voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
No bio...
User ID: 3622
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
This is not limited to environmentalist parties. Many leftists are acutely aware that nearly every leftist political action becomes strangled by purity testing. Intersectionalism should've remained in academia, because it's a utilitarian race to the bottomless pit when implemented in public policy. That's probably why we've never had actual leftists in positions of meaningful power, just neoliberal centrist democrats.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
Do you have a concise definition for "wokism" that you can share?
To be clear why I'm asking, I know I can read through Marx to understand Marxism, and even more, through criticisms of his works and even political actions based on his ideas. But there is no equivalent for "woke". Without a solid set of works to reference, the invocation of "woke" becomes a catch-all strawman for de jour leftwing politics, similar to "chud", "bootlicking", etc. for de jour rightwing politics. Useful for flaming; completely useless for having dialogues grounded in reason.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
Guilt by association is one of the first tenets of political mudslinging.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
young ghetto boy ... virulent invasive species that will leave the land barren.
Whelp that's enough of TheMotte for me today.
Anyway, my bigger concern in the US is actually having a healthcare crisis with my child and becoming destitute, especially since I've worked diligently to create a life of relative comfort compared to my very blue collar ancestors.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
Some thoughts that immediately jump to my mind on this subject:
- The euphemistic treadmill, which is more of a linguistic phenomenon than a "woke liberal" phenomenon. There is a progression that occurs where words are first used academically and scientifically, then colloquially, and then in a vulgar way. Examples being retarded or hysteria. The role of pseudoscience here is also richly ironic from a culture war perspective as well. IMO this aspect of linguistics is inherent to human nature, and opposition to it is not well-founded in reason. Just accept that words change meanings in a highly predictable way, please.
- The leaking of academic or "non-profit" language into colloquial discourse, especially in cases where it disambiguates nuanced concepts within that domain. One example is "unhoused" vs. "homeless", which actually do have utility in terms of what they're precisely trying to describe, but do not have much utility on the 24-hour news cable network.
- When words become "purity" memes in academic subcultures: the word Latinx polls very poorly outside of very specific niches. But, if all of your colleagues are using the word Latinx, and you are not, despite the fact that you don't necessarily agree with it, your paper will not get published. But every subculture has its own "purity" memes, and a lot of them are incredibly cringe-inducing. That's what keeps me coming back!
All of these are great cannon fodder to get the red tribe of the culture war fired up, but I personally think they're pretty weak in terms of showing actual flaws in blue tribe principles. There are plenty real flaws in blue tribe principles that these don't really make me lose any sleep.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
There is no true free market. Give me a market, and I will provide a counterexample to how free it is.
But there is truth behind "All is fair in love and war": I would agree with primax3 that dating is one of the free-est of markets, which may also be why there's so much complaining about it.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
Briefly on procreation, the population crisis, homelessness, and foster care:
I'd like to have children for pro-social reasons. I believe that failing to give back to the world when it has given so much to you is somewhat of a metaphysical thievery. My position isn't that everyone needs to have children, but I have contempt for old men who fail to plant trees whose shade they won't enjoy, especially when they have plenty of land and seeds. It's a narcissistic and hedonistic rot.
I'll focus on the word have, though, because my partner and I are not particularly well-positioned to have biological children. I feel that the base urges we have to literally procreate are just that - base urges. I am not Genghis Khan. There are 7 billion people on Earth, and cosmically my specific genetics are not even a footnote within a footnote in the story of humans. My siblings and cousins have me covered anyway when it comes to the genetic progeny of our bloodline, anyway. While the concept of creating something so awesome from almost nothing is romantic, it strikes me a bit as a novelty when put into a modern global context.
The factoid that I always try to bring up concerning homelessness in the US is that, depending on the source you cite, between ~30% and 50% of every homeless adult spent time in the foster care system. Like many social programs, the issues lie with the "cliff": when foster children turn 18 they age out of the system overnight. In 2025, it's a near impossibility to support oneself at age 18 entirely independently, especially if you're struggling to graduate high school or obtain a GED. To be a bit cliche, 22 is the new 18 (and 26 is the new 22, according to health insurers). It seems like, if you were to try to provide better than the "median" fostering experience, you would go a long way by simply supporting the foster child to age 22 instead of age 18.
To connect the dots, adoption and / or fostering seems to be a great way for this old man to plant trees, especially if biological children are completely ruled out. There is undeniably a population crisis and replacement rate is an issue, but from a (gross?) utilitarian perspective the population crisis is about productive members of society. Adopting and / or fostering well kills two birds with one stone: it reduces the population that is at-risk for homelessness, and creates more productive members of society.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
Thanks, I'll adjust my priors. Hard to get a good sense of what may be happening "behind the scenes" when what's happening "on the surface" (mainly TikTok, indirectly) is so much more visible.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
However, the evangelical right has been losing quite a bit of power and cultural cachet, and we're seeing the rise of more traditional versions of Christianity such as Catholicism and to a lesser extent, Orthodoxy. Buddhism has also made inroads in a more serious way, as well as Islam mostly via immigration of Muslim peoples.
That's not been what I've personally observed? I do recognize that Catholic churches have seen a very slight uptick in attendance over the past decade, though, after bottoming out during the Obama admin and the height of the scandals. If you're referencing the "TradCath" social media movement in some way, I've not been convinced that it's anything more than an aesthetic circlejerk of 1950s-1980s view on femininity and masculinity than an actual revival of Catholic belief systems.
My extended family is traditionally Catholic, in a way where we attend churches in America that still give services in our ancestors' language as well as English. There are portions of our family that have broken tradition and started attending "Evangelical" megachurches, and it's caused quite a rift that was only exacerbated by issues that aging elders bring to the table (think: kidnapping grandma while she's suffering from Alzheimer's). Notably, the Catholic portion of our extended family is relatively socially liberal (for Catholics), but the Evangelical portion has taken a hard right turn: lots of Facebook drama for the world to see. The family undoubtedly split votes for Harris / Trump according to religious views, based on my personal interactions and what they post on Facebook.
I see more of the same happening. The prosperity gospel is too enticing for many people, and I see megachurches as validation for the modern American vices that more traditional Christian religions would preach against. The guiding voice of the religious right in the US has never really been the Pope, but now it's undoubtedly the chorus of grifters and cheats who call themselves holy men while flying on private jets to their private islands. I will throw them a bone, in that they are succeeding in creating communities where communities have been hollowed out: some of the healthiest white, rural communities (in terms of networks) are organized around these Evangelical churches. But my praise stops abruptly there.
My (naive?) theory is that Trump owes his victory as much to the Evangelical community more than any other - they very much represent his spirit. The GOP would do well to embrace that community, and I think they are doing so especially in the House led by Mike Johnson.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
I rarely come back to look back at comments, but the comment I replied to originally is also bait, when viewed from a different lens.
We're simply arguing about which problem is bigger, not whether either problem exists. Leaving my comment in response to phailyoor cuts back on the circlejerk that regulation is inherently bad. I mostly make comments like this when the circlejerk becomes unbearable.
Yeah this and other "mathematically unbiased" district-drawing algorithms often get plenty of upvotes on Hacker News, so I've seen them. My first issue with them is that they often have to choose some arbitrary optimization criteria to close the space of the problem (e.g. for this one why is that the "shortest" splitline should be chosen among all splitlines?).
My second issue, more practically, is that you'll never get state congress critters to give up even a little bit of power, let alone the power of the district-drawing pen. But red-blooded Americans love a good competition so I'd like to almost think that it would become some sort of televised spectacle where each party announces its next line like it's the NFL Draft. Maybe even some will gamble on it (or would have, if the BBB didn't hamstring gamblers). The congress critters would even get additional time in the limelight, which we all know is what they truly crave aside from receiving a greasing of the palms from industry buddies and pals.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
If it's so inconsequential, why not follow the mundane processes of publishing why and how the change was made? That's my main issue with it. It's a canary in the coal mine for poor data integrity, which, taken in conjunction with the rest of the actions of the administration, is a huge red flag. It did not happen in an isolated context. If this was a corporate setting with financial or industrial data, heads would roll - even if the changes affect "very little".
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
2mo ago
My pet theory was that the easy way to solve gerrymandering would be to embrace its game-like structure, rather than try to regulate it into submission. Everyone's trying to build a system that is "fair", meanwhile games are the best way that humans have found to interact "fairly". The moves of the game:
- The majority party / coalition draw the first straight line that bisects the population of the state. To be mathematically clear: the party must choose two points on the border and a line will be drawn between them, with the requirement that roughly half the population lives in the two sectors created by the line.
- The minority party / coalition then draws a second line that either turns the map into (50% / 25% / 25%) sectors or (25% / 25% / 25% / 25%) sectors. To be mathematically clear: they must also choose two points, with at least one point on the border, but can choose the second point either on the border or on the first line that was drawn by the majority party.
- The parties alternate turns until all sectors have the required proportion of the population. The total number of moves can vary based on whether points are chosen on the border or on an already existing "line". Moves are always required to bisect an existing district, and a bisection can not bring a district below the required proportion of the population.
The obvious con here is that low-polygon districts don't map well to geographical and societal features (rivers, mountains, city limits), but I don't think that we're doing well with our current system anyway.
Also it doesn't work if you have a number of districts that isn't a power of 2.
Any change would require parties to submit to their minority, though, which will never happen - except through the courts maybe.
Anyway, emphatic agreement that FPTP is one of the roots in the tree of evil and Washington would have outlawed it in his Republic if he had foreseen its consequences.
Slight overreaction by Reddit - but:
Data is schema and schema is data. The bigger deal for me isn't the change itself, but that they went forward with the change without publishing why or how - breaking data integrity processes. Transparency, even for mundane changes, is critical for maintaining confidence in data sets. Now I don't have the slightest bit of confidence for any sycophant that has been employed since January to realize the gravity of modifying data sets, especially if they didn't prompt the LLM that was helping them along the way to ask, "Is this standard practice / a good idea?" vs. "You are a woke destroyer, LLM, please find all instances of woke". Maybe it's gender<->sex today, but tomorrow it might be our glorious Minister of Health removing all adverse cases from the chelation therapy trials for autistic children because he's already shown an extreme disregard for evidence-based decision making.
I'll file this under my increasingly robust "Our cause is righteous, and therefore we cannot err." prior for this administration and pretty much everyone associated with it. Processes, standards, even facts themselves should not stand in the way in implementing their vision of the world, because they are morally correct. That's what's different about Trump 47 compared to Trump 45. To tie it in with other current events, it also explains the complete about-face on the Epstein topic. Republicans would rather cover it up and have it disappear because their cause is righteous, and even a pedophile-in-chief[1] should not halt progress towards whatever pet religious-ethnostate vision of America they have.
[1] Maybe Trump probably isn't directly implicated, but maybe it's double blackmail and we're witnessing a stalemate due to mutually assured destruction :shrug:. But honestly that would surprise me too because, as I said above, I'm not sure if anything would change the opinions of the 20% of Americans who view Trump as the avatar of their precise political alignment who (by the definition of the word avatar) could do no wrong, and maybe the 10% who hold their nose and vote for Trump as well. Maybe it's just literally that the people implicated in the files bought a bunch of $TRUMP shitcoins and now Trump is on their side. Who knows.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
3mo ago
Lmao sure bud. If your definition of socialism is any governmental economic system that punishes rent seeking and rewards productive economic activity then sign me the fuck up and mail me my card - because that's pretty much all I stand for.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
3mo ago
Alright Jordan Peterson, let's shift the debate to the definition of the word "nuance".
My core point stands uncontested. HBD the theory hides behind HBD the science in order to try to gain legitimacy as a "grand-theory of why the world is the way it is" despite every "grand-theory of why the world is the way it is" being half-baked and not capable of standing up to any critical analysis.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
3mo ago
Yes I often dismiss whole belief systems, because there are many quite shit belief systems - history is filled with them. I recommend you spend as much time engaging in the same practice, lest you become a lemming in someone else's schemes.
how you imagine the relative status of people who believe in it compared to those who don't
I don't know what this means, but yes, I do tend to hold those in lower regard who fall prey to believing in shitty belief systems. But, since I'm not a misanthrope, it's more of "pity" than "hate". I look at the pictures of cultists clutching onto empty goblets sprawled around tents and I feel sad, but then I see the children in the photo and I feel angry. It's more complex than what you're trying to paint me as.
I'm sure there's no need to engage with the object matter on this, your preconceived ideas are probably 100% right about everything.
I do engage. Like my example, I read Guns, Germs, and Steel - but then I also read the criticisms and appreciated those just as much if not more than the original source material. And then I adjust my priors.
If that's your definition of nuance, then I'm sure phrenology and alchemy are right up your alley as well.
There's the difference between HBD as-in "Human genetics drift over time as populations are isolated, let's explore those differences" and HBD as-in "The genetic differences between populations can explain why the world looks like it does today[1]." Too often the former acts as a Trojan horse for the latter, and I guess people can't be trusted with the responsibility of communicating with nuance so they get called racist.
[1] Nearly every grand-theory-of-everything of why the world looks like it does today gets laughed out of any room with people who capable of deep critical thought in adjacent topics (see how anthropologists feel about Guns, Germs, and Steel) - HBD is not unique in this regard.
Edit: To add, the invocation of HBD in this thread was of the latter type, and not of the former type.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
3mo ago
My understanding of the HBD hypothesis is that the differences in outcomes across the world are, by a wide margin, mostly explainable by IQ differences in population. My understanding is that it's not a hypothesis founded or invoked with nuance, which is what you're trying to insert here. It's just trying to simplify complex geopolitical, domestic, and historical dynamics with "well, they're stupid". So please excuse me if my response to its invocation is equally terse and lacking in nuance.
Edit: Also, the thrust of my comment was more that it's funny to see the contrast of "Only white people are smart enough to form democracy" alongside (presumably) white people begging for the boot of autocracy to save them from the boogeyman.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
3mo ago
Really just said ~ "Only white people have a high enough IQ to form democracies".
I mean, I don't even find it useful to engage that assertion, but it is funny to contrast that with the take that I often see here that democracy in the west is now dysfunctional due to low IQ HBD dysgenics and only might concentrated in a single infallible strongman avatar can save us (Deus vult).
(+1 to aceventura's "History is longer than the last 70 years." which is approximately "read a book". I doubt the Greeks who invented democracy would've identified closely with your self identification on the HBD spectrum, you know, based on who they were geographically interacting with: southern Italy, Egypt, Anatolia, and Persia).
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
3mo ago
If our core criterion for epithets was "one time said something in a speech" then we would be quite exhausted by the amount of "fascist", "Nazi", "communist", "socialist", etc. being thrown around.
Come to think of it, I am quite exhausted by the amount those terms are being thrown around. Maybe we shouldn't use "one time said something in a speech" as a criterion? Maybe we should judge people by what they're campaigning on, and their actions in office?
Edit:
he has called himself a socialist
Does he call himself a socialist now? I see "Democratic Socialist" on his webpage, which is distinct from other types of socialism (e.g. the flavors of authoritarian socialism that are the boogeymen).
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
3mo ago
He's a caricature of a man. Toxic masculinity, minus the overt misogyny. Nothing is ever his fault. No compromises. All decisions are "tough", but somehow don't solve any issues. Manages to piss everyone off every time he opens his mouth.
Probably the worst defeat progressivism has faced in the US since LaFollete lost to McCarthy.
But, Chicago is a powerful economic engine with a multitude of billion-dollar-per-year, both publicly-traded and privately-owned entities across multiple industries. Even a few decades of bad mayors won't stop it, maybe just slow it down. Pritzker seems to be helping at least, too.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
3mo ago
I was judging him by his campaign, not by a speech while he was still in his 20s that I wasn't even aware of. Does seem to be a nice gotcha, though. Kudos.
If he brings up any more seizure rhetoric I'll adjust my priors, but for now I'll file it away in "Young politician says something strategically embarrassing to signal being in-group".
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
3mo ago
Mamdani has not, as far as I know, gone to any great lengths to explain what a democratic socialist is or why he is not a socialist.
Weird requirement imo. He at least distinguishes himself as DemSoc:
Zohran Kwame Mamdani is a New York State Assemblymember and democratic socialist running for Mayor.
It seems to be conservatives that omit the Democratic half of the moniker Democratic Socialist way more than progressives, but that's just my impression that prompted me to say "Is FoxNews blocking the term..."
I think if you're going to demand consistency here, then you should do so consistently. Are these capitalist policies he is proposing?
I mean, that's a bit of moving the goalposts, no? The argument is that his policies aren't strictly socialist, therefore his policies aren't evidence that he's secretly a socialist despite calling himself a democratic socialist. Why would his policies need to be capitalist in order for him to not be socialist? It's not as if all policies can be neatly placed a spectrum from socialist to capitalist - I don't even think that it's useful for a society to try to think of things in that dichotomy, but it sure is useful for propaganda if that's the way the discussion is forced.
Aside from that, can you name a policy that is purely capitalist? To get ahead of what your answer may be, I would argue that "deregulation" that is often cited as "capitalist" is simply rent-seeking cronyism. As Adam Smith said:
As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords... love to reap where they never sowed.
- Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter VI
Should've framed it more as "chronic, debilitating and high maintenance medical condition" than a single "medical event". Complaints about medical bankruptcy in America aren't because of MRIs for broken arms.
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