popocatepetl
I'm the guy who edits every comment I write at least four times. Sorry.
User ID: 215
A law that restricts trans behavior is an "anti-lgbt law" regardless of the truth value of the underlying premise and how good the law is.
Then we may as well say that a law that restricts shoplifting is an "anti-thief" law regardless of how good the law is
Shoplifting laws are definitely anti-thief laws. (andthatsagoodthing.jpeg) Lawmakers do not want people to act as thieves in the context of the shop; in Texas, lawmakers do not want men acting as female ('being trans') in the context of sports.
The reason that anti-trans laws are controversial is that the "underlying principle" you speak of is not agreed upon in society. Two sides cannot agree on whether a biological male entering a female space is a 'thief' taking what he is not due, or a female taking what belongs to her.
I'm denigrating the culture of people who have different traditions around the concept of property ownership!
I think it's fair to say laws against stuffing iphones in your pants are, in fact, denigrating the values of people who would do that if it were legal. Likewise, I understand that, to a MtF, I really am pissing on their sacred values when I block the door to the women's restroom. That the shoplifter and the MtF are in the wrong is an entirely separate question from whether I am opposing them; I am opposing them. I am making an anti-thief/anti-trans action.
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.
Still anti-white, because it's legislation that removes a previous privilege from that specific group.
This seems like the opposite of how we talk about laws? I've never seen removal of privilege be declared anti-[group] because they remove privilege.
It is, because people call privileges "rights" when they support them, but they call rights "privileges" when they oppose them. I am a neutral looking from the outside on a ridiculous scenario, and can clearly see "whites can run red lights" is a privilege. In the hypothetical universe where a whites-can-run-red-lights law exists, people opposing the change would holler hell about their natural rights being infringed.
This is exactly where we find ourself with letting MtFs into female spaces. Pro-trans think their "rights" to be treated as female are being infringed; anti-trans are denying that those rights exist.
The situation may seem comical, but during the abolition of slavery and feudalism, slave-owners/feudal lords complained bitterly about their property rights being infringed. Things like that are only ludicrous in retrospect.
Ok, but those laws are not applied specifically to trans people, so they can't be declared anti-trans [...] So in the case of MtFs, the laws are mischaracterized, as they are still targeting men, not trans people in particular.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
The intent of the law is going after trans entryists, specifically, even if the language of the law is framed generally.
(let alone anti-LGBT)
Certainly this is obnoxious. The motivation by journalists to generalize actions against tiny minorities with a broader interest group is the same thing behind blacks becoming BIPOCs. If you criticize calling the laws anti-LGBT on these grounds I have no objection.
For one, you're already admitting only white supremacists would see it like that, and in that case I agree, those laws aren't anti- trans, opposition to them is trans-supremacist. But the other issue is that historically trans people had no such privilege.
I am stepping into a hypothetical set by sodiummuffin. The scenario proposed is so ridiculous, if a soapbubble universe where whites could run lights popped into existence, everyone except hardcore white supremacists would wake up to how stupid that is immediately. Our current situation is less ridiculous so people's thoughts are much more confused on the matter.
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.
So the sports leagues that never allowed it in the first place are not anti- trans?
They were anti-trans in their inception, though there would not be the language to describe it as such. Again, I am not using 'anti-trans' as a synonym for 'bigoted' or 'evil', but merely descriptively.
popocatepetl
27d ago
'Given that african savages are manifestly, transparently incapable of civilization and self-rule, it's dishonest to say that enslaving them is a racist policy'.
If you mean to imply that "the average male is stronger and faster than 99% of females" is as obviously ridiculous an assertion as "African savages are incapable of civilization and self-rule" - well, I don't know what to tell you. That you're wrong?
I think you're missing the point of her analogy. A law that restricts trans behavior is an "anti-lgbt law" regardless of the truth value of the underlying premise and how good the law is. Likewise, a law that restricts blacks to chattel status is an "anti-black law" regardless of whether it's actually true blacks can't govern themselves. Trying to say "A law that restricts X group isn't anti-X, because X should be restricted" is incoherent.
Misconstruing the focus of an analogy is a failure mode of debate I'm glad not to see too often here.
popocatepetl
27d ago
Nobody would call a law against drunk driving an "anti-driving law" even though it restricts driver behavior.
No, but it is an anti-drunkard law.
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?
popocatepetl
24d 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
27d ago
By that definition, most laws are "anti-human". I'm not generally opposed to strict, literal interpretations, but this definition seems to go quite strongly against common sense understanding of "anti".
Sure. I would say that goes unsaid for the same reason that it's the "Department of Education", not "Department of Human Education"; or "Department of Labor", not "Department of Human Labor".
There's no question that journalists calling laws "anti-trans laws" are implying a negative valence. But Folamnh3 called the idea they're anti-trans laws "farcical", which is a bit off when the description seems literally quite defensible. Which was the point guesswho's analogy tried to draw out.
It's just so unfair. It fills me with anger and sadness and rage and I can't stop thinking about it. I don't want it to be true...I don't want it to be true. It's so unfair
A common, characteristic-of-our-time response is "Why should you care? You're an individual. If the portion of your tribe doesn't apply to you, what does it skin off your back?" This is @BurdensomeCount's answer. I think that's fine, but it only works for certain people. The reality is most people do care about their tribe. We're not atomized. The heat map of our moral concern goes from family, to self, to tribe, to confession/creed, to human. We care about tribal welfare only one degree less than ourselves. So it is with you.
So. Let's talk about me. While this may be a luxurious piggyback on your own problem, I'm also dour on my tribe recently. My tribe is a superset of the puritans in Albion's Seed — it doesn't include all 'whites', but neither is it just white americans who descended from those guys with buckles on their hats. It is the group on whom the terrible weight of God's judgement presses. I am talking about blood rather than confession to be clear; this feeling can and has been channeled to a million creeds. How do I know who's in my tribe, then? I just do.
My tribe is currently willing itself to subjugation. They want the destruction of our history, the destruction of our communities, and they're eager for genetic replacement: I don't think we're actually willing ourselves to extinction, as anti-progressives (usually cavalier or borderer white) accuse us. Rather, our tribe wants to place ourselves, we horrible fiends, under a yoke of penance to the fargroup. In practice, this might lead to tribal extinction, but that's just my prediction.
On the dissident right, there are attempts to blame this on (((a certain group of people))). And while it may be that jews are exploiting their curious situation as whites-allowed-to-be-racist to the hilt, on the whole, this explanation is just an offramp. The hard truth is puritan-adjacent whites have a will to self-destruction, and this is probably fundamental to who we are. It's not going away.
I could pray for God (or more effectively CRISPR) to remove this trait from my tribe. (This is what @campfireSmoresEaten just suggested.) But that would be genociding us beyond the wildest dreams of the activist holding an "Abolish Whiteness" sign. We are the people under God's weight. What's worse, the narcissism and greed one centimeter underneath that facade is also who we are.
For you: it may be your tribe's doom is to be a lekking species, wild, stupid, violent, and feral, and that you as a non-central member must watch them destroy themselves. Any attempt you might make to "fix" this problem would also be genocide.
A few thoughts on how to cope:
- Aim for better rather than perfect. Lots of people have noticed that black communities used to be more functional. At the very least, they had two parent households and much lower crime. What were the features of this world, and how can you get closer to it?
- Look for optimism in history. Your tribe exists for a game-theoretic reason. While it may be maladapted and flailing here, it thrives elsewhere. In this sense, doomerism is a counsel of hope; when the current system either eats itself alive or revolutionizes, there will be another chance for your tribe to flourish.
- Focus your mind on eternal or "spiritual" matters. I'm not a christian but this is what they mean when they talk about fallen man and the love of God.
popocatepetl
23d 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.
popocatepetl
21d ago
I even have a toy example I like to use involving an ordinary claw hammer, and how they are four different ways of answering the question "why is this hammer here?"
Its the final cause (teleology) that really gets people upset with Aristotle here. He believed you could meaningfully talk about a dog having sharp front teeth because:
- Material - Enamel
- Formal - "Tooth"
- Efficient - Genetic expression
- Final - To sever meat to eat
Whereas modern scientists are iffy on #2 and hostile to #4.
popocatepetl
21d ago
Good job predicting the motte. I really thought
It's a shame there wasn't a Knowledge option, otherwise we could re-create that scene from HPMOR.
Congratulations on being the only
I bet most of The Motte will (correctly) see that the pleasure machine can provide every feeling the other options might. You could even program the pleasure machine to fool you into thinking you chose something else. And arguably, the existence of the pleasure machine solves any external suffering that Good Works or Power might fix; when others hook up to the grid, the moral dilemma of choosing Pleasure goes away.
We didn't change that much. The jump from being a thread in /r/slatestarcodex to being /r/themotte was much sharper. /r/themotte started from the beginning as "the portion of the community that was willing to platform HBD", which was what the other side most strongly objected to, so using pro-HBD sentiment as evidence of how we changed seems lacking to me.
I mean, even Scott was a racist all along, he just being esoteric about it.
I anticipated there would be a lot of rebuttals
The position "whites suffered as a response to the civil rights revolution" is an unimpeachable fact that even people on the pro-CRL side agree with, just with a positive valence. Justice for the robbed implies stripping goods from the robber. Why should you expect a rebuttal? Perhaps the word "suffering" implies sympathy for those injured? But even mass murderers and child molesters suffer.
and that the solution obviously can't be segregation.
I'd certainly contest that this is obvious. You seem to be asserting this on moral rather than empirical grounds. Even morally, the weak form of segregation is "allow people to self-select their own communities as they like", which is a proposition most people agree is moral unless you specifically rephase it in the race context.
EDIT: While we're here, "don't let black people watch your kids" is an uncharitable rewording of @RandomRanger's post. He says it's bad to send your children to a mostly American black school/community, which is quite compatible with "letting black people watch your kids" in the case of a black acquaintance, peer, or credentialed teacher/pastor/nanny. The point is that a large group will tend to the population average, not that every member of that group is the average ― this is a standard anti-racist motte and bailey.
The difference between flyovercountry crackheads/american fatties and the videographical apocalypse in that 4chan video is the lack of shit all over the place and rats. I am visually viscerally disgusted on a level unable to be put into words far more than the racist words spoken by the ai.
But the question is: how do we know said crackheads wouldn't do the same in Delhi? I don't know any cities where dirt poor whites live in Indian concentrations without welfare support. It could be that some ethnicities have more "ingrained cleanliness" than others, but american fatties benefit from abundant free bathrooms connected to a sewer system; poor Indians do not.
My priors are that if you artificially gave San Antonio third world infrastructure and wealth, the inhabitations would still clean their surroundings better than what you see in this film. But there's no test case to know for sure.
This seems to be one of those essays temporarily-embarrassed-democrats kicked out of the coalition write. Assertions that he didn't leave the party, true principles of the party were betrayed; nervous jabs at the outgroup to remind everyone he's not one of them; and a weird, paradoxical refusal to admit that the outgroup's prediction of your party's nature turned out to be right. I spent a few minutes trying to understand what he meant by "MAGA-fied Republicans" as some sharp deviation away from pre-2016 republicans on social policy, as if Trump weren't basically a 90s democrat, but I think those remarks are better understood in that light.
The triangle is a projection of Silver's psyche, where even though he's no longer a progressive, he's still not a dirty red triber. He can't psychologically bring himself to admit that, if either party can be said to represent classical liberalism at this point, it is the republicans.
popocatepetl
28d ago
Virtue ethics: Stand up to the mob, though it will be at the cost of your favor with them.
Deontology: Obey the mandate of the voters because fidelity to your role as their representative is the only rule you can will to universal law
Utilitarianism: ExpectedUtility(your policy) - ExpectedUtility(public's loss of trust in the institution that gives you power)
I tend to think Jesus believed 'works' were a lot more essential to salvation than most Protestants (even most Catholics) would like.
Grace leads to good works because grace remakes men morally. "Grace without good works" is incoherent; if you are not doing good works, you have not accepted grace. The dispute between protestants and catholics lies in the catholic church's offer of a bargain by which a favor from God could be purchased: that you could do a good work to "buy" grace.
They didn't. Jesus told them to go buy some swords earlier that same week, explicitly so that he could fulfill the prophecy
As told in Luke, they already had two on hand.
There's not a single place in the New Testament where violence against one's enemies is encouraged or even sanctioned.
There is no occurrence where violence would be appropriate, save for crucifixion, which was Christ's intention to suffer. A centurion approaches Jesus in Matthew and Jesus praises him and says that he will enter God's kingdom with no stipulation that he give up his army gig.
What is forbidden by Christ is retribution or vengeance. That a Christian cannot take up a sword in hatred or for his own personal ends is beyond question.
I would say the pacifism of the early Christians is inexplicable without the apparently ubiquitous belief that Jesus was going to come back very soon to establish the kingdom and destroy Rome and the nations; in other words, earthly Christians didn't need to do any killing because God was about to do it for them. When this didn't pan out naturally doctrine had to evolve.
It depends on what you mean. The actions of the apostles recorded in scripture are strong evidence for any Christian that believes in biblical inerrancy — which I believe is all of them. They certainly acted as if they could not use violence to defend their own persons against persecution. However, this does not track 1:1 with the question of whether a Christian can be a soldier, police officer, defend their family against a rapist, etc: that is, commit violence not on one's own behalf. The apostles did not address that question or find themselves in that situation.
(EDIT: I see Romans 13 gets cited a lot in defense of Christian police officers, despite the main focus being Christians obeying the police. Looks cut and dry on that one.)
As for the behavior of Christians in the 2nd century, one is perfectly entitled to think individuals from that time period might be wrong about doctrine, same as one might think for the 6th century, 11th century, 15th century, or (now) 21st century.
If that's the case, he wasted a lot of time delivering ethical teaching.
His ethical teaching falls into the camps "you think you're doing enough, but you're nowhere near adequate by God's standards" or "you're hewing to the letter of the law rather than reaching the spirit of the law, which is what you know is right". Both those points are to a purpose. He avoids giving straightforward list of instructions, and he teaches in questions and riddles, because being a moral person does not mean lawyering your way around a contract of clear-cut rules as the Jews had been trying for several hundred years.
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. From those who have much, much is expected (and the corollary, from those who have nothing, nothing is expected, explains Grant's Pass). Blessed are the poor. Etc. It's a slave morality.
You're passing a progressive or nietzschean interpretation of those elements as their true, indisputable meaning. Consider the possibility those teach self-discipline ("bearing the cross") rather than as statements bashing those high in status.
Blessed are the poor. [...] from those who have nothing, nothing is expected
The beatitudes describe various hardships as the blessings of God. "Blessed are the X" is not to say the status of poverty/mourning/persecution intrinsically grants righteous status — that is, "poor people are good" — but that poverty/mourning/persecution are blessings from heaven to mortify the evil in you. In this reading, being rich, happy, and safe carries the dangers of you becoming self-satisfied and thus not seeking God. To the contrary, in another context of Jesus's ministry, the poor person who receives only one talent is cast into hell for sitting on his laurels. The two richer servants are praised and the master grants them greater dominion in his service (AKA puts them above the lesser servants).
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven."
The lesson here is that the rich man does not value God higher than his own material status. When challenged on the point, he prefers money; his mouth says "I want God" but his mind says "I want earthly passions" — this lesson holds for the beggar with his bottle just as much as Scrooge McDuck with his gold swimming pool. At other parts of scripture, Jesus meets well-to-do people and does not demand they pauper themselves for God's kingdom.
To be clear, it's very questionable that Bezos can be saved, because he is chasing money and status above all else. But is not at all clear that Jesus categorically condemns money any more than he condemns enjoying marital sex, food, or earthly luxuries such as come to you in your service to God.
If a kind fairy made you absolute ruler of your country, what batshit crazy out of left field ideas would you implement?
Strict sumptuary laws. Outside of special occasions, everyone wears clothes that specifically indicate their job in rough categories.
A pet theory of mine is that "capitalism" in the informal sense came to exist when conspicuous consumption became the only means of status signaling. The first two estates (clergy and nobility) got gutted, so bourgeois success became the ruler of social distinction: everyone jumped on a hamster wheel of ever increasing productivity/entrepreneurship to buy the next stage of luxury good, not because they wanted the luxury, but to distinguish themselves from the lower classes. This created an economic boom. However, the excess wealth has increasingly been funneled into a meaningless hedonic treadmill, with humans throwing out all other social goods in favor of keeping up with the Joneses. The destructive dual income household, for example, results from it being the only way to maintain "middle status" in society.
popocatepetl
21d 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.
(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)
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.
I've been thinking about Christianity lately. Christians (at least the modern ones) struggle with the question of subhumans. They prefer to thrust the question completely out of mind. "That couldn't happen. There could be no such thing!" is their comforting bromide and thought-killer. Understandably, Christians are afraid to put themselves in the position of judging whether a fellow person could be subhuman. But the unwillingness to entertain a hypothetical reflects a kind of cowardice: you are so afraid of being bad, you won't meditate on what makes the good.
Let me elide the question of whether Pajeets, or a subset of them, qualify. I don't know. This movie is selective. Nevertheless, it is certainly possible to imagine the breeding and education of an organism devoid of the divine spark. If you're not a Christian, it's even easier to imagine the creation of an organism without the virtues a materialist uses to define "human". Such a beast is, if C.S. Lewis is to be believed, what God casts into hell after the corruption of pride eats it completely. To materialists, it's some level of sophistication between "ape" and "moth".
If we are to preserve Christian morality, being Christian or no, we must come to terms with God's treatment of the Canaanites, the Hittites, Sodom, and Gomorrah. Subhumans in other words. He killed them. Ostensibly these people had fallen into extreme depravity of human sacrifice, mass rape, etc., and after many generations, these patterns of sin soaked into their very nature. God saved the righteous, but he commanded his people to kill the first two, and he personally rained fire on the others. I've heard protestants claim that this was "old morality" which the New Testament overturned, but this seems exceptionally weak reasoning to me. It endorses morality as something God arbitrarily decides, which Christians deny in every other context.
So there exists a threshold beneath which a "human" does fall below human dignity and should be treated as a beast. At least if you believe in sky daddy™. If you don't, it's an interesting parable to consider for whatever you consider the "source" of morality.
Another possible answer to the question of subhumans is stewardship. My bae Kevin Dolan did a long meditation on this idea, so I won't repeat it. This answer says: the subhumans have value in God's eyes, as we mere humans have value. But that value does not imply the necessity of equality, or the abolition of stewards and bondsmen. Hierarchical relations are perfectly in line with this Christian morality, unlike "modern" post-Christian morality which holds that the divine spark in everyone implies the abolition of rulers and ruled.
I don't have a conclusion, but these are things I've been thinking about.
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