haroldbkny
11mo ago
Alice, Bob and Carol live in the Soviet Union during Stalin's regime. Alice hates Stalin and wishes him dead. But Alice has never read a column or editorial which was even mildly critical of Stalin (Stalin controls Pravda), and also knows that everyone who criticises Stalin in any capacity immediately vanishes to the gulag, never to be heard from again. For fear of this happening to her, Alice never criticises Stalin in front of Bob and Carol. Unbeknownst to Alice, Bob and Carol also hate Stalin, but have performed exactly the same risk calculus and decided never to publicly criticise Stalin. Hence conversations between Alice, Bob and Carol consist of three people loudly, conspicuously praising Stalin and successfully deceiving the others that they sincerely admire Stalin and think he's the bee's knees - but all three of them hate him and erroneously believe that they're the only one of the three to think so.
This much makes sense to me, but beyond this it gets tough for me. This sounds like "everyone knows Stalin sucks, but everyone doesn't know that everyone knows Stalin sucks". But let's say everyone did know that everyone knows Stalin sucks. Why is that not common knowledge already? Why is it important that everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows that Stalin sucks?
I'm very interested in the idea of common knowledge. It's been talked a lot about by the Scotts here and here
The crucial concept here is common knowledge. We call a fact “common knowledge” if, not only does everyone know it, but everyone knows everyone knows it, and everyone knows everyone knows everyone knows it, and so on.
I sort of understand this but I want to understand it better. Can someone explain this to me? Why is something not common knowledge if everyone knows that everyone knows it? What is the difference between that and the next level (everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows it)? I want to get a more intuitive grasp of that.
haroldbkny
11mo ago
I don't know anything about the economics of slavery, so I'm just trying to understand. But why does having population in excess make slavery less enticing? I understand you can get lots of cheap labor if you have excess population. But at the same time, slavery is free labor, and wouldn't having excess population mean you have more people to enslave?
Yes, they point that out, but they don't specifically juxtapose the seeming disconnect in leftist thought that for some reason in their mind, immigrants have the full privilege of movement, but Europeans don't have the privilege to live in the lands they've lived in for half a century
haroldbkny
11mo ago
Earthbound's "199x" was three decades early. But unfortunately, these aren't New Age Retro Hippies, they're a more modern equivalent.
Well, this brings up one interesting counter argument (which I don't particularly agree with). When I argue with people about land acknowledgements, and bring up that I think that they're stupid because every land is stolen land, the only interesting argument I heard in return is that since the native Americans's descents are still around, it's important to give land acknowledgements at events for native Americans as a sign of respect. Basically respect for the living. However, the people the native Americans had long ago slaughtered to get their land are long gone (as are the neanderthals), so there's no reason to acknowledge their previous ownership.
To me this sounds like they're saying we only need to apologize for the past if the descendants of the victims are still around. This quickly gets to a repugnant conclusion, which is that in some ways it's better to have killed off an entire population then leave any descendents, because if there are no descendents, there's no need to apologize.
I think this also sounds similar to another argument, which is that the only reason white people are held so guilty for slave owning is because previous slave owning populations sterilized the slaves, or the slaves otherwise went extinct before the modern era. This makes it sound like the real "sin" of white people which makes them distinct from other slave owning populations, is that they freed the slaves, and gave them enough resources that their descendents lived to the modern age. Once again, no descendents, no guilt. And white people are demonized as "literally the worst", when in fact they were one of the few groups of people noble enough to end slavery.
haroldbkny
11mo ago
I'd say absolutely not. But you must know that that argument applies to us as decendents of European settlers, too. @shakenvac was bringing up an argument that the amount of time and generations that pass do not matter.
haroldbkny
11mo ago
Hah yes. The simple counter-counter argument would be, do the people who stole the land originally (as the natives of America did) really have much of a leg to stand on when they tell us we shouldn't have stolen it from them?
haroldbkny
11mo ago
"He's Welsh, but I'm still on stolen land after hundreds of years? How does that work?"
Huh, that's interesting. I never thought about that before. How does that work?
Moreover, why have I been anti-leftist and interested in anti-leftist modes of thought for a decade and I've never heard this argument before, and why does no one else seem to see that sort of obvious double speak when examining leftist stances on immigration vs leftist stances on colonialism?
I wouldn't mind hearing pro and anti arguments for that particular argument. I mean, it is a "gotcha", but it sounds to me like a thought provoking gotcha.
haroldbkny
11mo ago
This has panned out to be an interesting subportion of the thread. I'm trying to imagine showing this to my wife, and I think an interesting question just occurred to me: where would a feminist land on this question of women's vs men's strength?
On the one hand, they want to believe that women and men can go toe-to-toe in boxing and a woman would have an equal chance. On the other hand, they want us to believe that women are in constant terror at all times that a man might hurt her. And I remember conversations on this very forum where people have been indicating that in certain situations women have no choice but to willingly go along with whatever a man wants her to do in a 1 on 1 setting, because there's a small chance he could get violent if she objected at all.
The correct responses from the Bio-pilled segment of the political sector should probably still be accelerationism.
I understand where you're coming from, and I hope you're right. But the black pilled part of me makes me think that accelerationism will just accelerate the denial. That's what I tend to see.
When I wrote The Science doesn't support the bigots who think XY chromosomes makes someone a man, it was paraphrased from several people I saw writing about this. I can't actually ask these people what actual biology and science support the notion that being a woman is distinct from the presence of XY chromosomes, and how that was determined by these biologists and scientists for fear of outing myself as a heretic and being yelled at by people who probably don't really want to explain it anyhow. I really am curious, because it seems if I'm being charitable, "being a woman" is a social state that they're arguing for definitionally. And definitions like that are neither provable by biological science nor disputable. As Scott says:
I can’t argue with this. No, literally, I can’t argue with this. There’s no disputing the definitions of words. If you say that “racism” is a rare species of nocturnal bird native to New Guinea which feeds upon morning dew and the dreams of young children, then all I can do is point out that the dictionary and common usage both disagree with you. And the sources I cited above have already admitted that “the dictionary is wrong” and “no one uses the word racism correctly”.
haroldbkny
11mo ago
I kinda felt that's why that guy waited until days before the election to leak the "grab em by the pussy" footage. But Trump ended up winning anyway.
haroldbkny
11mo ago
Are there any generally applicable lessons here?
People only care about the most recent interesting things to happen, and completely forget about the second to most recent thing. But that's nothing new.
haroldbkny
11mo ago
JK Rowling has jumped into the Imane Khalif controversy with both feet, outright stating she's a man, which is always good for turning up the heat on a constantly simmering issue.
Ah, I didn't realize that. That might account for why more people are paying attention to this issue.
The culture war seemed subdued in my bubble for a few months, but picked up majorly recently. Oddly enough, the cause (mostly) doesn't seem to be the attempted presidential assassination, the quick Democratic party shifts, the ramping up of tensions in the middle east, or the black female presidential candidate, but the Olympics. Color me surprised.
I see non-stop posting currently about "The Science doesn't support the bigots who think XY chromosomes makes someone a man", "why do they care more about a woman competing in woman's boxing than they do about a literal child rapist competing?", "the people complaining about a woman getting punched in the face by another woman are the same people who don't bat an eye at men beating up women outside of the Olympics". There seems to have been some really high-profile culture war controversies in this Olympics. I really doubt there's more fodder for controversy in the Olympics in general than in everyday life, so why is everyone picking up their keyboards to go vanquish the enemy all of a sudden?
haroldbkny
11mo ago
Yes. The length and pacing did astound me, too. I remembered wanting to fly and needing the magic feather as a crutch, and learning to overcome it, as being the main crux of the movie. It turns out the feather and flying were introduced as plot points in the last 6 or 7 minutes of the movie! And Dumbo overcame his need for the feather in the last 3 minutes of the movie. They really moved things in a way modern movies don't, and I've also felt this about other Disney movies from that era that I'm currently rewatching with my family right now.
haroldbkny
11mo ago
Yeah, I've never seen Song of the South, but this is making me wonder if it deserves the criticism it gets. I know little about it, but is the problem once again mostly that it depicts black people acting like black people of the time?
For example, you'll never see certain episodes of the original broadcast of Tom and Jerry because many of those episodes feature a sassy black maid who doesn't take any shit from Tom. Why was that deemed worthy to never be broadcast again? I don't know. I guess because we are not allowed to ever see a black maid on TV. In certain broadcasts, the black maid was even replaced with a white teenage girl. That's representation for you!
haroldbkny
11mo ago
I just watched the 1941 Dumbo movie with my family. It's probably the first time I've seen it in about 35 years. One thing that stood out to me were the crow characters. All my adult life I've heard about how horrible and racist they were, and Disney is censoring them to this day in multiple ways. But upon watching them, I really have a hard time understanding what may be considered to be racist about them.
They are obvious caricatures of black people, no doubt. They talk in AAVE, they scat, they banter, they dance in stereotypically black ways (albeit circa 1941). But I'm not certain that most leftists these days would consider any of that to be a bad thing. I think the modern day leftist would probably call it "representation"; it's highlighting and drawing attention to race, and inserting it into a movie that would otherwise be without any particular spotlight on race. Most of the actors voicing the crows were actually black, also.
So why does this have such a bad reputation? Maybe because it was demonized back in a day when it was bad to notice any race at all, and those reputations are stickier than the taboos themselves? Maybe because one of the voice actors was white? But I chalk this up as another data point in the perhaps beaten to death category of "modern day leftist mores around race look very similar to the racism of yesteryear".
I have no clue what I'm talking about with this stuff, I've never been attacked or felt particularly unsafe where I live. If I'd been attacked multiple times, I'd probably move away, start carrying mace, find different routes to take, start driving instead of walking, start walking around in groups for safety, idk.
I assume you've spoken with the police about it and they told you they can't do anything? If you want to try to change your neighborhood instead of just changing your habits, maybe I'd start by finding out about existing town halls, and see if anything is already being done about it. Do you sense other people have been impacted like you have? If nothing is already being done, then speak at your town hall and try to show people this is a big problem. Try to make some sort of council through your town hall that can make suggestions to the police about where they should be policing. Or maybe start a neighborhood watch? If none of that works, then find some other people who have been affected as you have and start a viral campaign to showcase the problem and try to humiliate the local police, show everyone they're not doing their jobs and normal people are suffering.
I don't think anyone would actually recommend going Charles Bronson on them.
Recently I have been getting more and more fed up with the failure of my local government to provide basic safety - which is, after all, reasonably speaking the most important purpose of government.
What I know is that I subjectively feel that the level of street crime now is too high compared to what I would wish it to be
Can you clarify what exactly you're seeking regarding safety that you're not getting now? Is this impacting your life directly, and if so, how?
Edit: looks like you added more detail in an edit, saying that you were attacked directly, so feel free to disregard. But I guess more info about those attacks might be useful. What was the context, what was the motive, what was the outcome, etc?
haroldbkny
11mo ago
but it likely cost Dems the 2016 election
I wasn't fully tuned in back then (nor am I now), but I don't remember the Dems going high back then. "Basket of deplorables" comes to mind. But maybe my perception was skewed because back then I was listening to a lot of conservative outrage bait.
I guess. I mean, we could talk about what it means to "force" someone to do something. Is a woman forced if she chooses to have an abortion because she knows she can't make ends meet, even if she did have child support from the father? Can someone be forced simply by the circumstances of their life? Anyone can choose to have a baby or not regardless of their lot in life. I don't like that we are less willing to ascribe agency to women than men. I want to be consistent, but no one else wants to be.
Also, regarding responsibility, I don't see why we should make it illegal for someone to do something simply because it is irresponsible.
But I also wanted to add that I sense that my original argument of "feminists just don't get the parallel between LPS and abortion rights" probably doesn't apply to you, since you are likely a traditionalist (?). I'm basing this assumption on that I don't believe that a feminist would generally argue about laws being made based on whether they are responsible actions or not.
Most feminists tend to argue for abortion from the basis of "human rights", whatever that may mean. And I see no reason why the human right for a man to decide his own destiny is any less important than for a woman to decide her own destiny.
haroldbkny
11mo ago
There's nothing that says a woman wouldn't be able to choose to get an abortion after the legal paternal surrender, knowing that the man is choosing to not be involved. The man surrenders, and then the woman can then choose what she wants to do accordingly. If she chooses to have the baby at that point, knowing that there's no father, then she would be the one choosing to do the irresponsible act.
haroldbkny
11mo ago
The thing I really can't stand is that I've had hours long debates with feminists about legal paternal surrender, and they'll continue to employee the exact mirror-image rhetoric of "women should keep their legs shut", and they just don't get it (in my experiences). It just feels wrong to them to allow financial abortion, and they won't budge no matter how much one points out how much they sound like the traditionalists on the other side that they decry so much.
I think Amanda Marcotte does remarkably little thinking, and has very few morals, or at least what we used to call morals. She is the epitome of feminism, in as much as feminism is about "do whatever gives more power to women". She came to debate at my college while I was in grad school, and I was shocked at how I could be surrounded by people cheering against someone having compassion for men, and for someone who believes that it's women's duty to actively try to ruin men's lives. To be honest, I got more of the vibe from her that she was saying the things she said because she knew it's what her audience wants to hear, but I don't think that's an excuse for being a bad person.
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