curious_straight_ca
No bio...
User ID: 1845
curious_straight_ca
2yr ago
specifically an unwillingness to accept the possibility that someone can be both "smart" and "wrong"
er, clearly hoffmeister and some of the alt-right believe that e.g. the libs and (for the alt-right) jews are both very smart (given both technical achievements and cultural influence) and wrong.
One of the core tenents of the whole blue tribe memeplex is that behavior and morality exist completely independently of the other. It doesn't whether a man is a hard worker or a good father, what matters is what he thinks and what he feels.
... both the alt-right and probably hoffmeister value "hard work" and "being a good father". Did this idea come from the left accusing people of being racist, and racism is a "think and feel" instead of a "behavior"? But "blue tribe morality" prescribe plenty of behaviors such as giving to the poor (note all the blue-tribe charitable foundations).
" is that they are so deeply embedded in their own blue tribe backgrounds that they don't know the answer to "what is the point of being a good man if it won't get you ahead in politics"
The value of being a 'good man' is always something though! "Being a hard worker" is valuable in that that work produces something useful for people. "Being a good father" is valuable in that it helps raise children! If you're 'being a good father' in a way that isn't helping a child, or "working hard" as a MLM marketer, you're not actually "being good". (this suggests that "being good" isn't an informative statement itself, that one needs to point to the actual thing being done). Those people are saying that the thing you're doing isn't actually accomplishing the thing you're claiming it is.
curious_straight_ca
2yr ago
Anecdotally in tech and among smart, """high status""" people, trans stuff is more accepted than ever. Especially among software devs, there are a lot of quite smart and productive trans people, who mostly have the usual harsh distaste of visible transphobia, while at the same time being much more ""reasonable"" than cherrypicked internet examples.
And @ your second paragraph, see my above comment.
When you said "public knowledge", did you mean "public knowledge that a large number of people were interested in"?
My point was that if someone's motivated enough to go to the IRL location of your children, they're probably motivated enough to look in voter registration databases, or do the 5 hours of research necessary to dox 90% of people who use the internet. The motivation is the problem, not the publicness of the information. Doxxing is bad, but unless you put a lot of effort into hiding it, it's really easy to dox people. (I don't know precisely how one does it, but have seen it happen many times).
This story's continued popularity seems to be a combination of "man bites dog" (and it is funny), and specifically claims that "wokeness" degrades the quality of government, and that LGBT people are weird fetishists. From twitter, searching "Brinton": "Raise your hand if you knew Sam Brinton was mentally ill before any luggage was stolen", Re. Sam Brinton, let's call it what it is: a person clearly unfit for a high-level national security role was hired because the Admin prioritizes wokeness over competence. (not cherrypicked, those and paraphrases of them were the top results). While Brinton is being retarded, taking this as something bad about 'wokeness' or 'lgbts' is about as bad as taking every base-rate sex crime by a republican as evidence for pedocon theory. There are many LGBTs in the government, at least a dozen of which have been in the R news cycle in the past few years. Many casual politics observers hear these random events and say "wow, those libs are fucked up, man" - all that does is confuse one and make it harder to pick out serious trends. And people with power having strange proclivities isn't new. (and as usual, this isn't a point about how LGBTS are good and all evidence against them is BAD, but a point about good and bad evidence for broad political points)
edit: removed jinx doublepost of LGBTQnation article
curious_straight_ca
2yr ago
'Straight' doesn't mean 'not degenerate', familiar words + owning the libs != accuracy. If a straight guy + a woman do butt stuff ... how does that make the guy 'not straight', even if he gets off from it? The claim is iirc 'prostate stimulation is sexually pleasurable', and that doesn't have to involve enjoying the idea of being penetrated by a penis, necessarily. This is separate from 'is it good' or 'is it degenerate', just in terms of accuracy, 'it isn't straight' doesnt seem right.
curious_straight_ca
1yr ago
Despite thinking transitioning is in general bad no matter if you're TruTrans or not, this is a silly line of argument. If a treatment is genuinely good for a small minority of people, and bad for a larger number of copycats, just ... figure out a test that differentiates the two and only give it to the first group. One can do that. It's absurd to say "no" early to people who'd really benefit.
curious_straight_ca
1yr ago
I don't think this argument is going to go anywhere unless I write a 5000 word effortpost with a dozen tiktok, reddit, and discord screenshots each to actually convey the understanding of what it's like to be a 'trans kid' and why the school isn't relevant. And the time for that was a year or two ago anyway.
So instead, I'll go back to the above argument - put the mental effort into having an extra kid (or two, or ...) instead. Even heavily discounted, it's more important.
Or I guess working on AI or something. It probably seems like an odd tic that I keep bringing that up, but all of our moral philosophies depend on and don't make sense outside of the indefinite continuation of human life and civilization and power, and that is very much in question! If you're having a kid who will themselves have kids who will ... and so on and so on, I can see that as a divine duty of infinite importance, an unbroken chain - or, really, an unbroken interwoven net of sexual reproduction tiling the whole of your nation - of intergenerational devotion. If you have two kids who each have three kids who all starve to death because we're now to silicon as horses were to us ...
curious_straight_ca
1yr ago
Fair. Sometimes I make claims much weaker than my actual beliefs if they're enough to prove my point. I'm pretty sure a 'competent country' could have prevented 90%+ of covid deaths with no behavioral changes whatsoever other than minor things like masks, better ventilation, uv sterilization, and vaccines. But those asian countries still had significant behavioral changes that I'm arguing are unnecessary, even if less than here." And the standard for competence is somewhat high
Eh. There's a real class of very bad ideas like the QAnon cinematic universe, or things like 'the government has secret spies all over the place. I have a friend who used to be one of them, he tells me about the reptilians and their spiritual plans for humanity's enslavement. I'm not sure I believe it but apparently the elites conspire with them, they took out JFK, they took out the people on the Clinton kill list..." (those are all real things I've actually been told by people who were being genuine, not hyperbole). I think OP is very much coming from the mindset that generates that.
curious_straight_ca
1yr ago
What's the obvious deal that America should dictate to Israel that'd solve the I/P conflict? The only thing I can think of is 'actually occupy, subdue, and govern Palestine', but that's less pro-palestine than US policy currently is.
This just made me realize I generally trust Internet commentors on themotte more than just about any mainstream newspaper. Why would I trust a mainstream newspaper on a culture war topic?
At least half of the information we discuss here comes directly from mainstream newspapers, and much of the rest is filtered through them. And the information that comes from newspapers is disproportionately about 'real things' like politics, business, and war, while the thing that come from internet journalists are more often weird internet or culture war drama.
Also, motteposters are wrong a lot, as demonstrated by how often we disagree.
Maybe works, but what how do you secure that authentication? Ukrainian equipment and personnel can both be captured and interrogated to spill their secrets.
The same way you solved that problem for every other network-connected piece of military equipment, of which there are a lot? That was just a "guess" on my part though, I don't have any particular knowledge about this area.
curious_straight_ca
1yr ago
They are geofenced to not work in Russian-controlled areas so that Russia can't use them
That's possible, but all i have here is the New Yorker's assertion vs your assertion. Do you have a source or something?
My guess would've been that access would've been controlled by some method of authentication, so that the Ukrainian terminals would work anywhere but anything held by Russians wouldn't work at all, making such a geofence unnecessary.
curious_straight_ca
1yr ago
The only reason we care about COVID-19 is severe illness and death. There are many other circulating coronaviruses that didn't cause unusually high rates of severe illness, and we do not care about those.
you know it was explicitly argued that the COVID vaccines do it as well.
(low confidence) That was argued, and seemed plausible at the time! It ended up not being true. But, since it still prevented severe illness and death, people who got the vaccine died a lot less! And most people in high-risk groups got the vaccine. Which is, I think, a success, since the one bad thing was prevented!
It's weird to imagine scenarios where covid doesn't mutate to become less deadly but the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission. Why couldn't it mutate to become more deadly? I vaguely think there's a trend to become less deadly to become more transmissible, but it's clearly not universal given the many deadly diseases of the past.
to whom you’re attracted
"A woman to whom you're attracted" is an odd term to use in in a society-wide analysis. Attraction is fundamentally situational - like everything human, it adjusts to its environment. If you were stuck on a desert island with your grandmother, she'd become appealing after a year or two. If you spent a few years surrounded by only supermodels, you'd find something unappealing about many of them.
Consider - a quarter of America is obese. Of all the very fat, ugly men who date very fat, ugly women - nothing could biologically make you like fat women just because you're fat, if you could go after models you'd find women as viscerally disgusting as I do. But, for the most part, fat people manage to get it up and desire sex with each other. People adapt.
This isn't really a cause of sexlessness or dating woes, though. And I don't think sexlessness is that big of a problem anyway. To whatever extent it does exist, the cause is probably a combination of physical proximity not happening on the internet, pornography, and whatever other right-wing social ideas you want to add to that.
Fraud
How is pickup artistry fraud or manipulation? Everyone, admit it or not, both consciously and instinctively, practice and train their speech and behavior to get the partners they desire. PUA stuff is kinda just an explicit and well-done version of that. Which doesn't mean you have to like the consequences, but it's not any more 'manipulation' than makeup or 'asking a friend what you should text'. Semi-deceptive or semi-adversarial techniques aimed at getting sex or a better wife aren't new features of the 21st century, or even modernity.
nobody is calling CPS over parents preventing their kids from watching porn. there is no culture war over parents preventing their children from watching online porn. This is because 'kids and sexuality' is a taboo pressure point for almost everyone in the US. Which is why conservatives try to associate trans with child + sex (grooming!). The culture war issues are all about trans in schools, drag queen story hour, etc.
If your concern is that schools or institutions embrace trans, then ... they embrace trans because everyone does, so we circle back to the original 'is trans real and good' debate, 'society as a whole' isn't going to suppress something most people think is good. If your concern is your kid becoming trans, then said institutions have basically no causal role in an individual kid deciding they are trans (other than 'not explicitly opposing it it', which brings us back to the first point). Nowhere does it make sense to specifically attack schools. The entire 'trans in schools' issue is based on a bunch of false premises that spread because they rile up disconnected but concerned parents.
curious_straight_ca
2yr ago
No, that would be more of something like - statements of fact / material statements relating to a political candidate or issue, which would receive broad First Amendment protection, as restricting that gives the govt/courts a way to directly censor some political positions. That's clearly different than issues solely related to election procedure like 'where and how to vote'.
This wasn't just a single casual joke!
Excerpts from the complaint, which somehow blocks copying
[...] Within minutes, members of the Madman Group discussed ways to make the Deceptive Image more effective. One member of the group responded, "Don't post it yet though, a week or less before the election. I'm making a version myself." Co-Conspirator 4 responded, "make sure to use the latest color schemes they have.
Three minutes later, a participant in the Madman Group responded, "Dopey shitlibs will fall for it too."
Co-Conspirator 2 stated "here's what I worried about [I, people on[Candidate 2's] side thinking this is legit and they stay home. I'm plotting, will have something soon.» Another member responded, "[Co-Conspirator 2], what about if we say something about its too late b/c we didn't register for it [and] we'll have to do it next election or some shit." Co-Conspirator 2 responded, "Yep, I think so."
This does seem to show intent to actually influence voting, as opposed to just laughing. That said, 'actually influencing the vote' is pretty funny. And the sort of person who'd fall for such a dumb trick probably isn't someone whose political opinions, and thus vote, are of particular value anyway.
curious_straight_ca
2yr ago
To you and @rococobasilica - yeah, there's some general dislike (potentially justified!) of higher body counts, especially for wives. But - how strong is that? It doesn't seem to be anywhere near what the OP implies. Anecdotally, while my right-leaning friends care a lot (imo too much) about body count, my apolitical or liberal friends either don't care about, or care a bit but not much about, for instance 8 past partners, for a wife - and it's somewhat hard to tell but their actions don't seem to contradict it. They'd, ofc, find 50 past partners unappealing, but few women have that so it's not a general issue. My experiences aren't universal obviously, social clustering is weird, but my guess is it's common enough, and the amount of caring about 8 past partners among non-conservatives small enough, that OP's worry about 'promiscuous women not finding partners because men aren't interested' isn't a big issue for feminism.
Why do they do this if they don't feel the number lowers their status? Do you believe women are just being paranoid?
No, it does a bit, just not that much. People lie about all sorts of things. Men lie about their height, everyone lies about attractiveness, even though everyone can already see them.
curious_straight_ca
2yr ago
The 'the MSM is trying to hide the real story with fake stories' thing doesn't really make sense. Media is generally incentivized to print entertaining but meaningless stuff to get attention, whether or not there's something to hide. There isn't a single week without something wacky like this. Plus, it's tucker appearing on a podcast, not a fox news headline.
I don't like the "not in control of their actions" idea. Someone with a mental illness doesn't have an entirely separate process intruding on their thoughts - they're taking actions with the same complex network of neurological processes (that aren't understood too well), just either there's some biochemical defect (autoimmune-induced schizophrenia?), or some other social/environmental factor, causing parts of it to be slightly off. And that doesn't seem like 'loss of control'. The 'person' is still 'in control of their actions' (which really is a tautological statement), the actions are just ... bad.
... as an illustration that doesn't have that much resemblance to real mental illness, say the same kind of mental defect gives one person an obsession with collecting baseball cards and another person an obsession with eating rocks. One might say 'the person isn't in control of their actions, they have to eat rocks'. But one wouldn't say that of someone who really likes collecting baseball cards!
curious_straight_ca
2yr ago
It's interesting how this particular manner of writing is common among people who are vaguely "conspiracy theorists", or who are vaguely but ominously musing about dark, shadowy conspiracies.
Very frequent line breaks, jumping from topic to topic, a narrative/story-like flow, vague hints.
[not saying this as evidence your points are wrong, good points are sometimes made with weird modes of speaking, but association is strong]
That isn't what "base rate" means, base rate would be "rate in a larger population", not "rate among people who I've heard of in the news". Most obviously, taking 'two trans in government' as true, there are other high status positions with only few trans people - powerful executives (such as martine rothblatt ), celebrities, transgender state legislators. Each category increases the overall sample size, making 'one in two' much less obvious.
Also, they aren't transgender - "Brinton is bisexual.[9] Brinton, the first openly gender-fluid individual in federal government leadership, uses they and them pronouns.[1][5][6]". Transgender is sometimes used to include 'nonbinary/genderfluid' descriptively, but more in the 'everyone is queer uwu' sense than a literal one.
In terms of base rates, of the dozens of productive and competent transwoman software engineers I know of (whose economic value outweighs occasional purse theft) ... a decent few are 'sexual deviants', but almost none of them have committed crimes related to it.
Also, this isn't "outing" brinton as a sexual deviant, they were publicly a kink activist and did drag beforehand.
curious_straight_ca
2yr ago
I don't think the optimal covid response involved lockdowns, but that doesn't mean the best case is "midwit morons". A week / month-long lockdown wouldn't have been that bad - even lockdowns as they were just weren't that bad compared to the 200-year history of american political/economic mistakes!
Covid's mortality rate was, on a log scale, only a bit worse than the flu. Diseases with 10-100x higher mortality rates can exist - smallpox, the original SARS, etc - and lockdowns would be justified for those.
curious_straight_ca
2yr ago
and rural areas dependent on urban areas for things like finance, communications, and media
Technology, logistics, military too! That severely understates the dependence (also, the 'rural' population of america is ~ 15% iirc, rest is urban + suburban).
Although, does a WFH stripe employee living in the woods count as 'rural' here?
Religion tends to imply far-reaching moral claims and ways of living organized around mystical / supernatural ideas. Anti-racism/progressivism may be distinctly christian, and may make significant moral claims, but it isn't a religion - it doesn't have supernatural claims, nor does it provide a grounding for all or even most moral claims.
It's claimed to be a religion because of the combination of moral dedication and seeming wrongness - as if people follow it religiously because of a 'religious impulse' to believe strong moral claims at the expense of correctness. This doesn't work because wokeness makes specific, non-mystical claims - calling it a religion doesn't actually rebut the claims (it'd come closer if woke people believed in an Anti-Racism Allfather that lived in the sun, but it doesn't!).
More options
Context Copy link