I learned about it from tweet by Yudkowsky, his defense got pretty bizzare at some point. I think he said that he sniffed Aella and she does not stink or something like that. Bunch of other people also tweeted some platitudes about how Aella is amazing, or how bad it is that she has to go through all this when she was molested as a child etc.
georgioz
2d ago
Agreed. I bet that any famous personality has ton of haters no matter what side they are on be it Destiny or Joe Rogan or Hasan Piker or Tim Pool. Some of these people read out loud their hate male for fun from time to time, or they just describe what is happening - e.g. Tim Pool is swatted every couple of weeks and hate is through the roof. I don't think it is good, but it is part of what is going on. Why should it be different for women.
georgioz
4d ago
I tried to drag this board into a conversation about cars. I won’t make that mistake again, but a point of discussion centered around all of them being way less colorful than they used to be..
I am not sure if this proves what you think it does. If you look at the graph, the difference is basically in people selecting white as their color. I am not sure how it is in the US, but the last time when I was shopping for a new car, the white color was for free while everything else was €500 - 1,000 extra. I don't care enough about color to pay that, although I would prefer more vibrant color - if for nothing else then to be more visible on the road for more safety.
georgioz
4d ago
Him and Trace changed after leaving, kulak changed a lot more but trace did too. There are plenty of alums that are popular on twitter, covfefe anon, cremieuxrecueil (allegedly trannyporn0).
I am a little bit torn on this one. For instance with Trace, I think he is more authentic after leaving his anonymous motte persona, except at least from what I observed he is now more into gay stuff and mormonism - probably stemming more from his personal experience and history. I think he was more interesting in his fictional anonymous personality writing about whatever here on The Motte, when he had to mold himself into The Motte ethos. In a sense rules here are also some sort of algorithm forcing some people into writing style, that may not be natural to them. And they may be better for it.
There are really only a handful of anti-trans people who literally believe people shouldn't be "allowed" to transition.
I think this just cheap consensus building, a semantic trap which rests a lot on what the word "allow" means. Not many people would for instance literally believe, that it should not be allowed for people to drink themselves to death or that they are not allowed to cut off their fingers or any number of other gruesome things. But these arguments would be more in line with thinking that alcoholism or self-harm is bad, and that the society should do everything to prevent it using shaming and other tools. Because any other measure to prevent it would be worse and not really applicable.
But many more conservatives and also liberals would be against let's say having "gender expression" as a protected characteristic in law or having transition being financed by taxpayers.
Yes, that is why I was talking about general attitude. In general men may view loneliness as more problematic, for instance according to Pew research 57% of 18-34 men compared to 45% of women want a family. That is why I previously mentioned that men are more likely to see loneliness as a bad thing and approach it from despair, while women may view loneliness as an empowerment and something they want.
I think this goes hand in hand with general trend where men have more societal expectations put on them when it comes to traditional gender roles - strive for high status, provide for and protect your family and your community especially women and children. While for women the gender roles were targets of more attacks, to the extent where some traditional gender duties like motherhood were dropped completely. To even talk about having children as duty for women is viewed as misogyny.
This also informs how the topic is handled - incels are universally reviled as failures of their own character, while femcels are victims of society in general and men in particular at best. But this may also change in the future and men will be more comfortable also dropping the societal expectations - like 40 year old guys just working part time and playing video games completely reneging on social pressure on their behavior, similarly how it is with women now. However I would not see it as cure for loneliness, just more acceptance of shitty situation.
Sure, but then this cuts both ways. In that sense MGTOw man who regularly goes to pub with his colleagues or who plays D&D with his friends or who organizes grill party for his nieces and nephews or who volunteers for summer camps for children is not lonely either.
Of course this can explain only part of the problem, loneliness is something deeper no matter how women or men try to rationalize it. And maybe in current culture lionizing single powerful women it may be easier for women to do that. The word "incel" has much more shame and negative connotation in it compared to femcel. A lonely childless widow may have more social status than lonely childless widower. Nevertheless in some fundamental way they are still lonely.
One statement I've found that cuts across the bipartisan spectrum is 'the internet made us all crazy'.
It may be one of the factors, but not necessarily the primary one. People in the past refused to date or engage with people of other religions or classes. What I think really happened in the past decade, is that for many secular people the politics basically became the new religion - especially for those more radicalized ones. Internet may spread the radicalization more effectively, but the underlying phenomenon is still the same.
georgioz
9d ago
I read a lot about the male loneliness crisis, or think pieces on why men are dropping out of the dating pool and I can’t help but draw nebulous connections with these experiences.
I always found this weird, as mathematically for every lonely man there has to be one lonely woman and vice versa. There are some confounders, like that women can have one night stands or situationships. Or that men can pay for prostitutes as a substitute for one night stands. Or that there is more lonely women especially in higher age due to them living longer than men. In any case for each man that lays his head alone in his bedroom, there is a woman somewhere doing the same. It is intrinsically linked phenomenon and it does not make sense to talk about it separately.
Maybe one thing that is different is that in general men who are alone are more aware of it not being ideal situation and they talk more of despair. Even MGTOW community talks about loneliness as preferable to other types of suffering, not as something that is preferable to fulfilling relationship. While on the other side when people are talking about lonely women it is more linked with some sort of empowerment and other positive vibes.
American politics are generally much less corrupt than Roman ones were. Sure, companies will sponsor campaigns, but any voter who cares can find out what the sponsors of a politician are. My gut feeling is that 87% of the political decisions (weighted by impact) are made on either ideology or merit, perhaps 10% of the decisions are made to please campaign donors and perhaps 3% of the decisions are made to personally enrich the decision maker.
You could say the same about crucial issues in Rome at that time such as let's say land reform or distribution of wealth from kingdom of Pontus. On surface level it was a discussion of ideological conflict between optimates and populares, but in the end the conflict was about which faction will distribute wealth and maintain power.
For instance during latest elections 92% of votes of people in DC landed in favor of Democrats - these are all people staffing all the most powerful federal institutions. You can go one-by-one with other institutions depending on public money be it public schools, academia etc. It is by now basically captured by one of the parties. You may downplay it such as merit or ideology, but the fact is that people governed by bureoucracy have different views from those who rule them. This also means that members of one political party extract resources from general population and distribute them toward their own client network of sympathizers.
In a sense the system is already corrupted. When they saw Caesar giving them personal promise of benefits they saw it as more tangible and in a sense even less corrupt compared to some vague promise of of reward by the republic controlled by people they viewed as actually corrupt.
There are 45 thousand wet markets in China according to my google search. How likely it is, that novel coronavirus comes from the market literally only a few miles away from a lab studying novel coronaviruses? At least 1:10,000 let's say. Let's even say that Wuhan is a huge hub, not unlike another 113 large cities with population over 1 million in China. Again, how likely it is that a new virus appears in Wuhan and not in any other large city? And I am not even talking about other facts such as that China is notoriously opaque communist dictatorship falsifying uncomfortable data.
Nevertheless even if you are convinced that the virus is of zoonotic origin, the lab-leak could never have been anywhere close to conspiracy theory realm. In fact it would require some conspiracy to explain this away - such as bat > pangolin > human transmission in Wuhan chain of events to explain zoonotic origin. That one is more complex. Additionally even if we accept wet market theory, that one is is still compatible with lab leak - such as let's say infected bat carcass being sold on wet market for profit by some careless employee in charge of incineration inside famously corrupt Chinese environment.
The fact that even reasonable rationalists mocked and suppressed this theory is wild to me.
georgioz
19d ago
It does not matter, the genie is out of the bottle and people will not believe the government. In fact I think that in this case your argument is completely the other way around. People advocating for lockdowns as an open policy is similar to somebody making apologetics for Nazis. Maybe their government has been wrong when it comes to Jews. Mistakes were made and German government apologized for it. But who knows. Maybe sometimes in the future there will be a need for government to lock some portion of the population into concentration camps. We do not want to have such a strict no more Holocaust policy. What if utilitarian calculation of government experts shows that locking people against their will and marking them as pariahs with martial laws and all that is necessary and will save a lot more people?
I mean, come on, if the next thing to go pandemic (lab leak, bioweapon, or natural) has the mortality rate of septicaemic plague, there's just straight-up no alternative.
Non sequitur. We had data regarding COVID outbreak on board of Diamond Princess cruise ship since February 2020. We had 7-14 deaths out of 700 confirmed cases out of 3,700 passengers and crew - of course depending on how strict you want to attribute these deaths to Covid. This rate of 0,2-1% mortality rate that was discussed early on, it was known already in April including age and comorbidities based on this ideal natural experiment, and even that was the upper bound given small portion of people infected on board. All of this was known way before lockdowns were enacted. These policies were nothing short of criminal.
(…) for the first time [this debate] made me see the coronavirus as one of God’s biggest and funniest jokes. Think about it. Either a zoonotic virus crossed over to humans fifteen miles from the biggest coronavirus laboratory in the Eastern Hemisphere. Or a lab leak virus first rose to public attention right near a raccoon-dog stall in a wet market. Either way is one of the century’s biggest coincidences, designed by some cosmic joker who wanted to keep the debate acrimonious for years to come.
Even if it was a coincidence, it still means that lab leak theory should never have been considered a conspiracy theory. You can believe whatever you want, but the sheer coincidence of all this should always give some credence to lab leak at least enough not to outright mock or ban it as completely wacky thing to believe in.
It has to have certain flow and be aesthetically pleasing. Gary Provost nailed it
This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.
georgioz
2mo ago
Far from a blackpill, rulings like this give me some hope that checks and balances will actually work in practice.
It depends on your definition of checks and balances. The question here is who is checking and balancing court decisions. Somebody can say that it can be executive by ignoring them. It is also not without a precedent such as when Andrew Jackson simply ignored court decision of Worcester v. Georgia (1832) stating that executive branch also has ability to interpret the constitution. Another example was Lincoln ignoring ruling regarding suspension of habeas corpus
georgioz
2mo ago
In America the existence of a certificate in following basic directions, using the English language, being able to not make problems when working in groups, etc is the function of a bachelor's in psychology, but what else do you suggest fill that role?
I am not sure if college degree provides that certificate anymore. First, universities now tend to produce culture warriors that can endanger you business if they think your corporation is the best platform to promote their political ideas. Additionally I am not sure if even ability to cooperate in a team or command of English language is something necessary to get a degree anymore. I think what you basically have to do now as a business owner is to do your own testing of potential employees including basic tests such as composing some simple email to customer or related to reading comprehension of some corporate memo.
georgioz
2mo ago
Their combined GDP is around $550 billion. That is similar level to that of Israel or Ireland or United Arab Emirates or Denmark.
georgioz
2mo ago
Exactly. It would be as if we had an 80ies movie about how bunch of regular and nice kids committed heinous murder inspired by violent action movies while trying to reenact D&D spell in real life. And the whole thing would be promoted by school system as a guide for teachers and parents.
I am not sure if there was anything like that during satanic panic, but it would not surprise me. Wokeness has attracted the usual moral busybodies of yesteryear, I would not be the first one to go with "woke is secular puritanism" angle.
Ok, I can even grant you Rowling, although she is at least a liberal. "Fortunately" there are many others, like Camile Paglia - self described admirer of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and all that shtick, who is now supposedly on the right making interviews with Peterson because of her cat fight with Judith Butler and 3rd+ wave of intersectional feminists.
georgioz
2mo ago
being infinitely scared by Russian nuclear arsenal is (in addition to Libya vs North Korea) something that will greatly encourage nuclear proliferation.
You can probably also add Poland to that list in the future
I think Stefferi is correct. I can give you just one example - Dave Rubin, a homosexual conservative star who together with his husband bought their children from surrogates. A lot of conservatives use him as a proof that they are not homophobic or whatever. You have more, like Elon Musk or Joe Rogan or lately even Bill Maher. Or take as an example of narcissist OF prostitute Nala Ray, who recently landed a soft interview with Michael Knowles about her newfound faith, and apparently is now some sort of a saint going around and preaching to conservatives how to be proper Christians. Or how J.K. Rowling or other old school leftie ultrafeminists are now conservative heroes, just because of their one particular stance against transgenderism.
If you take it at face value, none of the above deserve to be anything approaching to conservative role models, but conservatives love it if they see even fake semblance of their values reflected by their former opponents. I can guarantee you that if let's say Destiny or Hasan Piker declare that they are now officially conservative, they would be immediately launched into conservative stardom with conservatives gushing all over them - even if they do not even curtail their values and degeneracy. In a sense it is kind of happening with Ana Kasparian already. It is strange.
A VAT applies equally to foreign and domestic goods. It is not similar to a tariff.
It is similar to tariff, as VAT on foreign goods is used to subsidize domestic production. Revenue from VAT is used to subsidize domestic infrastructure, healthcare and other benefits for domestic workers and companies, or they can even provide direct subsidies. None of these are available for factories or workers from foreign manufacturers who get nothing from VAT imposed on goods they produce. So in the end domestic producers reap more advantage compared to what they pay as a tax.
Whether applying a retaliatory tariff (harming both sides) in order to kick the first side into dropping their tariff is a quantitative question that can easily differ from one situation to the next.
Okay, so what are these quantities and what are costs or benefits to that? If retaliatory tariffs are beneficial then under what conditions? What if these conditions are met when you are the one enacting the tariff as first mover - should you do it?
I'm no economist, but my understanding is that tariffs harm both parties.
Sure, but then the question is how and why. Details matter in this case as reasons may bring more light into the whole issue of tariffs.
Moreover this to me seems quite a different statement: any country that refuses to trade with us under any circumstances except of condition of absolute free trade, is harming us and we will retaliate. This is quite a statement, especially when it then comes to oxymoron of mandatory "free" trade. You would probably not deal like that with an individual.
Also there is more to this type of thinking. In this framework Trump is then also right regarding VAT/Sales tax. If country A has sales tax of 20% and uses this tax for instance to provide free health care, then it is using taxes on foreign goods to artificially bring benefits to its domestic workers. Country B with sales tax of 0% is thus "harmed", right?
This is why details matter.
Why do you care about what he cares about? So what if somebody has a chat about poor body hygiene of somebody else - what is it to you? Do you often go around snooping on conversations you are not interested in, so you can deliver some petty sermons about the fact, that you do not like their conversations and that they should talk about something else?
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