urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
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User ID: 226
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
The point of the motte is to promote interesting conversation. If a troll post manages to be interesting enough to lead to a good conversation, I would say it made a contribution, even if unintentionally.
Thinking someone got the best of us by creating conversation in a place designed to create conversation is odd, a thought that could only occur to someone who thinks in-depth intellectual conversations is unfun. But in fact they are fun, and a troll running with glee about how he "really got us" by giving us a chance to do what we love is like a guy who hands out Harris/Walz fliers and thinks he's campaigning for Trump.
The motte isn't a springboard for political action, just a discussion space. If trolls think they're distracting us from "real politics" by making us talk to each other, I'm just reminded of -- and I rarely use this term -- losers like KulakRevolt, who think they're going to start a race war from their basement. We're not trying to change the world, just trying to change our minds through exposure to new ideas.
I don't like trolls because of their insincerity, but they certainly do serve a purpose sometimes. If they're pathogens, maybe we can think of them as part of the site microbiome.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
· Edited 5mo ago
His reply seemed indistinguishable from sarcasm to me, I thought he was inventing a term to tar them with. But you brought the receipts, and it does seem they are as disconnected from reality as he suggested.
At the same time, like all mass killers, the actual content of these people's delusions is irrelevant, and the only appropriate response is to medicate until sane and confine until natural death.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
10mo ago
I regretted the comment, and I’m not interested in furthering that particular line of discussion, as I don’t think anything fruitful will come of it.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
10mo ago
Or by spreading out the economic opportunity so that other places are also hot. Which can be done either by making the pie higher bigger, or by distributing the pie more equally.
Which one is possible, or desirable, cuts to the very heart of the differences between the economic left and right.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
11mo ago
Dude, I agree with you. But this isn't the place to wage the culture war. There are lots of incredibly relevant points you can make without waging the culture war, much less actively admitting you're violating the fundamental rule of the site.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
It's no different than HPMOR, in my view.
Yeah, and I also think HPMOR is very silly and shouldn't be treated as serious. Harry Potter fanfiction is not the means by which serious people discuss or disseminate philosophical treatises; it insults Harry Potter by trying to make it something it isn't, and insults philosophical treatises by trying to make them something they're not. That Yudkowsky used Harry Potter fanfiction to distribute his ideas indicates to me an unwillingness to choose the right register in which to communicate, a bit like TYPING IN ALL CAPS LIKE YOU'RE A BOOMER WITH A BROKEN CAPS LOCK or refusng 2 us propper gramar to rite yur txt bc its to hard 2 rite n propr inglish. It indicates a disrespect to your content and your audience, while also implying you don't believe your work is strong enough to stand on its own without adding a gimmick.
And that's exactly what I charge our cultists here are doing: they're disrespecting themselves by describing extremely significant and important themes in metaphysics and social reality through video game references, which aren't reality, indicating that either they can't justify their views in more complex terms or don't have the patience, lucidity, and self-control to choose to do so, both of which are damning.
I have some minor personal experience with cult shit, and this is definitely cult shit.
Sure, maybe. But I don't see "cult shit" as meaningfully distinguished from crazy; by crazy I don't simply mean schizophrenia or something along those lines, but simply that these are people whose reasoning and behavior are separated from reality and whose ramblings are therefore fruitless and best to be ignored. I don't really care, Margaret, whether the delusions came from neurological abnormalities or from manipulation as part of a cult.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
6mo ago
Sure, I don't doubt that there are a lot of Jews in powerful positions who agree with the point of view and have pushed it along. But my belief is this is due to their eliteness, not their Jewishness.
And I believe the same thing would be happening if there were no Jews in positions of power whatsoever. I believe elite Jews are mostly indistinguishable from elite gentiles in the west in terms of their worldview; they're mostly atheists with vaguely-to-decidedly progressive beliefs, just with a somewhat more intense radar for antisemitism.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
6mo ago
Yeah. Going mainstream as a part of the platform of people devoted to preserving American power so it can protect Israeli interests.
Which is only a problem if you explicitly believe the replacement and opposition to whites is happening because of Jewish influence, instead of being done by elite progressive white people who hate their co-ethnics.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
12d ago
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1mo ago
· Edited 1mo ago
Therefore the claim "The phrase 'God's goodness' means no more or less than 'Orcus's goodness', and refers to being a perfect fulfillment of His own nature" is a motte, and everyday discussion of God by Catholics is frolicking in a bailey where God's "goodness" encompasses positive moral qualities.
Yes, that's the reaction I had to the claims being made as well. But I want to reassure you that the Catholic, and broader Christian, tradition does affirm the benevolence of God, as shown in the person of Jesus Christ, who healed the sick, forgave the penitent, judged the oppressor, and died for the ungodly. Any account of God's goodness that doesn't center on the person of Jesus simply isn't a representation of the Christian approach to the divine nature.
In particular, the unique Christian claim of a divine trinity is often seen by theology as a rebuff to God as pure will and impersonal power, and instead reorients him as pure love: the Father loves the Son, and thus "God is love." (1 John 4:8) God's moral quality is known through his nature, which he enacts in the world with his will; and that nature is perfectly loving, serene, self-giving, and joyful. While it is true that Christian theology is ultimately apophatic and analogical, those analogies are often viewed as evidence of God's goodness and not merely nice things we're comparing to him. The Christian tradition insists that those who know God will be "known by their fruits," and so it is with God himself:
Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man—though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. (Romans 5:7-8)
I'm sure you won't find that to be a good enough answer to your questions, and probably creates more questions than answers, about how the wrath of God interacts with or seems often in human perception to counteract the goodness of God. Those are real questions, and they require a real answer. But your questions are good, your intuition about what would be a satisfying answer to them is good, and your ability to perceive mottes and baileys in the severe differences between the God of the philosophers (and theology journals) and the God of the Christian revelation is very, very good.
Christianity does not proclaim a mere abstraction. It proclaims a Father, a Son, and a Spirit who loves, gives, forgives, and indwells. Any Christian view that does not ground everything about God's acts in the world in his steadfast love for humanity is not mine, and it is not the Christianity of the saints, who found God in encounter with love and not in the perfect recitation of scholastic categories. As Teresa of Avila once said, "It is love alone that gives worth to all things."
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
You've missed the second part of what I said: I said that antisemites often both deny the Holocaust and despise the concept of a Jewish state. If you "believe races in general should have their own nations", but not the Jews, and also don't want to live around them, essentially what you're saying is that the Jews should go away, but there's not any place on earth you can put them... well, that rather sounds like the public position of the Nazi party before the Holocaust. The final solution was final because they decided the other solutions wouldn't work to get rid of the Jews they despised. If someone doesn't want to live around Jews, hates the concept of a Jewish state, and despises mass murder, it rather prompts the question of what exactly they want Jewish people to do.
Which brings me back to my point: the crux of antisemitism isn't about trying to do something with Jews, even though that can spiral out of control -- it's about finding a scapegoat for the ingroup's problems. "Our society would be grand and peaceful and glorious, were it not for those dastardly Jews!" is a refrain heard from Toledo to Berlin to Little Rock; somehow the cause of good German Aryans white liberals being liberal isn't white people's culture, but the Jews, because good German Aryans white people are, of course, the master race with protagonist energy, they've just been duped by the Jews and their damn verbal intelligence. It lets people rectify the purity of the ingroup, by blaming all its problems on the outgroup. But it also says some pretty pathetic things about the ingroup, if you think about it.
I get why Jews make an easy scapegoat -- they do have a strong sense of ingroup-loyalty, they do have a lot of success in fields requiring high verbal fluency, and they do have a unique, even odd, culture, which makes them easily distrusted, especially in pre-modern societies that never prized pluralism. But I think the error of the Zionists who claimed antisemites would be on their side is they thought the point of antisemitism was about trying to not live near Jews or wanting an ethnostate -- in fact the very things you're saying -- rather than getting really, really angry at Jews for problems they didn't actually cause, because they're an easy scapegoat.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
This is a total non-sequitur.
My point is simple, and really quite humble. I am not saying that the motte is broadly anti-Jewish; I'm saying that the motte has right-wing antisemitic posters, which indicate that right-wing antisemitism is a real thing that some people in the world believe, that it therefore still exists.
While there are certainly antisemites on the left, like the chanters you mention, most progressives -- even most progressives who are critical of Israel were horrified when such things went down. To say those chanters represent the progressive left is to paint with far too broad a brush, or in other words to make general claims about general groups, not specific claims about specific groups.
Is it really so hard to acknowledge that, despite growing antisemitism on the left, right-wing antisemitism is not dead? There are lots of ways you could argue against my point -- saying that right-wing antisemitism has no power, that it's rejected by a larger sum of the right than left-wing antisemitism is by the left, that left-wing antisemites are more acutely dangerous. You say I made a bad argument, but you're not even making an argument at all: just repeating what you already said in a firmer tone, and acting offended that I pointed out that right-wing antisemitism exists, as evidenced by local posters who are right wing antisemites.
What I think has happened is this: you made a massive overgeneralization, treating all your opponents as one bloc and imputing to them the dreaded term of "anti-Jewish," while denying that anyone remotely on your side of the political spectrum holds similar views. You were treating antisemitism like a moral cancer, that pollutes anyone in the blast radius, even uninvolved but similar parties. In a certain ironic sense you were saying that it poisons the well. "Some left wingers are antisemites, therefore antisemitism is left wing." You should know that the left does the same thing with racism, and are every bit as wrong.
Because you were thinking in terms of overgeneralizations and boo lights, when I suggested the motte provides counterevidence, you became defensive, acting as though I had made a similar general claim: "no, we're not anti-Jewish, we tolerate viewpoints, we're not the heretics, it's them." But I wasn't saying what you thought I was saying. I'm not treating antisemitism as a moral pollutant, just as a factual description of certain views, both left and right -- some of which are present here, indicating that they still exist in the world.
The idea that SS is Muslim is... pretty bizarre, and rather reminds me of Hylinka saying right wing identitarians are simply the same thing as left wing ones, all evidence to the contrary.
We don't have to be opposed here, and I'm not trying to start a fight. I just think you made a shady argument and wanted to point out the counterevidence.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
· Edited 5mo ago
Most of the great events in world history happened because people made decisions based on gut, and put personal negotiation above political correctness. It obviously has the possibility of causing instability — but the love of stability over significance and valor is the stuff of the neoliberal consensus, which is collapsing.
All things considered, I would prefer to live in interesting times to boring times, and I’d argue the revealed preferences of human beings are the same. Note the way veterans obsess about their service, or the way pledges go through humiliating rituals only to be bossed around and corralled by half-sober frat brothers, and then remember the situation fondly! And moreover: note how inside Russia there’s immense nostalgia for the rule of Stalin of all people, and note how pumped up the Chinese people are to take Taiwan. People would rather, especially in hindsight, live through a time that will go in the history books than one that will be forgotten. People would rather fly high, and end up too close to the sun, than swing low and drown in the deep. Would you rather be Abraham Lincoln, or James Garfield? Both were shot, but only one was shot because he was historically important.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
You know who wants to kill the Jews today? It's not right wingers.
I agree that in a raw sense the greatest threat to Jewish lives is Palestinians (and the opposite is also true, of course), but I find it ironic to claim that right-wing antisemitism is dead by posting here, of all places.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
6mo ago
The solution is deregulation. Medical treatments that were perfected 40 years ago should be basically free, and administered (if that’s even necessary) by a low wage technician.
Most of medicine is based on prescribing drugs, for which a person needs to understand drug interactions, risk-benefit ratios, and basic biochemistry. And most of the other part is surgery, which requires an experienced hand. You know, like a doctor.
So who's going to pay for the drugs people need? And who's going to pay for the drug development? And who's going to cut your appendix out when you have appendicitis? A "low wage technician"?
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
9mo ago
It's a good reminder that Twitter must be destroyed. This point is so crucial we should repeat it like a prayer, like the kyrie:
Twitter delenda est,
X delenda est,
Twitter delenda est.
No one, literally no one, not even one, comes off well on Twitter. Even people I have profound respect for seem like unhinged lunatics. I barely use it, and have never posted, but every time I open it up and I'm greeted by the firehose of insanity, I realize why our discourse has gone so insane. There's no room for nuance, no room for discussion, no room for tone of voice or personality, it's spicy takes all the way down. There's no value in it.
The only use for it is formal, simple annoucements of objective events, like the posting of an article or video elsewhere. Any other use of microblogging is haram.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
6mo ago
· Edited 6mo ago
Let me apologize for the tone of my recent posts on this topic, which were really dumb Twitter-tier reactions and don't reflect either my values or the standards of this place.
the only reason for affordability is due to the taxpayer shouldering the costs
Yes, and I'm saying this is a good thing, and the percentage should be higher. It's a fair point that the public option is unlikely to increase efficiency, but increasing efficiency isn't really the goal for me. I like the idea of a public option because it means giving money to the government that is constrained by the Constitution, the courts, administrative procedure, etc... while giving money to a private insurer, while they absolutely are regulated to death, means giving money to a party whose entire purpose is to take as much of your money as it can legally get away with while giving you as little in return as they can legally get away with. It's the alignment of incentives I find disconcerting, not the level of efficiency.
I don't agree with the "healthcare is a human right" thing, but I do believe that it's right for society as a whole to shoulder the burden to take care of people who are vulnerable, struggling, chronically ill, etc. I put social welfare policies, particularly surrounding healthcare, in the same basket of public goods as roads, bridges, police officers, defense -- it's part of the fundamental social fabric that enables people to live at all, and shouldn't be subject to the whims of the market.
To be clear, my view on the Republican party on this issue is not that conservative voters examined the evidence closely and made a cost-benefit analysis, it's that conservative voters hate the idea of the public option because it's the government doing stuff, and there's an axiomatic belief among Republicans that the public sector is inherently inferior that is just as dogmatic as the belief among Democrats that the private sector is always exploitative.
Despite what my strong feelings on healthcare may suggest, I'm not actually particularly dogmatic on economic issues: except to say that I believe what should be done is the option that empowers ordinary people to live the best and most fulfilling lives as is possible. There are some areas where giving people more choices and the freedom to make decisions in a free market gives them the most power -- but likewise there are other areas where the amount of knowledge and wisdom a person would have to accumulate to make a judicious choice is so ludicrously high that people do need government officials to regulate away bad choices and build a system where people have the legal right to be treated fairly.
If that means trickle-down in one case, fine, if that means government monopoly in another, great, if that means single payer in one context, sure, if that means tax breaks at one point, I'm all for it. I'm apparently being an economic progressive today, so I'll throw some meat to the fiscal conservatives in the audience and say I think most concerns about corporate greed are silly, and price increases usually reflect underlying economic variables. Price fixing in particular is the worst possible solution to any economic problem.
I'm happy to agree with the more libertarian side of the fence that our current system is regulated to death and has the worst aspects of both private and government-run healthcare, but I don't see the solution being deregulation and turning healthcare into a McDonald's menu where people have to price-match and pay for add-ons in times of extreme time-pressure, information asymmetry, and profound emotional and physical stress. If there's any time whatsoever where we can be absolutely sure people aren't Homo economicus, it's when they have to make serious decisions that affect the life, death, and serious suffering of themselves or a loved one.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
Any @TIRM's point isn't that we live in the counterfactual world, but that the counterfactual world indicates that the promiscuous sex practices of gay men are the cause of the problem: but for their existence, HIV would not be a major issue, as you've just agreed. Earlier you stated that "Even if one somehow got rid of those things... the deadliest diseases in human history were not caused by either promiscuous sex or drug use", and by agreeing to his counterfactual, you've just denied that very statement.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
6mo ago
If you find yourself in a room with 11 people who are voting to convict after several days of deliberation, then it's unlikely that they're doing so purely for political reasons. If you haven't turned at least a few members around in that time, then you're probably wrong, and unless you're a total moron, you'll probably come around yourself. In a high-profile case such as this, there is going to be a lot of pressure for a verdict, and the judge isn't going to send everyone home just because you say you're deadlocked; the system is willing to keep you there a lot longer than you think they will.
How democratic!
You can make any choice as a juror, so long as you make the one everyone else is making. And if you don’t make the decision everyone else wants you to, the state will use force to intimidate you into changing your mind.
We might as well just use Nazi ballots, if the whole point of juries is to use social and economic pressure to force people to vote the same way, and using confinement and isolation to overcome conscientious disagreement. These are totalitarian tactics, incompatible with freedom.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
7mo ago
Yes, precisely this. Anyone who doesn’t think there’s already a large cohort of late millennial and gen-Z women with no interest in realistic romantic relationships is either wildly out of touch or willfully blind.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
7mo ago
· Edited 7mo ago
We should encourage understanding; that is, a rational understanding of the physical and social causes that make people think as they think and do as they do. But such understanding is distinct from empathy and compassion as emotional affects.
Compassion isn't a social affect: it's an act of the will.
When I suggested to you that compassion is better than understanding, my point was not that you need to get all teary-eyed and emotional about everyone's problems, though I won't knock that. My point is that it's far greater and more important to earnestly will and desire the best for everyone. That doesn't mean being emotional about it, and it certainly doesn't mean affirming the desires of every single person, especially when they go against their best interests. It can often mean telling people to their face that the path they're on ends up in disaster and they need to stop, now. "Admonishing the sinner" is considered a work of mercy very much for that reason.
But it certainly means caring about what happens to people, even if only abstractly. It means seeing the bad places and needless suffering that people end up in, and earnestly wishing that it were not so. It even includes taking steps to prevent bad outcomes, if only in a very small way.
Understanding can help, insofar as it can help you see where people have ended up with the needs that they have. But it's more important simply to wish for the best, even if you don't fully understand what that looks like, even if the only thing you can muster is the earnest desire that all should end well.
If I understand @dovetailing and @SubstantialFrivolity correctly when they talk about empathy and compassion, I think this is what they're saying. The antonym isn't emotional impassivity, but malice. Dovetailing is arguing that what people often feel towards trans people is malice: "the cruelty is the point."
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
10mo ago
· Edited 10mo ago
The primary demographic I'm referring to are PMC Males who have pride flags next to their twitter handle, a COEXIST bumps sticker on their subaru, and have never been part of an organized sport in their lives. These are men who gain sexual access to women by hyper flattering their cultural and social biases. They often get friend zoned. They make awful husbands and say things like, "My wife's boyfriend drives a truck life that!"
We agree about a lot of things, even on this issue, but this is just intense boo outgroup without any useful content. "The men who disagree with me are liars, cheaters, and weaklings who women hate, they have to play pretend to get laid, they make awful husbands and they're cucks," is barely distinct from "The men who disagree with me are liars, cheaters, and weaklings who women hate, they have to play pretend to get laid, they make awful husbands and they're misogynists," which is precisely the way that the left talks about incels.
I don't disagree that there are some lefty men who dissemble or exaggerate their progressive opinions to appeal to progressive women. But there are, of course, righty men who dissemble or exaggerate their religiosity to appeal to devout women. That was particularly true when religion was more important in society, as wokeness is now.
Playing the game of "find new and creative ways to call the opposition sexually-revolting losers" is particularly ironic when the topic of discussion is the demonization of lonely men, as it is with the incel policies.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1mo ago
Ah, I see what you're saying now. Sure, his ideas should be judged on their own merits, regardless of what his conduct in his personal life is.
But to be clear, I don't find findom offensive because it's degenerate, I find it offensive because it's stupid -- there are much more efficient ways to pay people to get your rocks off, even if your thing is being humiliated. For instance, you could pay someone to actually have sex with you while telling you you're a loser.
It's an economic waste, is all. Like someone investing their fortune in beanie babies. I just couldn't look someone in the eyes or think them intelligent if I found out they did it.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1mo ago
It's these people that suddenly decided that boosting leaked videos showing you're a paypig findom-enjoyer is a valid angle of attack on someone.
I mean, given how insane of a concept it is to pay a sex worker to aggressively not have sex with you, I do consider doing that to be a major red flag for someone's judgment even in non-political terms.
I agree. Sometimes I feel like the only person who wants both the J6 rioters and the BLM rioters to be punished harshly. Lawlessness is lawlessness, riots are riots, violence is violence, and the fundamental duty of the state is to maintain its monopoly on violence by curtailing violent uprisings with great fire and fury.
That being said, I suspect you and I are more Auth than Trump or Trump supporters are, and at least he got this out of his system so we can focus on other things.
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