popocatepetl
I'm the guy who edits every comment I write at least four times. Sorry.
User ID: 215
popocatepetl
2yr ago
the main culture war in Finland still is basically what could be described as "environmentalism vs. standard middle-class way of life", ie. whether the so called green shift and strict climate targets are electorally compatible with people's fears over losing their job, seeing costs of living (fuel, electricity, food etc.) go up, and generally whether environmentalism is just an urban academic fad incompatible with normie life, particularly in rural areas.
The dilemma facing progressive parties everywhere is that while saying "We need to address climate change" is popular, measures to address climate change aren't. In recent years, Covid has good and well emptied people's tank of virtuous self-sacrifice. Even if it hadn't, climate change doesn't present a visible immediate threat like Covid did. If you mess with food and fuel prices, the apolitical masses will leave the sideline.
The ideal strategy, of course, is to pay lip-service to the cause, pass a few paper straw initiatives, and let be. Unfortunately, this strategy risks you getting overrun by True Believers who grab the wheel and try to steer you into an iceberg. (See: "Defund the police")
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
1yr ago
The worst case was him deleting his most popular substacks, "Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand" and "Of Course You Know What 'Woke' Means", because conservatives found his arguments good and started linking them. He seems afraid to be seen building bridges with non-fellow travelers, even when their interests and beliefs align with the old-style left perfectly.
popocatepetl
1yr ago
Don't take your political movement that's spent decades building a state with the power to imprison citizens on a whim
The reason Trump exists is because conservatives are dissatisfied with the fruits of the last decades of conservatism. Your post reads to me like, "Trump supporters claim to hate bad things, but if that were true, they'd hate these other things that are also bad!"
Trump voters I know of speak glowingly of Nayib Bukele's law and order in El Salvador, which is to say, arbitrary roundups on police discretion.
Whether supporting uncuffing the police for crackdowns on violent crime can coexist rationally with opposing selective prosecution of political enemies is difficult to say. I'm not sure. It seems it should be possible to square those two stances, but I can see why @FiveHourMarathon sees it as obvious hypocrisy.
(EDIT: PDF version from ToaKraka for people with bad internet.)
Which of the following would you rather have? CYOA - In general, people pick Comfort or Power. But the Motte is built different (laughs). As a fun exercise, pick your option and predict what the Motte will choose.
Me:
YOUR CHOICE. The motte: Pleasure 20%, Adventure 20%, Comfort 20%, Good Works 20%, Power 20%
Wrap this part in || to spoiler, please. (And try to pick your honest choice rather than the socially desirable one if at all possible)
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.
I'll echo @JarJarJedi here. What is the problem BLM might have reasonably addressed with reasonable methods? That two digits of unarmed people are killed per year by US police? That blacks have worse social outcomes than whites?
Those issue are unsolvable without ripping up the basic social constitution. And to be fair to progressives, that's what they've been trying. They've been trying to gut the 2nd and disarm the populace, decreasing violent crime and making police-civilian interactions safer. They've been trying to decrease the number and funding of the militarized police. They've been try to enact DEI to give status and wealth to blacks regardless of meritocratic outcome. They've been trying keep blacks out of jail by non-prosecution.
Of course, the costs they'd inflict on society to achieve their ends is unconscionable, and their methods wildly contradict my personal values. But what is the approach you'd recommend that's not "bizarre" or "crazy" but would actually put a dent in these problems?
I do not believe any of your complaints are relevant because they not only apply, but apply much harder, in countries with high fertility rates.
If anything, a blind adherance to the data would show that the exact opposite of your prescriptions would be useful, if increasing fertility is the only value we're optimizing for. Make people poorer, more conservative and intolerant, add corrupt and dysfunctional governments, remove welfare and social comforts, etc.
EDIT: I should clarify that your complaints may be valid for other reasons, but in terms of increasing fertility, the variables you're suggesting tweaking not only are unrelated but inversely correlated with the desired effect.
EDIT 2: Actually, to avoid being guilty of the same thing I suspect you of, I should clarify that I think you're playing dumb and are putting forth spurious arguments to passive-aggressively poke the bear here.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Ashkenazim seem pretty similar, group IQ-wise, to Japanese. Are they similarly overrepresented among powerful positions, or moreso?
Japan's National IQ is about 105; European jews are 115. Additionally, there are five times as many jews as japanese in the US, and European jews had a dramatically lower cultural and linquistic hurdle to clear on immigrating.
I'd say those factors can plausibly explain the gap.
I'm waiting for a non-self-referential definition of gender
External Gender: People perceived as "female" get treated differently
Internal Gender: I prefer being called "ma'am", and am happier when my external gender is "female".
This is self-referential. "The meaning of female gender is treating a person like a female, and a person who is of female gender is one who wants to be treated like a female."
Predictions:
-
95%: Reddit does not back down, defined as offering free API to Apollo and RiF
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80%: After two weeks, no top 100 subreddit is still blacked out. (99% no more than two are)
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60%: At least one case of admins stripping modding privileges from blackouters occurs
Bonus:
- 70%: Assuming my preferred app stops working, I personally will cave and still be using Reddit on my phone this summer despite it being the perfect opportunity to quit.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
As much as I'd like to make an Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte joke, I don't think this is a case of an earnest nerd space getting coopted by trend-chasers. Most of those comments don't read to me as saying "Like, yikes. NERD", but rather, they want his arguments taken seriously and wish he'd present himself better for the normies.
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.
I disagree. "Groomer", as I understand it, is a person who's making a covert attempt to directly modify a kid's sexuality in unhealthy ways. I understand that many people here disagree with this definition, but there's something you should understand in turn: when people like me use the term "groomer", we are not saying "I really don't like this person." We're saying that we consider the people so labeled, the officials supporting them, and the section of the public providing their ideology to be a direct, serious and immediate threat to our children.
I understand the analogy between teacher/parent trans activists and child groomers, but it's also the case that conservatives are "kidding in the square" here. Many are also darkly hinting that trans activists are pedophiles. For example, the Stonetoss comic about predators hiding in plain sight or the "Don't overcomplicate things, they're evil and want to fuck kids" meme. I don't have the data to evalute the truth value of this claim but it's definitely being made.
Virginia Democrat to Introduce Bill to Prosecute Parents Who Refuse to Treat Child as Opposite Sex
You're misreading this one IMO.
Democrats, America's party for social engineering, have naturally come into conflict with families over gender ideology, vaccines, school curriculum, you name it. This isn't a naked attack on the Red Tribe (though they do do that) but on the right of family — any family — to inculclate its children in values contrary to the state.
The family is the most enduring relic of pre-state humanity. How things work in your extended family is a good approximation of how a band or small tribe worked thirty thousand years ago. The family has long been the thorn in the side of states trying to engage in social engineering. Do I need examples? Attempts to fight civil servants and non-ruling class citizens from funneling resources to their family is, boldy, the entire project of the state.
About the bill, then. There was an interesting podcast over at Bennett's Phylactery about the relationship between Christianity and hierarchy. I link it (a) because it's a good response to Guzman's "The Bible says to accept everyone for who they are" quote, but also (b) in one part, he makes a good case for why preserving parents' arbitrary rights to discipline and educate their children is good, even if they may in fringe cases abuse it.
I think it's a good response to Guzman's attempt to impose gender ideology in the houshold, even if she can come up with one or two horrifying anecdotes. If our standard for abolishing rights and local institutions is "something horrifying was done" we will have no rights or local institutions in short order.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
The problem is cultural. Around here, when someone makes an 80% prediction of a specific event, we know they're publicly stating their priors to make themselves clear and so they can check / other people can check their rationality later. To general internet-goers, making a quantitative prediction that specific sounds ludicrously overconfident. (Not only will it happen, but you know down to the percentage point how likely it is? Mind showing your math, Mr. Silver?)
popocatepetl
7mo ago
As for the political content that reddit is worried about, that's just the stuff I myself watch/read anyway, so stopping my own kids from watching/reading it would be even more bizarre and hypocritical.
So you'll need to signal flip the political content in the thought experiment to stuff you profoundly disagree with.
It's hard to think of content that arouses in the anti-woke right the sense of a priori absolute evil that Tate does to the feminist left. Maybe MAP advocacy? Children-targeted sissy hypno?
Sure, righties "hate" BreadTube, but it's not quite the same hate.
popocatepetl
11mo ago
If you intentionally break the law by firing bureaucrats on partisan grounds
I would think that the plan would be to fire them based on lack of merit?
He's not saying to fire bad bureaucrats or incompetent DEI hires; he's saying to fire democrats.
The fertility problem continues to defy the desire to blame it on a political hobby horse. People try to draw correlation lines with feminism, secularism, diversity, urbanization, high cost of housing/education. To some extent, they succeed; those are all correlated with modernity. But look closely and you'll see outliers for your chosen culprit. Low fertility is hitting everyone regardless of regional particularities, just on a time lag of how deep they are in the boonies.
Does anyone here actually "believe" Plato/Aristotle's theory of forms, material/formal/efficient/final causes, and hylemorphism? Or is at all basically nonsense, dreamed up for a want of robust physical science, with 'ball', 'sphere', 'man', 'dog' being just human oversimplifications for matter arrangements?
Do people on both side of the debate actually care about women's sports, or is it just an excuse to wage the culture war?
Why do crocodiles ambush prey crossing the river instead of coming on land to snatch them?
Sports is where the weakness of the "trans(wo)men are (wo)men" is most visible, and where the apparent moral highground of progressives defending the weak against bullies is reversed. It's the ideal terrain for conservatives. So that's where they choose to fight, hoping victory there translates to victory elsewhere.
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
FtM, if this is anything to go by.
More FtM school shooters would be (with grim irony) excellent evidence in favor of the "trans people are X minds born in a Y body" framing of the trans phenomenon, as opposed to borderline personality and social contagion which is the more popular explanation here.
I'm not getting any quick google results I trust, but there must be at least 20x as many Gen Z biological males as FtMs. If the ratio of male mass shooters:FtM mass shooters ever converges with the ratio of Male:FtMs in society, that will shift my priors dramatically in favor the LGBT activist framing of the issue being the correct one.
(I'm not suggesting that this ratio will come to pass, but I am registering this in advance as evidence that would falsify my current position.)
I tend to see feminism as a logical outgrowth of classical liberalism. Most ideologies since 1789 seem to involve people building off the ideas the French Revolution set loose from the salons to their natural conclusions. Once the Declaration of the Rights of Man became the civic religion, abolitionism was inevitable, as was universal male suffrage, as were nationstates, and then eventually female suffrage and the end of the patriarchy, whatever that means. Plus socialism. The whole thing has just taken centuries to play out. We are still adapting to the adaptations to the adaptations to the adaptations, with no one sure when we will settle into a new equilibrium.
I suspect we have knocked down a few very important Chesterson's fences along the way, and the manosphere will write your ear off on all the ways modern gender roles are making people dysfunctional and unhappy. Naively speaking, if you look at the fertility rates, where things end up in 2100 is a race between memetic feminism and genetic traditionalism. Personally? I'd say we will probably reinvent the social contract in a way no one can yet expect, as the dominoes continue to tumble.
By the by, this guy is rapidly approaching mid-10s Scott-tier for me. Scratches almost the same itch. Almost every time he releases a podcast essay, I end up re-listening a few times, and it lingers in my mind for weeks. (The interview podcasts are less interesting.) I recommend "The Frontier Was Always Closed (To you)", "How the Taliban Won", and his review of Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy.
It's a shame he's not anywhere near as prolific.
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