guajalote
11mo ago
I'm not criticizing midjourney, I'm criticizing OP's standards of beauty. It's probably possible to get actual good art out of midjourney in its current form, but OP's examples are crap and were selected based purely on what was most popular among users.
guajalote
4mo ago
What kind of world do you imagine where cultural change doesn't happen? Even if all migration was completely halted worldwide, the internet is constantly transmitting culture worldwide. The kind of world you seem to want to live in would require a literal return to the dark ages. And of course cultural mixing was still happening back then too. The reason we're speaking a language without gendered nouns is because Viking settlers "corrupted" English. The reason I used the word "do" in the first sentence of this post is because Celtic languages "corrupted" English.
guajalote
9mo ago
Depends on what you mean by "quality of life." If quality of life corresponds to revealed preferences, then people in the heartland are getting more of the things they want than ever and are therefore enjoying a better quality of life than ever. But it so happens that what they want is meth and McDonalds.
If by "quality of life" you mean "the things that people should want," then that's a harder question. We'd have to come up with an objective way of figuring out what people "should" want, and then measure whether they're getting more or less of that.
guajalote
4mo ago
"This thing [cultural change or immigration specifically] happened in the past, therefore it's a good thing, or therefore we can't/shouldn't do anything about it".
You're misunderstanding my point. I'm saying whatever it is you like about "American culture" or "Anglo-Saxon culture" or whatever specific culture it is that you're trying to preserve, that culture only exists because of cultural mixing and change. "Your culture" came about as a result of the Angles and the Jutes and the Danes and the Celts all mixing together.
If you're saying that cultural mixing is always bad, then why do you want to preserve "your" culture? If you're being logically consistent then you should also conclude that your own culture is bad because it is a "corrupted" admixture of other cultures.
If they could have stopped the Vikings, should they not have?
If they could have stopped the Vikings from raping and pillaging, absolutely. But it's not clear why it would have been a good thing for them to stop the cultural admixture. If they had prevented the mixture from occurring, then the culture that you're trying to preserve wouldn't exist. So presumably you agree that this cultural mixing was good if you believe that your own culture existing is good.
My interest in continuing this conversation is waning given your unwillingness to present even a shred of evidence to substantiate your rather strong claims.
It seems to me that all your arguments are fundamentally the same arguments that people in the 60s advanced as evidence of the Beatles corrupting the youth. Run for Your Life is a song about beating or killing a woman for infidelity, written and sung by John Lennon who literally beat his wife. Got to Get you Into My Life and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds are about how great LSD is. Many Harrison songs promote Hinduism like My Sweet Lord. Polythene Pam promotes drag and crossdressing. Not to mention the countless songs that promote premarital sex.
The Beatles were as high-status and looked up to by teenagers as any band in history, arguably far more so than any hip hop act ever. You haven't given any principled reasons why your critique of hip hop wouldn't apply equally to the Beatles. By your logic they clearly and unironically promoted abusing women, doing drugs, leaving Christianity, and wearing drag. Other than wearing drag, these were all things members of the Beatles actually did and unironically supported in their own lives. Clearly you would agree that Beatles songs are harmful if even only 1% of the fans are more likely to do drugs after hearing a literal ode to drug use by their literal idols.
you’re a kid in the ghetto, and you see a guy getting respect and women and money and later learn he runs a gang, will this make you more likely to join a gang? Common sense says yes, and hip hop is merely the packaging of this experience into a commodity to be sold to those outside the ghetto.
Do you have any evidence of people "outside the ghetto" joining gangs because of hip hop? Even one anecdote? It strikes me as exceedingly unlikely.
Well I suppose it’s funny to know that he is still successfully trolling after all these decades.
The Manson murderers literally wrote "Helter Skelter" and "Piggies" in blood on the walls. You're saying that was trolling?
guajalote
1mo ago
You are asking for a peer-reviewed longterm study proving that a statistically significant amount of at-risk hip hop listeners will go on to try drugs relative to controls — yes, I would also like that study. But you understand that they haven’t done this study, right?
No, I am asking for literally any evidence at all. Even an anecdotal story of a middle class kid joining a gang because of hip hop would at least be a data point. Or a study suggesting that certain types of musical structures produce aggression. Anything at all besides your own opinion, really.
Is it your opinion that the 60s and 70s did not see an increase in both LSD and eastern spirituality?
Is it your opinion that this was causally related to the music of the 60s? If so, why do you single out hip hop as special and different in its influence?
“If you cheat on me I kill you” is not exhorting people to beat their wives, it’s a song from the perspective of an obsessive male partner that should be interpreted with exaggeration in mind.
This is special pleading. Lennon beat his wife and wrote a song about beating or killing a woman. If you want to argue this isn't meant to be taken seriously, you have to be willing to say the same about hip hop lyrics about killing written by murderers.
Qualitatively different as I explained in my last comment. You’ve ignored everything from the publicized lifestyles of the artists, to the visual culture (guns), to the aggression embedded in the actual musicality.
The publicized lifestyles of the Beatles included infidelity, heroin use, beating women, leaving Christianity, etc. Appeals to "the aggression embedded in the actual musicality" is special pleading. You're just saying hip hop is different because it feels different to you.
Youve misunderstood thr metaphor. Black gangs don’t recruit white suburban kids, they just sell them drugs.
But surely the violent lyrics and "aggressive" music should be inducing suburban kids to violence too, right? Why are they magically immune to this?
guajalote
4mo ago
And I'd probably care about whatever culture I would have ended up having. Just like if I was born into a different family, I would care about the family I was born into and not the one I have in the reality we live in.
At this point it seems you are conceding there's nothing special about your culture that makes it intrinsically worth preserving. You're just saying "it happens to be my culture by chance, therefore I want to preserve it" (why this conclusion follows from this premise is left as an exercise for the reader).
Even I wouldn't concede that there's nothing valuable about my own culture. There are a number of things about my culture that I find valuable, that I intend to pass on to my children, and that I hope they will continue to pass on as long as those things remain valuable in the ever-changing world my descendants will inhabit. I get the impression that I actually value and care about my own culture far more than you do, I just don't feel any need to keep it "pure" and unmixed with other valuable things from other cultures.
At this point, I am convinced this conversation with you is not worth my time, sorry.
Fair enough. Have a nice day.
guajalote
1yr ago
So, for those who elected him, Trump defecting is exactly why they elected him - because cooperating hasn't been working for them for decades now, and they feel like the other side is already been defecting for a long while, and it's time to respond in kind.
Sure, but if this is the case you don't have standing to complain when his opponents adopt the same strategy. Arguing that indicting Trump is norm-breaking rings hollow if Trump himself was elected to break norms.
guajalote
2mo ago
You can have religion without god, but I don't see how you can have religion without faith. By "faith" I mean roughly this definition that popped up when I googled it: "Firm belief based upon confidence in the authority and veracity of another, rather than upon one's own knowledge, reason, or judgment."
But if they aren’t coming to Jesus anyway, surely I would prefer to funnel those people into a group where they can proudly and honestly proclaim that ‘of course Jesus isn’t real, but that’s not the point; the 10 commandments have served our people well for 2 thousand years because they work and you should follow them too.’
In this form of the religion you have faith in the Ten Commandments or in biblical laws more generally. If the adherents take this faith seriously, then they end up being every bit as "religious" as if god existed. As you put it, people would still have to be "convinced to believe or to feign belief" in the inerrant properties of the Ten Commandments. So at best you have effectively replaced god with the ten commandments, and I think you will find it just as hard to convince atheists to truly believe in them. Alternatively, if the adherents don't really take their faith seriously, then it's hard to see what holds the religion together, or how it answers the kinds of existential questions that people look to religion to answer. It's reduced to a social club at that point. If people were excited to join secular social clubs we'd see participation in clubs like Rotary Club, bowling leagues, etc., rising rather than declining.
guajalote
1yr ago
I have nothing against high-context cultures, but this should not be one of them. The point of this place is to (1) welcome all viewpoints, so long as (2) the viewpoint is articulated and defended clearly. High contexts cuts against both of these goals.
guajalote
11mo ago
That midjourney stuff is utter pabulum. It's only beautiful by the most shallow and insipid standards of beauty. The kind of "beauty" that would rank Thomas Kinkaide's paintings above Rembrandt's, because the former is bright and sparkly while the latter is brown and muddy. Or the kind of "beauty" that would consider N*SYNC's music superior to Bach's because the former's is free of dissonance and the later's is rife with it.
I don't particularly like the human art you linked either, but at least the artists are trying to do something interesting. We can do better than ugly modern art without resorting to saccharine crap and calling it beauty.
AI gives people what it gets positive feedback from. It gives people what they want.
Marvel movies and McDonalds chicken nuggets are examples of giving people what they want. Mass appeal produces boring hyperpalatability, not greatness.
What is an interracial marriage? Serious question.
Am I in an interracial marriage? I genuinely don't know. According to 23 and me I'm 100% Northern European genetically. My wife was born in Mexico, where her family has lived for generations, and only moved to the states as a teenager. She attended the same law school as me, and received a "Hispanic" scholarship I would not have been eligible for. Her workplace counts her as a "woman of color" for diversity reporting purposes. According to 23 and me, she's at least 75% European. She has dark hair, but her skin tone is indistinguishable from mine (both pale white).
I'm friends with a married couple consisting of a Korean man and a Taiwanese woman. Are they in an interracial marriage? They're considered the same "race" in the US but if they lived in Taiwan or Korea their marriage would be viewed as something like "interracial." Their backgrounds are quite culturally, linguistically, and genetically different.
I'm friends with a married couple consisting of a Gujrati Indian man and a European white woman. Are they in an interracial marriage? Their skin colors are quite different, but they are both of Indo-European ancestry and not much farther apart genetically than two random Europeans would be.
If Barack Obama is 50% African and 50% European, and if his wife is 80% African and 20% European, are they in an interracial marriage? If Barack Obama was instead 20% African and 80% European would it be an interracial marriage?
Edit: Remembered another example from my own life. I'm friends with a married couple consisting of a white (Northern European) man and a white woman of Sami (aka Laplander) ancestry. Are they in an interracial marriage? Visually they just look like two white people. But Sami do not have Indo-European ancestry, so this couple is more genetically distant than a couple where one partner is Indian and the other European.
guajalote
8mo ago
The system can tolerate a lot of corruption, but Hunter has just been so incredibly sloppy and his corruption is so undeniably blatant that it represents a bridge too far for a lot of people.
I think this is basically the same reason why Trump was and is subject to such extraordinary scrutiny. His level of corruption is in the same ballpark as other recent presidents, but he is too sloppy and is unable or unwilling to correctly play the plausible deniability game.
guajalote
1mo ago
Music is about producing a spirit in a person, a social emotional-behavioral orientation. Music can produce approximately any emotional space, from the felt sense of eeriness, to grief, even to tones that connote honor, duty, profundity, you name it. We do not need to prove how it does this, as we all agree it does this.
I don't think we all agree it does this, at least not in the way you seem to claim. Music can temporarily evoke an emotion, in much the way a movie can, but the idea that music changes people's actual beliefs or actions seems like a very strong and unsubstantiated claim.
I enjoy Excitable Boy by Warren Zevon and Maxwell's Silver Hammer by the Beatles. Both songs basically celebrate deranged serial killers. Neither has made me want to kill anyone to even the slightest degree.
guajalote
1yr ago
I don't think I do need to explain why he's hated in order to take it as a given, and use that hatred as the basis for explaining behavior.
"Hatred for Trump is a significant motivating factor in these prosecutions" is I think an almost trivially true statement. The question is whether the hatred is justified and leading to socially desirable outcomes. Hatred for rapists is a major factor in why rape is criminally prosecuted, that doesn't make it illegitimate or inappropriate to prosecute rapists.
While I can't answer why, I have some theories. First, he's a genuine outsider that has resisted cooption. Second, he's personally repugnant due to manners and demeanor. Third, he's politically repugnant, and his pet issues (immigration, mostly) mark him as low-status or otherwise 'other.' Fourth, he's a genuine threat to the status quo (similar to #1) is ways that triggers reactions from those inside the system (deep state, anyone?). Fifth, the normal demonization of Republicans, but enhanced due to #2.
I would say a combination of your second, third, and fifth explanation, combined with the fact that many of Trump's detractors legitimately believe he has violated democratic norms. Putting aside whether he has or hasn't, I do think they sincerely believe this and are motivated by it.
He was hated, and persecuted, before he contested the 2020 election. He was already impeached once and the entirety of the bureaucratic class was opposed to him by the time he walked in the door. It was this antipathy that caused the groups described in the famous Time article to collectively 'fortify' the election in advance. So I think this causation is backwards.
There are many pre-2016 election examples of behavior that one could believe in good faith violates democratic norms. For example, calling on Russia to release one's opponent's hacked emails and threatening to "lock up" one's electoral opponent.
guajalote
1yr ago
I agree with your overall thesis, and I think it applies widely to many things including most economic policies. Also things like Covid lockdowns and school closures, which I'm surprised you didn't mention - even if only small costs were associated with these things, those costs would still be a big deal when distributed across the population.
But I think this is a weak example of your thesis:
Trans women are women: If some people experience pain because they're not considered to be in the social category they want to be in, what is the harm in everyone else agreeing that they are actually in that category? Why not consider trans women to be real women? This argument doesn't take into account the fact that words and categories are useful. In particular, they're useful to all the other people who are using those words and categories. For people who only want to date partners with whom they can reproduce, and for anyone who wants to predict others' behavior by knowing their biology, diluting the meaning of social categories and blurring their boundaries makes those categories less useful.
"Woman" was always a noisy signal for fertility and behavior. Only a tiny percentage of people (<0.5%) are transwomen, and only a fraction of them pass well enough that you would be confused about their birth sex. Injecting a tiny amount of noise into the predictive power of the term "woman" (which already had relatively weak predictive power) is I think too insignificant a cost to worry about, even when spread across the population.
That said, there are plenty of other costs associated with "transwomen are women." Things like transwomen in women's sports, the possibility of regret or detransitioning, and the fact that people are being censored for disagreeing with the orthodoxy.
guajalote
2mo ago
IMO, any argument premised on the speaker's personal identity should be bannable regardless.
guajalote
5mo ago
Anecdotes can trump statistics in the context of a specific type of argument, of the following form: "I don't give a shit about how 'the economy' is doing, I care about how me and my family are doing, so aggregate economic indicators are of no interest to me when I have my own lived experiences." Similar types of arguments could be made about other subjects, like policing.
I think quite often, even when people don't explicitly make this argument, it's what they're really saying. For obvious reasons, most people support or oppose policies based on how they think those policies will impact them personally, regardless of whether the policy is "good" or "bad" in the aggregate.
guajalote
7mo ago
guajalote
10mo ago
Your point only functions as an explanation of fine tuning if we assume in advance that the (or “a”) multiverse hypothesis is true.
No, it doesn't. It works equally well with a one-shot universe. If the parameters had not been properly fined tuned, then we wouldn't be here. Therefore we can only observe a universe in which the parameters are fine tuned. This is true regardless of how many universes exist.
It’s unlikely that I would result from my parent’s act of conception, but billions of acts of conception were happening before I was conceived.
Those other billions of acts of conception are irrelevant. You could not possibly have been made by any of those other acts of conception, since those other people had different genes than your parents. Moreover, the statistical likelihood of you being conceived is independent of each prior act of conception in the same way that the outcome of a coin flip is independent of prior flips.
The relevant analogy is to note the large number of eggs and sperm your parents produced over their lifetimes and the extreme unlikelihood that the particular egg and particular sperm that produced you would have combined. This was, indeed, extremely unlikely ex ante, but you can only observe an ex post world in which this highly unlikely event did in fact occur.
guajalote
11mo ago
While I agree mostly ... are the top 20% of that page really any worse than 99.9% of popular existing art?
No, it's not any worse, it's about the same, and that's my point. The midjourney stuff is just as crappy as most of the art that gets made today. The "beauty" that OP thinks he's identified is just hyperpalatablity. Unlike most modern art, the midjorney art is inoffensive, but that doesn't make it good or beautiful.
guajalote
1yr ago
There's nothing wrong with deciding "this person is so aggravating I don't want to have to read their thoughts ever again".
I do think there's something wrong with deciding that. I think it's definitely counter to the ethos of TheMotte, which as far as I can tell basically boils down to: (1) engage with arguments rather than people, and (2) an argument's validity depends on the facts and reasoning used to defend it, not how "gross" or "aggravating" the argument is. You're not obligated to respond to every user, but if you post here I think you should at least feel obligated to read all the non-rule-breaking responses to your post (especially the "aggravating" ones). We're supposed to seriously engage with criticism here.
guajalote
1yr ago
If those “tacked on” fines aren’t part of the sentence, by what authority are they being imposed? If you are legally obligated to pay a sum of money as a result of a criminal conviction, it seems to me you have been “sentenced” to pay that sum of money.
guajalote
18d ago
My point is that it's based on one's own situation, not others. You gave an example in your post of a depressed person doing basic tasks. Another example might be someone who had a stroke learning how to move their right index finger, something almost everyone can do. It is worthy of pride because it's an accomplishment for that person. By contrast, doing something that almost no one can do may not be worthy of pride. If Usain Bolt runs a race faster than 99% of the population could, he still may be quite disappointed with his time and feel no pride at all.
Because race is an extremely noisy and inconsistent proxy for other things we might care about like culture and genetics. As I asked above, I'm genuinely unclear what OP means by "race" and what qualifies as interracial. This is because the concept is so un-rigorous.
It's like if I decided to separate all dogs into four "races" of dogs as follows:
Race 1: yellow labs
Race 2: black labs
Race 3: dogs with short tails
Race 4: all other dogs
Technically this is a valid way to classify dogs into 4 categories. And these categories are undeniably correlated with things like genetics. But the correlation is tenuous and arbitrary to the point that this classification schema has minimal utility.
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