popocatepetl
I'm the guy who edits every comment I write at least four times. Sorry.
User ID: 215
popocatepetl
2yr ago
"Recruiter" is nine letters.
Goodbye then. I yut that the mod action for accusing Republicans of genocide advocacy was incorrect. At the same time, a lot of your behavior I've seen has been explicitly quite bad, and I suspect the mods hesitated to dock you for it because you're in the minority. But given you have surrendered yourself, like William Wallace, to be martyred and cut open while screaming FREEDOM, I suspect you'll be indulged.
We've done an epic's of navel gazing on this. I don't think what you're saying is true, or "truer" than a similar narrative you'd see on /r/politics about conservatives just not liking science.
The two competing theories common here are (a) It's group dynamics. People with relatively mainstream beliefs are less motivated to hang out here, more likely to leave due to evaporative cooling; and people do not bother discussing what mainstream beliefs they have here, because they have other places (b) modern leftism has become highly correlated with a brand of social justice ethics which does not countenance debating or platforming nazis, and people who subscribe to it are repelled by The Motte's basic constitution.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
I think spending time in a legitimately republican space, like, oh I don't know, Gab for an online example, will cure you of the notion that The Motte is regular conservatives. I don't know whether this is a libertarian space anymore, either. Personally I have my heart reflexively beating libertarian but the blood runs slow, so to speak. Everyone everywhere is more of a conflict theorist since 2020, and I have been awed and dismayed by the power of collective action.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
How did you come to this conclusion? What flaws do you see in the studies that inform current medical practice? [...] Fair point, but I feel there should be some burden on those arguing against a vast amount of establishment consensus to show otherwise
A few years ago LGBT activist organizations campaigned against John Hopkins publishing transphobic research results. John Hopkins ultimately retracted. An open letter from 'the faculty'. (Scroll to the bottom to see which departments have names represented, and which don't.)
As faculty at Johns Hopkins, we are committed to serving the health needs of the LGBTQ community in a manner that is informed by the best available science — a manner that is respectful and inclusive and supports the rights of LGBTQ people to live full and open lives without fear of discrimination or bias based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. [...]
Because of the report, the Human Rights Campaign has warned Johns Hopkins that it is reviewing, and may remove from the institution, its high ranking in the HRC Healthcare Equality Index. The national benchmarking tool evaluates health care facilities' policies and practices related to equity and inclusion of their LGBTQ patients, visitors and employees.
In situations where institutions can have their proto-DEI score docked for producing certain results, and where such results prompt a buzzword-filled moral struggle session from the parts of the faculty that study "human rights" and "reproductive health", the consensus of academia is meaningless to me. Academia has been scared into mumbling about other topics. Why not this one?
If I tell my ten year old daughter she's a fat retard every day and I wish she was never born, should the state intervene or leave me alone?
Granting the premise that this comparison is reasonable, the state should not intervene, no. Cultures, religions, and ideologies propogate themselves through childhood discipline. State intervention presupposes that certain psychologically abusive treatment is valid because it instills favored values. (For example, children who cannot stay in their desk and be quiet during class are subjected to quite frightful forced isolation and verbal abuse until they conform to expected standards.) The Amish and Orthodox Jews subject their children to a rather crippling upbringing and it is understood that the government cannot intercede because freedom of religion. The situation with hypothical "fat retard calling" parent is much the same.
Once children become adults they are obviously entitled to judge their parents' instilled culture by themselves and accept or reject it.
Very good, when you publish this research it may inform future education policies. Until such a time, it's unclear to my why I should privilege your opinion is on how transgender children should be treated and insist that it be enforced in education policy.
The current policies and proposed policies are based on politics, not disinterested research, if such even exists for this topic. In any case, public schools are funded by and serve the parents.
Also, that sarcasm is beneath you. "You are not a PhD in this subject so be quiet", as if arguments you see online, in media, or politics are informed by one.
Certainly the red-tribe plan of abusing them out of it has been unsuccessful thus far. [...] where do you believe transgender adults come from? My claim is that prior to reaching age 18, they are first age 17. And before that, they are invariably age 16. And before that...
The "red tribe plan", such as it is, is to ignore trans children to the extent they exist and let them figure it out as adults. This plan worked for most of human history. High teen suicide, whether the cause be misgendering or borderline personality, is a modern phenomenon so I don't think you can lay that on conservatives.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
I've seen clips. Not much to say really, except that I'm surprised he consented to show up for the debate. A senator doesn't need charisma or even intelligence to vote the party line, which is what a lot of voters are looking for. He could be inanimate carbon rod. The story of a TV personality and a stroke victim duking it out for senator will be a droll anecdote for the history books though, in a chapter about the political dysfunction of the late second period American republic. I can almost here Wanda McCaddon narrating.
They hate me, they want my children sterilized, and they want me dead. They say so, openly, repeatedly.
Don't overgeneralize "they". I do see a democrat coalition with their eyes on the prize to force their opponents into a checkmate in terms of sociopolitical influence. Reforms like adding DC and Puerto Rico as states; or defining republican value advocacy as hate speech; or gatekeeping all respectable institutions with tests of 'modern' values; or simply letting urbanization and demographic changes proceed as normal, are all achievable goals that will lock the current republican coalition into a "no-win" scenario. At that point, the republican party will reorganize around a different coalition, institutions will stop nodding to the old values, and the current republican coalition will go the way of the olde Tidewater coalition that is now Gone With The Wind™.
I think the average blue triber is fine if you're just powerless and the memes in your head go extinct as your children adopt their values.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
I think it's a little hazy to try to draw equivalence between a state legislator's attempt to pass a criminal law targeting parents with an anonymous webcomic's provocations.
Where did I draw that equivalence? OP claimed conservatives are only using "groomer" as in "covert attempt to directly modify a kid's sexuality in unhealthy ways". I provided two prominent examples of conservatives saying "groomer" as in "those people are pedophiles". But they are just two examples. If you browse /r/conservative or /r/politicalcompassmemes (pre mod-purge) you regularly see (saw) posts of trans child sex abuse cases with comments like "groomers gonna groom". Admittedly there's no conservative pope I can cite for the mainstream conservative usage of "groomer", but I'm just trying to keep it real.
The second part of my comment addresses the Virginia bill, and is completely separate.
Then you interpret your own bias as an objective fact of the world, which lets you make fun of people who don’t share that bias by effectively calling them stupid (which is the framing for your entire comment)
I don't see too much in his comment where the language is more inflammatory than the ideas, or where he's mocking people who disagree with his conflict theory take. Otherwise your criticism is... that he believes his own model of the world. Yes?
It's also a tortured reading to his quote. Obviously not everything every institution has done for the last 31 months has has been anti-outgroup punitive measures. How much qualification is required? Open any work of political economy or op-ed section and you'll find statements rounding the measly complexity of nature into digestible simplifications. @FCfromSSC likely does not think Biden pardoning the 2021 Thanksgiving turkey was part of a blue counterinsurgency.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
What are some of the greatest Motte posts on this topic of rhetoric and skepticism? Even of rationalists?
@beej67 — "I have, however, seen behavior which I consider to be fear driven, and typical of that of an expert challenged." AKA the "Popcorn gonna pop" post. His TL;DR argument is that expertise is often tainted by experts' desire to defend their reputation when their analysis fails.
Hopefully he start posting again if the muse strikes him.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
So the standard we're going by is "the other side is equivocating too"? I'm not outraged by the right bringing knives to a knife fight, but let's call knives knives, please.
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
I realize this is the response this post was likely designed to elicit but:
Our system, including institutions both public and private, formal and informal, hard and soft, is configured such that the misbehavior of favored groups is tolerated, while the misbehavior of disfavored groups is punished to maximum extent the decision-makers feel they can get away with.
What more is there to say? At this point the people on the winning side should continue doing what they're doing even if they disagree with it; if they ever stop or fail to keep the boot on their own foot, the future is not pretty for them.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
The cost rate needs a caveat. Paradox games are podcast/audiobook games. You use them to engage a mechanical part of your brain while leaving the verbal and contemplative parts open. Not while learning to play them, certainly, but after the hundred hour mark.
Outer Wilds is much more expensive by rate (maybe $1.20/hour), but while you're playing it, it is the only thing you're doing and commands your attention. EU4 on the other hand becomes a glorified stress ball.
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
2yr ago
Fuzzy political movements are almost named for their opponents' sneer term. In the English Civil War, "Roundhead", "Cavalier", "Leveller" were all insults. To themselves, they were sensible people acting rightly. Fortunately, in that case we can depoliticize it with different labels (eg Parliamentarian, Monarchist, Proto-Republican). But there's not enough clarity on what our modern groups are. I think "Identarian" is a solid first stab for the group people call 'woke'.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
In his traditional biography Mohammed pissed off the elites of Mecca so much he had to leave to save his life.
A pretty straight putt modification to @Gdanning's conjecture should be "successful religions (eventually) deliver a message that isn't threatening to (their) elites." Christianity was also extremely threatening the status quo at the start, which is why Diocletion and other Roman emperors tried so hard to stamp it out. But when a revolutionary new Christian elite under Constatine took their place, we get the Council of Niceaea, and all the inconvenient or threatening parts of the religion get sandpapered over. Eventually, the religion that said all rich people are literally going to hell morphs into something telling serfs to stay in their place and the duke gets to live in a palace because God wills it.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
I don't find it uncanny at all. In ecosystems, one species tends to dominate a given niche. The internet created a giant shared memetic ecosystem that almost all young westerners inhabit together, and wokeness is the perfect meme to dominate its given niche -- the group this blog describes, more or less. It either outcompeted or absorbed rival memes like internet atheism, internet stoicism, internet communism, etc etc.
A similar process is taking place on the right for underemployed undersexed downward mobile males, outcompeting or absorbing rival memes like internet collapse, internet reaction, internet men's rights, internet trumpism, internet gaming fandom, etc etc. But it doesn't have a name yet.
Two explanations. One: elites of every age and culture have engaged in a healthy dose of noble lying as it served them. (Sometimes noble, usually self-interested.) Two: divine command as an ethical framework has fallen off a cliff. A hundred years ago good christians took the Ninth Commandment rather seriously. Today most Ivy league educated lower elites have no moral framework and tend to waver between expediency and utilitarianism. Even when people claim to be deontologists, they rarely have the intellectual chops to justify their actions by a categorical imperative and are mostly going by gut.
I'd guess it's a mix. Explanation one is true for decision-makers at the top, who have always been mercenary liars; but the conflict theorification of the lower ruling class like Klein feels new. Using the Gervais Principle and Straussian language respectively, the sociopaths/wise are the same as always. The clueless/gentlemen have lost scripture and only hear from their God through prayer, and sometimes he tells them to lie, or importantly, to not seek that fruit.
How do wokes/social constructionists/etc reconcile their views with the actual state of scientific knowledge or even basic logic? It seems clear to me that if one accepts genetics and evolutionary principles, it necessarily implies that 1: humans have a nature that is determined in large part by our genetics and 2: humans and human societies undergo selection on both an individual and group level.
Among woke-lite groups, AKA the gestalt that creates the Reddit frontpage, you're forgetting that they don't have the information you do. There's a lot of organic social infrastructure to prevent people from learning about group differences and the heritability of behavioural traits; you have to learn about them separately and then correlate the two sets of knowledge on your own. When I first read an internet comment saying the average black american's IQ was one standard deviation below average, my reaction was "Who did the study, the Klu Klux Klan?" For any academic who speaks about the topic openly, their reputations get dragged through the mud. Who wastes time investigating the claims of flat earthers?
Well, me. I investigated flat earth. I also investigated racist pseudoscience. And I didn't bail off any spurious offramps like iron deficiency in childhood or IQ tests being a measure of cultural knowledge that late aughts Google was eager to throw in my face.
For those who never investigate the problem to begin with, or get off one of the offramps, they "reconcile" it because there's nothing to reconcile. There's a reason why your side tends to be much better at passing ideological turing tests then theirs. They just don't know.
Now, there are a few "high inquisitors" like tenured critical theorists, internet moderators, or the SLPC who have to engage with this information enough to fight its dissemination. To steelman what they would say, the evidence for what you're talking about is not conclusive (iron deficiencies in childhood, shared environments, etc), and could have disasterous social consequences if the average idiot takes a simple conclusion from complex and mixed research. Could there be group differences? Maybe. Is there a genetic component? Maybe. Did Islam propogate through the world because it justified systemic violence against non-muslims, unlike other religions? Maybe.
But the impressionable average idiot has to be protected from fascists preaching radical ideology with oversimplified and deceptive statistics.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Is this Markov generated or did you compose that epic yourself?
Thanks for the specific quotes. I'll save this one to reference it.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Covid measures are very much the equivalent of TSA, the Patriot Act, Shock and Awe, and terror threat levels for people born after 1999 or so. A wakeup call that "respectable" organs of society are often (a) incompetent, run by gladhanding careerists who are trying to implement policies that make themselves look useful while filling the political checkboxes they've been handed (b) cynically trying to push through unpopular reforms by not letting a good crisis go to waste.
Reflecting on Covid (or the War on Terror) is useful. There's a good saying that goes something like "Who you are in adversity is who you always were." Well, the government you see in a crisis is the government you always have.
I have a different interpretation. Various governments in history claimed to have absolute power over their territories, and the right of life and death their subjects. So the average joe had no rights. In fact, though, these governments barely controlled the outskirts of their capital city. Their grip over the empire amounted to negotiating with local magnates and associations. When I read about farmers and shepherds living in the Pyrenees, it seems like the king in Paris, the pope in Rome, and even the nobles in Bordeaux barely influenced their lives at all.
Obviously, their local nobles and clergy could tyrannize them. But tyrannizing a community that lives right next to you and knows where you sleep is a dangerous business. In practice, serfs worked the lord's strip one day per week and did a pretty lazy job of it. In theory, the church required that everyone attend mass; in practice, only a fraction did.
The early modern period, on the other hand, saw an explosion in state capacity. Monarchs gained standing armies, the right to permanent taxes, bureaucracies, and modern financial instruments. Local nobles and clergy became absentee nobles and clergy, leaving the collection of dues to deputies. This caused turmoil and revolt.
The formal rights we gained in the 19th century are not new things; they are a reaction to attempts by the state to enforce hypothetical claims as actual policy starting in the 16th century or so.
By analogy, do you remember all those states banning gay marriage in the 90s and 00s? Would you say gay rights were increasing or decreasing, then? The formal law was not a sign that gay rights were declining, but that they were growing. Things like "civil rights" are the reverse situation. In theory, we have more freedoms than ever. In practice, institutional control over people's lives is at an unprecedented high.
This is all a re-litigation of Uncle Ted's take, so I'll quote him directly.
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