cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
1d ago
I was composing a response while you posted this, but I think its still relevant for your comment:
https://www.themotte.org/post/3564/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/413729?context=8#context
cjet79
1d ago
I had quite a few responses talking about the definition of soldier vs warrior. So I'm responding to @Shrike, but this is also relevant to nearly everyone that responded to me: @gog, @Mantergeistmann, @PokerPirate, @Grant_us_eyes, @coffee_enjoyer, and @MadMonzer
I think the distinction between warrior and soldiers in my mind is where their capacity for violence comes from.
For a soldier the capacity for violence comes from without. They are trained and drilled repeatedly to enact violence. They are trained to obey orders to a fault, and when the order comes to enact violence they will obey. They'll need an ideology that allows for their violence to be righteous and correct. They will also form tight social bonds with those around them, and protecting them will also allow them to enact violence. When the war ends and they go home their problem will be PTSD. They may be haunted by the violence they enacted, or the violent situations they were placed in. But they can also put the war and the fighting behind them and live normal lives.
PokerPirate quotes a US military thing that I think perfectly describes a soldier's ethos, despite it being called a warrior ethos.
The United States Military Academy at Westpoint has literally been training artillery men to have a "warrior ethos" since forever. They define it as
I will always place the mission first.
I will never accept defeat.
I will never quit.
I will never leave a fallen comrade.
They will obey orders, regardless of how difficult, and they will maintain the group loyalty that allows an easy path to violence.
For a warrior the capacity for violence comes from within. Through either repeated exposure or personality compatibility they are fully capable of enacting interpersonal violence on others. When the war ends and they come home, their problem will be that they miss the excuse for violence. They will seek other excuses for violence. They will have trouble living normal lives, because the desire for interpersonal violence will spill out far more often.
I think within a modern military there is definitely a contingent of "warriors". You definitely want such men in special forces, or in any groups that see heavy close range combat repeatedly. But I still think that mainly what you want is men with a soldier's ethos. After all, a soldier's violence will always be pointed where you want it. A warrior's violence can be pointed anywhere they wish including up the command chain, or at civilians.
Too many warriors in a society is a bad thing. They end up as gang riddled or honor culture hell holes. Where young men are inculcated into violence and warriordom as soon as they get out of puberty. They'll fight each other for sure, but they'll also beat the snot out of all the women and kids around them as well.
I think these are useful and helpful definitions that point to clusters of ideas. It seems necessary to me to center the definitions around capacity for violence. Masculinity is its own thing, and women seem attracted to both soldiers and warriors. Being willing to enact change seems like the wrong definition for warrior, because I think its the tools that matter. The tool of a warrior is violence, the tools of a propagandist are ideas, both are willing to enact change but calling them both warriors seems to darken rather than enlighten.
PokerPirate's quote makes me think this is all just a semantic misunderstanding. If the US military and Pete Hegseth mean what I think of as "soldier" when they say they want a "warrior" ethos then I withdraw any objections. Words are important and I hate euphemism treadmills, but I've learned to stop arguing over such things.
cjet79
1d ago
I don't understand this focus on "warrior ethos" in the modern world, it seems badly misguided.
"Warrior" seems like a better description for gang members than professional soldiers.
Ever since WWI wars between governments have been all about long range capabilities, like aircraft and artillery (and ICBMs in the Cold war). You don't want your artillery man to have a warrior ethos. You want him to be a mix of gym bro, accountant, and auto mechanic.
When governments are fighting insurgencies, or just groups of people, the importance of artillery declines a lot. But I'm still not sure "warriors" are a good description of the type of soldier you need. You need a mix of police officer and diplomat. A "warrior" sounds like a soldier that will rile up the population even more with misdirected acts of violence.
Can anyone charitably explain this "warrior" obsession?
cjet79
1d ago
https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=89120&post_id=187622533
Anyone see Scott's latest post on crime stats and have a significant disagreement with it? It feels culture war worthy and I'd like to discuss it, but I don't feel like I know the counter viewpoints well.
cjet79
2d ago
Some real life examples:
I had my kid's daycare provider ask me who I voted for in the 2024 election. She is clearly hispanic, has an accent, and my kids come home learning spanish words. I've normally not voted or voted libertarian, but I happened to vote Trump in that election. And I responded without thinking "Trump". Her response was honest relief and "oh good, me too".
The neighborhood dads discuss politics with each other, there are a variety of political persuasions. I'd guess that it is close to an even split among conservatives and liberals among the dads. You can razz these guys a little about their beliefs, but ostracizing anyone or acting high and mighty would be a massive social faux paus. To the point that it would probably massively backfire.
My cousin's wife is an artist/painter/political activist. My cousin has worked on political campaigns and is the local head of a teachers union, very left coded obviously. During my wedding in 2016 my best man joked about how he burned his ballot. My cousin's wife was horrified.
In the 20teens I worked at a tech company. Most people were liberal. Politics would come up in the breakroom. People knew I was a libertarian. I did get in a minor argument with one co-worker on facebook. He said something about libertarians being awful for not voting for Hillary, and letting Trump win. I said something about its the democrats fault for having such an awful candidate up for election. It was a few months later that I deactivated my facebook account.
I was on the dating scene and got a date with a girl off of OKCupid. Found out during the date that she worked at some women's oriented political organization in DC. I'd already sorta outed myself as libertarian. I figured the date and my chances were tanked. I stopped caring and talked more politics, when I was done and ready to go home I invited her back to my place. She surprised me by saying yes and we hooked up. I never heard from her again.
In general, I don't like hiding my politics. I have a bad poker face, and I'm too opinionated to shut up for long. My experience has been that the consequences of revealing your politics are not that bad. Its possible some people have talked shit about me at work behind my back and I lost some opportunities because of it, I think its unlikely though. Its also fully possible that friends or family have been annoyed with me before for expressing my opinions. If there is a reason for me to not express my politics in person its that the real world doesn't have to follow the rules on TheMotte. Politeness is not required. A lack of antagonism is not required. Low effort participation is encouraged. Enforcing consensus is the name of the game. etc.
My advice to you is that just about everyone hates the 'agnostics'. The ones with no opinions who try to stay out of it all. Politics is pure tribalism. Religious affiliation is tribalism. Sports team affiliation is tribalism. A yankees fan and red socks fan will really go at each other over baseball and their respective teams, but they both don't want to even talk with the person who doesn't care for baseball. So be honest and put your opinions out there. To politic is human.
cjet79
3d ago
The news is lying again!
Not directly of course. Indirectly, and ya I know it's not really a surprise. But I like Scott's approach to lying, "if it's worth your time to lie it's worth my time to correct you".
In this case, my newsfeed got clogged up with articles about the bad bunny halftime show because I was looking up reactions to it after some of the previous TheMotte discussions. One of the lines repeated in just about every article was that bad bunny was the most viewed half time show in all history. Which immediately struck me as disingenuous.
First of all none of them meant "most viewed at the time of airing". It's based on playback data after the fact. Usher and Kendrick Lamar both had more viewership during the performance. This is a bad metric for multiple reasons. Viewership generally goes up over time. Internet viewership of things has definitely gone up. None of the articles I saw gave relative numbers on this, so I don't even know how much of a success this should be. It would be like judging star wars movie success by how many people watched on the first week of the theater release, and not adjusting at all for more theaters/people/etc.
Second of all the in moment halftime show viewership is generally a function of how many people are watching the Superbowl. The halftime show does create a viewership bump as some people tune in for it specifically. I think this viewership bump is actually more important than total viewership of the halftime show. The viewership bump makes the Superbowl more of a cultural moment. The "cultural moment" is what makes the Superbowl such a commercial success.
The metric that I think we should judge halftime shows on is the relative viewership bump as a percentage and not absolute numbers. Since viewership has generally been going up year over year for the event.
The bulleted data below was put together by Gemini AI, using methodology I requested. Basically how much viewership was bumped by the halftime show:
Relative Viewership Bump (%)
- 2017 Lady Gaga +5.57%
- 2021 The Weeknd +5.57%
- 2023 Rihanna +5.13%
- 2025 Kendrick Lamar +4.54%
- 2024 Usher +4.53%
- 2022 Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, et al. +4.23%
- 2018 Justin Timberlake +3.09%
- 2026 Bad Bunny +2.64%
- 2019 Maroon 5 +2.55%
- 2020 Shakira & Jennifer Lopez +2.49%
By this metric I think bad bunny was a failure. In the 2010s a 1-3% bump was standard. Lady Gaga was an outlier during that era.
Third and final point is: stop trying to make fetch happen. I've lived most of my adult life in a media environment where they can just endlessly repeat something in order to make it true. I'm sick of it. I think most people are sick of it.
They want to manifest cultural items into success, and they use the fudgiest numbers and lying stats to make it part of the narrative.
They couldn't manifest the woke tv shows to success, and they aren't doing it here either.
cjet79
5d ago
I've spoken on this before, and been inside some of the non-profit institutions like this.
I think they should all just go back to building pyramids. The Egyptians had it right. Put your legacy and beliefs in stone. That way when your enemies scour it from history they'll be remembered as barbarians they are, rather than respectable think tank leaders.
cjet79
6d ago
Do you prefer apples or oranges?
I just really feel like these two things cannot be compared, but I'll try.
Apple in cold weather, Oranges in warm weather.
Apples for baking and cooking, Oranges for drink flavors/additions.
Apples for toddlers and teens, Oranges for babies and pre-teens.
Apples for solitary sports snacks, Oranges for team sport snacks.
Apples mashed for sauces, oranges (or preferably clementines) preserved in water.
cjet79
6d ago
Scott is allowing people to take a spin with a paid AI:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/ama-ask-machines-anything
I went and asked my own question, but didn't think the paid AI was significantly better than the free AI I'd also asked the same question to.
As I think about it more some of the confusion with the warrior/soldier distinction might be that soldier is a legal term and warrior is not. And almost no one is careful with their language.
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