drmanhattan16
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User ID: 640
drmanhattan16
1yr ago
The Red Pill
Seeing as there is not a better place for it, I thought I’d wrap up by going over what Joyce calls “gender-identity ideology” (GII). This is how trans people are encouraged to think and rationalize who and/or what they are. And we can start with the movie that is heralded as “universalizing” the trans experience: The Matrix.
I will not summarize the film itself, but instead go over what the film’s elements are that make it trans-allegorical and informative of GII.
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Thomas Anderson believes his reality is false and rejects it, just as a trans person would reject their original gender
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The Matrix itself is “cisnormative” society, meaning those who are removed from it are trans
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Anderson only gets to leave once he takes the red pill, just as drugs and surgery allow trans people to exit their “fake” bodies
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The Agents are transphobia made manifest, seeking to destroy those who rebel against society (Smith “deadnames” Neo by calling him Mr. Anderson)
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Trinity falls in love with Anderson, representing the feeling of being validated as a trans person
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Cypher is traitor and wants back into the Matrix, representing detransitioners (notice how he asks for higher status as part of his negotiations, perhaps making him out to be a trans person willing to flatter anti-trans beliefs)
There are more of these ideas, mind you, I’m just listing a few. For what it’s worth, I think this movie is pretty strongly about transgenderism, and we only debate if it is or not because the Wachowskis’ universalized it too well. Instead of gender, it became a film about rejecting authority and the status quo for the “real world”, just like Fight Club.
Joyce describes the “Matrix view” as dualism – the belief that your body and your psyche are distinct and separate. Another term for this comes from Gilbert Ryle, who described dualism as believing a person is a “ghost in a machine”. This view is especially tempting in the modern age, because most of us understand the analogy of a computer: a piece of hardware upon which any software might run. If operating systems are gender, then you can run Linux and Windows and Mac on the same machine without issue or even anyone complaining.
It is a view with a great deal of support in the modern age. Without transitioning, without dysphoria, one can simply declare that they are now a man or woman because of their feelings, and others are expected to act as if it is true. Once they eliminated definitions into these categories based on sex, the road was clear to let an unverifiable internal state be declare the highest authority for an individual's gender state.
This view, Joyce argues, was not how people conceived of transsexuality at the time. They would have thought of said people as having such a severe discomfort with their bodies that they could not live without surgery. Much like the officials of the first half of the 20th century, any accommodations were seen as “legal and bureaucratic fictions”.
Joyce is not opposed, mind you, to the deconstruction of binaries that postmodernists want to do. She praises the work of Simone de Beauvoir as recognizing that women are defined in relation to men and always as the weaker of the two. But she derides what GII has done with the following words.
… because of gender-identity ideology, the quest for the liberation of people with female bodies has arrived at an extraordinary position: that they do not even constitute a group that merits a name.
drmanhattan16
1yr ago
The sheet was providing anti-gun-control advocates with proverbial ammunition. They could point to it as an objective demonstration of the benefits of gun proliferation.
With this, the CDC is now, as you note, probably necessarily wrong (60k - 2.5M is a huge range to work with), but now the sheet doesn't provide a plausible amount that anti-gun-control advocates can use. So it moved away from the anti-gun-control position on that spectrum.
drmanhattan16
1yr ago
Sure, everyone has a solid mobile app now.
Banking is an important aspect of one's life that we are now 99% capable of doing w/o setting foot in a bank. Seems like a big win for everybody.
drmanhattan16
3mo ago
Wait, who is the secondary? My understanding is that the polycule was a thing of the past.
drmanhattan16
4mo ago
Whenever the mainstream US news covers the humanitarian disaster in Gaza (and the suffering is absolutely horrendous), the underlying subtext I get is "Israel should stop assaulting Gaza". But there's another path that would also end the humanitarian disaster, and that's the unconditional surrender of Hamas.
They probably would argue that Israel has obligations to support humanitarian aid into the area, both legally (international law) and morally, as the formal state with a much stronger military and large amounts of US backing. It's worth noting that this was exactly what deBoer's position was (is?), and he's hardly as bad-faith as some actors.
drmanhattan16
6mo ago
Hang on, aren't you the guy who wrote those great blogposts about Midway?
No, that was MrManhattan16. I have a Ph.D, you can tell b/c I have Dr in my name.
drmanhattan16
7mo ago
To the degree that Hamas is the legitimate government of the Palestinian people, the people bear responsibility for their international diplomacy (such as it is).
It's not. It controls Gaza, Fatah controls the West Bank.
Secondly, they froze elections after they came to power.
Thirdly, any analysis where you conclude that the average person holds non-negligible responsibility for something like government of all things must explain what exactly the analyst thinks is okay to do to that person with said responsibility. Can we start bombing them for not actively fighting the government?
drmanhattan16
1yr ago
God forbid that they might actually have to mix with the unwashed masses.
Was this ever actually required? Like, how many noble people were walking through a peasant village and chatting with the locals like they were at a sports bar? You can have obligations that you fulfill without the emotional attachment to them.
drmanhattan16
1yr ago
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It's happening, but it's a prospiracy instead. Jews aren't necessarily aware of their own thought processes that causes this.
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It's happening, but it's the equivalent of Russell conjugation. Non-Jews have a stick in their eyes that prevents them from seeing that were the situation reversed, they could be described in the exact same way. I forget who said it here, but it's about how those without power don't seem to understand the experience of having it.
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It's happening, but it's in response to history. Basically, Jews have been so poorly treated by others that they were funneled into doing things others did not want to and built their advantages upon that. In this case, Jews are acting rationally and have learned that they benefit from the existence of a state for their people (and whoever else they want to allow), among other things.
These are just a few I can come up with. This says nothing about evidence, of course, and that applies to both sides of this debate.
drmanhattan16
1yr ago
Is...is this a troll? It pattern matches way too well to what an atheist might say about Christians if you replaced the term in your post. Like, down to the actual words and sentences.
drmanhattan16
1yr ago
I'm with you.
I get it, not everyone is aware of the oceans of ink spilled on any particular topic. I don't begrudge people for going through the same steps as others. But goddamn, can we at least get more interesting discussion on themotte? I get why transgenderism gets so much time spent on it, but there's a reason scholarly articles mention previous or related work - it's so that people don't waste their time on the same thing over and over.
drmanhattan16
1yr ago
Better to ask in the small questions thread.
drmanhattan16
1yr ago
How is this a W? What part of banning liberal journalists is a W? Was their credibility somehow based on not getting banned from Twitter?
drmanhattan16
3mo ago
Yes, yes, there are these two tribes, but WHY do these tribes hate each so much? It seems obvious to me that the red tribe is currently on the defensive, and so fights on out of a spirit of plucky individualism/puerile defiance (you choose). They could just stop, but that would amount to a capitulation.
You are missing why they are fighting in the first place. This is not a case of "I know I'm wrong, I'm just arguing to piss you off", the red tribe holds fundamental moral values. The most basic of oughts is that one ought to promote what one deems moral. Why wouldn't they fight against someone promoting something they don't think is moral?
But the blue tribe's motivation is harder for me to explain to myself. Why do they hate the red tribe so much? One could point back to Trump and say "Look at all the damage the red tribe did!" but Trump himself seems to have been the red tribe lashing out at blue tribe condescension/scorn.
This is again missing the point. You don't need an explanation for why this particular culture played out the way it did to understand 90% of it. The Blue Tribe holds different values and will fight for its morality, simple as that.
Humans set their standards by their environment, which is why nerds and jocks will self-segregate despite the countless things that make them similar. You cannot point to the far group(s) and ask why a tribe doesn't organize with the other tribe against the remote tribe, it's very rarely relevant. Failure to understand this is bizarre given that you've read SSC's Outgroup piece.
It appears that the Blue Tribe today does not accuse the red tribe of anything specific at all
This is so blind to anything the Blue Tribe says that I have to seriously consider if you are just casually speculating with no research on what either side alleges. The Blue Tribe accuses the Red Tribe of a whole host of things, which can largely be grouped into two categories: bigotry (racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.) and irrationality (in particular, deriving views based on "common sense" and religious beliefs).
drmanhattan16
5mo ago
What will be left of Ukraine after Russia and the West are done with their proxy war?
Ideally Ukraine will be a part of NATO as its allies fund its reconstruction. Even better if it means the death of current Russian regime. No better message for every other tyrant eyeing the lands near them.
It's hard to get good numbers as both Russia and Ukraine lie about everything. But it feels that Ukraine is exhausted and will soon lose this war. My heuristic for this is reading between the lines of the news.
"Both sides lies" is a meaningless platitude. Perun covered this exact topic 2 weeks ago and argued that Ukrainians are still incredibly supportive of fighting Russia, though they recognize that its going to be hard and grinding. Russians are harder to poll due to fear of state punishment for the "wrong" opinions, but even then, there's less support on the Russian side for fighting the war to its conclusion than there is on the Ukrainian side. He also doesn't ignore all the things "between the lines", talking explicitly about the average Ukrainian soldier's age issue in the linked video.
I have to ask, at this point, why does the West still support Ukraine? Yes, it's very convenient that Ukraine is willing to destroy itself to hurt Russia. But, as a utilitarian, I am very skeptical of the benefits of "grand strategy" type decisions like this. The world is complicated. If we let Putin have the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine will he then demand the Polish-speaking parts of Poland? No. It's not like this war has been a resounding success. Furthermore, he could die tomorrow.
Supporting Ukraine is an affirmation of the post-WW2 status quo in which war for the sake of expansion will not be tolerated. Russia may fear Ukraine slipping from its control, but the reason Eastern Europe did that is precisely because Russia has acted on this notion of spheres of influence. Moreover, every dead Russian, while tragic, and every spent ruble on military equipment is part of the cost that Russia will have to deal with. No better cost-effective solution for depleting the resources of an expansionist and corrupt system.
Moreover, you know why Putin won't demand the Polish parts of Poland? Because Poland is in NATO. That's precisely the threat of Ukraine after the 2014 revolution, it may join America's umbrella and then it can never be touched.
Peace would be nice. But, and I recognize that I have less stake in the issue given that I'm not losing people myself over the issue, I believe it would still be good for the Ukrainians to continue fighting. I support giving them as much as they ask for and more.
drmanhattan16
7mo ago
Note that the Palestinians have no good plan for how they would materially improve the lives of their citizens if Israel sudden disappeared in the blink of an eye beyond going in an feeding off the surplus left behind.
The Palestinians would, if Israel disappeared and they took over all its land, have the water, food, ports, etc. that they could develop. There are undoubtedly millions or billions of dollars that could flow from Islam-dominant countries to help them as well.
even today there is a very large contingent of the world that supports those who get their political inspiration from the Prince of Darkness
Yawn. Every time someone comes up with such an explanation, they should probably do due diligence and consider what those supporters would actually say. It's not writing for everyone to argue that one side of an issue is Satanic...except in cases where actual Satanists are involved, I suppose.
drmanhattan16
7mo ago
This is a convenient explanation, but one should always be skeptical of any description of their enemies that boils down to "they're jealous". It's not impossible, but you're gonna miss a lot. For all that leftists do this, it should be considered that they expect better of Western civilization. In the same vein that an adult is held to different standards vs. children, the social critic holds his society to be able to do better than this enemies.
There is obviously a debate to be had over whether their standards are perfect or not, but you do yourself a disservice if you boil your opponent's arguments down to "seethe more".
drmanhattan16
7mo ago
As a composite character, I give you the US infantryman. He is nineteen or twenty years old, grew up in a trailer park, has a kid or two with women he's not married to, is married to a woman with kids that are not his. He'll be divorced in a year. His family are construction workers, nurses, truck drivers, retail workers, garbage collectors, heavy machine operators, drug dealers, petty criminals, major criminals. He is dumber than average, hated school, has never read a book not assigned in class. He's been in jail multiple times, and probably will be again, mostly for low level stuff like underage drinking, vandalism and fighting. He binge drinks and smokes when in garrison, dips in the field. He gets in fistfights on a regular but extended basis with members of his own unit, in group conflict with other units, or with civilians on liberty. His politics, if he has any, are somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan. He drives a pickup truck, a Mustang, or a heavily riced-out import and is dead broke most of the time. He is, in short, perilously close to the underclass of our society, and there's a lot of crossover. His life is boredom, fear, pain and the brotherhood of those who live in fear and pain. His values are foreign, rude and frightening to those not of his group.
Your description is fascinating to me because I would have assumed this to be the modern equivalent of one of McNamara's Morons. The self-destructive and perhaps anti-social behavior are the kind of thing I wouldn't expect from a modern soldier, because my understanding was that everyone looked at MMs and concluded that they were better dead than alive.
Or maybe MMs were even more abysmal than this.
drmanhattan16
11mo ago
(Side note: since we live in the clown world, I feel compelled to add a disclaimer that the word "barbarian" is used in purely descriptive, not pejorative, meaning - as "somebody who is not part of the imperial culture" - and, in fact, for the purposes of this definition, I am a barbarian myself and many of my friends are Barbarian-Americans)
It has nothing to do with "clown world", you are straight up analogizing the US to older empires that were far more explicitly formulated on a racial or ethnic basis, likewise analogizing illegal immigrants as less-civilized. You are free, of course, to idiosyncratically define "barbarian" as those who don't belong to the culture of the US (insofar as such a thing exists). But let's not pretend that this is some "clown world" shit, and that everyone in a "saner" world would understand that you weren't trying to insult those who are the "barbarians" here. It was an insult long before the advent of the "clown world".
drmanhattan16
1yr ago
No this is definitely not a troll. I actually sortof hate the (blatantly inverted) myth that religious people can't be scientists, but I think it illustrates my point really well, so here goes:
Yeah, but no one is actually arguing that? Not here, anyways. I'll argue that religious people engage in some level of compartmentalization when it comes to science, but not that they couldn't do it.
You can have a devout Catholic particle physicist, astronomer, biologist, etc. These things are completely compatible with each other. Consider the breadth of experience that a devout Catholic astronomer has. They are able to tap into both the beauty of the universe, as well as integrate this into a broader (in my opinion richer) understanding about how humans and our morality fit into that universe. They get the "stars are cool" side of things, but they also get the divine "this is bigger than me" philosophical side of things.
You can do all those things even without religion. You can have a sense of "this is beautiful" or "this is cool". People can, for example, experience many of the same feelings about nations instead of religion, where they get some awe or wonder from tying things to their people as opposed to God.
What you're saying just doesn't happen, and I know that because I've personally had the kind of moments where I felt many of the same things you described while also being an atheist.
drmanhattan16
1yr ago
IQ is generally not in the Western mainstream. I've seen people express genuine shock at the idea that IQ is even heritable.
drmanhattan16
1yr ago
Governments defecting against other w.r.t. taxes creates downwards pressure on tax rates, a race to the bottom, which is one of the things that prevents the governments from taxing as high as the market can bear, and therefore capturing all the produced value.
Seems like neither is really desirable - letting corporations threaten to run to some other country in a legal fiction about where your headquarters is located to not have to pay taxes while reaping the benefits of access to the higher-tax market. I don't know what the better solution is, though.
drmanhattan16
1yr ago
Second, this month we have special AAQC recognition for drmanhattan16. This readthrough of Paul Gottfried’s Fascism: Career of a Concept began in the Old Country, and has continued to garner AAQC nominations here. It is a great example of the kind of effort and thoughtfulness we like to see. Also judging by reports and upvotes, a great many of us are junkies for good book reviews. The final analysis was actually posted in January, but it contains links to all the previous entries as well, so that's what I'll put here:
I was a bit surprised that my posts seemed to receive less engagement here compared to the old place, but I assumed that perhaps some readers had been lost in the migration. So thank you to anyone who nominated me!
drmanhattan16
1yr ago
Taibbi does argue in the release that Twitter execs were nervous about getting dragged in front of Congress again over alleged foreign interference and their lack of action. The implication is that they feared getting hit with new regulation or fine or whatever.
The idea of taking the black pill specifically so you can cast yourself as a "free thinker" is an interesting one, remind me of this Onion article. If it's about having status and independence, it should be left-right agnostic and more about whatever side is perceived as setting the rules more. There must have been edgelords in the 60s who were in favor of the counter-culture, right?
But if this is why you get infiltration, is it your opinion that it's ultimately harmless until taken seriously? That is, banning the "kids" from making their jokes can lead to them taking it more seriously than if they were just given a slap on the wrist and told to knock it off?
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