popocatepetl
I'm the guy who edits every comment I write at least four times. Sorry.
User ID: 215
That's why it's such a potent meme. The idea of a DEI education committee so egg-headedly absorbed in intersectionality that they think choices here will reflect your subtle implicit biases rather than, you know, the strategic concerns that will swamp those in any normal person looking at this scenario. It seems the DEI lecturer will then tut-tut students who avoid the most intersectional candidates.
I'd consider it definitely a troll if it other people didn't seem to think it were real.
Smart people fall for fakes all the time. Especially when they want to believe the outageous premise a meme suggests is true.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Nobody showed any sign of dodging the mockery of an argument he made when he randomly brought it up. And be serious; this whole chain was started by someone say, "Why don't we mock my opponents more?" Whelp, I guess we're mocking opponents now. Them's the grounds you wanted to live on.
The original question from @Goodguy: Why don't we challenge the magical beliefs of Christianity as much as we challenge the beliefs of social justice? Are we handling christians with kid gloves?
My argument: Most christians do not use potentially magical beliefs in the literal words of the Bible as a basis for policies. The group of (possibly only hypothetical) christians who do is tiny and politically impotent. When mainstream christians oppose abortion, their arguments don't depend irreducibly on a belief that Jesus turned water to wine.
(There is a group who say "We should do X because Jesus said we should, and Jesus is God made flesh" but the X they choose is highly selective, and I think we can dismiss this as a rhetorical flourish because they provide other arguments rather than letting "Jesus said so" stand alone.)
On the other hand, social justice activists advocate things directly and irreducibly based on their potentially magical beliefs, so it's worth interrogating those beliefs. If SJ had extraneous beliefs in magical pink elephants, it would be a fallacy to spend time harping on that rather than addressing their load-bearing questionable beliefs.
There's nothing here that's mocking.
As for "maximizing reproduction/fitness, which is obviously the One True Message from [my] belief system" — where did that come from? — I suspect you're getting me confused with someone else. I've said on a few occasions I oppose any attempt to alter humanity or change the current distribution of types of humans, or even to let natural molochian processes that improve fitness/efficiency continue.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
A modhat comment showed up in my janny queue. Could the UI preserve the modhat? If I didn't check the context I would tick "deserves a warning", but mods are allowed to say people are being obnoxious.
If "become a mendicant" is the actual general rule Jesus was teaching, why doesn't Jesus apply it to Zacchaeus?
My interpretation is that the tax collector's generosity was an indicator of salvation (EDIT: I originally wrote "sufficient" here), but not ideal moral behavior. Ideal would be "If you have two coats, give away one" as John the Baptist said. But the tax collector's generosity does reflect awareness of god's grace, which Zacchaeus is reciprocating with good works.
I use as my touchstone Jesus saying "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God" but then "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." To me, this reads as saying Jesus thinks being rich is sinful, but also that the grace of god can still push a rich man through. Otherwise Jesus would not bother to point out richness as a possible disqualifying factor, to begin with.
Then again, using Zacchaeus, maybe the lesson is that a moderate nest egg is okay, but only "wealth" is a sin. Where "wealth" begins past not being stony broke is unclear.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
.... I did? It's been a while. Please provide some kind of counter rather than just sneering.
end banking like Jesus clearly said we should, or stop accumulating wealth and live like the birds and beasts of the field like he also said we should
It never ceases to amaze me how utterly poor people's reasoning becomes when they're trying to make their opponents sound bad. This is, like, woke-twitter-level atrocious.
End banking: Deutoronomy explicitly forbids lending money for interest, but that's Old Testament, not Jesus. The Catholic Church did forbid lending money for interest as ipso facto usury for most of its history, so I'm not alone in my interpretation. The Catholic Church was not trying to make Chrisians look bad. I guess I will retract "clearly" as he does not explicitly forbid interest like I thought.
Stop accumulating weath and live like the birds and beasts of the field: This is something Jesus did pretty specifically say, in the sermon of the mount no less.
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
[...]
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.
Of course, you can say "He didn't mean what he was saying literally!" but I resent the implication I'm contorting Jesus's words. He seems to be saying you should not create and store wealth.
Ah, fair enough. GEAJ mentioned him killing someone, and I thought you were seconding that fear.
Racist cop. I am concerned about the low agreeability and the part where he's armed. High risk, if he ends up killing anyone on the trip. @GreenEggsAndJam
Cop is too high risk.
Okay, everyone is waaaay overstating this risk. How many innocent minorities does the average racist cop kill for no good reason in their career? Let alone ones they get to know intimately. You're accepting a woke rhetorical frame where it's normal for prejudiced cops to fly off the handle and attack a black minding their business because the cop is like a bull seeing red.
If anything, the vetting process police officers go through makes them less likely to go out-of-control in tense situations than the general public. Yes, cops kill more people than accountants, but that's a question of base rates.
The outcome of putting racist cop on a spaceship with seven minorities is overwhelmingly likely to be a scene from Gran Torino, where things are tense for a bit and then everyone starts to identity as a tribe and they chill. And I'm not talking "99% chance" but "99.999[insert more nines here]% chance"
Why is no one mentioning the gay athlete giving people AIDs if we're going to entertain these super fringe risk scenarios?
popocatepetl
2yr ago
I am reminded of Ross Scott covering the video game of Rama and his assessments of the astronauts.
I was originally only going to pick 3, 6, and I guess 10, but I realized that if the goal is to restart humanity elsewhere, then this does become a harder task than just "pick the most likely to be good astronauts."
Wow. He's still around? Last year I found out AVGN is still making videos, so I shouldn't be surprised.
I'm kind of gobsmacked at the mentality of the person designing this exercise, who assumed it would draw out your sympathies for different idpol groups. The fate of mankind is at stake. My own mother wouldn't make the cut.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
I disagree with Lewis. In an alternate universe where Pontius Pilate let Jesus off with a whipping and he later died in a cholera outbreak, you could still have a religion based on his ministry of the Kingdom of God — the infinite grace of the Father, the equality of sinners be Him, the need to forgive debtors as one's debt has been forgiven... it's a spicy take on judaism. Without the resurrection, "Christians" might teach the same doctrines, but grace wouldn't be mediated personally through Christ.
If tomorrow, incontrovertible evidence came out that the apostles lied, you could still salvage a religion from the wreckage. Christians would have to perform some interprative surgery on the parts of the Bible where Jesus claims to be God — maybe make it like Buddhism where any enlightened person can be God? — but there are already stretches in biblical interpretation, as is.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
There's no functional difference between the two. People use "I feel" and "I think" as a preemptive defense against hostile readers attacking propositions stated without that label. Unfortunately, this makes writing less forceful and less enjoyable for everyone.
Let me include an earlier version of this comment:
I don't see any functional difference between the two. I think both are a form of preemptive defense against a hostile reader refusing to address your points by instead attacking your certainty in something you're only proposing for discussion.
While I didn't use "I feel" there, it's still weak writing.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
What is the appropriate, Christian, response to this situation? @Corvos
Jesus didn't say anything about giving money to con artists. @Lizzardspawn
Except for that bit in the Sermon On the Mount. @big-city-gay
Jesus said you should give away your surplus wealth to the poor pretty explicitly several times. However, correctly interpreting this would preclude Christianity becoming a world religion, so it's not the version of the church that came down to us.
Or that's my read anyway. The church does have slight cover because later in the Book of Mark, Jesus says:
Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself.”
“All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”
Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
By this passage, the Catholic Church came up with the interpretation that poverty, chastity, and obediance are only required of the priestly class, and regular Joes can still be saved if they ignore those rules. However, he is definitely still saying that giving all your stuff away to beggars is a thing you should be doing, even if God will cut you some slack.
I guess it’s a matter of scale I my opinion. I find the the political personhood of ~50% of the population to be more compelling and important then the material disposition of the great great great failsons of European warlords. I suspect this is a belief shared by a vast majority of people who even spare the old nobility a thought.
Your continuing to define the issue at hand as "personhood of 50% of the population" is compelling to you but not to others past, present, and future who consider the rights in question social constructions. Those progeny of Charlemagne likewise defined their cause in grandiose terms, which we now dismiss.
99% of humans ever alive would find your and my values completely disgusting.
I should continue to restate my point lest it get lost in the weeds. Culture wars are serious. Everyone is always fighting for their fucking life. If you feel there's something uniquely monstrous about the anti-feminist position opposed to you, it's because you have until this point been sheltered from the high stakes of other culture wars in history.
Maybe. But certainly Britain itself decided on the slavery issue peacefully, and that was a rather important domino, yes?
EDIT: To the part you added in:
To me “culture war” is different from suicide. When your position is totally compromised and you have no chance of success in a matter I think it’s expected you just accept the status quo. IE there were certainly people that wanted/what a haindmaid’s tale type society(someone them are right here on this forum) but they know either explicitly or intuitively that they are in a tiny minority so there is no violent revolution.
This is a meaningful distinction. But the people on the losing side of culture wars often know what losing will mean for them -- that members of their team will end up socially marginalized and that the rights they hold holy will go extinct -- but after getting outmaneuvred by changes in public opinion, peacefully surrender in exchange for a few rats on their side being allowed to board a life raft.
Take the upper crust of old European nobility. A lot of those peacefully gave up their estate and are still rich. But the baronets and lesser gentry plummeted in status, and some surely became penniless and died without issue, who otherwise would have still been noble.
To recap, my claim is (a) you do not always need knives to force your enemy to surrender, discourse is still useful, and (b) there's nothing special about this culture war existentially threatening rights you consider sacrosanct and non-negotiable, all culture wars have been like that. All culture wars have been "5000 lb bombs".
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Yeah, that was the point. None of the serious issues involving "who are people" were settled by talking.
Not true. Slavery was dismantled peacefully in many places. The US just happened to have a weird politial configuration that caused it to go out with a bang. In most places, those who did not benefit from the "right" to own slaves were persuaded by discourse such as we have in The Motte, and eventually those who did benefit were so politically isolated they surrendered and became skulls without a fight. The winning side usually granted a fig leaf that some portion of the losing side would not become skulls.
To give a contemporary example that's being discussed here of late, incels. In a Handmaid's Tale society, many incels might get the "right" to a goverment issued GF. So do all incels become revolutionaries to reimpose the patriarchy?
No. They know they've been outgunned by peaceful spread of feminism in the last 120 years. So instead 99% of them become skulls peacefully.
Devout believers in the Bible as literally written are the fargroup. The threat that such people pose to, say, end banking like Jesus clearly said we should, or stop accumulating wealth and live like the birds and beasts of the field like he also said we should, are so remote it's not worth debunking their kooky beliefs.
On the other hand, the beliefs of the group that rallies around the label "Christian" and uses Bible scripture for mostly signalling purposes are cross-examined for their day in court. They rarely actually make a fuss about implementing literal Christian doctrine. The "prayer in school" crowd and "teach young earth rather than evolution" crowd have been driven pretty well underground.
I think a good analogy is if there was a tiny branch of woke people also believed in a magical pink space elephant who says we must build a great tower of mozzarella.
Culture wars are about taking someone's rights away, whether positive rights or negative rights.
A firecracker and a 5000 lb bomb are identical by this logic.
No, unless you're a nihilist, the difference is that some rights are "privileges" that one side is falsely characterizing as a natural right.
As for bombs and firecrackers. The outcome of every culture war has been an existentially threatening 5000 lb bomb to at least some people. There is, for example, the dumpy fourth natural son of a plantation owner who would have been happily married if slavery continued, who instead died penniless with no issue. Or there is a sect that a community considered the true word of god that went defunct because a German town legalized adult re-baptisms in the 1500s.
For you to characterize culture wars as firecrackers is only because you consider the casualties of lost culture wars worthless. Future people will consider the death of things you consider holy and the people who defended them likewise worthless.
There are no culture wars being fought in the west with the stakes being "one group of people essentially returns to being chattel".
You edited this in, so I'll edit this in. Don't look down. The ground is made out of skulls.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Culture wars are about taking someone's rights away, whether positive rights or negative rights. Off the top of my head I'm struggling to think of any culture war that can't be described in those terms. What you're saying is that The Motte is stupid and conflict theory should reign.
Which is a thing you can believe, but be cognizant of that.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
It would probably take a tiring effortpost to correct my misunderstanding here, but don't the Education Amendments of 1972 (most famously Title IX) mean the federal gov is treating universities as an extension of government institutions because they receive public funding, and thus must respect constitutional rights?
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Do you think telling me you think I am playing dumb and lying about my beliefs to be civil?
Yes, I believe I phrased my doubts civilly.
In other conversations, you seem not to separate the content of a belief from whether it's being argued fairly. Elsewhere, you say:
I am making it all about myself because I am a woman, and every generalized comment about women is therefore directed at me. When you say men are funnier than women, you are also saying you are funnier than me, for no other reason than because of your body. The "big deal" of you holding that opinion is that I find it's a rather illogical and mean one,
So, in your view, the opinion "Men are funnier than women" cannot be held or argued without it being an insult. I do not see it that way. I also do not see "Men are immoral" as an insult. And unless I'm grossly misunderstanding the rules, neither does The Motte. You would be closer to the bone accusing lack of charity, but you'll find I did respond to your arguments as you stated them, while leaving that I doubted your good faith as a sidenote disclosure.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
I don't have any problem with historical materialism and believe it's probably mostly right on the money. It's not, however, something we can really verify.
You can say "changes in the mode of production in the late modern period of proto-industrialization caused the liberal revolutions of the 18th-19th century and their attendant changes in ideology and governmental structure." But you could also say "Ideas of the early Englightenment caused intellectual foment in the 18th-19th century, leading to innovation in economic organization and the reconsidering of political structures."
How do we adjudicate these claims? And even if we can prove the materialist interpretation for this particular case, does that generalize to proving materialism is the driving force of history everywhere? It sure seems like the ideas of some figures (take Jesus Christ) were pretty influential to later history, not just the type of slave plantation and tax farming system they were using in 1st century BC Rome.
Likewise, even if we eventually find a ton of evidence that lots of billionaires were cynically pushing idpol, there will inevitably be cases where idpol was pushed from sincere belief. How many examples of the first prove the model? How many counterexamples of the second disprove the model?
popocatepetl
2yr ago
I think there’s a lot more demand for niche internet communities now than in the mid 2010s when everyone was allowed to have their own subreddit.
Oh, I believe there's a demo that wants us. But our discoverability is toilet tier compared to being a subreddit.
Some communities sustain themselves through pure word of mouth, like Kiwifarms. (Hey! They're alive!) But most... don't. They shrink as their initial seed members drift away without being replaced.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
I simply don't feel that "interesting ways to solve energy output problems from solar cells" can be described as "in depth discussion, introspection, navel-gazing".
We've dropped something midstream through our conversation. At the very beginning you said: Smart ≠ highly analytical and inclined to in depth discussion, introspection, navel-gazing. Would you then retract the first part? That smart does indeed = highly analytical?
But if people are inclined to "live life and vibe" outside their professional fields + areas of special interest, that doesn't intrinsically reflect on their intelligence.
I mean that unsmart people "just live life and vibe" outside and inside their professional fields; they are uninterested in the truth value, implications, or consistency of the symbol systems they manipulate for a paycheck, or any other system for a hobby. Take the third grade teacher in another thread who teaches elementary math for a living but does not understand why two column multiplication works when a student does the tens column first, tries to browbeat them for doing it wrong, and then complains in the teacher's room that the student keeps getting problems right. That person is most people. They do not have an "area of interest". They want to ascend status hierarchies and have pleasant experiences, and good for them.
Could you be in a smart-people bubble where you don't interact with them enough to scratch the surface and realize average people are like that?
(I think this whole comment thread kicked off with someone dropping in to say prioritizing a smart mate is important, which I interpreted as a response to my claim that constant in-depth quality discussion turned out to not be nearly as meaningful to me as I'd imagined when I started dating. Hence my initial response resisting conflating the two. I really believe it has much more to do with personality than intelligence)
I guess it's possible to have a smart partner who is inclined to in depth discussions... but not with you, because you're not versed in their area of interest. You know they're smart, but you don't meet the standard to speak with them about the thing they care about. God knows, in-laws through my sister's husband I meet every Thanksgiving would never guess I like in depth discussions. Their opinions are not worth dissecting for me. (Again, good for them, they spent their time and mental energy on something better.)
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Need more evidence/citations that they are same.
Positivism is useless for defining words. I like my definition and think most people share it. As for why I contested you on a semantic point, it's common for people to try to redefine "smart" as "having the collection of mental attributes that lead to success", which is circular (good brain = good brain). This is IMO not a valid definition. From this comment, you are not falling into that trap, so my bad.
Anecdotally, using proxies for intelligence like vast breadth of knowledge, grasping new material extremely quickly, getting good grades in very challenging programs, and creative problem solving, I can think of a number of very smart people I know who don't do much in the way of in depth discussion, introspection, or navel-gazing. It doesn't interest or excite them the way, say, a cool engineering problem does. Their approach to their inner selves is -shrug-, to interpersonal politics is "well, it all works out in the end", etc. These things simply don't bother or preoccupy them, they find them tedious and a waste of time better spent on cool problems.
Highlight meaningful. You rephrased my definition. Their smartness is the mental quality that leads to them becoming engrossed in untangling systems: that is to say, analysis. We on the Motte are engrossed in analyzing and introspecting on one particular type of problem. They have another. Non-smart people get engrossed in analyzing neither. They just live life and vibe, which is probably the better way to go about this thing.
Isn't the stupider part that the bet fundamentally favors of the one betting against hyperinflation? If he wins he gets a whopping $1M USD. If he loses he only has to pay a measly $1M USD.
It's not quite as asymmetric as "I bet humanity won't go extinct in 90 days" but it's pretty asymmetric.
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