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thomasThePaineEngine

Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill

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joined 2022 September 11 16:24:53 UTC
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thomasThePaineEngine


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 11 16:24:53 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Dismantling pseudo-skepticism
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks for writing this. I found it accessible, despite being fairly weak on stats (though I do remember what a beta distribution is).


Your piece has a vibe of a warning for young rationalists that goes something like, "Beware, for not all who claim to be skeptics are ones." Would you say this is a correct interpretation?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What if these nerds are not the Eric S. Raymond/Richard Stallman type, the initial bazaar dwellers, but the new crop of folks that entered the culture post-DomCom crash? The pragmatic ones who love the counter cultural aesthetic but just want a safe, cool job?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


70.3% of all human resources managers are women, while 29.7% are men.




https://www.zippia.com/human-resources-manager-jobs/demographics/


I imagine it's harder to get this kind of scheme to work in private industry, but I don't see a reason why it wouldn't be at least a minor component. In my own experience, most HR folks I've talked to were women who were also heavily into a certain flavor of politics. I wouldn't put it above them to invent work, then use that to argue for increasing headcount and hiring more comradettes. But I don't think this is a large force. More like upper single digits of % perhaps?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks for sharing this. This is the first time I've encountered Paolo Freire. I've only skimmed the wiki article on him and on his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, but I think I need to dig a little more.


Both you and the wikipedia article on him say that he's been hugely influential on the US education system. How is this impact measured? I'm reading the City Journal article on this and it mentions that Pedagogy of the Oppressed is assigned to teachers-in-training very often--but does it actually change how teachers teach?


I can imagine that some more fiery educators will have done the heavy lifting and baked in some of Freire's ideas into curricula. But going off my assumption that most Marxist teachings are very abstract (almost postmodern), then most teachers would highlight a few juicy quotes and later forget about these ideas. My other assumption comes from going through a few grades in the US system and I'm struggling to find anything that would have a noticeable taint of Marxist thought--but then, I only did a few grades, and that was over 20 years ago.


(It's too easy to find low hanging fruit of a few teachers refusing to teach math because it's oppressive. I'm looking for more subtle but broader effects of Freire's thought).




One of Freire’s key concepts is what he calls “the banking model of education.”




I find this interesting because it seems like nothing new. I've met before with the constructivist theory of education, which seems to have begun assembling into a coherent theory somewhere in the early 20th century, though its roots go back to the mid 19th century. It's amazing to me that someone could take this idea, which, in the right hands, could produce so much good, and then cover it in Marxist nonsense.




“Why don’t their concrete policies and actions lead actually seem to further their stated goals”, your first instinct should be to assume that they know what they’re doing, and it’s not what you thought they were trying to do.




I think my emotion wasn't around the disconnect between their goals and actions, because it's pretty clear that whatever "good" they say they aim toward is subordinate to their real goals. Rather, it was about how openly they disdain science, reality, and human discourse as a tool for pursuing truth. While writing my post, I had a look at the Calkin's institute page and most of the messaging their is, indeed, about DEI stuff. So yeah, 100% WYSIWYG.


Anyway, I have more reading to do.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 18, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've experienced the same feeling.


I read The Hobbit, LotR, and The Silmarillion when I was a teenager. It was addictive, like being kidnapped into a whole new living world. When I reread LotR about a year ago, the same feelings came back--but this time enriched with an awe of Tolkien's language. I didn't even try watching ROP because I don't think it's possible to capture that magic in the medium of a TV series.


From his newer things, I've read Children of Hurin and loved it. Would you recommend the other "new" works as well?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks for sharing. I'll dig a bit into what happened in the early XX century.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Will you have the moral courage and willpower and hard-heartedness the next time a George Floyd level event happens, to say, “I don’t give a fuck”? When the news shows you some incident with horrible optics and constructs an expansive and emotionally-manipulative narrative around it, will you stand firm and reject fundamental elements of that narrative? Will you say, “it’s completely fine that this happened, and we should change nothing about our society to prevent it from happening again”? Or, like the previous times, will you say, “I understand why you’re angry and I agree things need to change, but do you have to be quite so extreme about your response?”




Does this really require hard-heartendess though? The hippie era ended not because people became tough, but because everyone got sick of them--the people, the ideology, the empty promises, the same blah tunes, etc. The same thing happened with the early 90's environmentalism craze: it was everywhere, absolutely everywhere. We had recycling lessons in school. There were cute cartoon characters of mother Earth on TV. There was probably some take of the President segregating his trash or some such thing. And you had PETA or the Sea Shepard and people chaining themselves to bulldozers. What about the trash barge that couldn't find a port that was scaring the whole country into thinking we'd all drown under an ocean of garbage?


It all faded away. Well, not all of it. Recycling is somewhat enforced, even though it doesn't appear to work much. And people mostly rejected EVs until mostly recently when they became--almost--as good as ICEV. But, in general, people got tired of being told they're immoral idiots who are destroying everything every minute of every day.


That's my hope at least. It's too early to tell, but the recent news about Rowling makes me think that the crowds are getting tired of listening to same tired old stuff all the time. Perhaps we here are even more tired since many of us have been audience to this show for a decade or more.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I like how these questions make you think.


I'll put on my sci-fi hat and do some guessing:


    

  1. 

    The social norms will stay but will lose power. It's like having that one vegan friend that's into freecycling. Fun to invite sometimes, maybe even cook a meat- and dairy-free dish for, but they know that if they act up too much, they'll get axed from the social circle. It's like with all the boomers who thought they could keep the summer of love going forever, but instead grew up, got jobs, kids, mortgages and now just want stable living. Youngsters will roll their eyes when their parents will recount for the 12th time how they were fighting for racial justice--because youngsters will be well aware that, well, nothing really changed, so all this SJW stuff is just the same old crap you see in old movies.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    I would guess that we should see another woke cycle in 20 years. I'm basing this on my own fairly short timeframe of observation that only goes back to the early 90's, and a bunch of history I've learned, second hand, about the 70's and 80's. I don't think it can be stopped, though I hold onto some hope on that a great refragmentation is happening that will make purity-based movements like woke much less likely to spread. As for full inoculation against religious fervor, I suspect we're biologically programmed to engage in tribal behaviors whose symptoms include religious and political fervor, so we'd need a massive change to take place, something like artificial wombs or gay space communism, that would completely change the fabric of society to the point where tribal games would be severely punished. Short of that, I suspect it'll be some thousands of years before these genes are weakened enough to make this type of social behavior stop popping up like cockroaches in a bad NYC neighborhood.
    

    3. 



But what are your thoughts on these questions?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Is that a typo, or are you extending this commentary to things like lying flat and anti-work?




No! This is actually exactly what I'm talking about--if woke has become The Establishment, then youngsters' attacking the establishment is good, no?


Though, to add nuance, anti-work seems like a spinoff from woke, a tumor of it trying to eat itself, and not some healthy type of rebellion, but I'll take what I can get.




Assuming it's a typo, how do you see them rebelling?




Doing the opposite things they see their parents doing. Wearing dark clothing instead of happy pastel colors like in the 00's and '10s. Smoking or rather vaping, rather than sticking to ubercool health regimes. Watching gory movies. Understanding the the DEI stuff they hear at school is just the system trying to control them.


Of course, this may only describe a minority of gen z. Like the 90's crowd, most will go on to happily comply with any beliefs they're given. But this minority are the future mottizens.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This is like saying communism must be winding down, because I'm not hearing about as many shootings of kulaks and imperialist agents. No Shit. Who the fuck is left to cancel? This is what complete victory looks like. You don't need to hit people over the head because everyone agrees with you they just want you to shut up about it already. Yes, communism might be entirely antithetical to human nature and party officials, together with everyone else might cynically use the black market on the side, but no one will openly question government ownership of everything and everyone will claim to hate the capitalist parasites.




Well, didn't it though?


Communism--revolution of the proletariat, utopia around the corner, full employment, 3-hour work week--were all the rage in the beginning of the 20th century. Even after WW2, there were still many people, many fellow travelers, championing the cause despite more and more reports about the purges and gulags coming out of Soviet Russia or Communist China. And yet, but the end of that century, communism had few open supporters. Sure, you had the Noami Kleins and other angry activists, but they were mostly selling tired tropes to angry teenagers. Also, true, today there seems to be a revival of anti-capitalist sentiment, but it seems to be mainly a side dish to the main course that is identity politics. No one is starting communes, no one is talking about seizing the means of production--except a bunch of hipsters trying to organize a "May Day" that attracts a total of, what, 100 people out a metropolis like New York that numbers over 8 million residents?




Every bloody media company in the country spent the 90s aggressively telling the free spirited teenagers you are talking about; "Hey aren't your parents and elders boring, repressive shits..." Who, is telling them that now? Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro?




I don't know. I don't hang with teenagers. But I can make out movements of large masses of popculture and it looks like woke-filled pieces like Velma or Rings of Power aren't really getting much of a following. What appears to be gaining popularity is the dirty grungy style of the 90's. Of course, this could be a fad. Maybe it's all just about the aesthetics and not about the substance. But if it's not, we should see more stuff like Tarantino's movies, more heavy music--and an increasingly strong resistance to the morally pure elders that make up such a large chunk of millennials.




Yes, worlds rarely end, things can go on and get eternally worse forever - Do "rest easy"!




I'd rather rest easy than get carried away by the rapacious currents of dooming.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Why do you care? How does it affect your life or the lives of anyone you care about? Do you have any relatives or loved ones who are even remotely likely to end up dying in a similar matter? Is the extremely rare death of the occasional junkie ex-con seriously worth devoting any significant political capital toward preventing?




What about caring for the maintenance and running of a complicated machine like the court system or the police system? Am I not to care that parts of this system seem to be defective in certain area of my country, a country I care a lot about? Should I just ignore that these core institutions are producing false positives at a rate higher than acceptable?


I imagine the answer is no.


But I also imagine that you could argue that the existence of people like Floyd outside of prison is the sign of the system being broken. With that, I agree wholeheartedly, but I must push back against the idea of not caring about the health of fundamental institutions. And arguably, a court and police that's in better shape would have more appropriately handled the such a case as Floyd's by, most likely, isolating him from society. But the same system killing even a man like Floyd by mistake is even more cause for alarm than letting one like him walk about freely.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've had my website come up a few times during or after interviewing. Sometimes it was related to a tech-related post (or how-to) I've written, but more often it was about the non-programming content, eg. "Hey, I saw you wrote about X on your blog, I'm a big fan of X...".


I think that and my github profile (empty-ish, but has some project w/ 50+ stars) add color to my applications.


From the interviewing side, I would always look at a candidate's website if they included it. For junior candidates, it often served to help to figure out where they're coming from. Like one guy wrote a ton about rust and microcontrollers, another about web development. It helped me put them ease by first asking about these topics and also to answer the question "will this guy here be excited by what we're working on?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 29, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It depends.


For fiction, I mostly don't. I mostly focus on the language, the plot, the characters, etc. If there's a particularly good line or segment, I'll copy it to my quote file in Obsidian.


For non-fiction, I collect fragments into Obsidian. For paper books, I use google lens for OCR and copy/paste into a dedicated Obsidian file. For ebooks, I highlight stuff in moonreader, then export it all when I'm done. I do a little bit of clean up using sed, then put everything into Obsidian.


Occasionally, I review my notes, bolding or highlighting+bolding fragments that seem the most valuable. (This is lightweight BASB). If something is sound tactical advice, I'll write down a little checklist at the top of the file. If a group of ideas seems extremely valuable, I'll write a short summary so that I can refresh my memory quickly whenever, even when I'm using my phone.


If I want something to become muscle memory, like vim commands, I make a few cards for anki. I started this just recently.


I've been doing the notetaking for about a year. It's proven very lightweight--I've probably spent maybe 2 hours total on cleaning/organizing/tagging--and it's proven useful for both writing as well as refreshing my memory about specific bits and pieces.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A few years back an idea came to me to use markov chains to generate content and submit it to scientific journals that I thought were already publishing low-quality, ideological stuff. A sort of DDOS against the human editors of journals that publish things like "Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Ore.,".


I never even started on it, and I think markov chains wouldn't really be adequate to the task anymore. But today, I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years we'll read an NYT article about how whole volumes of certain types of "scientific" journals were actually the product of a band of merry pranksters armed with chatgpt.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That doesn't address what I said. I said that Serge put forth a claim about American production capacity and then supported it by linking to a piece that has absolutely nothing to do with American production capacity.


That's shoddy writing. Worse, it's shoddy thinking--bold claims, no evidence. Why the hell would I trust the guy after this?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Thoughts on the Network State
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As a big fan of Neal Stephenson's works, I've thought about phyles a lot.




The question remains: what sort of shared identity could people found a network state on?




The issue disappears if you consider people adopting a set of identities, some minor, some major, maybe even a single dominant one. This would allow multiple ideologies to fill in the empty space in peoples' hearts, perhaps enough to allow them to park themselves in a nice comfy spot on some nice, white-picket-fence social graph somewhere. This would fall in line with what I think Srinivasan describes (haven't read his book), a world where everything is negotiable and subject to change.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sometimes I think there are parts of a culture that are not communicable unless a person spends considerable time inside that culture.


This is a subjective and completely anecdotal take: the amount of lying that happens in Eastern European cultures (and others too, probably) is difficult to imagine for someone from a high-trust society. It's just hard to imagine that people could lie for almost no reason at all, I guess. It's somewhat similar in that way to corruption: many of my American friends think they live in a corrupt society. I grew up in a society where my mother, just before ejecting me from her womb, had to present a 'gift' of cognac to the doctor, the head nurse, and the receptionist. A society where lying is as common as asking "How ya doing?" or talking about the weather is in the US.


Lying about big things. Small things. And that gets you accustomed to not relying on anything anyone has said. Did an online merchant say they sent you the item you paid for? Or did the clerk at the store promise your construction materials will be delivered by eod tomorrow? Or perhaps your employee called out sick? There is no way you could know for sure. The only way to increase reliability is to increase the effects of retaliation--hit people where it hurts--meaning, their long-term social standing. So you get to know the other party's friends and family so when an occasion for renege on a promise, the cost of doing so involves shame, perhaps even some ostracism if the stakes are high enough.


In contrast, while you still have a bunch of lying going on in a high-trust society, the happens sporadically enough that it's effective to bet that the other party mostly truthful most of the time: most business concludes in a predictable way.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Why single out the Kursk incident specifically?




It just came up in a talk I was having with a friend. It was a major News Thing back in the day and I realized I didn't really know the whole story. When I did some reading, it just struck me as tragicomic in how history just repeats itself.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm confused by your premises.


You describe puritans and the founding of the US as if to imply these are strongly related, one flowing from the other perhaps. But if we look at when the Mayflower landed--1620--and when the Constitution was published--1787--there's over a century between those two dates! I'd expect the people and the norms and ideas to have changed much in the time in between.


Admittedly, I know little about early/Puritan America, but looking at the Consitution, it seems to strongly lean toward individualism. The Bill of Rights establishes a framework where the individual is the basic unit of society and seeks to protect the individual from the Government. I know that in reality this didn't always work out this way because people were constrained by customs and norms, especially as seen from our vantage point, but compared to what was and had been going on in Europe back then, it was an incredible leap forward away from collectivism.




These towns were not morally relativistic and policed behaviour of their members.




But this policing was done according to norms that, back then, were revolutionary! Like, in contrast to much of Europe, women were allowed and supported in attaining an education. I don't have sources at hand, but I also believe men were punished for beating women. And again, this sounds conservative now, but back in the day, this was some holy shit progressive thinking and if I were to go out on a limb, many European conservatives of that era would have labeled allowing ordinary women to attend school as something disgusting and upsetting to the perfect, God-ordained order of things.


What I'm trying to say, I think, is that modern conservatives would find issues with how liberal both the Puritans of the 17th century and the Enlightened "Spirit of '76" crowd of the 18th century.


(Though my understanding of modern US conservatism is rather fuzzy, so I should spend more time reading through this thread.)




What many conservatives actually want is to enforce their values, norms, and culture on society.




When I naturalized some years back, I signed up for the Republican party. In my mind, this was the party espousing the values of 1776 (and 1787). Markets, individualism, responsibility. Friedman, McCain, Schwarzenegger. But since then, I noticed the same pattern you point out here, cut my ties, and having no other options, marked myself as independent.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And part of me wonders if I even know what real is any more.




Well damn. I have a Mood Cabinet too and have been struggling with this question for some time. It's gotten more relevant recently because I've discovered that I am somewhat unhappy with my life--I lack certain things such as enough meaningful human interaction (I get plenty of the meaningless stuff at work); and I find it harder and harder to focus on what I'm doing. The question I'm stuck on is "who/what is selecting the moods?"


I don't know. Much of it feels like a program put in place by early-20's me composed of things like "there's always time for exercise", "X, Y, and Z types of entertainment are heresy", "every job change should increase my salary min. 10%" and lots of ambitious and optimal stuff like that. And in the years since then, it feels like my life has been focused on optimizing everything within those constraints.


In many ways, it's proven successful. I have an extremely financially stable life. I've tried a bunch of fun things like traveling and sports. I've learned to go deep on certain things like literature. I've found a loving partner. But as I've mentioned before, I just discovered that there are areas of my life that essentially stopped changing since my early 20's, most of them orbiting around human relationships (my early 20's self was a misanthropic shithead). And this little crisis has forced me face the Director who selects my moods. It's a weird feeling. Like suddenly discovering you were merely a mask sitting on someone's face. You thought you had thought and adventures and relationships, but really, it was the mask having all these things.


On the brighter side, the mask doesn't seem that far from the Director. And the guy turned out to be pretty careful and empathetic. So it seems the path ahead is to recombine the two beings to be able to say, truly, "I am."


Anyhow.


My Cabinet is stocked somewhat similarly to yours. The main differences I see are that I rarely touch caffeine since it makes me hyperventilate. That, and I rely on a bunch of different consumables to calms down--l-theanine, ashwaghanda, valerian root, and cannabis (blunts or tincture).


Also, exercise is a big one for me. It gives me a unique mixture of calm energy that I can then use on productive work. Anything from a 5k run during lunch to doing a dozen pullups works wonders. That and some light stretching every day, especially in the evening, seems to give me a solid foundation to function that only requires minor adjustment w/ the consumables I mention above.


Edit: I forgot one: books. Reading a certain type of book puts me a mood that can last for days. Technical books for puzzle-solving mood. History books for writing. Epic sci-fi books for confidence, etc.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks for the thorough explanation.


I've recently become interested in measuring things, so finding related domains that I'm ignorant about is pretty helpful to keep following the thread.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 4, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks! I'll look into getting a paper copy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Holiday gift ideas 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A pocket flashlight like the Fenix e03r. It's truly a pocket flashlight that you can wear on your keychain, but with the advances in LED and battery tech, it's bright enough to be useful.


Weighted blankets. I'm about to try one out, but have heard good things from friends and they aren't expensive.


Non-ultrasonic humidifiers for winter.


A pull-up bar for WFH. Just having it around enticed me to do occasional pullups, and now I can max out at 10.


A subscription to The Texas Security Review--four nicely printed issues a year all about high-level military strategy.


Bookmark lights. These used to be a shitty gimmick. Now, with improved LEDs and batteries (must be a theme), they're actually bright and small enough to be comfortable to use on everything from cheap softcovers to heavy hardcovers.


Ditto on handwarmers. Supremely useful.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


However, social networks with free-for-all blocking are often very brutal brutal.




And we've seen this play out since the dawn of the Internet. The vast majority of online spaces were rich in cliques, flamewars, relentless trolling, and corrupt moderation that never shied from using the banhammer for personal gain. It's why such a high number of online communities follow a predictable path of eventually becoming echo chambers and later imploding. Perhaps it would even be fair to say that the vast majority of people who take on the mission of establishing and running a community have little or no knowledge of basic coordination mechanisms, some dating as far back as ancient Greece.


Themotte and some rat-adjacent spaces are the only ones I know that have avoided imploding while maintaining the ability to generate novel, interesting discussion. I can see no other reason than the fact that these places have not only enshrined rules that encourage civilized argument, what Karl Popper labeled "the rational unity of mankind", but also ensured that moderation is done in the spirit of those rules.


As evidenced by the broader culture war, the majority of people are fine with tribal warfare, whether it's online or offline.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 9, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Solstice?


Not the San Diego one, but I'm going to a local rationalist solstice.


Last time, when I attended the ACX meetup, I met a ton of cool people and had some refreshing non-CW discussions.