georgioz
1d ago
Since you mentioned athlecisism, IQ is a score that takes several activities - imagine running, lifting weights, foot-rope drill and maybe throwing a stone. Then average it to some score hoping you captured something like athleticism.
For IQ test the aim is to measure this underlying intellectual ability, the famous psychometric g score/factor of "general intelligence". Individual tests like matrices or vocabulary or object assembly have correlation between 0.6-0.8 with g, but neither of them is perfect correlate. In fact it is harder to say what this general IQ is supposed to be, similarly if let's say professional weightlifter is more athletic than a professional marathon runner.
Democrats dropped tens of millions for MAGA candidates in 2022 from their own money, while declaring the same candidates as existential threat to democracy.
Spending government money to get some votes of shady characters? Absolutely no problem, especially with so many naive people around.
georgioz
6d ago
I may be one of those people, but I do consider all rights as privileges. Right means entitlement absent of any duty, which means somebody else has duty providing you with said right. Even original US set of rights in American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man gives government duties through law to to enforce these rights privileges.
In this case right for asylum means nothing else other than duty of you fellow citizens to accommodate foreigners. If society as a whole refuses these duties, then said "right" is dead. Duties related to rights are not enforced by god who strikes you with lightning and they are not enshrined in trajectories of planets in Solar system. They are social conventions and they are direct results of what duties citizens are willing and capable to undertake - we have all seen what happened to human rights during COVID for example.
georgioz
6d ago
It may be statistically correct, but it doesn't justify restricting my liberty to make my own choices.
Of course it may justify it, there are situations where your choices are limited exactly on these grounds - like with myriads of other illegal drugs and many other illegal activities, that limit your liberty to make many choices. What are you talking about.
I watched a Sagaar/Crystal Breaking Point show on the topic, and to me it seemed funny that for some reason none of them mentioned the potentially most important reason: crypto has been historically used to protect money from various actors, including garnishing the income due to child support or other such obligations. If you have irregular or under the table income, you can store it even using cash such as with bitcoin ATMs or peer-to-peer trading, there are also other methods. Sending signals that the government will be easy on these practices may be very important for black men specifically.
The right to asylum is not something you can suspend at will. I mean, if you are in the middle of a zombie virus apocalypse, a case might be made, but Poland is very much not on the brink of collapse.
I thought that we are beyond this point already. At least since COVID, everybody knows that rights, including human rights can be suspended at will, sometimes based on unilateral decision of governing bodies for what constitutes a crisis. We now hype everything ranging from climate change through mental health or obesity or anything else as crisis, this is the feature and not a bug. It was actually one of my direct examples to many people during COVID - what prevents government to declare some arbitrary crisis and act with heavy hand?
Also this is nothing new, human rights were undermined constantly. Look at declaration of human rights and let's use Article 5
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Waterboarding is widely deemed as torture and yet it was used by CIA in their War on Terror and to my knowledge nobody was punished for it.
Another one is of course article 12
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
This one is dead, governments routinely spy on peoples electronic correspondence and ignore their privacy. And it seems that nobody gives a shit.
Of course Article 14 is also very sketchy:
Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
This is my favorite one when I am talking with progressives who are supposedly staunch defenders of human rights. It is interesting to watch how many people are then using legalese to weasel out of this one.
Asylum is part of Article 14:
Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Again, many people may bog this down into legal battles of who is asylum seeker, if Belarus is not safe country for many such people trying to cross Polish borders etc. Call me cynical, but I do not see how this should be some barrier nobody will cross.
the Democrat elite may hate him, may despise him, may say that he is a threat to democracy, but I don't think I can remember any time that any of them acted as if he was a threat to one's very psychological foundation. Maybe their power and their close understanding of American politics generally inoculates them against such a reaction.
It is far more sinister. It is public secret, that Hillary Clinton wanted Trump as her opponent, she expected to defeat him easily in 2016. While this strategy backfired, Dems had no problem funneling over $50 million to promote MAGA candidates during 2022 midterms, expecting easier opponents while from the other side of the mouth shouting how they are threat to democracy. There is great deal of cynicism and theater in current politics.
I have a little bit different take. It is not that western world is against moralizing, it is just that it changed values that people are judged by. The don't be judgmental schtick was there only as a temporary stopgap in order to protect these alternative moralities while they were weak. Now when they reign, instead of traditional moral values and virtues that people were judged by, you can now easily be judged as committing one of the big 4 "new" istophobic sins: racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. You can add various other moral issues such as being a bigot (you are against these values as interpreted by new religious authorities) or some sort of other enemy: anti-vaxxer, conspiracy theorist and so forth.
What I find interesting is how a lot of the new morality is direct subversion of traditional virtues and promoting related sins instead. Instead of chastity, we promote lust. Instead of humility we literally celebrate pride month. Instead of patience we celebrate righteous wrath of punching Nazis and persecuting bigots. Instead of temperance we literally promote gluttony, celebrate obesity and drug culture. Instead of charity we promote greed by eating the rich and demanding rights without any related responsibilities. Instead of diligence, we excuse sloth ideally enabled by some sort of UBI or by medicalizing it and removing any responsibility for it. Instead of kindness we prefer envy of those who have some kind of privilege and who are in in some mysterious systematic ways responsible for our situation.
I am not the first one to notice, that the new moral regime shapes up to be almost literal subversion of the old system.
This isn't feminism in any meaningful sense of the word.
I'd agree that it would probably not fit into any of probably dozens of strains of academic feminism. However I think it was Louise Perry or somebody of that thought who half-jokingly defined the practical, Elle style of modern feminism which actually fits:
Feminism is whatever women do.
Women can do X and its opposite and if you criticize anything, then the defense of both simultaneously contradictory positions is feminism. As an example, women can be soldiers and our army will be strengthened by it - which is feminism. But at the same time women should be not compelled or even shamed into military service, or even subject to same physical standards and that is also feminism.
I think there is grain of truth in there, feminism in current day-and-age is mostly a tool of how to prevent any semblance of judgement for whatever behavior women engage in.
georgioz
20d ago
I sympathize with you quite a lot, I am non-US resident and I observe very similar pattern. However a lot of it I think is in the end are very fake controversies. Watching the media it seems that every single week there is a new crisis or a new controversy which will affect the future of the whole nation. People get riled up and lose themself in it.
I recently read a decent book called A Benedict Option by Rod Dreher. His outlook is to just accept that you already lost the culture war and just focus on what you can affect: build a community, be active in your local environment and live your values in your daily life - basically build something like Benedictine monastery in your environment. It can be definitely more useful compared to raging on Twitter over climate change or dog-eating Haitians or any other number of controversies you cannot move in any direction anyway.
georgioz
20d ago
Ok, then I am incorrectly interpreting the term rationalism.
You are not the first one to point this out, rationalism is a terrible name for the movement. Mostly because rationalism already exists as a philosophical system, partially defined as opposition to empiricism. This form of rationalism is the belief, that the basis of all eternal truth comes from reason alone. Hence Descartes argument of cogito ergo sum which comes from total critique of validity of senses. Which is exactly the opposite to what Yud/Alexander "rationalists" espouse. Rationalists are really empiricists in this way.
Not as I intended to use it. I was using the term "rationally" to mean logically extended from your moral principles - whatever those are.
First, this is silly. Rationalists were not the first ones to invent logic, this is too broad a definition. On practical level famoust rationalists are obsessed with movements like Effective Altruism, which is rabidly utilitarian. Scott Alexander described himself as consequentialist utilitarian. Alexander described also Robin Hanson as total utilitaian. Yudkowsky is not very clear writer on this, he often espouses consequentialist and utilitarian thinking, but he complicates stuff. I find this short tweet as a very good summary:
Go three-quarters of the way from deontology to utilitarianism and then stop. You are now in the right place. Stay there at least until you have become a god.
So 2 and a half or two and three quarters for three are team utilitarianism. So I do not think I misjudged that.
georgioz
25d ago
This absolutely misses the point of what attorney is supposed to do. The criminal system is based on the fact, that everybody has right to their own attorney. In a sense attorney is there not to only represent the defendant, but also to defend the whole system of justice. Let's say we have "obvious" murderer, but the prosecution used the most heinous tactics such as beating confession out of him, planting evidence or manipulating and threatening witnesses. In such a case it is the prosecution fault that they mishandled the case and the defendant was let go. Similar with any other issues, such as claiming insanity etc. In such a case it is a problem of stupid experts or laws that let these people out, it is not a problem of attorney that he used such loopholes.
georgioz
25d ago
I am not disputing the fact, tattoos may have different meanings in different time and places. In the past, sailors got tattoos indicating if they crossed Atlantic, or other deeds. Prisoners got their own tattoos and so forth. All useful signals for judging people. In modern time, some girl has a tramp stamp or flower tattooed on her ankle, somebody else can have some other patterns tattooed. However it still is a signal of some behavior. I do not have interest to now have PHD style post analyzing all the tattoos, I will generalize.
In fact I can go even deeper. What if I find tattoos stupid, disgusting and weird. That is my judgement and I do not care why you got them or any other excuse. That is my judgement and I do not give shit about what you think in the same way people with tattoos often claim that they themselves do not give a shit what other people think about their tattoos. In fact it may be a lie and maybe the think that my disgust with their tattoos is also some sort of signal and they will judge me for my "bigotry" or lack of empathy or whatever.
In the end the argument stands: people do judge other people and I do not see any problem with that.
You can say it about other things as well. More than 20% of people in USA are obese, 1 in 5 people un USA experience mental illness, 25% of women are expected to get abortion, 28% of black males and 16% of Hispanic males will be incarcerated during their lifetimes. We can go on. I do not think that just because something is common, that it automatically means it is also a good thing.
So yeah, maybe it is not such a good thing that we normalized former taboos. What is also interesting in this debate is that the word judging really has negative connotations for many people - except of course if you "judge" something positively. Fat Cosmopolitan model? No problem if somebody judges her overflowing fat as beautiful and herself as stunning and brave person. Somebody has neck tattoos and sleeves? No problem complimenting them for their bravery and confidence. Of course you can judge somebody if he has Make America Great Again sleeve, in that case it is disgusting and not a signal that this person is actually brave to wear his beliefs literally on his sleeve.
It is not about being judgemental or non-judgemental. It is about judging certain things positively and other things negatively, while claiming the moral high ground.
Sure, the MS-13 face tattoo was just an obvious example that was meant to show the principle - if you present yourself or behave in certain way, you will be judged, it is inevitable.
Let´s say that I know that somebody has tattoos and piercings, and I do not know anything about it: if it is some face tattoo or tramp stamp or nipple piercing etc.
I could judge such a person as having been at certain point in time as reckless, vain, possibly with some body dismorphia or at least self-esteem complex. It is not some gamebreaker for me, but neither is obesity. But it is a hint.
But there is another level here I want to touch. Sometimes there are situations, where we are speaking about very deep concepts, which evade “rationalist” thinking and endless scrutiny. One famous example is when Plato went about in his Academia, thinking about definition of what is a man, he came up with definition of “featherless biped”. Then he met Diogenes:
According to Diogenes Laërtius, when Plato gave the tongue-in-cheek definition of man as "featherless bipeds", Diogenes plucked a chicken and brought it into Plato's Academy, saying, "Here is Plato's man" (Οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ Πλάτωνος ἄνθρωπος), and so the academy added "with broad flat nails" to the definition.
This is such a rationalist story. Everybody knows what is a man, even a child or village idiot. A good example of trying to ruminate and categorize definitions of what is X, only to completely miss the point and ontology of the problem. This is similar to me: being a fat, weak, tatooed person with a ton of piercings who swears like a sailor is weird and stupid. We may endlessly harp on it, adding epicycles to our definitions but it will not capture the essence. Also there is the tactic of “dont be judgemental” and accept the expert definition, in order to shame you out of your instinct, that even a small child learns somehow without knowing that fat people have higher risk of diabetes according to this metastudy.
Even for stoics it is absolutely okay to judge others and especially themselves in accordance with stoic virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. For instance Seneca was very critical of Nero, and Epictetus had no problem judging emperor Domitian for his tyrannical actions.
In fact Stoics would be the first ones to point to fat people as negative example of what happens if one lacks self-control, which is the core basis of the virtue of temperance. I know this, because they actually did condemn gluttony and other excesses of Roman elites.
I am not sure where you came to this idea that stoics are some silent monks never to talk and make judgements. One of they key values of stoicism is courage, which includes courage to tell the truth even in face of tyrants like Caligula who wanted to order Seneca to commit suicide, then let it go given Seneca's poor health.
I would not say that the Left is reactionary or conservative, it is more that it accepts certain broadly French liberal thinking as described by Rousseau, specifically in his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Among Men, where he claimed that a man in his natural state was free and that society enslaves him. That is the core idea behind leftist concept of liberation - to return to this mythical state of things where hierarchies were supposedly flat and there was material equality - but in modern society. I will just add that all these assumptions regarding noble savage is proven as unscientific, but nevertheless it is still at the core of even modern leftism. So much for science. Marx added the dialectical process behind it and added concepts such as alienation. For him what makes human is his ability to produce his own vision, not to work for anybody else such as capitalists. In his analysis of stages of history the very first stage is called primitive communism, the later stages are just a historical process until the true communism is achieved - again something like primitive communism but inside modern industrial society.
So I would not necessarily say that leftism is reactionary or that they want to return to some actual scientifically grounded previous state of history. Rather leftists created an idea of their utopia, and put it into historical and materialistic context - either in the past or in the future or both - which gives this ideology veneer of science and evidence. But it is as imaginary, false and spiritual as any religious thinking, my closest comparison would be something like Scientology which talks about extraterrestrial alien race called Xenu and tries to marry materialism with spiritualism.
Well, I'm not really interested in judging others (beyond ways that are immediately useful).
I don't believe you, unless maybe you have a very broad definition of immediately useful. For instance, what use did you have scolding the OP for judging people outside of their "character"?
I openly admit that I am very interested in judging. Judgment is necessary when analyzing all actions or things as good/moral or bad. What I wanted to point out is a very common trope of some people, who lack even basic self awareness and who can with straight face say things such as "unlike all those nasty bigots, I am very open-minded and non-judgmental person". The ask by anybody not to judge, is often just a manipulation technique to normalize and shelter from criticism what they themselves judge as a good thing. With no such treatment offered to what they deem as bad things such as bigotry, which has to be judged and punished harshly.
If by character you mean moral character, then yes, aesthetics can be used to signal moral character. If I see somebody with MS-13 face tattoo or wearing Hells Angels bike jacket, I have no problem with that.
And sometimes I will also judge outside of moral character. If I want a partner for pickup basketball, then I may judge a 5 foot tall nice god-fearing guy as unsuitable for that role. In fact if he is of a good moral character, then I expect him to accept it with stoicism and plow through the situation with grace and respect as opposed to complaining about it. If he did whine, then I would also judge him as a little whiner unsuitable for other activities as well.
To what extent do you think it's appropriate to judge someone else for their body type? Would you assess someone that was weak, small, or skinny as also lacking in character?
Not the OP, but I will bite - yes, it is appropriate with possibly the exception of "small". I can judge people especially for things that can be under their control: that they are weak, that they are anorectic, that they lack personal hygiene, that they have bad breath and other things including things like tattoos, piercings, foul language and so forth.
Now I have a question for you: why do you think it is appropriate to judge me for my criteria I judge for? Why should I care for what you judge as judgmental? Are you some ultimate meta-judge, who is going to set the standards of judging for all people? Who elected you into this position?
As I said to the other commenter, I'm not defending utilitarianism!
Good, utilitarianism is a monstrous moral system so I give you a point here.
This is why I brought up the speed limit and vaccine examples, which are actual decisions of this type our society is currently making. I don't think we should decide speed limits on gut feelings and instincts. Or what the proper rules of war are.
Yes, I think we should do exactly that, bring back common sense and gut feelings. I have zero faith in our philosopher kings running utilitarian calculation for meaning of life, speed limit and war and spitting out number 42. Especially as they scramble to readjust their speed limit calculation after their computer mistakenly said, that legalizing of marijuana was universally good.
The veil of ignorance basically says "if everyone's main ends are benefit and pleasure for themselves, and everyone's human experience matters roughly equally, then we should have equality", and that's as true as 1+1=2, but the "veil" argument hides the importance of the assumptions.
Exactly. The veil of ignorance - a very apt name I have to add - is just restating old Marxist trick of declaring every other moral and philosophical system as "ideology", while hiding itself from the same criticism. That is why under the veil of ignorance you divide values between "ideologies" you are incarnated into, such as religion, while Rawls's values are "sacred" and kept outside of the incarnated world as assumptions embodied by commie soul(s) waiting to be incarnated. It is the stupidest and oldest trick in the books.
My point was, that your argument is in similar vein: lets assume that we have to do utilitarian calculation about speed limits, which means measuring exact value between speed and lives lost. What is the value? While there are other approaches. Such as for instance, that we will incarcerate and strip of drivers lince all the psychopathic people who are "obviously" speeding, while the rest of the population will drive normally: they will slow down even to 5miles per hour instead of allowed 15 if they see a school and small kids who are jaywalking to get there in time, and who can simultaneously go 100 miles per hour in broad sunny daylight on empty highway. No need for autistic philosopher-king-utilitarians to abstract from all these "details" and "context" to bring us their perfect formula between miles per hour and deaths. Just normal heuristics of normal people, enforced by good old justice where child killers and reckless or drunk drivers are reported and shamed and punished.
georgioz
1mo ago
I used the term fait accompli in relation to Russian invasion of Poland and Baltics. If Russians invaded Suwałki Gap, preventing NATO to supply Baltics, then they could march into Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania in hours or days. Once established there, it would be fait accompli. What would remain is for US/Polish/German/Spanish and other NATO troops to spill blood in house-to-house urban/trench fight to liberate their former NATO allies from the south. I can already see how enthusiastic the coalition would be in that case.
Also Mariupol was a done deal. It was surrounded in 2 days after invasion, the rest was mopping up operation without anybody able to do anything about it, with Russian tanks in suburbs of Kyiv.
And the question then is, how? why? what for?
Okay, here is one possible answer: gut feeling, instinct and heuristics. I may choose to hold dog owner criminaly liable if he has dangerous dog - so the kid is mauled and dog owner's ass is hauled into prison. We may implement one of the ranges of laws ranging from "one free bite" law or mandatory muzzles/leashes etc. In fact more often than not I find it more correct than endless harping over hypothetical trolley problems. One issues with this "rational" thinking is that it leads you astray. It strips the situation of context, forces you to abstract looking at the problem from some inhumane birds eye view and reconstruct stuff from some first principles, which often smuggles in more assumptions. More often than not, it is not useful or sometimes outright misleading.
I will actually use one example, that of famous Rawl's original position. At the first glance it seems reasonable, you are just using thought experiment to sharpen your moral instinct "rationally". However what it really does is smuggle in some strange or outright spiritual assumptions. The Original Position assumes that people are distinct from their bodies. They are all indistinguishable immaterial souls possessing all the rational faculties and all the knowledge and they are about to decide into what society to reincarnate. This is deeply spiritual and political assumption. The Original Position basically assumes some spiritual space communism and utopian equity between souls about to be trapped in sometimes stupid or weak human bodies maybe even of “wrong” sex and asks, if you would not want to recreate Social Justice communism here on Earth, that is what you would want to do in this scenario - right?
But let me ask you dear reader, to consider another thought experiment I will call Georgioz's Positon. It is identical to Original Position except that there also exists Christian God floating above all the commie souls from Rawls's thought experiment. Teachings of Jesus Christ are correct and if you do not adhere to it, you will go to hell after you die. Under such assumptions, you would surely want to be incarnated into body of a good Christian, right?
It is the same here with this example: let's assume this thought experiment, where you are presented with a choice between two outcomes with some range of various values - please calibrate the exact percentage threshold of your choice. We are assuming utilitarianism here in this thought experiment, which I refuse. Maybe I will refuse to calculate values X, Y, C, B, A and number of children or dogs killed as you steer me to do. Fuck that, maybe all I care about is adherence to eye-for-an-eye Hammurabi style of law: if a child gets mauled by some dog, then the dog owner will be sentenced to a colosseum, where he himself gets mauled by pack of bloodthirsty mastiffs - and portion of ticket sales for the spectacle will be used to pay for damages. Justice was served, next case. And also please dear utilitarian, calculate exact threshold between 5 to 10 mastiffs you think is the best choice when executing the transgressor in this thought experiment. I am sure you will come up with something interesting here.
georgioz
1mo ago
The first thing that came to my mind was that animal killing may be part of some Vodun/Voodoo or other magical ritual. I tried to google it now and it seems that the internet was already scraped. You can easily avoid it by limiting the google search to before August 2024. Here are some articles. National Geographic in 2004
These disembodied spirits are believed to become tired and worn down—and rely on humans to "feed" them in periodic rituals, including sacrifices. "It's not the killing of the animals that matters," Corbett said. "It's the transfer of life energy back to the Loa."
Another one from Slate in 2013 describing sacrifice of goat
The life energy of the animal is for the Lwa. Often the blood is collected in a calabash bowl and later placed on the Poto Mitan, which represents the center of the universe and access to the spirit world.
Another article from New York Times that mentions that 90% of Haitians practice some form of voodoo and has this to say about animal sacrifice:
I talk about sacrifice a lot. That is usually the first order of questioning. People find themselves offended by it. And then I usually ask, 'Do you eat chicken? Do you eat meat? How do you think the animal was killed? Do you feel any responsibility for it?'
And then we usually move on from there. The imagery surrounding blood sacrifice is much exaggerated. After the food is presented to the spirits as a gift, it is given back to the people by the spirits. It is all cooked and eaten, so none of it is wasted.
Here is an article about dog torture in West Africa. Just do your own research. It may not necessary be the issue of hungry people eating cats or dogs - although it definitely can happen - but it is also about tradition.
I find this fascinating, the same is happening in my country of Slovakia. My working theory is that we live in de facto what accounts to US Empire. It is not dissimilar to let's say Roman empire or British empire - you have various naturalized people who feel allegiance to the empire, they adopt the imperial customs and ethos and even ape people in imperial centers of power. It also fosters certain strange allegiances, I am sure upper class of Roman Britain or Egypt felt more in common with Roman elites than local people - not unlike what is happening now.
When it comes to culture, there are obvious things such as racism or sexism etc. However what I find interesting is that people here internalize even completely invalid themes - for instance the boomer vs millenial dichotomy from US. In Slovakia, boomers spent their best productive years during communism or very shady early years after the fall of Eastern Bloc in 1989, with 20%+ unemployment and average salary of $100 a month/$1,200 a year - if you were lucky enough to actually have an average job and the employer was actually paying you on time. Boomers at large do not have any financial property such as stocks or bonds to help in their retirement, because these were not accessible. Whatever they had, they probably lost it to double digit inflation, failing state banks and bankrupted post-communist industry. At best they may own some old commie apartment in some small town where they lived their whole lives. They are wholly dependent on state pension, which averages around 60% of average net wage, many of them have to work various odd jobs to survive. And yet young people are parroting the US talking point of how boomers had it so much better than them, how they hoard wealth, how much harder it is now in current economy etc. It is amazing to see.
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