A lot of the complaints also seem to be that alleged rationalists and effective altruists - for some reason - don't just take people at their word.
I remember that atheism+ stuff, though I wasn't a part of it at the time, just an observer. But I really think you hit the nail on the head here. People were applying their skepticism and agnosticism to women telling their stories back then, and feminists just didn't like that. They wanted atheism plus feminism, or as I (uncharitably) look at it, atheism minus skepticism when it is applied towards specific groups, because that makes those groups uncomfortable.
I do think that some feminist and woke values are antithetical to skepticism and rationalism, but at the same time, I know a lot of people in rationalist communities who are not against wokeness, and many in favor, and I've never seen great schisms in the rationalist community like what happened in atheism. Maybe just the woke rationalists value rationalism enough to be able to compartmentalize and have lively debates. They value keeping an open mind enough, maybe more than atheists. Atheism as a movement ended up with atheism being somewhat fanatical in it's own right.
haroldbkny
1yr ago
This is very strange, and I feel like to any normal person this should sound strange to them, even without knowledge of base rates. I think anyone looking at this would immediately say "wait, doesn't that mean that ~90% of journalists killed each year were men?". I also think that most people would make the assumption, if not stated otherwise, that women account for 50% of journalists and men account for the other 50%. And for it to seem like women journalists were being disproportionately targeted, women would have to account for less than 11% of journalists on a year that 11% were killed. So according to how I believe a normal person would think, anyone should look at this figure and either not care, or get outraged by the fact that they interpreted these figures to indicate there's some sort of epidemic of women journalists being killed or something.
haroldbkny
7mo ago
I don't even think you need implicit bias to account for this! It's quite overt. I remember seeing some video from one of the big MGTOW/anti-feminist guys back in like 2014 when I was first being awakened to anti-wokeness. In it, he talks about how he was a psychologist, I think, and he used to give seminars on gender relations or something many years prior. He'd go to a chalkboard and write "women are..." and people would complete the sentence. Overwhelmingly, he'd get the crowd all chiming in with "hard-working", "caring", "empathetic", "smart", "strong", and every other positive affirmation you could get, and he'd write it down. Then he'd write "men are..." and people would chime in with "pigs", "assholes", "stupid", "lazy", etc. And then he'd ask the crowd, "so what does this show you about the true nature of sexism?". And then everyone in the seminars would hate him.
haroldbkny
1yr ago
There are other benefits to foreskin removal as well, like hygiene and having effects on preventing STD spread.
I always hear hygiene and STDs trotted out in these arguments, but I'm somewhat skeptical that it actually matters. Are these really significant in the day and age of regular bathing, and ubiquitous condoms? Like, sure, in Africa, I'm sure it makes a big difference, where HIV ravages something like 1/3 of the population. But in the USA? If there is a small to medium chance that circumcision actually does reduce male sensation, then hygiene and STDs are not enough to make me think circumcision is worth it, at least in the USA and other modernized countries.
It's also worth noting that proponents of female circumcision claim that there are significant health benefits that outweigh the downsides of that, too. But no one outside the countries where it's practiced thinks that that should matter at all to the question of the ethics of FGM.
I'd been meeting these people in the wild since at least 2014. I remember, for example, when I mentioned this particular technological breakthrough which allowed people to reconstruct audio in a room from capturing vibrations in papery substances on video. I mentioned that the tech wasn't always good enough to be able to actually hear what was said, but was capable of being used for figuring out whether the speaker was male or female, and then I got yelled at from 5 different directions saying that some women have deeper voices than men, and you couldn't generalize about such things.
haroldbkny
5mo 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
1yr ago
Yep, he's a member of the old guard. I remember back a while ago he said in a comedy sketch that he was more "comedian" than "black" because he felt more sorry than angry at Michael Richards for his cancellation incident.
haroldbkny
1yr ago
I've certainly heard my leftist friends talking about and gearing up for the Supreme Court striking down AA. Though I doubt it'll have the same viceral-ity as Roe, since leftists have convinced themselves for decades that any touching of Roe is a literal attack on women's bodies.
Also, I think I remember a thread on the Motte a few weeks ago where someone indicated some evidence (I can't remember the exact evidence) that once AA is struck down, colleges will use other things as a proxy, which may even be worse for everyone. The proxy might be something like, far more preference is given to applicants who take part in DEI initiatives in high school, since that will heavily skew both towards non-whites, and towards leftists.
What if it was gradually becoming only acceptable to wear blue shirts? And if you make a comment about your brother wearing a blue shirt, saying that maybe it'd be nice if he wore a different color, then you'd be called out as a bigot? What if you really like wearing other color shirts, in addition to blue?
But people all really think that all existing shirts should be dyed blue, because if they don't, then it's perpetuating a "harmful culture where blue shirts are underrepresented". But then, later when only blue shirts are produced, due to the years of preexisting social pressure, people who were blue-shirt advocates start saying, "Well what's your problem with it? They're clearly making blue shirts just because people like blue shirts, so they sell better." The metaphor might be a little tortured, but I hope you get my idea.
haroldbkny
3d ago
I'm glad you posted this, because I wanted to rant about this, since it's the most irritating feminist trend I've seen since 2017ish, but I didn't know how to phrase any of it in a way that would be "leaving the rest of the internet at the door".
I do think that, like other commenters have called out, the trend is childish and virtue signaling, and no one is being sincere. I think takes like this:
If a bear attacks you, people will believe you, if a man attacks you, people will not believe you.
do more to show exactly what feminists think about men, as opposed to how women are actually victimized by men in society.
What is the difference between a bear and a man? Maybe that men are people and bears are not? Men have other people who love them, and trust them, and care about them. Is that perhaps the reason why people may give men the benefit of the doubt in the case of an ambiguous he-said-she-said situation, but not give such benefit to a bear? Do men not deserve such a benefit over bears, because, you know, they're actual people and bears are not?
This reminds me very heavily of what I wrote last year regarding how I believe that movies like Knives Out are basically trying to implant progressive "brain worms" into people's heads, to kind of overwrite their perception of famous people:
The movie just seemed like a pulpit for Rian Johnson to talk about how much he hates Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and various other people. I almost feel like the entire plot is really the secondary goal. The main goal of him making this was to implant and grow a brain worm in the audience that every famous rich person is connected, really part of a cabal that got what they got through no talent of their own, took advantage of individuals and the world at large, contribute nothing, and are evil, vile, worthless, and bratty pieces of shit.
And here
The redpill manosphere streamer character also doesn't really fit Rogan. Rogan of course didn't 'lucky break' his way into prominence, he had a lengthy career as a comedian and hosted mainstream TV shows before starting his podcast.
This is all a part of how I think Johnson is trying to implant brain worms. It's not the truth he's written, but people will walk away from this feeling like they understand Joe Rogan and Elon Musk better, even though they're just watching fictionalized versions of them. They'll feel inside like they can just write them off as well-connected lucky backstabbers. Whether the characters are actually similar in deep ways to Rogan and Musk doesn't matter, because they're the first people who will come to mind for the general populace when they see this movie, due to their cultural prominence.
I haven't noticed this blatant trend so much these days, but maybe it's because I simply am checked out of modern media and the culture war.
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.
haroldbkny
1yr ago
It's been my opinion for some time that radical feminists, like Marxists, are correct on their analysis of their subjects
I disagree in general. Maybe they might be right on some things, but in general their analysis usually suffers from having to always frame things into a position that women are oppressed, even when it doesn't really make sense. They have a whole term for this, "benevolent sexism". When men hold doors for women, to a feminist it's not because society values women and wants to treat women well, it's because society erroneously thinks women are too weak to hold their open doors. When men stand up for women, it's because men think women need their saving, etc. When women get less severe prison sentencing then men, and there are fewer homeless women, it's somehow because society hates women. I think they're way off base in their analyses of these sorts of things.
haroldbkny
1yr ago
Along with the recent addition of Ivermectin to the list of possible effective treatments
Are you referring to the NIH page here?
You're not the first person I've heard refer to this as backpedaling, but I don't think it actually is backpedaling. They say in this post:
Recommendation
The Panel recommends against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19, except in clinical trials
If there's a separate CDC admission you're referring to, I'd be curious to see.
Whomever ZHPL is, his writing reads like a crazy political grifter. There was a lot of text, but what was all that text even trying to say? I feel like he barely even tried to tie thought threads together. For example, he went from "in 1968, leftism was taking over the world", then in the next sentence said that almost a full decade later, French intellectuals baned age of consent. Am I supposed to think something about this? Am I supposed to think that one event led to the other? Can he even try to convince me of this instead of just assuming I already agree? 9 years later, people in France did something. Okay. Maybe there's a connection I'm not seeing. If so, prove it.
haroldbkny
1yr ago
I always see people, even on the Motte, talk about how women are constantly fearing that they're at risk of getting the killed if they don't comply with men. Then they go along and do everything they think the men wanted them to do (based on no concrete evidence), and then blame men for their own stupid, interpolated to the nth degree, actions. Often, they even blame individual men who didn't intend anything in the first place.
I can't stand this. Men are not mind readers, and most men are not bad people who would take advantage of women like this. At some point, we have to say that the woman was irrational, and wrong to blame innocent men for her own decisions. If someone is terrified about something with no evidence, and they act based on their fear, they don't get to blame random people that they've projected their fears onto.
Now that we can't see that our click has raised the vote count number, someone needs to change the colors of the arrows. It's confusing the way it is right now. When you hover over the arrow it becomes teal. Then when you click it, it stays teal. It should immediately change to a drastically different color, so you have feedback that your click registered successfully. As is, I feel an involuntary sense of uncertainty every time I upvote, now, as if I'm wondering whether my click registered.
Also, I miss being able to see the vote count on my own posts, even before the 24 hour period is up.
haroldbkny
5mo ago
The opposition left I believe will become less engaged. How do you motivate the troops if you spend 8 years calling him the Antichrist and then the American people reject that and vote him in anyway. They would be a defeated people.
Wow, you're a lot more optimistic than I am! I anticipate that we will revert right back to everyone calling him (and actually thinking) he's the Antichrist, and the left will simply use the fact that he was reelected as proof that we're a white supremecist nation, that Trump has corrupted various institutions through dirty dealing, that Russia is still meddling in our elections, and what else.
I don't disagree with what you wrote at all. In fact, I wholeheartedly champion basically everything you said. My first exposure to that kind of feminist sophistry first got me totally tongue-tied and I didn't know how to fight back against it, but I knew that they were doing something wrong. Then when I saw people like Scott calling out this sort of thing as a motte and bailey in posts like Social Justice and Words Words Words, Another Brick in the Motte, and Untitled, I was able to recognize exactly where the sophistry was, and I grew to hate feminists for their abuse of logic, and getting large swaths of society to fall in line, because they make fallacious arguments that aren't super easy to spot and refute as such. After all, the way to win a debate with a 2 minute speaker limit is to make arguments that take 2 minutes and 10 seconds to refute.
But all of this was pointed out by tons of MGTOWs, MRAs, and other anti-feminists, along with the more scrupled people in the rationalist movement like Scott back in 2015. I'm sure that 99.99% of people posting on the Motte already know that patriarchy theory is one of the biggest divisive arguments of the past decade, and I'm sure that 95% of Mottezians would agree with you that it is pure sophistry, and one of the more infamous and abused motte and bailey arguments. This is all to say that I think that everything you said is old news, so I'm wondering, why did you bring it up? Is there some greater context surrounding your post that would be relevant to it, that would cast it in a new light, to spark debate amongst the Motte?
Sorry, I don't want to be too hard on you as a first time poster. I'm far from the arbiter of what's insightful and what's old on the Motte, and it's not like I've never said anything that was obvious to others before. It's just that people on the Motte are always (rightfully) wary of us becoming an echo chamber, and I worry about that, too. So I'd rather focus on new things that we have lots to say about as opposed to retread ground.
haroldbkny
1yr ago
There are certain topics that I won’t publicly touch even in a space like this
Seems to me like in this post and your replies to people, you did publicly touch it in a space like this.
But I appreciate you doing so. I think the Motte is usually pretty rational, but I've been surprised at how much people subscribe to the "the Left is full of pedophiles" narrative around here, which to me really does seem to be a purity spiral. And I think your identification of the motte and baily strategic equivocation is pretty spot on. I don't really understand how people come to these conclusions. It just seems so much like people on the Right/Center trying desperately to find a weapon to strike their enemies with, and it seems too close to essentially what the Left has been doing for over a decade. Except replace "racist" with "pedophile", because both are equally hateable by society.
I understand the Right's desire to do this. Since all forthright arguments seem doomed to fail against the Left, why don't we fight fire with fire? Except that for people like me, that just makes me dislike the Right/Center more. I hate the use of fire, not the Left.
I think if that was true then Amazon would tell their producers and directors to make the type of content that people want to see: white men with guns (apparently).
Any executive in that position knows what would happen if they did that. Maybe it would sell more for a bit, but then the vocal minority would start loudly complaining, and claiming Amazon is white supremacist, and this executive would have to answer for it.
Having a job at a place like Amazon makes you a different person, wherein you must constantly portray yourself as squeaky clean. I frequently find myself acting like a very different person at work than I actually am, and operating contrary to my own values. The most important thing is avoiding controversy from both inside and especially from outside the company. This always makes me think about egregores, and how within the company it's possible that absolutely everyone is operating against their own interest, because the entity of the company "demands it" in some way.
haroldbkny
1yr ago
I've always disliked the common feminist answer of "I wear makeup for myself, not for men". I find that very reductive and very much a poisoned explanation based on the feminist brain worm that no woman anywhere should ever try to do anything for the sake of men/a man, try to make a man/men happy, or seek any form of approval from a man/men.
I keep seeing this clip (and then people referencing it in other media) all over the conservative internet, along with conservative people drawing the same conclusions, that this is some bombshell piece of evidence that will tear apart the myth of vaccine mandates. Let me be clear: I want this, and the conclusion to be true, because I want a piece of bulletproof evidence that I can use against people who still believe that mandatory vaccination was and still is the best way to go. I don't like those people or their mandates, and I'd like to argue against them with very firm evidence. But I'm skeptical that this clip is that, especially because I haven't really seen anyone on the other side acknowledging anything about it, whether it's to eat crow or argue back. It seems to me to be potentially something where the conservatives once again think they have rock solid proof of something, but it never goes further than that, because we never even hear the other side's response to it, because it's so miniscule that they don't even have to acknowledge it. In other words, the same old of people living in different universes.
Let me say again, I hope I eat the above words. I want to steelman this particular clip and conclusion, by attacking it the way its opponents may attack it. So here are some questions:
-
There's a weird splice in the video between Roos and Pfizer woman. Are we in-fact seeing something that was edited to look like some sort of damning admission, instead of an actual damning admission?
-
Pfizer woman says "did we know about stopping immunization before it entered the market". She doesn't say "transmission" or "spread" or "reinfection" or whatever, she says "immunization", which seems to make no sense in the context presented. Was this a clip that was taken out of context to make it sound like she was really trying to refer to the question Roos asked, but it was about something else?
-
Does this have any implications on other vaccines and their trials, like Moderna or J&J?
-
Even if the vaccine was not explicitly tested for transmission, was it still a reasonable assumption for them to make that it could have a decent chance to stop transmission? Or was it a reasonable assumption for politicians to make, and there was just some information lost in the shuffle?
-
I don't know much about Roos, I've never heard of him before, but does he have much bipartisan cred? He comes off in the whole clip like a conservative commentator the likes of Tucker Carlson, gloating about how he just owned some lib. He even has a gotcha-like printout saying "Pfizer CEO? Where is Transparency?" in front of him when he asks the question, as if he's only asking as a formality and has already drawn his conclusions. The way he comes off, and the above edits and strangeness makes this whole conclusion that this is a death-blow to the conspiracy of vaccine mandates seem somewhat non-credible.
haroldbkny
1yr ago
So what's wrong with this anyways? If Amazon wants to cast more black / POC actors and actresses that's neutral if not good. I don't get the problem.
I think I explained this in my post. The why and when of what I dislike about this sort of casting decision is what my post is primarily about.
Sneaking in new definitions while still maintaining the previous emotional attachments of those definitions is necessary? In rationalist communities, I think we have words for things like this, such as motte and bailey. And I think that most of us are in agreement that such tactics are sneaky and underhanded, and make it unnecessary difficult to argue against, and very easy to turn into mob mentality and moral panics.
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