theincompetencetheorist
No bio...
User ID: 1270
theincompetencetheorist
4mo ago
My highly personal pet theory is that the culture war is changing is combination of
- Twitter changes with community notes, needing an account to see replies and so on
- Reddit changes, like shutting down alternative clients that "Culture Warriors" both users and mods relied on.
- The fall of highly polarized news blogs like Vice and Gawker Media properties mostly due to high interest rates. As it turns out activists aren't profitable, especially when the main platform to spread rage bait Twitter is changing(see point 1, some rage bait is just killed of with a community note).
I believe that the masses of culture war is not participitating anymore in the same way because of these things and the "heat" is turned down.
theincompetencetheorist
5mo ago
I find this immensely funny for some reason that no one is incentivized to issue an public correction. Reuters parroted anonymous source claiming a breakthrough and backtracking on that well is a loss of credibility, and OpenAI can't go just "there is no breakthrough" without hurting the for profit investments part of the org. I read the breakthrough claim and did a little further digging and just threw out there with Russel's Teapot!
Yeah other people have come to a similar conclusion: What OpenAI shares with Scientology
theincompetencetheorist
5mo ago
There is a good portion of intellectual laziness in why people become tribal. Because that what I read out of your post as a lament of "tribalism". Most people find it cumbersome to build a correct theory of mind of the opposition and currently we are being rewarded for not having them, because it is way too easy for us get approval from our tribes with social media likes or biased personalized social media news feeds. It is something that has served humanity in the past but in the current "global village" of interconnectedness it is becoming a problem, because it eroding social and cultural cohesion that makes cooperation harder in society.
I would prefer to put the issue at an axis of language and status rather than knowledge and power. These people us language to try to bolster their status in their tribe, there is no actual knowledge there to exert power over someone else. Everything about the intellectual laziness is about accumulating status for their tribe with the least amount of energy i.e. just changing the words and behavior they use so to be seen as members of their tribe.
theincompetencetheorist
7mo ago
That Mr. Ellul wrote similar things I think more proves my point than refutes it (I believe you both that he wrote similar things, but I'm not sure to what extent he rejected or endorsed violence to spread his ideas) - it's perfectly possible to have such views and advocate for them in normal and peaceful ways.
Ellul is the originator of the ideas and he also rejected violence to spread them. Last time I checked the wikipedia article wasn't that bad. And to quote wikipedia... 'Ellul explained his view in this way: "By anarchy I mean first an absolute rejection of violence."'
I think that, considering the public image TK has gained from his bombing campaign (since we're all talking about him), it's perfectly reasonable to point out the holes in his ideas and remind people that he did make the decision that his ideas were important enough to justify aggressive violence - not even towards specific people responsible for opposing him or rejecting his ideas, but people he felt were part of the industrial system that he wanted to tear down.
This is the main reason I think you got caught in such a critical response. It is that there is no separation of the ideas that Kaczynski based on Elluls work and Kaczynskis campaign of violence. It is not clear what are Kaczynskis contributions that you are criticizing here or if you are criticizing Ellul.
I could counter-argue that while I am no expert on such lifestyles, he in turn may not know much about just how complex the logistical chain is that makes available all of the modern goods that we take for granted and exactly what life may be like when they are completely impossible to obtain. I specifically mean the "safety net" concept that I mention elsewhere in this thread. It may not be terribly hard to live a lifestyle superficially similar to what is described by TK, presumably Ellul, and others - I wouldn't be surprised if the number of people in the continental US voluntarily living like that is in the hundreds of thousands. But it's only superficial if you still have the grocery store to solve any food production problems that come up, the hospital to solve any medical problems, the hardware store for any tools you can't fabricate, etc. Even if you never actually go to any of those, the mere fact that it's possible tends to change peoples' behavior. How many people volunteer to put all of those perpetually out of reach for their entire extended family for all eternity?
The Amish reject modernity but when their children come of age they get to decide through 'Rumschpringe' if they want to join the community or get access to all of modernity has to offer. Also the Amish are not hunter-gatherers so there is that.
I'm not here to accuse you of being ignorant but I could claim that there is not enough imagination what it could mean to resist industrialized society. The ideas resisting it has continued with people of like Paul Kingsnorth. But because someone decided to mail out bombs you are rejecting the ideas around resisting "the machine" even if there are people that have ideas that predate and supersede it without violence.
For me it is a reasonable answer. There is a bias that you are upfront with that the ideas you are critiquing are from a terrorist, thus you are not separating the ideas from the man. But the thing is that it is not TK who is the originator of the ideas. It is Ellul! The core is simple, humanity is not supposed to serve the "machine" but the "machine" is supposed to serve humanity! And you wrote several paragraphs saying that we are supposed to serve the machine because it benefits all of humanity. I'm not so sure...
theincompetencetheorist
7mo ago
I used to have a good experience with subscriptions and recommendations it contributed, but somewhere along the line the algorithm decided to show me "outrage bait". Things that I deliberately avoid by not going on Twitter, Reddit(when it got worse there) and so on... for my own sanity. So it is something in my personal feed that triggered it but it became like everything else that I've identified dragging me down.
The thing is that it is personalized by the very definition not everyone is going to have the same poor experience I did. So if you are seeing things that enrich your life go for it. I'm just informing other people that might have identified something similar in their life and that it might be something worth a try.
Yeah I've done that too, but those extensions don't work on the TV. This applies to the TV and the YouTube app on your phone too.
Finally YouTube did something useful. If you have an YouTube account and turn of your watch history, YouTube stops recommending you videos. The final piece of my day to day internet experience free of outrage bait that was making me depressed. If I want to be recommended videos I can always log out.
theincompetencetheorist
8mo ago
Well for me I can think of three ways of trying to do it interesting and natural: Star Trek:DS9 has the Trills which for me always has worked as perfect way of sneaking various aspects of trans concepts right under our noses, but not being about trans. Further looking a specific subgenre of transhumanist sci-fi literature we have things like the Culture series by Iain M Banks where humans are so advanced in technology that changing back and forth human physoilogy between genders isn't an obstacle anymore. And there is a scene in the Netflix Series Altered Carbon(haven't gotten around to read the books yet) where a womans mind was transfered into a male body. The thing all of the three have in common is the identity/mind/soul transcending the physical body in some way and making the transcending of the physical limits not about gender but a feature and possibility of it.
theincompetencetheorist
9mo ago
Both sides see themselves as righteous oppressed victims fighting against the evil empire of the other side, but for both it is less a Star Wars vision than a Terminator vision. War machines running over skulls at night-time, death and lasers.
The footsoldiers of the culture war are passive nihilists screaming other peoples ideas hoping for attention by the algorithms of big tech. Big tech are the arms dealers of this war.
But at the end of the day the modern culture war is just a continuation of Yellow Journalism which was transfered trough the age of television and now is on Youtube, Twitter and so on. But it is still the same thing. Having passive nihilists fighting each other over stuff that isn't relevant in their lives so they give up a tiny percentage of their income and get their consent on political projects that goes against the publics interests.
Maybe it is possible to move in some orthogonal direction and flank this whole conflict from a side that has the breath of fresh air behind it?
Don't consume the content that is designed to have you worried about problems you don't have. It is the simplest way of finding fresh air. Who knows maybe you will start creating that fresh air after you found it.
theincompetencetheorist
9mo ago
ah damn... sorry. I'll edit.
Note: This was wrong of me... but I'll keep it for posterity
Old irrelevant comment:
Of course they are distinct but I'm not confused, I'm claiming there is a way of doing a study that could disconnect if they are truly distinct or show that they are related some way. Then I'm also parroting without reference a claim that these studies are stopped with reasoning of being "transphobic". I don't think that it is an unviable hypothesis that could be proven or disproven that "gender dysphoria" and "body dysmorphia" could be related for a specific group like teenagers. I'm not making any claim that they are related though so there is no confusion here.
I’m not sure exactly how culture war-like this idea is, but I’ve never actually heard anyone else compare Anorexia with trans people before.
This is very much a big issue in the Culture War! If you don't want to be banned or harrased e.g. on certain subreddits you need to avoid this line of reasoning. Because you are supposed to say: "they have always been there they are more comfortable to express in the modern day". One of the first things you notice is that you haven't heard of it: my claim for the reason is "media bias" and gender ideologs.
I don't see a reason why a study in academia couldn't be constructed that could prove or disprove a link between eating disorders and gender dysphoria. I've seen claims made by various people that this research is not being funded or passing an ethics board because the research would be deemed "transphobic".
theincompetencetheorist
9mo ago
Maybe it is how it is supposed to be. Because there is a difference in Science and "science" and the pattern here is that Science has remained but "science" gets kicked out. We have gotten rid of concepts race biology for eugenics and phrenology because it is "science", but when we get rid of one other takes it place like "Gender Studies" and CRT and we are about to repeat that cycle by getting rid of it and replacing with some other junk.
theincompetencetheorist
9mo ago
Well the thing for me which I'm open about it that there is that it feels different. Almost like the dominios started to fall after Elon bought Twitter and the latest domino to fall is all the DEI directors booted from the media companies. I remember at the beginning of the Bud Light boycott that the likes of Tim Pool thought at it was going to go over, but it is still going. But on the woke side of the things fizzle out really fast it seems. Like where they able to disrupt boycotts on the non-woke side earlier? It looks like something has changed.
theincompetencetheorist
9mo ago
It is not the boycott in itself that is the difference in outcome, But no big fights online of people defending the game and the defenders called everything bad under the sun. It was limited fights online but nothing high profile. Like we got more than a week over the removed CoD skins.
theincompetencetheorist
9mo ago
Well yeah gaming has had its kerfuffles ever since back in 2014 when Gamegate happened. But somehow the air over culture war battlefields are different now, I can't really put my finger on what has changed. The Hogwarts Legacy boycott was DOA and majority of the regular people just ignored bought and played the game. Something has changed, and I don't know what.
theincompetencetheorist
9mo ago
Absolutly and also if you look at the positive review texts they are sometimes just copy paste with "bot like" username. Sometimes even getting simple things wrong about the movie. But the thing about reddit is that you can look at the users history and see that they are behaving suspiciosly either being straight up activists and not actually discussing having good faith discussion or defend the billion dollar companies go from little mermaid to strange worlds to elements defeding the trash and never showing up in activist circles. Back in the day a powermod punished me with a short term ban because I called out an obvious paid shill on a subreddit, like that was going to convince me that it wasn't astroturf.
theincompetencetheorist
9mo ago
Every time we pointed out the warning signals, the /r/IndianaJones circlejerk simply kept dismissing us as bigots still continue to defend it like it's some misunderstood masterpiece and the only ones who hate it are incels that can't handle strong women. It's the same theme every single time.
So how do we know that these are actual fans? I.e. How do we know that these people aren't online activists just claiming to be fans? Dare I say that there might be people making money of the fact that shilling the movie to actual fans, that Disney have their own 50 Cent army sitting in /r/IndianaJones?
I remember back in the day that there was this whole thing about how "fans gatekeeping fandoms is a bad thing!" as a part of the culture war. But gatekeeping served a purpose in my view and it is shame that good fans bought into the reasoning of not gatekeeping anymore do their own detriment.
theincompetencetheorist
9mo ago
If this Twitter change is permanent the 'Terminally Online' are going to be in for interesting times. Between Youtube experimenting with banning adblockers and Reddit apps closing has the potential of creating a dead sea like effect on the platforms. It will be a shift in internet culture and the online portion of the culture war, how that looks I wouldn't know how to start to speculate about.
Fair enough, in my defense, this side of you is all that I've seen.
It is a online persona that I use only here where I want to discuss semi controversial views. It is the only side you are going to see. And for the first time it is working.
Not necessarily, it's all a question of relative to what. If you're doing your activism with full knowledge of how unpopular your views are, having your message pushed through Disney is still a win, relative to it never making it out of the fringes of society.
In many ways the culture war is virtual where they consider themselves as being mainstream and not at the fringes of society. In many ways it could be considered the mainstream views, that the majority of people that is not on Twitter and so on(i.e. virtual milieus) don't think it should be in their entertainment.
Bullshit Jobs feels to me like kicking the can down the road. Yeah, it's not the fault of an individual bad actor, or even a group of bad actors working together, it's... that our system maintains legions upon legions of workers that bring absolutely nothing? I'm not against the theory, but the magnitude of the systemic failure is about as mind-boggling to me as an outright global conspiracy.
Yeah welcome to my world view.... the stupidity paradox comes into play with that maybe the systemic failure is because of a reason, some mechanism in our world makes it necessary. Even if the book about stupidity paradox only talk about organization, my synthesis of the two essentially touches there is a reason for Bullshit Jobs is that there is a functional reason for them to exists which Graeber only touches upon but don't delve into deeper. The mind-boggling nature of it validates is a "incompetence theory" akin to "conspiracy theory". On the other hand the question is though if the framework of "incompetence theory" is useful for me, I haven't decided that yet. Also it all could be wrong and useless and then I'll invent a new persona instead.
Though with that phrasing it becomes less distinguishable from my theory. Is a conspiracy to push an ideology all that different from a conspiracy of incompetent people using an ideology to cover their asses?
Well it is a question if they are true believers or if they are adherents of practicality. So if it is practical adherence when the ideology is not useful for them anymore they dump it and move on to the next thing to cover their asses. True believers would stick to it unless they end up in a crisis of faith which is a higher bar for change. So I'm just speculating about the future of the ideology, that when reality strikes and how high the bar is for them to change. Much of the culture war is just virtue signaling for status and if the number of true believers are low then the shift might be faster when people break ranks around the issues.
Others pointed it out already, but the whole idea is that ESG is not about fighting climate change, but about propping up political/ideological allies and punishing enemies. Under this view, their decisions re: Tesla are a lot easier to explain.
So it is corporatism where corporations dictate the state and politics?
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini (although disputed if he really said it)
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
Not who you're arguing with
It is a forum with a discussion in the open so feel free to chime in.
but Tesla gets a low ESG score because Elon Musk runs Twitter, and that allows for problematic badthink to spread.
Yeah so we can change the climate of the planet(If I personally believe or not doesn't matter, it is the mainstream narrative) so the most marginalized people are impacted by various ways all over the world, but that doesn't take precedence over hate speech for a minority of people that we would classify as twitter users and a minority of that reading it and an even smaller piece(if any at all) of it enacting that speech in the world.
theincompetencetheorist
10mo ago
I have no claim of speaking for ordinary people. But in light of recent events DEI and ESG is failing the messaging for ordinary people. Nobody is watching new star wars except for notable exceptions that have good story telling in it. Like the two first seasons of The Mandalorian and now recently Andor. Like the rest of it could be "making money hand over fist" too, but they insist on weird messaging instead so people don't watch it! That is the only incompetence that I'm talking about. According to meager public data on viewership and online sentiment they are not being watched, and it is possible that it would be so much better without the "weird stuff".
I haven't been following this particular development, but in general that there is very little counter arguments has been made to the critical theory wielding elites when it comes to this type of discussion. I already noticed it with Campaign against sex robots back in 2015, where it was totally okay with arguments that sexual activities with inanimate woman shaped artifacts is akin to rape (but assfucking a adult male shaped artifacts seems to be OK according to them, but I digress). But from my point of view it is inability by these people to see the difference in fantasy and reality, why would we have these people decide on how we interact with these artifacts?
This whole line of thought go back to ELIZA a chat bot from 1967 when people are tricked into thinking that the machine has human qualities. People who that chatted with with it sometimes were asking to be left alone for a therapy session. It is a magic trick and even when people were told how it worked they still anthropomorphised it. Now we have ELIZA on steroids with LLMs and people still do the same stupid mistake of treating it like a human and attributing some real world harm if I'm allowed to talk dirty with it.
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