popocatepetl
I'm the guy who edits every comment I write at least four times. Sorry.
User ID: 215
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Every forum discussing politics that isn't wordy gets very unpleasant very fast. In the spirit of this subthread, I'll refrain from theoryposting why that might be.
Does treating transgender people as their transitioned gender in X circumstance make those people happier with little damage done to the rest of society? Because if the answer to that question is yes, then who gives a damn what the Truth of their gender is.
My favorite Scott essay ever covers this better than I can. Forcing people to believe false things is inherently destructive, even if the truth doesn't matter at all. Sometimes the repression is worth the squeeze, because the falsehood is load-bearing for the functioning of society. Reducing suicide rates for perhaps 1% of population doesn't qualify. Meanwhile, the truth regime required to force everyone else to believe a man is a woman — or at least pretend they do while never ever letting the mask slip — boggles the mind.
Could you get me down with "Transwomen are men, and we all know that, but for therapeutic purposes we will pretend they are not"? Maybe. But that's not what they're demanding.
Has anyone run into a really good case against the Great Replacement theory?
While I don't think "western democracies" are properly democracies these days, neither are they despotic. They don't rule by fear, but by meeting the demands of various interest groups and the people. Skilled professionals at least. (And the rest enough so they don't rebel.)
"The people" demand a comfortable lifestyle and rights that reduce fertility to <1.5 TFR. These demands, unfortunately, contradict each other. Cheap consumer goodies and early retirements need cheap labor to pick the fruit, make the iphones, and empty the bedpans.
Western governments are resolving this contradiction by importing young people from abroad and offshoring what dirty work they can to other countries. Is this popular? No. Is it out of malice for the natives? No. It's just that the other solutions to the problem would be more unpopular.
As usual, WTF Happened in 1971 is a fitting reference. Productivity and compensation stopped correlating in 1971, and we haven't (effectively) collectively demanded a reduced work week yet.
We could have transitioned to three day work weeks way before 1971. The flaw in Keynes's famous prediction is that, past the point of basic subsistance, economic utility is relative. People don't want to make $20,000 or $50,000 or $100,000 or $200,000 inflation-adjusted household income to be happy. They want more than their peers. They want to have class-markers that low status people don't, not the luxuries that those class-markers manifest themselves in. It's why the canard about modern trailer trash having it better than kings in 1900 is so ridiculous.
If whatever happened in 1971 never happened, people would still be working as much as ever. The hedonic treadmill would just be moving faster.
the violent and angry responses from conservatives
....? They're not buying beer. One guy shot a case of Bud Light and posted it on social media. It was not a case with Mulvaney on it, just a blue box.
now are asking me to find a way for a political pundit to express gay and trans hatred at a pride parade to prove... something.
Your core argument is that your side is morally superior because conservatives are welcome in gay spaces if they're not "political", but gay people are not welcome in conservative spaces, regardless. This is not some pedantic nit I'm picking. Please demonstrate that a legible conservative can enter a gay pride space and not get a hostile reception. I've tried to demonstrate it's possible for legibly gay people to enter a conservative space in the same way.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
You're continuing to demonstrate my point. A conservative has to display specific political speech in liberal spaces to have his presence politicized.
Putting aside that you consider "wearing a police uniform" a political statement, what do you propose as a clear way for a conservative to self-identify at a pride parade to see whether or not he'd be threatened?
Could we raise some money and get Ben Shapiro to attend a pride parade, just attend, with no political statement of any kind? I'd be willing to wager money people would get up in his grill, if not literally attack him.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
I think cutting off a child's sexual organs meets a very clear and universal definition of "sexual abuse".
Equivocation. Sexual abuse for my entire life has refered to using children for the sexual gratification, not just "abuse that involves primary sexual characteristics". Why not call it "child abuse" or "child disfigurement" except to free ride on the negative associations of the term? Same with "grooming".
I'm honestly shocked believe its almost certainly an indictment of the American right there haven't been terrorist attacks on gender clinics and assassination attempts against transition doctors.
That would only build political capital for the other side. Regardless, if the only correct response to the government/society doing something horrible were a terrorist attack, no decent man would yet survive. Be nice until you can coordinate meanness.
This is what we're talking about. this is what the American right believes. And the boomercons are so poisoned by "tolerance" they're actually letting it happen.
And people here believe AI apocalypse is three years away. Why aren't they bombing Nvidia factories and sabotaging electrical converters?
popocatepetl
2yr ago
A conservative man can go to a pride parade, just like in the blog post you linked, and not be threatened.
Uh... I strongly disagree with this analysis. Go to your next pride parade in a MAGA hat and see what happens.
However, there is a sense that certain factions or cultures of conservative men (of varying races and ethnicities) have created defensive silos of culture against the encroachment of gender non-conforming men. These places could be certain gyms, certain sales teams, certain blue collar unions, or certain bars. The shared sentiment is that there's enough spaces for gay or trans people (these men can't tell the difference) and so they need to batten down the hatches and keep their exclusionary spaces free from the taint of homo (no pun intended).
Then the conservative men start literally shooting cases of beer, and it becomes apparent that it's not really about protecting women and children, it's about establishing cultural silos of hatred towards gay and trans people.
Consider that there are semiotics to LGBT representation on a Bud Light can that go beyond the semantic meaning. Gay rites are civil rites. The red tribe can recognize a blue tribe religious ablution when they see one. Why do you think the red tribe failed to raise a stink about Milo Yiannopoulos, when he was a gay invading their "silo"?
Democrats used to get quite surly about Americana imagery and music in sports, brands, and media back during the War On Terror. This isn't because they "hated America" or "hated freedom". They correctly perceived extreme displays of the Stars and Stripes as a gang marker for the red tribe.
I'm willing to entertain the notion Alissa Heinerscheid didn't know what she was doing, but it looks a hell of a lot from the outside like a triumphalist blue tribe elite planting their flag on the reddest of red tribe territory. Imagine conservatives buying the largest mosque in Portland and erecting a big George W Bush statue on top of it. Are they doing anything wrong? What do you think will happen to the statue?
I think @motteposter is misidentifying his grievence with women to empathy. Mencius Moldbug wrote something like "Democracy is rule by who controls the media". I do not think this is universally the case. But women have a higher degree of conformity then men, and so are susceptible towards propaganda that portrays a minority viewpoint as consensus. I recall a study where researchers showed girls social media posts with randomly generated numbers of likes; their subjective rating of these posts matched the forged community opinion. You can steer the overton window in this way.
In pictures I see of the third reich, the ones most enthusiastically waving the swatztika flags and doing the Hitler salute at rallies are young women. Is that them being "empathetic"? No, it's social contagion. The media tells them that Nazism is socially desirable and good, and liberalism is unthinkable. And so they wave their flags. This makes democracies with female franchise singularly unstable and vulnerable to the most passionate power-seeking minority in its meme ecosystem. We are currently being driven off a cliff by such a one.
This leaves me in a bind, because I still feel myself a liberal in my bones, and female equality is a natural and inevitable derived principle of liberalism. I have said before (maybe joking) that extra votes to parents for their children might be a workable approach.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Replacing Bud Light with Yuengling as the schlitz of the red tribe would be the smallest W one could characterize as a W. On the level of "throw a tantrum to force Mom to stop at McDonalds on the way to get your shots". But if you can manage it, sure. Draping Bud Light in the colors seemed like a particularly cruel low blow. So I'll cheer.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
At the Mountains of Madness is probably to the Cthulhu fanbase as the Extended Directors Cuts are to the Lord of the Rings movie fanbase. Yeah, some other Lovecraft stories were better edited, suggestive-by-subtraction, and well-paced jewels of horror (Innsmouth or Call). But at a certain point you're a super-fan and want a buffet.
I don't see the connection. Whatever the truth is, when you're in a war, you're in a war. Perhaps stripping boxing gloves and picking up a bowie knife isn't a good tactic for the right — there may be social dynamics at play that allow the prog left to use slander but call for an asymmetric response from the right. However, there's nothing inconsistant between personal good faith truth-seeking and publicly using slander against opponents who are trying to destroy you. An anti-militarist can take up arms when the homeland is invaded. A person who seeks cooperate-cooperate can defect when playing against a defectbot.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
the reaction to dissent against lockdowns in China was to lift lockdowns, while the reaction in the West was to beat the shit out of protesters or even shoot them.
Western repression is a sieve, Chinese repression is a dam. A dam fully contains dissent until it reaches emergency levels. Canada could treat its protestors roughly because they didn't reflect a level of discontent that could threaten the regime.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
No man of any quality is going to commit to a woman in her mid thirties when he could just as easily get a woman in her mid twenties.
I unironically enjoy your periodic links to shock jock reactionary essays, but a weird blindspot of yours is that there are loads of non-quality men out there. They have to settle for less than a virginal sweet-natured 20yo tradwife just as Katja will have to settle for someone not exactly off the cover of a harlequin romance novel.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Well they should care. As @jeroboam said, they're going to lose a lot of money if they piss off that constituency. The company may be so infested with ideologues that they are willing to lose money for ideology, but eventually that will run them into the ground if they don't get a clue.
I do think "Bud Light" as a brand will suffer. But really, worst case scenario, they'll pull a switcheroo to escape the bad vibes a la Anglo-Iranian Oil -> British Petroleum -> BP. The American public does not have the attention span to keep track of which mask Nyarlathotep is wearing.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Not every culture war event gets covered here. We're few in number, and many inflammatory happenings don't have an interesting discussion angle. I recall that the shop teacher with prosthetic breasts didn't get any commentary here, despite being all the rage in conservative social media circles. What is there to say besides "Can you imagine what the outgroup is doing this time? Boo outgroup!"
popocatepetl
2yr ago
The extinction of any morally relevant species is tragic. I preferentially avoid tragic outcomes for morally relevant organisms closer in kinship to myself (I've donated more to my brother's medical expenses than to malaria nets for Ndugu.) But I am not filled with joy that those inferior pre homo sapiens vermin all died out, were outcompeted, were genocided, no.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
He could even just Ctrl+H "whore" and "town bike" tbh.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
What’s your issue with brain modifications? We’ve already massively modified our brain from homo erectus and I’m pretty happy about it.
Yes, "you're" happy about it. The non-human entity that succeeds us will be happy, too.
Assuming happiness or sadness is even a factor for it.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
cyborgs
No brain modifications is the clear schelling fence there.
life extension
No obvious schelling fence with this one
swapping genders
As long as the resulting persons remain infertile, otherwise it's interfering with the normal reproductive process. No making babies from bone marrow either.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
We anti-transhumanists need a schelling fence of some kind or other... why not erect it attempts to tinker with the reproductive process? Even if it's not an entirely rational line in the sand, neither is setting 18 years as the exact line for age of consent. Would you be open to getting salami sliced on that issue? One year, we agree 20 is okay. Next year, the debate goes, if 20 is okay, why not 19? Then, if 19 is okay, why not 18? If 18 is okay, why not 17? 16? We've been through this enough times that you'll have to define pedophilia.
Maintaining a line is important.
We accidentally stepped on a scissor statement.
If her pitch/approach were twenty percent more cringey and she were four years older, everyone would agree this a sad and sympathetic case of someone with unrealistic expectations who missed the boat. Move in the other direction, and no one would think to remark on it — an everyday case of a career-focused woman settling down.
But it straddles the line just so, leaving room to get outraged that other people are binning her in a category you think it's ridiculous to bin her in. Accusations of misogyny go to accusations of white-knighting go to accusations of I-bet-you're-no-prize-yourself-partner etc etc.
I have to admit, I don't get what everyone is talking about in this thread. Katja looks plenty attractive to marry and 36 is not disqualifyingly old, unlike the 42yo on HackerNews a few months ago. She probably did miss the boat. Katja's prospects, on the other hand, are quite good given her industry.
That said, I also don't see this as a case of a lost soul improving herself? I imagine the equivalent low SMV male posting a classified seeking applications for girlfriend would also get eyerolls. The "I'm willing to consider monogamy" part in particular stands out as comparable to "I'm willing to consider getting a steady job" for a guy.
For real, Peter Jackson made tons of canny revisions and cutdowns. I read the books first. The movies were better. So much of the LOTR screams "this author can't kill his darlings", with all the poetry and digressions into the Middle Earth history and Tom Bombadil sidestories. Furthermore, Jackson made the brilliant decision to add scenes from the villains' POV, creating opportunities for tense foreshadowing of the threats the fellowship will soon face.
The good professor Tokien of course remains a legend and a trailblazer, but only in the same way Newton is. Everyone respects Newton. No one thinks he was right about everything.
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