I do agree there's a quite a lot of hypo-/hyper-agency attributed to oppressed/oppressor classes of people, respectively, in the modern "progressive" worldview, but I also don't think there's much of a belief in this kind of coordination.
Yes, that's true. My framing of it is not a steelman, for sure. Though I do know some people who certainly act like they believe in the coordination, believe that there's a cabal of white men who are actively trying to keep others down, and they take our their anger on white men as such. I think that some groundling progressives may intellectually know some things, but have a lot of anger about their perceived injustices, and they end up having a hard time separating their angry feelings from their logical thoughts on the subject.
I don't really know your politics (because I can't keep track of people's username over time), but from this thread, you seem to lean progressive. However, I don't know your particular politics and how progressive you are, so this may be a gotcha and it may not be.
But I'm wondering how you feel about things that feminists may consider demeaning to women, such as fantasy depictions of violence against women, or women in skimpy outfits, etc. I don't know what the party line is these days, but 5 to 10 years ago, people were falling over themselves to denounce a plague of violence against women in media and video games, on the basis that this normalized such depictions, ultimately causing more violence against women or more unrealistic beauty standards, not less. Anita Sarkeesian made a career on this, there were protests against movie ads that feminists found to be unsavory. Overall this sort of thing seemed to be one of the biggest issues of last decade.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
I think this is an interesting topic. I try not to believe in conspiracy theories much, but sometimes complex systems can take on aspects that seem like conspiracy. One thing I'm wondering about, and I'm not sure if anyone would really know the answer here, is what incentives do the experts who are telling us that everything's great have for telling us that? What incentives do they have for telling us that things are not great?
Here would be some guesses, but they're really just guesses. I know nothing about these systems and positions, and I don't even know who the "usual suspects" are, besides the Treasury Secretary and/or former Treasury Secretary who you listed above.
Incentives for telling us that things are great:
- if people believe it then it's more likely that Biden will get reelected (though this sort of then raises the question of whether these experts are incentivized to get Biden reelected. I know little enough about the system to know whether that's the case either way)
- avoiding panic that could lead to more crisis
Incentives for telling us that things are bad:
- if things are truly bad, and they tell us things are great, people will lose trust in them as an institution
- if things are truly bad, then they can start enacting policies to make things better
Any other incentives people can think of?
haroldbkny
2mo ago
Just to make my point clearer, I don't necessarily think that Bush needed to parlay 9/11 into attacking Afghanistan, and definitely not Iraq, and I don't think there was universal support for those specific actions. But I think to simply ignore it, as @AhhhTheFrench said, was out of the question. Where I was (in the blueish-purple part of northeastern US), it was basically a given that he had to acknowledge the loss and try to coach the country through it in some way, swear vengeance, and at least try to go after Al Qaeda in some fashion.
That is so unrealistic. No one would have stood for that. Maybe you weren't in America at the time, or maybe you weren't even born yet. But trust me it was a harrowing experience well before Bush said anything. No leader would have simply done nothing in response to an unprecedented attack of American citizens on American soil, and if he had, no one, not even most of the people on the left would have stood for him.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
One morning at a farmer's market, in front of our families and newborn babies, I said I didn't like the new Star Trek and another liberal father there started yelling at me at the top of his lungs in public about the importance of punching fascist.
I've never been subject to being publicly screamed at, or witnessed it the new local farmers market when someone wears a BLM slogan.
Well-put. This lines up very well with my set of experiences, too. TBH, I really do think that Scott's recent theories in The Psychopolitics Of Trauma are pretty spot on, for better and for worse.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
To this day, I see people saying things like "Trump separated families at the border" and "Trump puts kids in cages".
I haven't really checked in on this issue in about 5 years, but I had remembered back when this happened, hearing conflicting reports about whether this was the Trump administration's policies, or if this was something that (like so many other things) had been going on for a long time before him, but for which he got saddled with the blame because of TDS.
I wanted to find out the truth about what happened, and if Trump is uniquely to blame. Quite frankly, I don't really trust anyone or any source (from the left or the right) other than this forum to be honest about the veracity of the accusations, because TDS is so powerful.
haroldbkny
5mo ago
Your point of view makes sense, but it would make more sense to me if we haven't had 100 years of infrastructure that treats the operation of that heavy machinery as a given. It's really hard to live without driving a car in all but the most densely populated cities!
If you have founded your own company, you probably have some leadership ability. Should you apply as a manager, or even a program manager? Even if that's not what you want to do long-term, it'll get you in the door.
Almost everyone has only intermediate-beginner, non-specialized skills. For a long time, that was enough to make sure you are well-paid in software. The industry runs on the ability of managers to take fungible engineers and turn them into productive engineers who they can apply towards their specific ends.
With the recent landscape changes (both the recession and chat GPT maybe starting to replace people), maybe that level of skill isn't enough anymore. I can't say but I haven't yet seen that trend personally.
Also, I think maybe the issue could be trying to get by on just your engineering skill. Technical ability is great, but if you're not a genius then it may not be enough to make you stand out. But having middle-level technical skill and reasoning ability combined with ability to lead, communicate, and make transparent decisions will make you much more marketable. As I said above, from your startup experiences, you probably have the leadership and communication, so you should leverage it. Apply to roles that will use that, and think about what experiences show off that ability that you can write about on cover letters and talk about in interviews.
Well, consider "whiny" is perhaps an understatement, or a proxy for other things. What happens when the whining is so intense that it actually distorts people's perception of reality? As an example, I really can't trust any news source for anything that is said about Trump. They can basically say whatever they want, because half the country is ready to believe it, and they have tons of precedent to draw on from other new sources doing the same thing.
And the same thing happens in my everyday life, too, when dealing with all my friends and loved ones. It's a complete uphill battle for me to try to communicate to anyone that they're being a conspiracy theorist crazy person, and ultimately I end up sounding like the conspiracy theorist because I'm going against the grain. It's hard enough to argue against a Gish gallop, but even worse when there's precedent for the Gish gallop, and everyone dogpiles on board, and there's a whole industry devoted to that one Gish gallop.
edit: I can't find it now, but I remember Scott wrote an SSC article where he talks about how when refuting crazy theories (like aliens built the pyramids or something), you end up sounding like you're making a bunch of one-off refutations that are not seeing the bigger picture.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
She is also portrayed as a much more antagonistic character in this movie than in the books.
Well, I think that sort of thing trickles down to the normies, too. If there's this ambient level of crazies constantly spouting "Trump's insane, Trump's going to kill us all, Trump's going to usher in a second holocaust, Trump cheated his way into the presidency", at some point the normies start to believe it. It has become truth to anyone who doesn't pay really really close attention or at least have some source of information that doesn't fall in line, because of this onslaught of one-sided information coming from sources that were considered reliable prior to Trump's presidency. Like, my cousins are those sports news people, and they are pretty checked out of world events, but even they believe Trump is the complete worst, tacitly.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
I think you're asking an interesting question, and I look forward to reading the answers. Just wanted to add something
Do they just want revenge for the 80s? The 50s?
It appears that the Blue Tribe today does not accuse the red tribe of anything specific at all (barring some attempts that certainly haven't had the hoped-for effect, like mass Residential school graves or Jan 6).
To the extent that I've heard blue-tribers be defensive, it's in relation to the dominance of 2000s era Bush-style evangelicals. I know many who at least claim to still live in fear of those folks, the religious Right, thinking that they'll come back and totally rule the country at any moment.
haroldbkny
4mo ago
There's a lot of good hypotheses put forward in the thread, many of which I hadn't considered before. I have generally thought that that reason they're having less sex is largely due to that generation having internalized the prudish leftist messaging that "sex is harmful, you're likely to harm women if you don't ask for permission every minute, no wait, 30 seconds, no wait 10 seconds, no wait just don't ever stop asking for permission just to be safe. Or just avoid fucking alltogether because only jerks and potential rapists feel like they need to have sex in order for a relationship to be fulfilling, and if you feel that way then you're just someone who thinks that women owe you sex, and you might as well be raping them."
In addition I've felt like there's a component by which younger people (and even millennials, too) kinda feel like bodies are gross. This has been a trend for a long time, with promotion of obsessive cleanliness to the point of it probably not even being useful, like people feeling they need to take showers multiple times per day, and also wear deodorant and cologne/perfume. I hear about historical views towards sex, like apparently Napoleon might have written a letter to Joséphine telling her not to bathe for 3 days before he came home to her from war, because her smell turned him on. The modern reaction to that story generally disgust and confusion. But think about how much the world much have smelled strongly like people's bodies, and bodies must have smelled really strong, for milennia before regular bathing was a thing, and people still has lots of sex back then.
Sex is very connected to bodies, sweat, fluids, and smell. People are raised on porn these days, with tissues at the ready to mop up any fluids shortly after their release. Sometimes when I watch porn, I think about how different it is to watch these recorded sex acts than it probably was for the actors to make them. Just thinking about the smell is interesting, considering that that sensation is completely absent when watching porn. I suspect that many people these days may have watched so much porn from a young age that the thought of sex being so much more messy and smelly with someone else's body that they'd rather just keep their nice, contained, fairly clean method of getting off to porn instead.
haroldbkny
5mo ago
I think this post was great, though much different than the previous ones. I thought the previous ones were more clever, though this one was wacky, which was fun.
But I think the best part of it was Scott's treatment of Trump. Though the events depicted are obviously unrealistic, I feel like Scott nailed Trump's preternatural ability to play to his crowd and ultimately come out on top no matter what the situation, while still also somehow being completely buffoonish, crass, and an embarrassment to just about everyone he deals with. Scott may be one of the few people who "gets" Trump.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
but it's 4/4 pop-rock
That's such a mischaracterization of the Beatles. If you think that, then you simply haven't listened to the full span of their music, and I'll guess you're missing out on both middle and mid-late Beatles.
Quantitatively, they did so much stuff besides sticking to common time all the time. For examples of well-known Beatles tunes that do weird things from a metric perspective: She Said, Good Morning, All You Need is Love, Two of Us, Rain, We Can Work it Out, Revolution, Across the Universe. Even Here Comes the Sun, which you mention, is not just 4/4, listen to the part that goes "Sun, sun, sun, here it comes".
As far as it being "easy listening" is concerned, my god, some of their stuff is so experimental, it's even barely listenable to! Revolution 9 comes to mind. And there's every point in-between, as well. Listen to Sgt Pepper, and tell me that's easy listening. Mr Kite is haunting with eerie sound experiments. Sgt Pepper and Reprise really rock. Fixing A Hole is wistful and thought provoking. A Day in the Life is downright depressing.
haroldbkny
4mo ago
What is wrong with reddit? I find that oftentimes I have a question, and I can't honestly think of any other place on the internet that I can ask that question and get an answer other than specific subreddits. But at the same time, I don't want to post on reddit because I hate it. You can't post anything there without at least half the comments being about how you're a fucking idiot for even asking the question to begin with. Every single time I'm like "I know I had bad experiences on reddit in the past, but this current post I'm about to do is so innocuous that no one could possibly take issue with it and ridicule me for it", and every time, without fail, I'm proven wrong.
Reddit just seems to me to be the judgiest place in the world. Does reddit select for this? Is this some sort of toxoplasma in action? Does half of reddit just consider themselves to be better than other people?
haroldbkny
6mo ago
I live in a very progressive part of the US. I had a moment earlier today when I was surrounded by some Jewish community members/friends, and they were talking about how difficult it's been at work for them this week, because they have to put up with many of their coworkers saying "horrible things" (read: things that they don't agree with regarding the recent events). These community members are the same people who went spouting all manners of progressive talking points in so many inappropriate and unnecessary contexts over the past 5 or so years, from BLM, to covid, to Trump derangement syndrome, and so many more issues.
I'm sure I wouldn't like what these people's coworkers are saying, but I find myself feeling more than ever wanting to say to these people, "So what? You can't have everyone agree with you". I guess I'm now an expert at being around people who say things that make my blood boil. I put up with progressives at work, in my social circles, in my local community events, in stores, who constantly barrage me with their unsolicited progressive message. I not only never say anything anymore, but I act as if I'm completely unbothered. As a result, I find myself having very little sympathy, but a lot of empathy for these pro Israel progressives. I'm sure the irony is completely lost on them, but it makes me wonder how certain people can go through life with so little perspective that they feel so put upon by people with different viewpoints, yet cannot fathom that they may make others feel that way with their own, and that maybe they're wrong to do so.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
The court has sought to lower the political temperature as a primary goal
Do you mean the current Supreme Court? I don't follow much SCOTUS news in general, but I thought that people felt that this court was doing the opposite of that. They had two landmark rulings within the past two years that both pissed off leftists, hard: Dobbs struct down Roe in 2022, and last year they overruled affirmative action.
Could you clarify? I am likely just not understanding what you mean by political vs partisan, or by political temperature.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
If you take too much minoxidil orally, you grow hair everywhere that hair can grow.
Applied topically, it works just as well for beards as bald patches on the scalp. Check out /r/Minoxbeards , I can personally vouch for it, and my brother who was a stickler to the routine had even more startling results from a worse start.
I mean, I definitely know that rogaine will do that, which is why bald people are usually careful to not let it drip onto their foreheads. But I didn't know that anyone actually deliberately puts it on their face to grow beards, that it would have desirable effects.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
I think you are right that "the default" is a big divide. In fact, I feel like it's been a scissor statement I've witnessed directly in my life.
I think Scott has written before something like "if you want to understand conservatives, pretend that there's going to be a zombie apocalypse tomorrow. If you want to understand leftists, pretend everything is going to be stable for the rest of time". I've spoken with both leftists and people I know who have anti-leftist leanings about this notion of the default, and it really scissors right between them, with each group being unable to fathom that anyone can disagree with them. The leftists generally come at it from a perspective of "well, everything would be stable forever, and we would always have enough resources for everyone to have everything they need, if only the billionaires shared their wealth (that incidentally they only got through exploiting the poor)". And the conservatives come at it with "there is barely anything holding keeping us from a risk societal collapse already". Which one of them is more right? I really can't say, and I don't really know how to argue with either of them. Perhaps it's simply an axiomatic belief.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
I guess when I said
Is there an explanation for Reagan?
I meant to be asking why so many leftists seem to have this vitriolic hatred for Reagan to this day, to see if there's an explanation besides just "they'll have vitriolic hatred for any Republican who's in power".
So are you saying that the left to this day hate Reagan because he actually had sway over the populace, and he managed to shift the country right?
haroldbkny
1mo ago
I'm tall, charming, with a beard that's far less scraggly after some (poorly adhered to) minoxidil, in a promising career (hahahaha),
Do people use minoxidil to grow hair on their face? I've never heard of that before.
so please skip the kind of blue pills (psychiatric pills) you'd feed the dearly departed Skookum and the like.
Uhh, I hesitate to ask what this means. Do you mean departed like he's not on the Motte, or do you mean departed like he died while attempting to do the Scag (or whatever that wilderness thing was called that he was doing)?
Tell that to my friend, who's going through this right now, and for whom it's required for her mild sleep apnea. Sounds like it's required if the state deems it so for your case. She definitely didn't opt into 2 and 3 of her own accord, she's super pissed about it!
Edit: I did just check in again. Sounds like you are correct that a CPAP may not be required. But for my friend, it was required simply because it was her doctor's recommended treatment. But in my experience which also matches with what I read online, doctors recommend CPAPs for everyone who has sleep apnea. They made it my recommended treatment even though my sleep apnea was at the mildest possible level. And like I said, she didn't opt into having to send her CPAP data, the state took it upon themselves to force her to be treated in a way she does not want, for a condition that has no impact on her driving.
I'm not a Bush fan, but if I were to try to say:
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