popocatepetl
I'm the guy who edits every comment I write at least four times. Sorry.
User ID: 215
popocatepetl
2mo ago
The proper way is to use a lash no thicker than your thumb on parts of her body that aren't seen in public. Non-consensually, aftercare optional.
I'm unable to tell whether your meaning is literal, ironic, pretend-ironic, or pretend-pretend-ironic to express distain for people saying those things pretend-ironically.
Do you think (a) regular birchings are part of healthy monogamy, (b) such disciplinings were regularly practiced in the west before feminism?
popocatepetl
2mo ago
@bfslndr @curious_straight_ca Guys I figured it out, it's the old reddit link conversion. Just copy+paste 'reddit.com/r/196/s/Qimfce7wOf' into your URL bar.
As for the link, one of my favorite genres of internet content is "Smart autists derive social rules even social butterflies don't know except on an instinctual level". Yes, friend groups are status alliances, and you endanger your own position by trying to bring a low value add into the mix. Never read Diary of a Wimpy Kid though, can't say whether the character descriptions are accurate.
popocatepetl
2mo ago
But a supremely benevolent being would give all his creations at least of a chance of accepting grace. This is a chink in the armor of the theodicy, because Christians' omnipotent benevolent God did not lift a finger to give 100s AD Malaysians even a shot at accepting grace — they could not have heard Christ's ministry. Nor, indeed, does God give us moderns the benefit he was willing to extend to 20s AD Near Easterners, who saw tangible miracles to guide them to God's kingdom.
This forum's meta treatment of Christianity is very goofy. You can call trans people delusional and nothing will happen. [...] But call religious people delusional and you should absolutely expect to get warned/banned.
Examples? I've written and seen written posts that treat Christian beliefs with the same rough treatment as "I think [X] are just delusional, and [Y] are just confused and mentally ill", and none of them ran afoul of the mods. This thread has some examples of posters (including me) saying in passing that 'yup, the factual claims of the bible are unsupported and faintly ridiculous on their face, and I think bible-thumpers are just [insert euphemism for confused simpleton'].
popocatepetl
1mo ago
The quality is just down overall, regardless of topic. Perhaps there are less offensive drive by posters but who cares?
This is the big change. When I go back to 2020 /r/themotte threads, I revel in all the glorious paragraphs and long good-faith back-and-forths.
Billions of people around the world would kill to be in a situation where they are an American citizen making $16 an hour and owing $100k.
Happiness is a function of relative status, not absolute economic utility.
For the billions around the world, $16/hour in an unglamorous job would increase their status relative to their neighbors. For an American, $16/hour in an unglamorous job feels perilously low status compared to one's (fictional, learned from advertisements and social media) neighbors. You criticize them harshly as wanting special privileges, but in their mind they are mainly seeking to clear to a respectability threshold.
The problem underlying a great many problems in society — education, purchasing decisions, family formation — is the dangerous gap between the popular perception of average and the reality of average.
popocatepetl
1mo ago
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
One of my handful of 10/10s. Absolute aesthetic perfection. Kundera's other pretty-good book is Immortality, which also explores the self as an experience versus the self as others project values onto. But this is the novel he lived his life to write, so the rest of his work ends up disappointing.
What are great graphic novels I should read? I read some manga as a tween, but never got really into it
Berserk. Koe no Katachi if you feel like a good cry.
So, what are you reading?
Re-reading my CS Lewis: Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain, plus some of his other apologetics for the first time. (Last month's subthread on christianity and theodicies put me in mind of him.) I must say, as an atheist, they are the best steelman of christian faith you will encounter. They present a version denuded of all things the sort of person who hangs out on the Motte dislikes. The mystical elements reduce to two foundational miracles: that God was made flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, and that your conscience is communication of God rather than a consequence of brain chemistry.
Better, Lewis presents a heady, masculine version of the faith which is largely absent in the therapeutic sop of modern nondenominational churches. He stresses that Christianity calls for radical striving and self-abnegation, for walking through the "narrow gate" ; that accepting Christ means, not nuzzling into the unjudgmental embrace of mother, but asking for father to break your will and reforge you with soul of a saint.
It's unfortunate. The mind-body dualism introduced in the first chapters of Mere Christianity, on which everything else builds, doesn't stand to reason. He spends a good deal of time arguing against the idea the conscience coming from "herd instinct", as he calls it, but his objections have easy answers. Human brains have an id and superego which are represented by different neural pathways; they make "bids" in the parliament of our ego, and the stronger case decides our action. You can see a primitive version of this in the warring segments of lamprey brains trying to decide whether to swim out to seek mates or hide in the rocks.
While Lewis's christianity may be pro-social and psychologically appealing, believing what your reason rejects for emotional relief is cowardly and base. If I am a seeker, I must remain one.
An internal locus of control gives you better outcomes, regardless of how valid a particular complaint is. Even if it is insanity, it's a useful insanity.
How positive can we be about the correlation/causation here? For reasons described elsewhere in this thread, people who succeed attribute it to their own agency, while people who fail blame circumstances. The cross-sectional cohort studies I see with a quick search don't impress me with their rigor in dismissing that explanation of LoC/outcome correlations. They seem to assume that if a 4th grader has internal LoC and experiences better outcomes later, then internal LoC was the cause; as opposed to that 4th grader having developed an internal LoC by age 10 due to having more friends, a likeable personality, having demonstrated demonstrated competency in the past, etc. The studies might include a line about controlling for IQ, but that's about it.
I dislike psychology as a field and this always sounded like one of those "just so" stories, to my biased ears.
Is it possible to salvage a non-trivial version of the DKE?
The observation that low-skilled people overestimate themselves and high-skilled people underestimate themselves survives this criticism. Yeah, that's trivial. It doesn't reveal the psychology of skilled vs unskilled, just that, like @rae says, misestimation by the worst will be on average an overestimate, while misestimation by the best will be an underestimate.
The reason Dunning-Kruger feels so real to us is that dilettants outnumber experts by a ludicrous margin. It feels like "history buffs" on the internet are always running their mouths with questionable takes on the Roman Empire. In reality, specialists talk a lot more. There just aren't that many of them.
popocatepetl
4mo ago
I do at least give Christie credit for taking Trump on directly.
The purpose of his candidacy seems to be parlaying a spot on the debate platform into clout in anti-Trump circles. He hasn't been in office for six years, he's disgraced because of Bridgegate, and his career as a Republican looks moribund. Most of the people in the debate using kid gloves with Trump are probably angling for an appointment down the road. That's not a concern for Christie, whose incentives run the other way.
popocatepetl
4mo ago
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.
popocatepetl
3mo ago
I'm curious as to what makes you so passionate about this issue. I have to admit it's just not that interesting to me. It just feels like Daily Show level dunking on the proles.
The equivalent might be multiple effort posts trying to argue against flat earthers, Nation of Islam, Bush did 9/11, or astrology.
A lot of Motters seem at least mildly sympathetic to fake vote counts in 2020. (The election being 'stolen' is a much squishier topic, but let's limit things to fake ballot-casting or vote-tallying.) Given my other belief that posters seem unusually insightful on other topics, this makes an important discrepancy. Is there really something to it? Or are these posters hyper-irrational and I've misjudged them all this time?
If a large chunk of The Motte started signaling interest in flat earth, 9/11 truth, astrology etc, I would be more interested in investigating those claims, too, either to credit those claims or to discredit The Motte.
(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)
If competition holds no appeal to you, we're too far apart in natural inclination for me to offer anything of use.
Males typically enjoy competition provided they have some chance of winning. I've never met a male who continues to enjoy a competitive activity in which they consistently lose. (For footraces this means near last-place finishes.)
To find meaning it's important to find a competition within an arm's length of your competency. See: eudaimonia, or flow state.
Is "white people aren't allowed to run red lights" an "anti-white law"?
Certainly, if it removes the right of red-light running to whites specifically.
Would it become an anti-white law if it was overruling a lower level of government, like if some municipalities were allowing white people to run red lights and the state government passed a law saying they couldn't make racial exceptions?
Still anti-white, because it's legislation that removes a previous privilege from that specific group.
but nobody describes the lack of such an exemption as anti-white, not even white supremacist
In a hypothetical universe where whites had a historic go-on-red privilege, its revocation would certainly be seen as anti-white by white supremacists. And they'd be correct. Even though such a change would be a good idea by my books, removing a specific white-held privilege is an "anti-white law". Likewise, restricting MtFs from female sports where they previously had access locally is an "anti-trans law", even though I agree it's a good idea.
Notice that guesswho didn't describe segregation of sports by sex as anti-male, despite men and boys being the overwhelming majority of those restricted, likely due to believing that the segregation is reasonable except for when it applies to people who identify as transgender.
When the system of female-only sports was first created, the restriction against men joining was definitely an "anti-male rule". Identifying which groups a rule targets is different from condemning the rule.
You're saying christianity forces us to believe dogmatic, but positivistically void claims like "the bread becomes flesh in an abstract manner". Progressivism, meanwhile, forces us to believe Jamaicans and Jews are equally fast at sprinting.
I guess that's true if you compare catholicism to wokeism, which is a fundamentalist branch of progressivism. But, as always, I'm not sure I agree with NRx that extreme blank slatism and communism were inevitable extrapolations of liberalism; that as soon Jefferson penned "all men are created equal", CRT and HAES were a matter of time. I think, if backed into a corner, progressives can reduce their claims to abstract, unfalsifiable ones, just as christians did.
Catholics believe man was created in God's image — this idea is safe, because scientists will never capture God in a dragnet for analysis. In the same way, early, non-fundamentalist liberals believed all men housed an ineffable equal dignity — this idea is also safe, because the human-rights-granting organ apparently can't be found via autopsy.
Evolution and HBD imply that catholics and liberals are wrong. But it's merely in the way that seeing a man living in a slum implies that he's poor; without seeing his bank account, one can come up with any number of excuses why he's actually a billionaire who chooses to live in a shack.
popocatepetl
6mo ago
How have your predictions fared?
Decently. Graded:
- ✅ 99%: Trumps Twitter ban has been lifted
- ✅ 95%: At least one case of Twitter moderation has happened for which the NY Times or WaPO has written a story highlighting hypocrisy
- ✅ 90%: Hate speech rules for protected classes remain, neither being retracted nor expanded to cover everyone
- ✅ 70%: Misgendering and deadnaming no longer fall under this category, however.
- ✅ 70%: Payment processors, cloud service providers, banks, and the US government have NOT taken measures to leverage or punish Twitter for content policies. (This one is tricky to adjudicate so I'll leave it to you.)
- ❌ 70%: The EU HAS taken measures to leverage or punish Twitter for content policies. (Same.)
- ✅ 60%: Twitter's medical misinformation rules have been modified.
- ❌ 60%: Twitter's election misinformation rules have been modified.
Vibes-wise, I've been surprised by how full-throatedly dissident conservative Elon Musk has been in his tweets. And while "hate speech" is still against TOS, I've been subjectively impressed by how much far right accounts have been able to test the limits without being deleted, banned, or throttled from at least my feed.
popocatepetl
2mo ago
It all goes back to the universities. All methods of recruiting skilled workers except credentialism were made de facto illegal in the 60s, and then the left took over the institution that issues credentials. What more do they need? Personnel will always be in their favor. Everything in American history since has been an endgame where checkmate is guaranteed for the right unless the left bungles its moves, allowing a stalemate; in other words, an ending where both sides lose.
I'm somewhat less impressed with Hoppean "kings have low time preference" argument now
The weakness of that argument is that a king with iron-clad legitimacy has low time preference, which is rare. Modern dynasties like the Stuarts and Bourbons kicked the can down the road for literal decades on obvious financial problems, even worse than our entitlements crisis, leading to civil war, because their power actually rested on the support of internal power brokers. Pissing those guys off (eg by amending the tax system) would topple the regime. This was also true for Roman emperors, who gave naked unsustainable bribes to the military for this reason.
If anything, I would say the average democracy affords its chief executive more freedom of action. Elections grant a special popular mandate to each new leader, thus the "First 100 Days" trope for American presidents. Though this advantage may be atrophying in western democracies where fewer people accept elections as granting legitimacy.
popocatepetl
3mo ago
I'm asking for recommendations on anti-feminist arguments
Haven’t been there in a long time, but /r/mensrights was always decent.
I'd describe the position of /r/mensrights as "the publicly stated doctrine of feminism should be applied, not the de facto version which gives new rents and social license to women only". For example, I recall many posts about how society stigmatizes men for emotionality and liking children, and that a fair society should treat men just like women in this regard. Also many blank slatist posts implying women commit sexual violence just as much as men, and that society just ignores female rape. So MRAs aren't rejecting feminism as an ideology; they're embracing its rhetorical frame.
A true anti-feminist position should reject the premise that men and women be treated the same, legally or culturally.
There's nothing the military could really do. While tempting for my own biases, "recruitment is down because woke institutions alienated poor conservative whites and catered to effete progressives" doesn't eat like a full meal to me. The woke ads didn't help, sure. And it also doesn't help that the current ruling ideology of the USA skims close to condemning the USA's very history and existence.
But fundamentally, the nationstate is past its expiration date. People need to belong to a tribe. Historically, the local church, one's birth neighborhood, and the ethnic nation filled that void, but now the internet exists. Globalization happened. These forces have channeled people into particularist tribes which are divorced from their geographic location.
So today, you can find people who would be willing to fight and die for LGBT rights, the white race, or classical liberalism if such armies were recruiting. Not so many willing to die for their hometown of Mobile, Alabama.
I expect militaries to regress to a pre-Napoleonic model in the future: an elite professional core with mercenaries who are in it for the cash and prizes.
popocatepetl
1mo ago
How do I read your plot?
It's a well-known graph from this study on the moral differences between liberals and conservatives. (See page 7.) I don't know why they chose a radial graph rather than a sensible line graph, but the brackets represent:
(1) all of your immediate family, (2) all of your extended family, (3) all of your closest friends, (4) all of your friends (including distant ones), (5) all of your acquaintances, (6) all people you have ever met, (7) all people in your country, (8) all people on your continent, (9) all people on all continents, (10) all mammals, (11) all amphibians, reptiles, mammals, fish, and birds, (12) all animals on earth including paramecia and amoebae, (13) all animals in the universe, including alien lifeforms, (14) all living things in the universe including plants and trees, (15) all natural things in the universe including entities such as rocks, (16) all things in existence
and the color heat represents relative moral weight a person puts on that group compared to the average person.
popocatepetl
5mo ago
A lot of my knowledge of Napoleon comes from Wikipedia dives embarked upon during my read of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
Great book, really brings to period to life. But Susanna Clarke obviously knows nothing about the military side of things.
Eventually, though, the odds caught up to him.
His life beggars belief.
It happens a lot with these Alexander/Caesar/Hitler/Gustavus Adolphus/Tom Brady figures. They win so much and so hard they see themselves as infallible and end up embarrassing themselves on a low-odds gamble, like playing football at 45 or invading Russia.
To be honest, I took the question as rhetorical garnish to the meat of dunking on groups of people and ideas you disapprove of.
The run-of-the-mill progressive does not consider striving and can-do attitudes an important part of success, but an ex post facto justification of privilege, so they wouldn't see your concerns as a problem. 'We don't need to convince Blacks to try hard, Blacks are already trying just as hard as anyone; we just need to dismantle the systems of oppression to unleash their human capital' would be their framing.
More options
Context Copy link