a tiny number of whites ran systems for a black-majority nation, with all the apartheid and related phenomenon most find distasteful. Even the king of the Zulus laments what blacks have wrought in South Africa, although this cannot be reported in the Western press. His comments about the Bantu are actively ignored and are more explicitly racist than anything whites ever say.
Much "white nationalism" is based on one simple observation - they are coming here; we are not going there. It is their job to assimilate not our job to agonize over the failure of them to do so.
Even more important, when the imperial era came to an end those who were there left when asked. India, the African nations and others cleared out their Europeans. Jamaica was handed over wholesale to the former slaves. The Haitians acquired their country in a manner more violent than even the liberals claim whites to be today. In modern terms all these nations rejected multiculturalism which they viewed as unnatural.
We are being held to standards no one else cares about and that even seeps in to articles like this, with the need to reassure everyone else our concerns about losing our cultures and territory are seen as an aberration. We have to guard against those questioning the status quo and explicitly reassure people violence must be rejected which plants a seed that curiosity about this subject is dangerous.
Finally, white nationalists look at the cultural tropes in the nations people are leaving to come to our nations. Pakistan and Arab countries do not tolerate foreigners emigrating to their countries. Pakistan have just expelled 1.7m Afghans, most Sunni muslims with similar social mores to Pakistanis, because they are "prone to criminality and terrorism." No hand wringing, no agonizing over "Pakistani nationalism." They couldn't assimilate despite Pakistan's best efforts so they were sent packing.
Nobody in Pakistan emphasizes only a tiny proportion of Afghans misbehave. Some of them do and the Pakistanis refuse to expend resources filtering through their population to find the bad ones. They had their chance and the safety of the natives trumps everything.
I get the need to be neutral, to be decent. But a big drive for people seeking out the data and the hard facts is this constant framing of homogeneity as being unusual or distasteful despite the fact 90 percent of the world's population views it as normal.
Believing the blank slate mantra and then observing something quite different is hard to make sense of. In primitive societies we would see something like the violent xenophobe reaction Western nations worry about. In European societies we see the opposite, with people very reluctantly concluding this may be going wrong. Lets find out, lets test, lets look around and see where culture mixing has actually worked and try that. Then we discover it doesn't seem to work anywhere. Even worse we find out almost no one thinks it makes sense. China is for the Chinese and India is for the Indians.
We all know the use of white nationalism is a euphemism for white supremacist or violent thugs who hate people that look different. The need to remind us of this potential for violence retards the genuine discussions we desperately need to try to make this all work or to abandon it completely.
User jewdefender has been banned. Discussing with other mods right now.
A few of us have high certainty that they are a troll of some sort. We just haven't been willing to ban, because it is not 100% certainty.
But they are also single issue posting and copy and pasted a comment from elsewhere to originally pass off as their own writing.
Edit: mod consensus is that this will stay as a permaban
Edit2: adding comment quote for posterity
cjet79
1yr ago
Does Mark Normand look good, Jerry Seinfeld? I'm not the best judge, but they seem passable at best.
You don't really have to look that good as a guy anyways. The most sexually active guy I ever knew was fat and had what I would consider some unattractive facial features. He was a terrible listener in conversations, he was dyslexic, and he came across as very goofy and happy go-lucky. Prior to covid he was probably averaging sex with 5 different partners a week. He was a divorcee, so he could also claim to have managed to do the whole long-term relationship thing too.
The Hock doesn't sound like it is something that will impress women. It something that might impress other straight guys.
cjet79
1yr ago
Has anyone here said anything positive about you doing the hock?
I am asking because if you die and they trace your online history to here, I want to be able to say that we unanimously said it was a stupid idea.
Autistic guys can slay. Get good at standup comedy instead. Some of the best comics in the business are at least a little autistic. They just focused their autistic powers on getting laughs, and their inability to pick up on social cues was an advantage cuz they could do horribly offensive jokes.
cjet79
1yr ago
The workers themselves are the main problem. They constantly violate the bio sphere containment area, and they themselves are a biological entity.
I think it is difficult sticking to lengthy isolation periods and being good about cleanliness on a long term consistent basis. Hospitals do their best to accomplish this, but I don't think any hospital would ever claim 100% effectiveness. And that is the real problem. A bio testing location working on dangerous pathogens needs to be 100% effective at preventing bio sample escape. A single escape and its all over. All of the "value" of that lab is gone and far into the negative if they cause a Covid level problem. Covid caused trillions in damage, so just for any of these labs to be worth it they need to be safe 99.9999% of the time (expected damage multiplied by likelihood of causing the damage), which measured in days means about a million days without incident, and that is basically 100%.
cjet79
1yr ago
I'm not entirely sure that biotech can be done safely anywhere in the world. Except maybe in a remote research station in Antarctica, where all the scientists are screened by personality before being allowed on base.
Securing complex and dangerous systems can be a hard problem to solve. I'm more familiar with computer security, since it is closer to my area of expertise.
Usually the first, most important, and sometimes only security measure is to just prevent people from having access to the thing you want safe. Passwords, secret access points, encryption, etc.
You can't really do that in biology. The biosphere is too leaky. Things get out. And often you have to give low level employees like Janitors access to areas for cleaning and routine maintenance. This would be like google basically giving access to interns to their most valued databased, just so the interns could do some data entry.
cjet79
1yr ago
This is similar to people using the term "NPCs" to describe others. I've never liked or ascribed to that terminology. The feeling you describe is not totally unfamiliar to me, but it isn't quite right for me. You describe feeling like you are a part of the tribe, and suddenly realizing you are not. I never felt entirely comfortable with the idea that I was in the tribe in the first place. I slowly had it confirmed over the years that "yes, your feelings are correct, we don't want you in the tribe". There wasn't a grand illusion that broke, I was just always sitting in the far wings of the theater where I could see the flatness of the background facade that looked so beautiful from the center seats.
Your questions at the end imply a certain yearning to return to the comforting embrace of the beautiful illusion. And you noticed that people still under the illusion got mad at your for pointing out things that might break the illusion for them. Your yearning to return seems to validate their anger. I have no illusion to return to. I'd burn down the illusion if I thought I could.
cjet79
1yr ago
You say things are getting stricter because we say no bare links and actually enforce the rule?
This is probably the least popular rule that we enforce right now. But it is far from some of the unpopular rules we have had to enforce in the past. We once banned discussion of HBD. That was very unpopular.
I think our users have gotten better behaved, so you notice some of the light touch mod stuff more. Back on the subreddit it wasn't strange to have a half dozen bans each week, with a perma-ban once or twice a month. Now we probably average about 1 ban a week, and maybe one perma-ban every 6 months.
Your complaint ultimately boils down to "I don't like this rule, so please stop enforcing it". The answer is no, I'm not going to do that. There was a halfway decent natural experiment we ran where the culturewarroundup subreddit allowed bare links, and themotte stopped allowing them. Themotte lives and the culturewarroundup subreddit is almost dead. Saying that I am "too strict" is silly. I didn't ban the top level poster, I asked them not do this, which is a basic level warning when I put on my red mod hat to say it. Its literally the least strict I can be while still saying "hey, please follow the rules".
cjet79
1yr ago
The mods have some slack in terms of what we choose to enforce.
If there was ever a case where:
- Someone posted interesting content
- AND I didn't think it was crowding out a more meaningful post on the same discussion
- AND it starts an interesting discussion
- AND it doesn't set a bad precedent for other people doing it
Then I probably won't enforce the rules.
This has happened before. A borderline top level post on an obscure topic, and some people jump in with interesting back and forth. The top level gets buried quickly because other topics come up. I've hit approve and moved on without a mod comment. Its already annoying enough to get into this same argument with people every time this comes up.
Basically we already have your system of "if mods think its ok, then we allow it". And I (a moderator) decided, that this post wasn't ok. Knowing all of this, you should be happy now, correct?
cjet79
1yr ago
Because you pruned yourself back into the spam filter. The votes on deleted comments don't count.
cjet79
1yr ago
That would be a whole mod team question, I'd lean towards "there is no point having this forum just to listen to AIs talk back and forth."
cjet79
1yr ago
And who determines if something is sufficiently interesting? I certainly don't think this story would pass that threshold. The culture war implications are unclear, and mostly people just posted speculation. Prior to my mod post I'd say no one really had anything interesting to say about the link. After I posted I think greyenlightenment had a semi interesting post.
cjet79
1yr ago
There is a whole dead subreddit dedicated to this approach. I would have agreed with you a few years ago before the evidence became clear. Discussion must trump content, or the site dies.
cjet79
1yr ago
It needs not have prevented this discussion, merely delayed it. Greyenlightenment had a response that easily could have served as a good top level post.
cjet79
1yr ago
A link is enough to start a discussion. I am not saying it isn't enough. I am saying you need to start the discussion, not just post a link.
There is a difference.
A chicken, pig, and a bag of wheat are enough for breakfast. But if you went to diner and that is what they gave you, then you'd be rightly upset.
Raw ingredients don't make a complete breakfast post.
The reason we ask for more is simple: a discussion requires multiple participants. To make a top level post you need to demonstrate that there will be at least one participant in the discussion. The top level poster needs to be that guaranteed discussed.
cjet79
1yr ago
I am missing a viewpoint from the original post. It seems to be just context, and the smallest of observations. So small of an observation that it could be mistaken for context in a more substantial post.
cjet79
1yr ago
That is how I see it, I'm not willing to be a dictatorship though. Discussion will happen with the other mods, and some key users if necessary. Then a rule will be made.
We are not on reddit so technical solutions are also possible.
cjet79
1yr ago
It seemed to generate plenty of speculation, not sure I'd say it generated lots of "discussion" aside from some people digging up the past allegations of abuse from his sister.
@greyenlightenment had a better post that could have been a top level post.
This is not a problem, and certainly is not an example of the problem you’re trying to solve with the length requirements.
There are not length requirements. A certain length of post is a necessary but not sufficient pass of the threshold.
My recommended structure for a top level post:
- Context (minimal needed, use it as a jumping off point).
- Observations about the context that build up to the third thing.
- Your viewpoint. Could be spicy, could be not. Should be built off of the observations. It will hopefully be interesting to the other people as a thing they can challenge and discuss.
Don't do low effort top level posts.
7 day ban for making me deal with this on Thanksgiving
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