iprayiam3
1yr ago
No, I think you're misdirecting your towel application. Nobody actively notices clean baseboards. They maybe notice messy baseboards. I think the towel principle relies on a conspicous element that implies the rest, not some inconspicous, subtlety.
iprayiam3
1yr ago
Consider how "incel" went from a morally neutral descriptor to a moral condemnation
I can't consider it because I've never seen it except in these scenarios where i'm assured it's true by its detractors. I especially haven't seen this in real life.
romantically unsuccessful men are about as low on the totem of sympathy as you can get.
Again, Ive never seen this. Get better friends people. Romantically unsuccessful men are to the contrary some of the most sympathetically talked about people I know. Even where it's not sympathetic and just pathetic, that's not the same as immoral.
Doing it on the meta level is pretty funny, I have to admit. 10/10
If you're contorting my comment into moral repudiation of someone for specifically being poorly undatable, I think we've found the disconnect.
This looks like nothing more than a victimhood mentality looking for a bully.
Even if it were somehow morally (I'm not) maligning the OP it's not for being single or unlucky in love.
If a Jewish guy stands up in a movie theater and shouts, 'AntiSemites are trying to silence me!!", His point isn't proven when people shush him.
Similarly, if you come in and say, 'how come I'm morally maligned for being undatable!", I'm not proving your point by repudiating that claim.
iprayiam3
1yr ago
I've never heard anyone suggest that it was a moral failing. That sounds like a completely made up strawman to victim oneself against.
Obviously the reverse causality makes sense: bad people should be less datable. But i e never even heard anyone suggest this should is an is as it's plainly not real.
Where are you getting this moral failing narrative from? You need to justify the premise, because it sounds like extrapolated wallowing or self-loathing.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
I don't think he's uncharismatic. Good grifters and great salesmen are charasmatic But he's a salesman not a showman (like trump) and he's clearly a pushy fast talking one at that.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
Yeah he's smart and well spoken on podcasts, but his combative look is not good. Though maybe his early Trump impression is resonating. It's hard for me to say... In other news wtf is Pence or Christie's goal here?
I get that several on the stage are going for the 'hope everyone in front of them drops dead" strategy, but these two are basically just here to telegraph how out of touch they are with the party.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
So far his debate performance is reinforcing my negative view of him. Great ideas but way too much slick, fast talking car salesman suspicious overeagerness.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
this has been by far the most boring election season we've had since I started watching in 2008.
What in the world are you talking about? We have a guy out on bail vs a guy at death's door, who's fending off credible corruption allegations. anything could happen. You talked 'tension' in 2020? This blows that out of the water
Biden is running as an incumbent with no credible challengers. That only leaves the Republican side, which isn't much better.
I predict there's a very high combined chance that it is not Biden vs. Trump by the time we get to election night.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
I'll echo what others have said, in that I suspect you are self-congratulating here. My experience has been religious folks very much identifying the religious features of woke-values.
Is it because they recognize the conflict of like-kind epistemic demands or is it because they are more likely to be on the right and see the progressives as a mirror from the left? Not sure.
Overall, i think it is not necessarily being religious or even on the right that makes one recognize wokism as a proto-religion, but overinvestment in idealized liberalism that makes one miss it. Part of this is because progressivism intentionally very much uses the langauge of frank liberalism to hide from the social and often legal barriers to forced ideological commitments. I don't personally care about the sociological implications of wokism being like a religion nearly as much as the socio-legal gerrymandering of what counts as 'neutral human decency' and what counts as imposed ideology.
Take for example the idea of using preferred pronouns. The liberal understands it as a acknowledgement of liberal desire to define oneself autonomously and sees undermining it as on a spectrum from a competing right to liberal self-expression or an affront to secular decency all the way to an invalidation of the other person's freedom. Meanwhile the religious person recognizes it as expression of an ontologolical truth in line with "Muhammad is the true prophet" or John 3:16, and understands it on those terms.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
I guess that dichotomy works, but it seems over-necessary. It seems to me more like the rational vs. bizarro choice, poltical sensibilities aside. Consider these scenarios:
-
A local high school is unhappy with the prom planning decisions made by the responsible faculty.
Option A: Force the responsible faculty to attend the prom as guests with their spouses as their own 'date' night
Option B: Give the student council some decision making power in prom planning
-
The town council has a committee to plan road expansions that will affect a local neighborhood, and there have been some complaints.
Option A: Force the town council to move to that neighborhood.
Option B: Hold a public forum with input from the neighborhood members / have a representative join the committe.
-
You and your friends are planning on dinner and drinks and debating where to go. Some folks plan to eat at home.
Option A: Force everyone to eat at the restaurant chosen.
Option B: Don't count the folks eating at home in the vote for where to go.
I guess you could frame all of these as Socialist vs Libertarian, but it looks more to me like obvious path vs. comically absurd.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
But Freddie's approach actually makes total sense as an attempt to force people to have skin in the game.
There a lot to respond to here but this sentiment just seems backwards to me. Isn't the goal not to get people who have decision making power to have artificial skin in the game, but to put people with genuine skin in the game into a position of decision making?
iprayiam3
2yr ago
I'll start by saying I'm no philosopher. But as you describe since, these can all collapse into eachother (in postive or negative formulation), I don't see why you couldn't have five. I'm going to flippantly call these all different faces of "The Axiom", some starting point of the good that's self-justifying in some way.
That said, I was personally thinking of group interest as essentially in terms of self-interest. Where I was going with self-interest was "this moral / value proposition" isn't based on some extrinsic good, but on what outcome I prefer. So if one thinks that said given moral proposition isn't based on some theistic derivation, isn't arbitrary, isn't derived from some evo-psych or naturalistic attraction, then it's motivated self-interest.
That said, again, I see no reason, this couldn't be expanded out as a fifth face.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
The red-flag works on two levels. At the object level, you cannot be sure that @Amadan specifically and his specific apple arrangement will remain purely channeled as he describes without any leaks.
On a broader level you are regularlizing and normalizing a fundamentally very unstable system. Providing open channels for to regularly interact with adults in two-way exchanges and providing, while normalizing adults requesting erotic-adjacent material from the former group, and destygmatizing then entire frame work around eprsonal kink shame, is basically asking for abuse all over the place.
One of the biggest concepts of conservatism vs liberalism is maintainance of the broad social value of institutional infrastructure and moral framework. When you erode that because isolated instances don't cause harm, you ignore that the only way to allow those isolated "harmless" incidents was to either open the same exact gate that does allow the harm or to be coupled with an extreme totalitarian surveillance against any harm.
Essentially you can't have safe, high trust neighborhoods, and no locks, and no social reprecussions for trespassers. You can only pick two. But the trespasser then points to harmless trespassing and uses something somethign "moral disgust" as a frame for why proscribing trespassing is arbirary.
You have a fence, a chesterton's fence. And some people believe they should be able to harmlessly pass through the fence. It is in fact an affront to their freedom that they cannot. Of course there are people who would do harm if they could pass the fence. So your choices are to 1. keep the fence, 2. remove the fence and accept, address, or police the harm on the other side of it, or 3. Put a high security gate in the fence.
Any version of 3 that still let's harm through is just a flavor of 2.
One might, in an appeal to liberty suggest that 2 is the only righteous solution. OK, make that argument, though I vehemently disagree. But we cannot frame 1 as simple disgust, aesthetics or moral dogmatism.
Some people, conservatives and progressives, prefer to live in a society with strong hegemonic barriers against harm whilest allowing a different kind of freedom and security inside the society dependent on that scaffolding.
On another level, this is probably your 'moral disgust' level. Regardless of whether @Amadan 's example would ever harm someone, what he is doing in the hypothetical is disordered. And is further involving a minor in their disordered act and there should be the highest reasonable obstacles from him doing so. Different definitions of reasonable are going to be socially navigated (you'll have burka's in one culture and open decadence coupled with a Terms of Service click through in another). I don't think reducing this social proscription to disgust or aversion tells the whole picture, remotely.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
This isn't the first time I'm seeing this 'moral disgust / aesthetics' dismissal in this kind of space, and it's nothing more than the intersection between a strawman, question begging, and isolated demand for rigor.
Are you interested in following the causal logic of an outcomes and effects argument? Then ask that plainly. Are you interested in hearing someone defend the issue deontologically? Then ask that plainly Are you're really intereted in someone's basic beliefs in their moral framework? Then why conveniently begin the discussion, dismissively, with an issue you disagree with.
All moral arguments will ultimately fall into essentially 1 of 4 categories, beneath the level of basic beleifs: theological / deist, arbitrary nihilism, aesthetic, or motivated self interest.
Even if you are Mr. Consequentialist, you eventually have to argue 'why' the good outcome deserves the term 'good', and you have one of the four options to pick from above. And all four of these can arguably collapse into the others (or lack of other).
"Ha! Your perception of good and bad is based on 'aesthetics'!" Isn't quite the trump one might thing it is.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
Well he's 100% not Christian. As I said, I actually respect that he's made it clear (papered over with a lot of politician speak about values) in a few recent interviews. It was more than I expected and much more than trumpa ever been clear about religion. But at the same time Trump's lack of smooth talking on the issue has certain authenticity in itself.
Vikek did his job here with me though, as my issue with his Hinduism is measurably lower than it was before watching that interview. Still has a long way to go to convince me of his whole package though
iprayiam3
2yr ago
I was going to criticize Vikek for starting his list of truths with was that was so blatantly framed to obfuscate nuance between what he means and what his target audience would mean by the same exact phrasing.
However, Vivek does appear to embrace the opportunity to dig into that more deeply and honestly, even if filled with too much political grandstanding.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=lxJeGIOKW8E
My view toward VR has increased slightly. I still find him too 'clever' and polished a little too over-done that I have worries his earnesty is rather calculated performance for his identified niche.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
This is one of those scenarios where it's easy to see a solution, but it lacks critical mass, much like walkable areas. You can't just decide to do it and hope the infastructure catches up.
If 60% of the houses in my neighborhood had stay-at-home moms in it with kids, and maybe a walkable park / swimclub within it, then you've lowered the barrier tremendously. Most women can find at least a few other people among dozens who they can get along with and their kids can play together. When 5-10% of the houses have this it's the same as not existing unless you win a lottery. Most importantly in the 60%+, you ahve the added diversity of the fact that the neighborhood with a lot of different priorities and levels of commitment to find your nitch amongst but likely all within a similar socio-economic class
On the other hand, intentional communities can only half-way bridge this. You will end up with a very particular selection effect that will almost necessarily require a much bigger dedication to the community and much deeper in-crowd vibes with a particular temperment and expectation. It's the difference between playing pick-up games with your neighbors and joining a club team.
In the absence of organic, SAHM friendly societies and neighborhoods, going at it alone and joining a Benedict Option style commune are two distantly inferior options. The families of GenX defected at too high a rate and broke the option.
detente that keeps hostile groups from engaging in constant all-out warfare all over the world.
Here's my take on that: I believe the detente worked in the US when a very shared concept of Christianity was ubiquitous in the first order cultural and institutional hegemony yet a very broad liberalist defection was not just tolerated, but treated as respectable through it's explicit allowance in the Bill of Rights. Eg 60s-2012ish.
During this time, take the 90s, it's was often the case likely that one was surrounded by irreligious liberal indulgence that was tacitly approved in social circles, yet that was socially boxed within a very visible sense of propriety that was more-or-less Christian. I think for example, Seinfeld demonstrates this well equilibrium. A bunch of non-Christian New Yorkers were able to live openly and happily, but a lot of the social-boundaries and humor found by nudging them was in the traditionalist propriety frame (see e.g. The Contest).
The problem is that this was always unsustainable because the liberalism continued to gnaw through the hegemony as if it was it's cage, not it's scaffolding.
There's two possibilities, that I'm unsure about: 1 (my suspicion) is that this was fundamentally untenable because the liberalism was deinstitutionalizing force coupled with modernizing technology and we always would have atrophied here as more people became irreligious and traditional institutions weakened, and communities evaporated into an atomic monoculture.
The other possibility is that this detente could have been held if the liberalizing had been defanged a bit somehow. The (classical) liberal, as I said, loved gnawing the nearest scaffold/boundary as a matter of right, whether that be teaching creationism in schools, public prayer, Blue laws, co-ed dorms, pushing boundaries in media, or whatever. Again, this wasn't one mono-effort, but a million different cuts that each time saw either a local limit on liberalism and uderstandably fought it, or (less understandably) openly rebelled against the yardstick of the hegemony even when they were free to ignore it.
I'll give an example of the latter: living in sin. Even as late as the 90s two unmarried people living together was seen as improprietous in large portions of society, but was widely practiced and pretty much blanketly tolerated. If people wanted the detente to remain, those even taking advantage of the freedom should have supported social disapproval, and not agitated for it's normalization.
Anyway, long story short, the whole culture house fell apart right around Obergerfell, and the traditional hegemony of cultural propriety (Im using this word as a placeholder for a much broader concept) was pretty much over. Was it gay marriage? Was it cellphones and social media? Reverberations of Catholic priest scandal? The end place of a long and steady momentum? Whatever.
The detente cannot exist any more or be returned to because the necessary tension between liberalism and shared cultural restraint snapped and the institutions of the latter fell over.
The most likely way back is for progressives to finish institutionalizing their own illiberal hegemony, and then get enough liberal tension coming from it's dissenters. But the if you want the old detente back, you're not getting it. And if you want to try, I (tongue-in-cheek) suggest all the agnostic liberals here go crypto with that and publically invest in either supporting progressivist takover or rebuilding American Christianity as the hegemonic force so you can start to rebel against it again. In other words, become an accelerationist is one direction away from your libertarian sensibilities or the other.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
I think this is a tired drumbeat from your side, wishing over and over for pro-lifers to not actually be prolife. I get that it's inconvenient that the religious right is not up to your snuff. It's counterpart is Kulak's old saw that if prolifers really believed it, they'd be more terrorists.
I want to point out, something else though:
forced into having more babies
This is a tremendously biased frame. It's a sister of the constant misinterpretation from pro-choicers that prolifers think people having unprotected sex should 'suffer the consequences', when it's nothing like that at all.
Forced into having babies has implications that are simply not true. Except on a negligable and understandably hotly debated margin (i.e., rape) nobody is 'forcing' babies on them, and even then it's not the same person as the pro-lifer.
At most, they're being 'forced' not to kill babies they already made. Your frame begs the question too much.
I get you can make arguments all day long about the non-existent impulse control of the population, but that still doesn't causally or morally get you all the way to arguing that Republicans are forcing them to have more babies any more than me not giving you money for drugs, 'forces' the drug user to steal.
iprayiam3
2yr ago
You're just cleaving 'sides' conveniently. By your description, your wife described the positive aspects of fat acceptance. You only want to be associated with the positive aspects of fat-detraction. Neither is truly a 'side' in any ontological sense, but you're just throwing in a biased gerrymander to accuse your wife of sane-washing.
Calling the fat acceptance movement hate-filled, is just an ineffective "Democrats are the real racists". It might be objectively true under carefully drawn definitions of the central word, but you've just engaged in word-thinking.
Ultimately, I was mostly driving at "Even if I don't like when I see what I believe to be undue hatred of fat people, I think the fat acceptance movement is primarily a bunch of hatred-filled people who want to control other people's desires and shame everyone else in order to fill the empty void in their own lives". My wife (as she usually does) was going with the argument of, "...". I basically replied that I believe she is sanewashing a movement that primarily works based on hatred, not love and reason, and I suggested to my wife that people like her are "laundering credibility" in social movements like this.
So you begin by acknowledging and distancing yourself from people on your side of the debate that seem hateful, then immediately turn around and accuse your wife of sane-washing when she does the same? Holy Russell's conjugation, Batman!
I have pure motives, unrelated to those on my side who are motivated by hate.
You are sane-washing the haters on your side.
He is a hater lying about his motivations.
yes we can all play that game. There is plently to criticize about the fat-acceptance movement, but pinning them as the side more prone to being motivated by hate / disgust is just lulz. I am sympathetic to an argument that hate of the person has nothing to do with it / one side is objectively correct / detraction is the appropriate response to unhealthiness, even if it's expression should be tempered etc / that shame can be a powerful way of patrolling unhealthy social contagions, etc. But the frame that it's the other side who is hate-filled is more DOA than Dems are the real racist type of rhetoric
iprayiam3
2yr ago
To be quite fair, I dony know who either of these people are or the debate beyond what @ymeskhout quoted. My point was mostly about the power of the frame and the difficulty epistemic differences bring to claiming contradictions in a value based discussion as compared to a fact based one
iprayiam3
2yr ago
Consider how much harder it is to argue against gambling than for it. To argue against gambling you have to have an understanding of addiction, genetic proclivities to addiction, the data on who gambles, and the adaptability of human happiness. To argue for gambling you just say “people should be allowed to do what they want unless harming someone”.
Yes this is closely related to my point below about the effects of the paradigm on the conversation, and it's a counterpoint to @ymeskhout 's point about the value of the cross-examination. When the framesetter is also the interrogator, (99% of the time), their interrogated starts out in an epistemology gravity well.
using your gambling example, as you suggest, starting with the pro-gambling argument is easier (within a particular meta-frame of Western liberal modernity. If your starting meta-paradigm is a traditionaly Christian society, I think it's reversed. There's a trite anti-gambling starting point: "Gambling is immoral and degenerate", and an argument for liberalism is the more complex one).
But even in today's world, starting with either argument makes arguing the other one against it harder.
Suppose I begin an interview with a pro-gambler, even in a modern western liberal context, by saying, "Gambling causes a lot of harm and addiction, and society has a responsibility against throwing its most vulnerable to the wolfs". I've put you several steps away from being able to argue simply "people should be allowed to do what they want unless harming someone” because I didn't allow you to begin with a proposal for liberal law making. You are forced to first debate whether or not my conjecture is true or blast into a non-sequitor to get to your position of libertarian license.
For a fair examination, the interviewer should begin with the examined frame of reference and work out from there.
Content aside, this is awful awful writing and, as I've heard this held up as an example of good rat-adj fanfic, it really speaks volumes negatively.
There's no accounting for taste and all, but this, much like the few lines I stomached of HPMOR, really shows that aesthetics and poetry can't be tossed out just because you're spewing 'points'.
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