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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25057 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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What would you consider to be sufficient factual evidence to shift your views on HBD in various directions?

In order for the question to make sense, it is probably helpful to think of one's position on HBD along two axes, as in the Political Compass test, and one discrete parameter that would make less sense on an axis. You're also welcome to point out omitted positions.

x-axis, ranging from 0 to 10, where moving right indicates agreement with the statement: Human populations have significantly different average levels of intelligence, and this becomes far more pronounced in the right tails of the distributions.

y-axis, same range as the x-axis, but measured as 10 * perceived percentage of genetic contribution to the difference above. If you attribute some of the difference to the interaction of genetic and environmental influences, give that half the weight for simplicity.

Parameter z: How does intelligence correlate with the moral worth of a person? This can take on one of a few values:

(-1) Negatively

(0) Not at all

(1) Positively

(i) The moral worth of a person is dependent on their actions or beliefs, and intelligence only provides bounds on their culpability or merit.

I’m somewhere near neutral on the question and I think most of it is due to confounding factors— education access, nutrition and health care, environmental factors, and culture. It’s almost impossible in my mind to get a pure genetic signal when there are so many factors that we also know affect intellectual capacity that I don’t think we have a smoking gun here. As a minor factor, maybe, but not with the importance some HBD types give it. You’d almost have to have a large cohort of swapped babies raised by other populations to really tease out the genetics. I don’t see anyone willing to do that.

As far as moral worth, I’m firmly in the equality camp. A human should have all the rights that go along with being human.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_Study

Isn't this kind of it?

I mean yes, but I’d consider a 10-15 IQ test differential to be fairly minor, it’s one σ at best. It’s there, but unless you’re doing high level stuff, I don’t think most people would be able to tell the difference at a glance between IQ 115 and IQ 100. At lower IQ it makes a difference sure, but for average IQ levels it’s not that much.

Right but it feels like you're assuming that somehow white people have no gains to be made. I think that assumption would fail on the same grounds you would fail those who presume that blacks have no gains to be made.

I'd argue that in the developed world, nobody has any gains to be made. We've removed lead from gasoline, famine and malnutrition are distant memories. In terms of IQ, we've picked all the low-hanging fruit. If there was a way to actually increase a child's IQ beyond avoiding stressors like malnutrition or poisoning, the tiger mothers and educational establishment would have found it by now.

I don't disagree. I just think it's easier to argue the point that there is no stated upper limit given by folks that argue what MaiqTheTrue argues. Since their position, in my experience of arguing against similar ones, is ultimately not based on objective thinking or anything related to the real world but rather moral preference.

When you push motivated egalitarians far enough they will simply resort to impossible to prove theories and assumptions, be that prenatal environment, systemic racism or whatever else. It's much quicker to simply ask them why they expect all of their confounding factors that can never be tested to only be able to affect black people. It helps highlight how the proposition that we could possibly increase IQ doesn't do much for equality.

AFAIK as IQ is deliberately intended to be normalized, the gap is exactly the same 85 to 100 as 100 to 115, and if you think that those two aren't the same, you are also inherently saying that IQ is the wrong tool for the job. That's not even getting into the whole "what benchmark do we set 100 at", do we update it year to year or try to peg it to some historical benchmark (though this is not necessarily fatal to IQ as a metric in the same way the first is, it does present a question that must be addressed when using IQ).

Simply using IQ necessitates that you grapple with these things. That's the nature of using numbers to describe something human. You, the invoker of IQ, need to prove the numbers work as numbers and aren't better being left as philosophical concepts or practical examples, or point to something well established that does. The simple, self-evident fact that IQ is fit to a normal curve and you yourself don't seem to believe that a symmetric 15 point gap is equal across the domain is in and of itself a tacit admission that IQ is the wrong tool. Are you familiar with the statistical notions of how an assigned number scale can be nominal, or ordinal, or interval, or ratio? It's not a perfect paradigm by any means, but it's one you must grapple with at least on some level, and happens to be incredibly relevant here in this case. See also OP's initial claim that the distribution has a weird asymmetric tail, also evidence (though more mild) against using IQ as the correct tool. Similarly, the fact that you dodge the 100-center question, which is a fundamentally important question to the use of IQ, is not acceptable.

I mean, I get the whole all models are wrong but some are useful, but these are just the very basics, the fundamentals, they are not nitpicks. An example of something that at least does attempt to address these issues and mostly succeeds is the Likert scale. You might be familiar with it. It's the classic 5 or 7 point scale in response to a question, with "strongly agree" and "slightly agree" and "not sure" and disagree options. There's a natural zero, and at least psychologists attempt to say that the distance between each point is "equal". I know forced normalization distorts this equal-distance formulation slightly, in terms of the math, but two properties that persist across the transformation are the aforementioned symmetry of responses, and also the center point of responses. These two decisions are non-negotiable and mandatory to make and cannot be hand-waved away. They are inherent to the math and the use of a numerical model.

The simple, self-evident fact that IQ is fit to a normal curve and you yourself don't seem to believe that a symmetric 15 point gap is equal across the domain is in and of itself a tacit admission that IQ is the wrong tool

Imagine two groups of children go to a themepark and want to hop onto a rollercoaster, which has a minimum height requirement of 105cm. One group of children has heights that range from 110cm to 150cm, and the other group has heights that range from 70cm to 110cm. The symmetric 40cm gap would not be equal across the domain - is this a tacit admission that height is the wrong measuring tool for the job? A simple 15cm boost would have a different effect on each group's ability to ride the rollercoaster, so how can you say that 1cm is equal to 1cm between the two groups?

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You, the invoker of IQ, need to prove the numbers work as numbers and aren't better being left as philosophical concepts or practical examples, or point to something well established that does.

Lewis Terman (of Stanford-Binet fame) and his many successors (and predecessors) have done that. IQ isn't some crank idea.

The simple, self-evident fact that IQ is fit to a normal curve and you yourself don't seem to believe that a symmetric 15 point gap is equal across the domain is in and of itself a tacit admission that IQ is the wrong tool.

The reason for this belief was explained; you've ignored the explanation. If you're just e.g. having casual conversation with someone, you may well not be able to detect someone at 100 from someone at 115, but could detect someone at 100 from someone at 85. This does not at all mean there's something unequal about IQ. It just means such casual conversation is not particularly intellectually taxing. The symmetry you claim must exist is not, in fact, a requirement.

As for "nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio", the Wikipedia page on that actually cites IQ as an example of an ordinal measurement, though I am not sure Terman would agree.

This is a weird compass, but okay, sure.

I'd probably put myself at X 8, Y 1 to 3, Z i. I can't imagine anything shifting me on the Z axis, and that being the case, I might be shifted on the X or Y axes with new evidence, but it ultimately wouldn't make much difference in my answer to Z.

I mean I think near zero on the z-axis? While my x and y answers are probably non-zero, and I do think maybe a rough 60% genetic contribution to individual heritability of g, for lack of a better term (I don't know how exactly to mathematically adapt this to populations in a fair way) but I appreciate z being its own axis. In essence, I don't think it's of any worth to spend a ton of work to evaluate x at all. Like, let's say there are in fact large but not enormous population differences. What am I supposed to do with this information? Am I supposed to be aware that I treat some populations differently than others, and do nothing about that? That's just stereotyping, which I think is morally wrong. Even if say 2/10 of Green candidates for a job are suitable vs 8/10 Blue people, individual respect and concepts of fairness matter more. I'm not gonna toss all 10 Green candidates to save time. Even if the job is important.

It's just stereotyping with extra steps, and is frequently the case. In practice many racists I see are using correlated but generally only semi-accurate indicators to judge group affiliation, and then do little follow-up. Like name, dress, skin tone, things like that. Sure, maybe they make sense on average, but on an individual level? Forget about it. I lived in Miami for a while, and I can tell you first-hand that a lot of people are far more than their upbringing, but more to the point, there's a huge difference in someone from Argentina vs Brazil vs other part of Brazil vs Peru vs Colombia vs Puerto Rico vs Mexico vs Cuba and somehow I'm supposed to believe that either they are all the same, or that other groups happen to be special and uniquely stupid, or something like that? Or that the only thing that matters is the exact percentage of some vague notion of "whiteness"?

And then even going along that note, genetic groups do NOT correlate 1-to-1 with skin color, for example, not as neatly as many would have you think. It brings to mind the craziness of one-drop policies in the antebellum South. What if someone is half-Blue half-Green? Their skin doesn't always average out or something. Africa is a big continent and not all of them are Black and not all Blacks are from Africa and again for the love of God genetics literally doesn't have a notion of race as these neat, immutable boxes, and history doesn't either. (Ancient) Egypt is a great example of how modern looks at racial groups and skin tone are often anachronistic. Maybe the whole white vs Black as a dichotomy or single slider is a straw man, but that tends to be the actual end result of a lot of this discussion.

In fact, someone just last week said on this very forum and I quote word for word:

White children that come from homogenous environments are some of the happiest, healthiest and smartest in the world. There is nothing bad, comparatively, about them or their education to be found.

Which I don't even know where to begin. I love reading and talking about history, and this just reeks of presentism. Look it up. On top of implying some one-dimensional scale of whiteness. Like, if you're going to use it that way, at least say WASP or something. And he didn't stop there, oh no. Of course, a discrimination step comes next. We didn't mention Hispanics or Asians, but that's another often awkward conversation rarely brought up because there isn't a clean and clear answer.

Anyways the end goal of this whole (disorganized, sorry) rant is basically, the whole HBD discussion is orthogonal, almost completely, to morally permissible practical applications. I apologize if I dragged both orthogonal arguments into the same thread. The whole idea of human rights and human dignity fundamentally involves the idea that a person's worth and treatment should, within reason, not depend on instant snap judgements. Were the American Founding Fathers hypocrites for writing words about equality and God-given innate rights when they didn't want poor people to vote, or enslaved people, or non-landowners, or certain foreigners, or women? Yes, at least a little bit. But that didn't make their words and ideas wrong.

Edit: edited intro to address OP's axes more directly.

People stereotype all the time, it is so ubiquitous that people hardly notice. I find it hard to believe you never stereotype.

If you are walking home at night in an isolated area, you would not be more cautious if you encountered a man vs a woman? If you need to move some heavy object, you would not be more likely to ask a man vs a woman? If you are trying to find the best local sushi restaurant, you would not be more likely to ask your Japanese friend vs others? If a customer walked into your place of work speaking Spanish, you would not be more likely to ask your Hispanic coworker for help vs others? If you are looking for a healthy lunch, you would not be likely to ask your fit coworker vs your fat coworker for a recommendation?

I find it hard to believe that your (implied) answer to 'not stereotyping is hard' is 'give up', much less 'give up on purpose'! Especially when it comes to something important. If you have something to say, say it. Don't imply it.

Obviously asking someone for lunch recs is much lower-stakes than deciding on a job hire. Obviously there's also a risk-reward component that I think is just common sense, but we need to be careful about how much we allow this to be stretched. Avoiding someone on the classic dark road, it's kinda no harm no foul, we don't have a duty to talk to strangers there. Avoiding someone in broad daylight in a crowd by blatantly deviating your course might be more legitimately offensive. I think the dark road example is an incredibly bad faith argument.

But sure, I'd ask all or several of my coworkers for recommendations. A fat coworker has eyes and also a brain, and might take a different driving route to work that drives past different restaurants. They also might go to restaurants more often than fit coworker. All very plausible reasons to ask, that could have good outcomes, that I'd rob myself of if I didn't ask. Plus, you know, the respect aspect.

I worked selling flooring for a while and I tried to make it a point when someone came in to not pigeonhole them into a certain price point. Of course this would vary, and of course (I spoke Spanish better than some of my theoretically native-speaker colleagues) you notice patterns, like who is more likely to be a renter vs owner vs businessperson vs tradesperson. But I will say that it wasn't uncommon for me to talk to someone like a neutral adult, and it turns out their financial or job status was far different than my initial guess would have been. I do feel like this helped build an overall environment of respect, and also 100% got me at least a few sales that if I had instantly stereotyped, I would have missed. I think even someone with a limited budget would appreciate me not talking down to them and giving them all the options, and we have a conversation for the literal and explicit purpose of narrowing it down and finding something for them. Use your words, gather data via a conversation, and base your opinions on that! Don't excessively allow background judgements to apply to individuals. It's hard, but not totally impossible, and a basic societal building-block of respect. I'm sure I wasn't perfect, but effort counts. How is that even a point of debate?

Besides, half your examples are not actually stereotyping. Negative stereotyping is when you make an assumption about someone based purely on physical appearance, rumor, etc. and act on that in such a way it impacts your treatment of them in a bad, disrespectful, etc way (as an individual). Asking an established-as-Japanese coworker about sushi is not a stereotype. Visible muscles are not a stereotype. Asking a known Spanish-speaker for help is not a stereotype and is fine. Pointing a customer toward a Hispanic-sounding name coworker in hopes they speak Spanish is bad. Asking said Hispanic-sounding-name coworker directly if they speak Spanish is probably fine and expected, but there are variants on how you ask that might be more or less respectful and don't overtly make the same assumptions.

That's kind of what politeness and respect is all about. No one ever said that you had to genuinely 100% have true respect for everyone around you, but you are obligated in a general social sense to play the game of respect and politeness, and eventually some of that actually bleeds through into actual attitudes. Like the Good Place book title, it's all about "What We Owe to Each Other", a phrase that really stuck with me. Golden-rule type shit. Treat others how you want to be treated!! Is that so strange?

Yes, "stereotyping" was probably the wrong word for the concept I had in mind, "discrimination" is probably a better term. And by discriminate, I mean - to infer something about an individual based on the base rate characteristics of a group identity that he/she belongs to. I am interested in when, and when not, it is okay to discriminate.

I will return to the dark road example, I apologize if you think it is a bad faith argument but I think it is illustrative. In the days following the man/bear meme question, I saw many women say that they would much rather run into a woman rather than a man if walking alone in the woods because the risk of physical/sexual assault is higher with a man. This was considered good/smart/wise risk assessment as this perception is based in reality and backed by crime statistics. It was not considered sexist to treat this individual man based on the statistics of his group (men).

Now compare the same scenario except swap in asian man / black man. We apply the same statistical reasoning yet now it is considered unacceptable and racist. Can you explain why?

The other examples I listed in my previous comment were included merely to point out additional instances where it seems okay to discriminate. I could of course list many more where it is not. I remain unclear on what the underlying principles/rules are for how society arrives at this determination.

No, I'm going to stick to my guns and I absolutely refuse to use a dark road analogy. It's legitimately one of the worst possible hypotheticals/thought experiments for this discussion.

  • relatively rare situation few of us experience in daily life
  • a far better situation would be an actual common and relatable one
  • the people involved are very specific which makes the scenario feel overtly contrived
  • very small changes in initial conditions can greatly affect individual responses which makes the scenario hard to discuss evenly
  • if you cross the road to avoid someone in an obvious way, feelings are only mildly hurt, so even "discrimination" in this case is kinda like, ok whatever no big deal
  • on the other hand you have presumably a major bodily harm risk
  • which is again, rare when considering the totality of all possible race-related experiences
  • can you see how this situation is not representative of a typical "do I discriminate" scenario? And easy to go in circles?

If you can't come up with a better example, it's probably because you don't have one (sorry).

Like, my actual real-world example of being a flooring salesman is much more typical. Some might defend giving disproportionate attention to perceived-as-rich people as a salesman because you do in fact have limited time, and you can get commission from higher sales, etc. I might even be wrong about being fair leading to more albeit less visible success/opportunities and maybe wasting time with poor people would hurt my sales. In either case, I'd defend the the moral requirement to treat people with a fair shake, and also defend the societal imperative to do and encourage the same.

Edit: Think I wasn't succinct enough in point #5. Made this description upthread which elaborates more:

Specifically, the "potential cost" I was referring to was actually "how does the group young blacks feel if someone crosses the road to avoid them". I don't think they would be that broken up about it, and I don't think it would make them feel particularly victimized (and even if they did the material impact on their life is approximately zero). So in that sense, it's a stupid example because both the overall societal cost and the impact on the discrimination recipient are low and also the potential cost to the discriminator is very high. This is, by all accounts, an abnormal rendering of a typical discrimination moral dilemma.

  1. The current explanation for disparate results is disparate treatment even if we can’t find it on the premise that races are equal outside of how races are treated. But if you prove no races are different, then you’d be foolish to accept disparate results as prima facie evidence of racism.

  2. Stereotyping makes sense when the cost of being wrong is high and the ability to obtain information is low (either there is a high cost or timing won’t permit it). For people who want to reduce stereotyping, the goal should be to make information easier to obtain. But frequently we do the opposite. For example, we don’t allow companies to provide IQ tests.

Point 1 is a good point. Personally my philosophy is that we should be looking for disparate treatment more independently of results, though I understand and suppose I agree that a more thorough and complete understanding of underlying facts and mechanisms could be helpful to figuring things out, at least in theory. Fundamentally I don't like dismissing arguments simply because many make them in bad faith, you can use a true thing to make a bad faith argument. Still, it certainly seems to be true that a good chunk (certainly not all) of the HBD stuff seems to just be Eugenics 2: Electric Boogaloo rather than "let's just follow the science". Not that this is unique to one particular political group, of course. So I guess overall, I think looking at disparate treatment alone and independently is often sufficient, so it doesn't necessarily follow that we need to do a deep dive into HBD theory stuff. I'm open to being wrong. Do you have some examples where it wouldn't be?

I mean there are parts of point 2 that are I think fairly self-evident, and you summarize it well, but I think you overlook that sometimes we actually have a vested interest in fairness even if outcomes are objectively worse. I think these cases are actually few and far-between, rather than super common -- I'm not naive enough to say that diversity is always a strength. I think it often has hidden benefits. I think that sometimes a desire for societal fairness and respect is greater than the need for some super-optimized result, if the cost is introducing a disproportionate amount of stereotyping.

Of course you do make a good point that the equation isn't always immutable. As I myself said in a longer comment just barely, gathering other, better information is really the best case. We don't allow companies to provide IQ tests, but some other forms of testing are allowed. I do think some of the restrictions need to be loosened on what's allowed for recruiters. Jobs are important enough that I think a lot of people in power aren't giving them the policy care and attention they need.

A couple of responses:

  1. Let’s just caveat that the reason we have disparate outcome is solely related to HBD—not saying that is true but thought experiment. If we as a society deem that conclusion out of bounds and have a desire to provide equal treatment, then after we continue to try to equalize by removing other impediments but get no farther (because the problem isn’t equal treatment but unequal talent) people will have to either accept the out of bounds conclusion or will adopt a god of the gaps approach to unequal treatment. Maybe they’d call it systemic racism. Maybe they’d start putting a massive thumb on the scale for certain populations and cause real societal harm (as jobs aren’t just spoils).

Now this is obviously slightly tongue in cheek but I am making an earnest point. I do think there are other things we can and should do (eg blacks didn’t always have super high single family rates). But a belief in tabooing HBD will have a kind of “false” Noticing effect. If we could just taboo the whole discussion on disparate impact on different populations maybe it would be more optimal but who knows.

  1. I agree that maybe sometimes where costs are low fairness matters. But for example if it’s late at night and I see a group of young blacks walking in my direction I’m going to put a lot of effort in getting into a safe place. Probably wouldn’t if it was a group of Asian teen girls. This is in one sense unfair. But the potential cost to me is high to outweigh the fairness. On the other hand, if I am interviewing a black candidate and an Asian female candidate I’m going to try to be complete impartial and see how they can handle tough interview questions.

Following along in your thought experiment, I don't see why that's so bad. My perception is that as a matter of actual fact we are not currently in a position where we have successfully equalized "outgoing" kind of measures of equality, the "disparate treatment" in and of itself. I guess my general train of thought is, there's every incentive to vigorously explore and work on explanations other than HBD and if we do pretty well on outgoing, treatment measures and at that point there's still some unexplained gap, sure let's go there, fine. Until then, we have tools that work just as well that are less controversial and can theoretically do the same thing, so let's pursue those. So sure, at some point maybe we do get in a situation where we are faced with only gaps-based bashing our head against a wall, or the HBD stuff. That's fine! I have faith if that were to happen we would in fact seriously consider HBD stuff, certainly more so than now. I simply don't think we've reached the point of "we've done enough" to merit having the discussion yet. I realize reasonable people might disagree.

That's why I'm actually quite curious downthread to if the other user answers my honest question about when they think we already reached a tipping point where we've "done enough" for racial equality and it's time to throw in the towel, so to speak.

I elaborated also downthread about the dark street thought experiment, but more specifically, the "potential cost" I was referring to was actually "how does the group young blacks feel if someone crosses the road to avoid them". I don't think they would be that broken up about it, and I don't think it would make them feel particularly victimized (and even if they did the material impact on their life is approximately zero). So in that sense, it's a stupid example because both the overall societal cost and the impact on the discrimination recipient are low and also the potential cost to the discriminator is very high. This is, by all accounts, an abnormal rendering of a typical discrimination moral dilemma.

I guess that’s where I disagree. We’ve done a lot to try to remedy disparate treatment. In fact we have de facto discrimination in favor of blacks.

The question is, I think, a little bit misleading, because humans don't live in a vacuum - they have real desires and needs that require other humans, or some kind of human society, to meet. That's the real challenge, not questions of human worth so far abstracted away from the actual problems we face as to be irrelevant.

x: 10 as stated, but with the caveat that differences within populations matter more than differences between populations - I'd rather work with 99th percentile white person than the average jewish person.

y: 7, rising to 9 at the tails, but the difference in eg income or achievement is somewhat less because there are other factors in between intelligence and outcomes.

z 1, if you take anything resembling a materialist or consequentialist approach to morality, even if it's also religious, smart people are capable of having more valuable experiences / contributions to society than less smart people

What evidence would change my mind:

If the next generation of the best writers, startup founders, scientists and mathematicians, programmers, et cetera had significantly higher black and hispanic representation, that would pretty quickly change my opinion. Or a change in my observation that, in general, any area with a high 'skill ceiling' in terms of intelligence seems to have asian/jewish overrepresentation and hispanic/black underrepresentation. The fact that that's currently not true is a bigger factor in my belief in HBD than any science or statistics right now. And the claim that various forms of racism cause this just doesn't add up, and here are a few more things that, if I was wrong, would change my opinion: Jews and asians with poor or average backgrounds are more likely to rise up into that cognitive elite than black people with rich backgrounds. And top people who are self-taught, top people in hobbies that require a lot of intelligence, or just the smartest people in internet communities I'm in, have just as much asian/jew overrepresentation and black/hispanic underrepresentation, even though you'd expect 'implicit bias' and 'systemic discrimination' to matter less for something entirely driven by personal interest. Gifted children who score high on tests show the same racial patterns. "Okay, but, uh, environmental racism, poor children have worse diets and this stunts their growth, lack of representation prevents them from achieving their dreams, epigenetics..." One of my favorite programming bloggers "grew[sic] up in a household that spent so little money that [he] was regularly lightheaded from hunger because I was actively starving", and yet has gained a significant following and is clearly very smart. He is, of course, asian. And leaving aside races, my personal experience also very strongly suggests that there's some 'general factor' of intelligence that some people just have a lot more of, that it's almost impossible to increase, and that is heritable. Every alternate explanation for differences in IQ or achievement between races just feels like a 'god of the gaps', and doesn't fit the whole picture nearly as well.

Even if we cordon that all off, start from an uninformative prior, and just look at the science and data, HBD still wins. Arguments for the validity of IQ and individual heritability of IQ are very strong, and the arguments for genetic IQ differences between races are pretty strong. There are sophisticated arguments against all of that, eg gusevlab.org/projects/hsq/, but if I dive into any individual technical argument usually either the HBD side wins or both sides have bad arguments. If that changed - if I changed my mind on the strength of the scientific evidence, or factual claims by hereditarians that I currently believe in ended up false - I'd become significantly less certain, but it'd move me less than the above observations changing.

gusevlab.org/projects/hsq/

This is very good. I recommend reading it for everyone who wants to learn more about population genetics.

Oh I thought I linked to a subsection, it's very good generally but the section about IQ is misleading imo http://gusevlab.org/projects/hsq/#h.u5i4y14hya4j

This is a good demonstration of how the science genuinely is complicated though, all it takes is the wrong starting point or a bit of motivated reasoning for someone very capable to take the wrong position (even if sasha is right, it's still true bc there are smart people on the other side), and it's part of why I put more weight on holistic observation than data here

What would you consider to be sufficient factual evidence to shift your views on HBD in various directions?

Rigorous statistical evidence that demonstrates the lack of heredity in all mental and physical characteristics. You'd have to be able to demonstrate that the intelligence of the parents has no impact on the intelligence of any children they have, across both humans and animal populations - so you're going to have to demonstrate that all animal breeding/domestication has actually just been a series of increasingly improbable coincidences. You'll need to conclusively demonstrate that familial similarity is actually a coincidental artifact of human perception with no basis in fact or reality.

I don't think you've adequately defined the moral terms you're using so I'm not going to touch that scale at all. HBD has nothing to say on matters of morality - you may as well ask whether someone's moral worth is dependent upon how good their skin is at conducting electricity.

I believe this is correct. I do believe there is data that would change my mind on HBD. I do not think there is any probability it exists.

Do I think white people just don’t want to be running backs or cornerbacks in the nfl but do have a desire to be tight ends and lineman? No. And the distribution of people who perform those jobs are so extreme that it’s mathematically impossible it’s not coming from genetics. (Current best RB in nfl is probably white and potentially best CB drafted this year is white but those are rare).

I’m not even sure if this would disprove hbd but selective breeding I guess could make the races equal across abilities. You would just need Christian McCaffrey to have a million kids and Clarence Thomas to be the sperm donor for all black kids. In 3-5 generations of doing that abilities would equal out.

But I guess that would just mean hbd is real. Environmental pressure pushing traits in groups leads to differences in groups when they were largely seperated because of geography culture (Ashkenazi separation was culture).

And we sort of see this in white people. Now that the Balkans play basketball with average male height of 6’4 they produce as high of rate or higher rate of nba players than Africans. Though they play in a different way.

One thing I have discovered in adult life is I have a lot of traits like my father - the good and the bad. That seems statistically impossible.

If a country in Sub-Saharan Africa or any other region with reportedly lower intelligence ever catches up economically to the west without natural resource shortcuts such as oil or rare metals I would see that as proof either that we are not measuring intelligence correctly or that intelligence differences between populations are not relevant to things I actually care about.

You're asking a lot of people. This feels like it could be an effort to shame people for having politically incorrect beliefs.

At a minimum, you should lead with your own scores and defend them.

That’s a completely fair request. I’m at (8,6,?), where my gut and more conscious intuition are in conflict on the last coordinate.

The best people I know in person are a local religious congregation, who span quite a ways in intelligence.

OTOH, I’m can’t help but look up to people significantly sharper than myself (in math, or Ilforte and selfmadehuman here, for example).

8, 8, 0.

The first two, I think there's fairly solid evidence, so more confidence would require isolating and editing the specific genes involved. Less confidence would require a demonstration of successfully raising IQ through environmental factors.

The third factor is axiomatic, and is supported by what appears to me to be a very large amount of evidence. It does not seem to me that there is a shortage of intelligent evil people.

US revoked the weapon ban on the openly Nazi, Azov brigade. The Azov Brigade, now 3rd separate assault force is also having considerable success in recruiting new soldiers. Now I don't know how much influence does Neo-Nazis wield in the Ukrainian government, but even assuming it is little, the thought of a trained, professional Nazi brigade with combat experience being armed with weapons and given legitimacy scares the shit out of me. What is the US thinking? What is their endgame? In the scenario that Ukraine is able to survive, do they think they can easily do away with the Brigade? In my opinion this is a huge miscalculation. The US might very well think Ukrainian politicians can outmaneuver Azovs if they decided to enter the political space orv if in worst case scenario, Azovs took Ukraine through a coup, they can deal with it through military action. Either option will come with huge costs, never-mind the possibility or degree of their success in disposing them.

Does anyone have any credible sources for the current Nazi influence in Ukraine?

So- my understanding is that Azov is neo-Nazi in the sense that they’re White supremacists who love Hitler, think the Nazis should have won WWII, and have a racial hatred for Russia and Russians. Sure, I’ll call that Nazi, but they’re not promising a genocide, or to invade their neighbors. Even if they wind up in the peacetime government of Ukraine after the war, they’ll probably morph into standard average nationalist-conservative far right party- the US isn’t panicking about mi hazank or reconquete either.

You're skipping over the fact that they were engaging in ethnic cleansing in eastern Ukraine before the conflict heated up.

I have no doubts people like that would be persecuting Russian speakers using typical natsoc tactics if given power, and that's a far cry from standard nationalism. The other parties you cite didn't do that and don't have large paramilitary forces.

People don't want to contemplate this because Putin uses it to justify his geopolitical moves, but it was still a real thing.

Westerners seem incapable of understanding the idea of different cultures. If they want to like a different people, they’ll project their own culture on them and will rationalize away major differences as not really existing. Thus, Azov aren’t really Nazis, they’re just… LARPing, I guess?

Alternatively they understand that Ukraine isn't going to be a national socialist state under the rule of the US state department. Unless they are willing to go full taliban Ukraine is not going to be national socialist. The Azov guys will end up in a trench somewhere. Mean while Ukraine's assets will be sold off to western financial institutions who will use staff trained at american colleges for white collar jobs while Bangladeshi migrants do the manual farm labour. The soldier's who are dying by the thousands can have whatever ideology they want, the companies rebuilding Ukraine's electrical grid and supply food to Ukraine's super markets have chief diversity officers.

Sure, that might be the rationalization this time around. It doesn’t explain all the other times this happens, or all the other replies here arguing that the Nazis aren’t actually Nazis, but it works for understanding this one decision this one time. I personally don’t buy it, because I’d prefer to see the overall pattern rather than zoom in on this one instance.

Mean while Ukraine's assets will be sold off to western financial institutions who will use staff trained at american colleges for white collar jobs while Bangladeshi migrants do the manual farm labour.

What I find sort of comical is that the situation won't be fundamentally different in the case of Russian annexation either.

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Bangladeshi migrants are not a common feature of Russian economy

Indeed they aren't. But Asian migrants as a whole, are.

That's the expected outcome of an invasion. Usually one lays one's life on the line and fights back to prevent such things.

Thus, Azov aren’t really Nazis, they’re just… LARPing, I guess?

What is "really a Nazi"? The German NSDAP party (1920-1945) has been defunct for generations. It's physically impossible to be a real Nazi then. And yet people keep using that word without irony and demanding to be taken as if they are speaking seriously.

I, personally, continue to be confused and angered by other's dialog around this fetishezed word. How it's used is clearly propaganda and point blank logical fallacy usage. The equivocation fallacy, I believe. X thing holds the mental symbolic resonance of [evil] thing we all hate. People want Y thing to be hated too, so they use the title of X and expect transference of associations, even though Y is objectively different than X in all the ways that made X probable to be associated with the mental color [evil]. Namly Y is not a militarized authoritarian party in the 1940s running Auschwitz and making massacre graves on the Eastern Front. What I don't get is why people, you included, seem to believe their own propaganda. This shit ain't real. "Nazis" are no longer real. Is there confusion on this?

What there is, and has been before, during, and after Germany 1920-1945 is the an ultra "right-wing" mentality and disposition. Some of these people do in fact engage in LARPy antinomian symbology and acts associated with the past NSDAP party (e.g. swastikas, salutes, black sun) - intentionally because they are so taboo most likely, because there's limited good ultra-right art/iconography to draw on, as well as admiration for the high point of the German ultra-right at its apex when it was winning. People love a winner and tend to rally behind one. But the ultra right mentality would exist if God deleted Germany from all time. People are their own thing. Again, is there confusion on this?

“Really a Nazi” here refers to genuinely held beliefs. “Not really a Nazi” means that Azov are only acting like they’re holding Nazi beliefs (whatever those are), but actually that’s only performative - on the inside they’re perfectly race blind liberals who think just like the modal westerner. I.e they’re LARPing as Nazis, like one would LARP as a wizard without actually believing oneself to be a wizard.

None of this is dependent on there still being “real” Nazis or not, since you’re using the word “real” to mean something completely different. I’m talking about what’s going on inside their head, not their party membership.

Is this fear of Ukranaian Nazis genuine, or just an attempt to sap anti-Russian energy in the West by associating Ukraine with one of the past century's great villains?

There seems to have been a very convenient transfer of exaggerated fear of Nazis from the progressive left to the far right which took place right around the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Historically it echoes how the American Left went from impassioned pacifists in the 1930s to hawkish anti-Nazis coinciding with the collapse of the Hitler-Stalin pact.

My far-right friends mocked the "punch a Nazi" drumbeat up until it became a weapon in Putin's rhetoric, so I have trouble accepting it at face value.

Is this fear of Ukranaian Nazis genuine, or just an attempt to sap anti-Russian energy in the West by associating Ukraine with one of the past century's great villains?

Speaking for myself as someone who doesn't really consider themselves pro Russian (but would likely be considered as such by others) there's no real genuine fear of Azov - they're just shown as an example of the hypocrisy of western governments. Nazis are the worst ever and need to be punched in order for democracy to survive... but these nazis are actually heroes, and your tax dollars need to be used to support them. The reason people bring up the fact that western governments are actually extremely pro-Nazi in the Ukraine is to damage the illusion that Western governments are motivated by ethical values("defending democracy" etc) rather than pure realpolitik.

There is potential concern that after Ukraine's defeat the remnants of the Azovites will become a far-right paramilitary organisation with a bone to pick with Europe, but nobody really cares - the far right are probably ok with an armed neonazi terrorist remnant fighting for their side and bombing synagogues, while the people who support the Ukraine war are doubtless extremely happy for there to be another reason for European tax dollars to get funnelled to arms/"security" companies once the war is over.

Is this fear of Ukranaian Nazis genuine, or just an attempt to sap anti-Russian energy in the West by associating Ukraine with one of the past century's great villains?

Yeah, I'm pretty anti-Western as far as it goes, but this is one of the lamest arguments in circulation. Like, who do you expect to voluntarily show up to face bullets, artillery fire, and drones? It's going to be the same type of guy in practically every country.

I have to agree with Dean, there aren't any real Nazis in Ukraine. You can't be a Nazi and fight for a country run by a Jew.

Far rightists? Ultranationalists? People who love sonnenrads and take every opportunity to get edgy tattoos? People who threaten anyone who opposes maximalist war aims? Sure. If we use the liberal definition of Nazism, then Ukraine is full of Nazis. The same people who were hysterical about Trump's fascist rhetoric could hardly ignore the Waffen SS LARPing.

The real trouble is all the weapons that have been pumped into such a corrupt country. They'll presumably find their way to third parties after the war, if not during it.

They fight for that Jew because he toes their line and gives them what they want. Should that ever change, they'll turn on him instantly.

All few hundred (or at the most couple thousand) of them? Azov is so small I don't think the rest of the Ukrainian military and government is concerned.

I suspect they wouldn't be alone in their move.

That would mean a significant portion of Ukrainians are Nazis so dedicated they are willing to coup attempt. I'm not very well informed here, but I don't suppose that is the case.

I think a couple hundred hardcore guys with combat experience and a clear vision are plenty enough people to topple a government under the right circumstances.

The Seychelles coup attempt only had 53 mercenaries, and by all accounts could have likely succeeded if airport security hadn't detected their weapons.

I can totally buy that, given Sirsky and Zelensky’s popularity problems with the troops, Azov could have enough of the armed forces behind them to credibly threaten a coup if they decide to do that and pick the right moment, sort of like how seal team six could probably cause a lot more problems than you’d think.

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Sure but being Jewish is a ethnically rooted property, not an ideological property like Nazism. You could be French and hate the French nation, seek its destruction and yet still be French. It would be impossible to be a French nationalist, however.

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They do seem to adhere to at least some Nazi racial doctrines, like ‘Russians are subhuman mongoloids’. Yes they draw the aryan/inter mensch line farther East than Hitler did, but it’s a similar idea.

I won't deny that they could be far-right, fascist, white supremacists (for a certain definition of white)... But the distinguishing feature of Nazism from those ideologies is anti-Semitism.

I reckon you could be really excited about authoritarianism, militarism and eugenics but lukewarm on anti-Semitism and still be a Nazi. But you can't be pro-Jewish. You can't take money from Israeli billionaires!

https://www.algemeiner.com/2014/06/24/ukraine-jewish-billionaires-batallion-sent-to-fight-pro-russian-militias/

Sure, but this misunderstands the reason for the Azov nazi LARP, which is that they hate Russians and Nazis fought Russians. Finnish neonazis are likewise primarily motivated by anti-Russian and anti-Communist sentiment. Again, almost all are actually antisemitic, but antisemitism isn’t incompatible with serving under a Jewish President provided you agree with his war aims. The Azov position is that Zelensky wavered on Russia but was strong-armed into his current position by (ethnic) Ukrainian patriots. Plus, it’s not as if Putin isn’t also very close to many powerful Jewish oligarchs and friends (and Russia to Israel), so the war can’t really be described as some kind of antisemitic struggle in any case. If Ukraine wins, Zelensky can always be replaced; if it loses, no Ukrainian is going to be in charge.

What was incredibly amusing to me on several levels was that Hitler apparently felt that, in his "tier list" of races so to speak, the British were not the top but they were pretty high up the list. So for that reason he was reluctant to bring them into the war and even apparently didn't think it was very likely they would side against him, because race reasons.

Not surprising, given they're a Germanic people.

You can't be a Nazi and fight for a country run by a Jew.

I think that Real Life is often much more nuanced than this – people are often happy to team up with someone they hate to fight someone else they hate more, and military exigencies in particular makes for strange bedfellows. Random examples: the Free Arabian Legion, qualified Nazi "support" for (or at least limited facilitation of) early Zionism, support during the Civil War on the Confederate side for mass freeings of slaves to serve as soldiers.

I get the vague impression that a feature among far-right Ukrainian ethnonationalists is that the RUSSIANS are the inferior racial types, but that doesn't prevent them from thinking the same thing is true of Jews. Possibly e.g. Andriy Biletsky has moderated his views over time, but it seems quite possible to me he thinks fighting for a country run by a Jew is politically expedient for an anti-Jewish agenda over the long run. Of course I think one could, ah, question whether Ukrainian ethnonationalists are really "Nazis" even if they self-identify as Nazis for much the same reason and in the same sense that one could question if Lenin was really a Marxist/Communist.

I tend to agree with the commenters on here that corruption resulting in weapons getting trafficked is probably more likely than "a few hundred neo-Nazis topple the Ukrainian government" (although I doubt that's a problem unique to Azov) but in potentially unstable countries like, possibly, a future Ukraine I think there's a lot of potential for a few hundred guys with military experience and hardline political views to do Stuff up to and including Regime change. I'm not really sure that they need US weapons to do that, but of course it will look awkward if they end up using them.

You can't be a Nazi and fight for a country run by a Jew.

This gets at an interesting difference between the western and Russian (or at least Putin's) definitions of Nazi. In the west, the defining feature of Nazis is their hatred of and desire to exterminate Jews, and any feelings they have about Russians are orthogonal to their Naziness, whereas in Russia the defining feature of Nazis is their hatred of and desire to displace and kill Slavs (and Russians in particular as the leading Slavic people), and it's their feelings about Jews that are orthogonal to their Naziness.

Now, I would say that the former definition is closer to historical reality than the latter, but this misunderstanding is why we in the west have been bemused by speeches about the "denazification" of a country with a Jewish president. Moreover, your typical Ukrainian Neo-Nazi probably ended up that way because he has heard all his life from the Russians that Nazis are people who hate Russians, and since he does in fact hate Russians he figures he might as well put on the uniform and become more intimidating to his enemies.

whereas in Russia the defining feature of Nazis is their hatred of and desire to displace and kill Slavs (and Russians in particular as the leading Slavic people),

As it happens, the Slavs were categorised by the Nazis as an Aryan race until 1939, after the conquest of Poland.

whereas in Russia the defining feature of Nazis is their hatred of and desire to displace and kill Slavs

Which makes the Azov's "Ukrainians are the real Slavs, Russians are Finno-Turkic mongrels" ideology even harder to square with neo-Nazism.

The defining feature of neo-Nazis in Russian discourse is being a Russophobic nationalist while being white. Since there are no countries that draw a meaningful distinction between Russians as an ethnic group and Russia as a state, Russian propaganda doesn't have to distinguish between instances of both either. With one exception: if you're a Russian ethnic nationalist living in Russia that hates the multiculturalist message of the Russian state, you're definitely a neo-Nazi.

Does anyone have any credible sources for the current Nazi influence in Ukraine?

No, but then I wouldn't expect to much credible information on something that largely doesn't exist, and I don't know any credible sources that would unironically use the term 'professional Nazi' either.

Given that the Azov Brigade's primary Nazi-ness was primarily performative, not ideological, and the primary ideological parallel was 'anyone the russians hate who could kill a lot of them had something going for them' rather than 'uber-racist genocidal anti-semetic state-supremacist nationalist with a desire to conquer Europe and colonize the east,' I'm also unclear what you think a 'trained, professional Nazi brigade' entails. Fashion-conscious parades? Cosplay with vigor? Casual drives through the Ardennes?

The neo-nazi accusation is about as old as the Russian incursion into Ukraine, which is to say 2014 and attempted at the Nova Russia uprising that fizzled into the Separatists, and has been the go-to accusation for the Russian propaganda aparatus for a decade now. It's about as well founded as it ever was. The Azovs were Nazis in much the same way that Satanists are worshippers of evil- it was (and to a degree still is) a form of unrepentant defiance by identifying with your hated outgroup's nominal worst fear / hated foe, rather than with what otherwise might be presented as a cultural sibling.

At the end of the day, the Azovs were one of a large number of private and oligarch-sponsored militias groups that rose during the chaos of Russia's attempted nova russia uprising. They weren't particularly nazi, unless you conflate all right-wing politics with nazi, and the only thing particularly notable about them aside from their wearing accusations like a badge of honor was a relatively high valor and willingness to keep fighting, which is why they were notably effective, and one of the reasons the Russians have fixated on them in particular.

That Azov formation is long dead. Between the post-2015 reorganization of the oligarchic controlled militias into the national military with replacements of key leaders, the normal military manning cycles, and the extremely high attrition during the Mariupole campaign in 2022, very little of the original formation remains, and the formation itself has been expanded and thus flooded so even pre-war composition would be flooded by outsiders, i.e. diluting the characteristics of the precursor personnel.

Unless you believe that nazism is a magical mind-virus that converts by insinuation and proximity, there's no particular Nazi influence in the Azov Brigade. The Azovs are basically a quote-unquote 'prestige' unit that people want to join because it is prestigious, and it is prestigious does much the same thing as any other, but with better (or, if you prefer, notorious) PR.

Thanks for the reply. Your arguments regarding the "performative Nazism" of Azov makes sense to me, I find it probable that Azovs are a right wing movement instead. If you could provide additional sources for further reading, that would be helpful.

That Azov formation is long dead. Between the post-2015 reorganization of the oligarchic controlled militias into the national military with replacements of key leaders, the normal military manning cycles, and the extremely high attrition during the Mariupole campaign in 2022, very little of the original formation remains, and the formation itself has been expanded and thus flooded so even pre-war composition would be flooded by outsiders, i.e. diluting the characteristics of the precursor personnel.

Unless you believe that nazism is a magical mind-virus that converts by insinuation and proximity, there's no particular Nazi influence in the Azov Brigade. The Azovs are basically a quote-unquote 'prestige' unit that people want to join because it is prestigious, and it is prestigious does much the same thing as any other, but with better (or, if you prefer, notorious) PR.

I don't fully agree with you on both of those point. Azovs doesn't seem to me a prestige unit since all sources arguing for and against them being "neo-nazi" do agree that they have been a particularly effective unit. On the right wing ideological dilution part, that could very well be true but its hard to determine the effectiveness of it and both Ukraine and Russia have incentives to lie.

For reading, I don't have anything specific regarding the Azovs for you on hand, but I would recommend reading into how the oligarchs of Ukraine were involved in the Nova Russia uprising, both in aligning with and against, and how the early 2014 militias were formed / organized / incorporated into the Ukrainian armed forces.

I don't fully agree with you on both of those point. Azovs doesn't seem to me a prestige unit since all sources arguing for and against them being "neo-nazi" do agree that they have been a particularly effective unit. On the right wing ideological dilution part, that could very well be true but its hard to determine the effectiveness of it and both Ukraine and Russia have incentives to lie.

Being a particularly effective fighting force is why they are prestigious, despite the infamy. But being a particularly effective unit is not an exceptional status, it is a relative status, and half of all units are above average.

What sets Azovs above and apart from most other above-average units- in additional to much higher media visibility (in part due to Russian efforts)- is that the Azovs have been at some of the more notable front lines where the Russians simultaneously had the most visibility but also showed their limits, which naturally leads to the self-serving deflection narratives of 'we're not bad, they're just good.' That was literally how they first gained notice- their origin is that of a militia formed and fighting before the formal armed forces of Ukraine were able to be reorganized during the Nova Russia campaign (giving Azov rivals of mostly-forgotten militias that didn't stand the test of time) in a conflict that the Russian proxies did so badly in that (giving the Azovs a contextual win) that the Russian army had to intervene (giving their survival it's own victory-against-the-odds narrative).

Consider how the 'modern' Azov's most significant performance was in the Mariupol defense of 2022, when the Russians were forced into a three month siege. For the later in particular, a three month siege of basically March / April / May 24. Standing ground and holding out in a 3-month siege is no joke and deserves the kudos... but it's also shaped by the factor that they had very good reason to believe the Russians would kill them outright (or in a show trial) if they surrendered due to them being used as part of the Russian de-nazification war narrative, and the fact that multi-month sieges were kind of a defining characteristic of the Russian invasion after the first few months, and also that the mariupol offensive was the primary Russian offensive in that part of Summer 22 while most of the rest of the front was static with marginal creeping artillery advances elsewhere. So while the fact that the Azovs fought hard is true and commendable, but it's also relatively normal for units of highly motivated people with good cause to fear surrender, and the dramatic image of defense and hard fighting was... kind of normal across the line in a number of places.

Azov's distinction in the war isn't hard fighting or urban defensive fighting. It's branding while doing that, when most Ukrainian units that did so lack the reputation or international visiblity or the contextual international drama for the times Azov was most visible when Ukraine was still in chaos in 2014, and when the post-Kyiev Russian offensive was still new and uncertain in 2022 and people thought a dedicated Russian offensive in the south could sweep the southern coast. After the Mariupole campaign, most people understood the Russians weren't going to steamroll the south, so units that fought just as hard wouldn't get the same valor / public credit that Azov did because it was expected rather than a surprise for the Russians to struggle so hard for so long.

You don’t think Azov’s high status in Ukraine converts new entrants into true believers in the Nazi stuff?

I mean, obviously they’re not full bore Nazis. But they do seem to be racist ultranationalists, which is close enough for government work.

You don’t think Azov’s high status in Ukraine converts new entrants into true believers in the Nazi stuff?

No, I don't. I've seen no evidence that Azov ever had true believers in the Nazi stuff, let alone converted new entrants into it,

I mean, obviously they’re not full bore Nazis. But they do seem to be racist ultranationalists, which is close enough for government work.

That government work being the Russian state-driven propaganda narrative claiming they are full-bore Nazis, and expecting others to go along with it on 'close enough' grounds that are not, in fact, close enough.

There are a lot of racist ultranationalists in the worlds. Equating them with Nazis or would-be-Nazis-if-empowered is a facile understanding of the Nazis as a polity and an ideology.

Unless you believe that nazism is a magical mind-virus that converts by insinuation and proximity

"If there's a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, then you got a table with 11 Nazis."

So kind of yeah, that's a somewhat common sentiment among some people.

That’s a misunderstanding of the phrase though. The phrase doesn’t mean you’ll catch Nazi ideology like it’s COVID. What it means is that if you’re hanging around with Nazis you are already at least okay with the ideas they espouse. It’s not a dealbreaker for you or you won’t sit there and talk to that guy. And I think it’s pretty reasonable in that sense, though it’s true of almost any ideology. If you’re talking to them and especially in the political sense of negotiation with them for power, you’re at least okay enough with them that you’re willing to give them a seat at the political table.

What it means

What it means is a threat.

How? Again, it’s not the claim that you catch Nazi like a big. The claim isn’t even about the Nazis per se. The claim is that people willing to have Nazis involved in their professional or political or social circles are at least okay with the ideology.

It's a threat insofar as SJ persecutes Nazis and thus a statement that non-haters of Nazis are Nazis is a threat to persecute anyone who doesn't join in the persecution.

The counterpoint of this is that the is a Nazi-cosplayer at a table and 10 other people sitting there, then you have a table with 0 Nazis. And if someone comes along and points and shouts 'Nazi', you still have 0 Nazis.

Nazi is as Nazi does, not as Nazi dresses or Nazi-accused. Belief otherwise may be somewhat common sentiment among some people, but these are generally the same people who similarly mis-used 'fascist', and they are just as wrong even if their numbers do allow them to appeal to the bandwagon fallacy.

I am not a Russia hawk, but I would need to see some evidence that Azov could actually topple the Ukrainian government before I believed it. As it is, the Ukrainians are hardly in a position to be picky.

More credible would be the threat of violent reprisals against Russians or Russian speakers in Ukraine, particularly in those regions that it seeks to reconquer, which seems very likely to me.

Oh, and I might add - Ukraine is not Germany. Germany is a great industrial and military power. Ukraine is poor and corrupt and has little industry. It doesn't even have young people. Even supposing it was taken over by Nazis (already a great stretch), it would not threaten Europe.

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I don't understand why so many people seem to believe that Nazis have some kind of mystical totemic powers that make them an ever-present threat far beyond their actual material capacity. Like if 100 people do the Nazi salute at midnight, they'll be empowered with the strength of a hundred thousand Panzers, instantly overthrow their government, and invade Poland.

"...the thought of a trained, professional Nazi brigade with combat experience being armed with weapons and given legitimacy scares the shit out of me. What is the US thinking? What is their endgame? In the scenario that Ukraine is able to survive, do they think they can easily do away with the Brigade?"

The Azov Brigade is made up of 900-2,500 soldiers. The Ukrainian Army has 170,000 soldiers. Why, exactly, do you think the Azov Brigade is such a threat? Just because they're Neo-Nazis? That's it? Being Neo-Nazis grants them the superhuman power of the Ubermensch, and with it the ability to sweep aside an army 100 times their size? Do you think that Neo-Nazism is such an appealing ideology that if they ever get the tiniest shred of power then everyone in the Ukraine will instantly convert to become card-carrying Nazis - and, after that, the world, since apparently this is a threat that the US State Department should take seriously?

People who get performatively afraid of the rising threat of Nazism remind me of those homophobic Christians who are obviously in the closet. "Everyone knows that all men are sexually attracted to other men, and the only thing stopping us from getting hot and heavy with those beautiful, chiseled male bodies is the threat of eternal damnation. That's why we can never allow any homosexual sex, ever - it's too tempting! No one could resist the siren song of gay sex if it were an option! It would destroy the family!"

Do you think the only thing protecting us from the overwhelming power and appeal of the Nazi ideology is ruthless, constant suppression? Do you think that Nazism is so appealing, so powerful, so effective, that all it takes is one active Neo-Nazi group and a handful of guns to threaten the most powerful nations on Earth? Because if so I think you might be a Nazi.

I think of Nazism as nothing but a minor historical ideology that held sway for a little more than a decade, in one country, eighty years ago. They were ineffectual rulers who only managed to start and then subsequently lose a war before being deposed. Granted, it was a pretty big war. The thought of some guys in another country cosplaying as Nazis doesn't concern me any more than the thought of some guys in another country cosplaying as Jacobins.

A war is fought not only on the battlefield, but also in the realm of propaganda.

As you point out, the size of Azov is trivial compared to the size of the army, and wearing swastikas does not actually grant combat superpowers.

But this should also mean that the possible battlefield gains from arming them with US weapons would be small.

On the propaganda front, it does not matter that they are only a small group. The USSR fought one big war, in which some 13% of its citizens were killed. In the end, they won, and it is a victory celebrated to this day in Russia. Their enemies in that war were flying the swastika.

Allowing a group of your citizens to cosplay as Nazis instead of drafting them into regular army units is handing Russia an easy propaganda victory. One would be better off supporting a brigade of child rapists and cannibals.

Also, the threat model is not that Azov declares its own state and sets out to conquer Ukraine by force of arms -- which is indeed silly given the power balance. There is a huge difference between having two thousand guys with military gear outside your borders and having them freely move within your country. It takes a lot more than 2000 men with guns to defend against 2000 determined terrorists.

One of the scarier phrases from Weimar Germany is "Reichswehr schiesst nicht auf Reichswehr" -- uttered when the German army refused to engage paramilitary putschists because they recognized them as comrades in arms. Every army seems to have some fraction of crypto-fascists, and the Ukraine army is likely no exception.

At the moment, Azov are suffering the Jewish president Zelenskyy to live because his interests and their interests align -- both want to stop Russian aggression by military means. I find it highly likely that Ukrainian mainstream -- and their president -- will tire of this war before Asov does. From the situation on the ground, it looks like any peace deal would involve some concessions to Russia, Crimea if nothing else. At that point, Azov could turn against Zelenskyy.

Allowing a group of your citizens to cosplay as Nazis instead of drafting them into regular army units is handing Russia an easy propaganda victory.

But Russia also allows groups of its citizens, like this one, to cosplay as the Nazis. Of course one could argue that kolovrat is something else than a barely-plausible-deniality swastika (after all, it has barely plausible deniality!), but come on now.

Rusich is far, far less influential than Azov.

I don't understand why so many people seem to believe that Nazis have some kind of mystical totemic powers that make them an ever-present threat far beyond their actual material capacity. Like if 100 people do the Nazi salute at midnight, they'll be empowered with the strength of a hundred thousand Panzers, instantly overthrow their government, and invade Poland.

Please give some examples of people who hold the belief you are criticizing. This would be a very uncharitable interpretation of the post you're actually responding to, so let's assume it's not them you're talking about. Who is it, specifically? There's apparently "so many" of them, in your words, so examples should not be hard to find.

On the one hand, it could be seen as a knee-jerk over-reaction based on the cultural prominence of this overall viewpoint.

On the other, the thread OP did say "scares the shit out of me" about it, and did not elaborate on exactly what was so scary about a thousand-ish men being given some weapons in the middle of a huge war involving many hundreds of thousands on both sides.

Good point, I should have elaborated on that. Its not exactly the weapons that I am concerned about but rather the influence. I wanted to know how much influence they currently wield in both the system and the populace, which is answered. Azovs and Nazis wield marginal if not zero influence in the system despite being popular with populace, and as long as the war goes on. On the other hand the west needs to get the post-war management would be crucial.

I tried to look into this some a while back, mostly along the lines of, what's the deal with the supposedly-Nazi Azov Battalion working together with Jewish Ukraine President Zelensky? What I came away with is, there's more than one perspective on Nazism.

There's the actual original Nazi party, a creature of 1920s Germany. Started out with mostly reasonable-sounding goals, but went to a very bad place. They're long gone now though, and nobody but some nerdy historians seems terribly concerned with what they actually thought and why.

There's how modern Westerners see Nazism, a mix of authoritarianism, warmongering imperialism, and racism and anti-semitism to the point of genocide. Reasonable given our perspective and role in the actual war, but probably not very well connected to how actual Nazi party members saw themselves.

How Russians and Eastern Europeans saw Nazism is another perspective entirely, with no connection to either of the others. Many in Russia, particularly Russian nationalists, see them as a horrific menace, bent on total destruction of their people and culture, that they only barely survived by tremendous effort and sacrifice. And quite a few in Ukraine, particularly Ukrainian Nationalists, see them primarily as a bulwark against Soviet/Russian domination, which was itself quite brutal and arguably genocidal against Ukrainians. I believe this strain is what Azov represents - it's just a meme demonstrating that they're really, seriously, majorly opposed to Russian domination. I don't think they have any awareness of, much less actually share, any of the actual viewpoints and goals of the original Nazi party, and of course have nothing to do with the Western view of Nazism. I think they'd be utterly baffled if you tried to discuss with them whether they intended to rampage across Europe and round up all the Jews if they were to win. They'd have no idea where you were coming from or how you got it into your head that they might want to do that.

I'm not in a position to provide examples but agree with OP that the described attitude is rampant.

Motte alum KulakRevolt had an interesting piece on this recently. https://www.anarchonomicon.com/p/were-all-hitlerists-now

I think the important part is simply, how is post-war Ukraine managed? Nazi-aligned groups getting funded in life-and-death struggle with a high mortality rate needs to be understood in this context. There are some potential parallels with Weimar Germany, where you had disbanded military units wandering around and forming militias in the context of a destabilized, new democracy with significant economic problems. I don't quite see Ukraine taking that path, but it's a possibility if the war ends with a politically divisive whimper and the economy crashes that a particularly well-trained and cohesive -but ideologically radical- group gains power in a society where post-war violence is normalized and insecurity is the norm.

Of course, there IS still a moral argument for "even in a life-and-death struggle, you don't give power to Nazis" as just that, a moral argument only (no practical considerations). I think the logical link here is, how likely are the Nazi groups to actually act on their hate-filled inclinations? If it's currently mostly-benign and political only that's one thing; if it's active in repression somehow, that's another. I also somewhat hesitate to write Nazism off as purely a local and minor ideology when it killed 6+ million people outside of war.

Firstly, their influence is grossly overblown, as outlined by multiple commenters here. A few thousand neo-Nazis aren't a particularly big threat, Ukrainian civic governance seems strong enough that in the event of a peace (of whatever kind, barring Russian occupation), the state machinery is at minimal risk of being overthrown and the country thrown into internecine fighting where such paltry numbers would make a difference. There are plenty of hardened combat units in Ukraine who have only fervent nationalism in common with Azov.

Secondly, there's always the pragmatic option once employed by Hamad to deal with the Al-Qassam brigades. What do you do with a group of fanatical (and exceedingly so, even by Hamas standards) Jihadists who went into every mission accepting death with equanimity if it spread their ethos?

You marry them off, going to refugee camps and selling impoverished women on the honorable prospect of marrying a glorious almost-martyr. Give them a pension and sinecure too, and they won't need to resort to violence as the only way they know to make a living, or as their first choice of livelihood.

Circa 2008:

Hamas, the militant Islamist group that controls Gaza, has been observing a truce with Israel since June, allowing its underground fighters to resurface but leaving them without much to do. At the same time, hundreds of the group’s women have been recently widowed, their husbands having been killed either in confrontations with Israel or in the fighting last year between Hamas and its secular rival, Fatah.

Taking advantage of the pause in violence, the Hamas leaders have turned to matchmaking, bringing together single fighters and widows, and providing dowries and wedding parties for the many here who cannot afford such trappings of matrimony.

“Marriage is the same as jihad,” or holy war, said Muhammad Yousef, one recently married member of the Qassam Brigades, the Hamas underground. “With marriage, you are producing another generation that believes in resistance.”

About 300 Qassam members, mostly in their 20s, signed up with their new wives for the most recent celebration, held at a sports stadium in the Tuffah district, east of Gaza City. Local mosques spread the word about the event and offered to help find spouses for single men whose families had not yet managed to arrange them a match.

As an added inducement, couples were promised a cash grant in lieu of a dowry, which few families could afford.

Turns out that a lot of angry young men with extremist tendencies rapidly cool down when confronted with a wife and kids they love and are responsible for. You're not going to dissuade them from their ideological tendencies quite so easily, but that's effectively de-fanging them.

In other words, deal with people with nothing to lose by giving them something to lose.

If/when this war cools down, well, there's plenty of Ukrainian women abroad, and at home, and it won't take all that much to either 'encourage' them to marry a dashing young fighter, while also giving them cash/jobs, and effective indemnity from political retribution when they cease to be allies of convenience. Provide the latter two and there's almost certainly going to be women wanting in regardless.

I get what you are saying, but pointing to Hamas as an example of how to successfully de-radicalize young violent men is not entirely without irony in 2024.

I think the steel man is that Azov has a lot of street cred with the Ukrainian nationalist right and could easily wind up leading the place in the event of postwar turmoil.

But again, what made the Nazis so bad was a set of policies that Azov doesn’t seem committed to. They’re close enough for government work to call Nazi but they’re not doctrinaire Nazis.

I did a rather cursory online search because the two linked articles are sort of confusing as they focus on two different units. The 3rd Assault Brigade is apparently a regular unit of the Ukrainian ground/land forces as of now, and if Wikipedia is to be trusted, its only tangible continuity with Azov is that most of its current(?) members were recruited in the Northern theatre of operations by those veterans of the unit who weren’t encircled in Mariupol. What I think bears mentioning in this particular context is that their insignia was apparently the subject of a rather comical PR move, namely that one stripe was removed from it so as to turn it into something that’s not a wolf hook. (See it for yourself here and here.)

The brigade, on the other hand, that still carries the “Azov” name is nominally of “special purpose” (whatever that means in this context, but this phrase has mostly been an ominous one, especially in Eastern Europe) and is part of the National Guard instead of the army land forces, but that is a difference that is only relevant in peacetime. And no, they don’t carry the wolf hook anymore either.

Anyway, it’s the latter unit that this US government decision affects, but I’d guess this is a purely symbolic measure, because I’d be rather surprised to learn that the Ukrainian National Guard used to have strict measures in effect until now to ensure the Azov does not receive US arms. And even if did, that’d only mean that Azov is being supplied with arms from other NATO members, presumably with rather more strict laws in effect against neo-Nazi symbology than the US.

Nonsense, we've never given weapons to some indigenous radical group because they were fighting the Russians, only to have them turn on us once that war was over!

...

More likely every Ukrainian who would think to do that will be dead by the war's end, and the country will be run by parasites that went to Harvard's Kennedy School of Government

...

9/11 was Al-Qaeda, not the Taliban.

The Taliban fought the US after (a) the US demanded that Bin Laden etc. were handed over and (b) the US joined with the Northern Alliance to overthrow the Taliban. If the Taliban had demanded the extradition of Pinochet (if he had been in hiding in the US) and allied with China to invade the US, I imagine that Americans would also have turned on the Taliban - not that the US was ever actually allied with or directly helping the Taliban, but I'm sure your suggestion to the contrary was just terse writing.

Well you've really changed my mind with that bit of scintillating criticism.

This is unnecessary dickishness. You do this often enough that you can't pretend you haven't been warned, and you are a grown man who can control your mouth and your typing fingers, so stop pretending you can't help it.

9/11 was Al-Qaeda, not the Taliban.

Bin Laden got his start in the mujahideen in Afghanistan, fighting the Soviets, supported and trained by the US. Is there an objection here beyond terminology?

[EDIT] - no, wait, it isn't even terminology. Your correction is straightforwardly less accurate than the comment it aims to correct. Didn't the Taliban get significant support from the US as well?

Bin Laden got his start in the mujahideen in Afghanistan, fighting the Soviets, supported and trained by the US.

(1) I specifically said Al-Qaeda, because the original claim was about groups, not individuals. For the specific claim I made: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_assistance_to_Osama_bin_Laden

Bin Laden was able to get Al-Qaeda going with his own money.

That bin Laden was a CIA proxy turned rogue makes for a great story and many people find it "too good not to be true". It supports non-interventionist ideologies, especially those who have never forgiven the US and the mujahideen for defeating the Soviets. The only problem is that it is not true, unless the CIA is far better at covering its tracks than we know. The suggestion in your comment (which may just be amphiboly) that he was trained by the US is a new one to me, though. I suppose it makes the story even better?

You could say that Al-Qaeda benefited INDIRECTLY from US aid to the mujahideen, but that's a clear motte-and-bailey. The original claim was (sarcastically) "we've never given weapons to some indigenous radical group because they were fighting the Russians, only to have them turn on us once that war was over!"

(2) "Didn't the Taliban get significant support from the US as well?"

You mean the organisation founded two years after the war with the Soviet-backed government ended? No.

However, someone could argue that the Taliban was the successor group of some mujahideen (specifically Pashtun ones around Kandahar) who had US support during the war, so I deliberately focused the discussion on Al-Qaeda, who seem to have undertaken 9/11 independently of the Taliban. Bin Laden claimed that Al-Qaeda was operating independently of the Taliban in the 9/11 attacks. He also did not attribute responsibility to the Taliban in tapes discovered in Afghanistan that (apparently) recorded bin Laden talking candidly. This was prior to his later (2004) admission of responsibility for the attack.

Indeed, the Taliban condemned the attack and were open (officially) to extraditing bin Laden to an Islamic country, if the US presented evidence. Of course, this offer was probably bullshit, and the US was justified in attacking the Taliban. However, the point is that 9/11 was not blowback for supporting a side in Afghanistan. If anything, it was the failure by the Bush I and Clinton administrations to support the establishment of a non-Taliban government in the mid-1990s that led to Afghanistan becoming a safe haven for bin Laden.

I am not an expert by any mean, but imho is the same situation of Croatia in the 90s; everyone screeching about far right nationalists who like Hitler and the Ustasce and the next croatian fascist regime after the war with Serbia. Then you have liberal democracy and talk of gay marriage legalization.

The Liberal-Atlantic bloc has been very good at using then dismantling far right organisation without any sort of problem, I have no doubt they will also do it in Ukraine. Unlike far-left organisations, there is no desire to keep these groups in power after the Emergency.

The crucial difference is that the war in question was concluded with complete success in swift military operations before Croatia had liberal democracy, because their war wasn't against Serbia per se, but against a separatist state in Krajina that was in a military disadvantage in every aspect, had no nuclear weapons, no arms industry and was not supported by any other country. Croatian far-right paramilitary groups had influence during the war because it was waged in the name of national independence. Once the central government's authority was secured over all territories it staked a claim for and the Croatian state was recognized by the so-called international community, I imagine there was little political support left for maintaining those armed groups anymore. I rather doubt they were dismantled in any sense, because dismantling entails coercive state measures, which I doubt were taken; it's rather that they there incorporated into the armed forces or disbanded on their own, and transformed into purely political parties.

I'm aware that the NAFO gang wants to believe that the situation in the Donbass is basically the same and final victory is in sight, but it actually isn't.

Wasn't the original Azov brigade pretty much destroyed at Mariupol? It may be the hard-core guys are dead.

That's gotta be the least popular position - Azov really were a bunch of Nazis and they died heroically, defending their country to the last man because of their steadfast Nazi hatred for Russians.

...

I want to talk about this piece (archive/unpaywalled here) from The Atlantic, titled Trump Rants About Sharks, and Everyone Just Pretends It’s Normal

The video clip the article is referring to is from a recent rally and is here on Twitter. One excerpt the article highlights:

I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery’s underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’ By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. Do you notice that? A lot of shark … I watched some guys justifying it today: ‘Well, they weren’t really that angry. They bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were not hungry, but they misunderstood who she was.’ These people are crazy.

The article's main thrust is that there's a double standard when it comes to mental fitness. We are used to this level of low-coherency rambling from Trump, but not Biden:

At rallies, the former president makes stream-of-consciousness statements that would raise questions about the mental acuity of anyone who said them at, say, the tail end of a night at a neighborhood bar, but that somehow don’t generate the same level of concern within the press or the Republican Party when Trump says them in front of a cheering crowd. By contrast, when Biden makes a gaffe—mixing up a name or a date rather than, for example, suggesting that boats sink because they’re heavy—questions arise about his mental fitness to be president.

There's also some hand-wringing about scientific awareness and facts. Shark attacks aren't up overall (but I don't think this is what Trump is claiming, so irrelevant), boats don't sink simply because they are heavy (is this just stating the obvious, or does he really think the heaviness of the boat is what makes a boat sink?), he plays up his connection to MIT to seem smart (completely true, spurious connection is just his uncle who was a professor there in an unrelated field, so clearly an unmerited brag). And then there's the actual fact of the matter: this is a silly and poor would-you-rather, because ships aren't being forced to include massive batteries and in any case a battery dropped in the ocean poses practically zero risk to nearby swimmers of electrocution, that's not how electrocution works. I suspect the guy he asked this question to remarked how unusual a question it was out of diplomacy, not that he was genuinely impressed by Trump's intelligence or question, much the same way we might speak to a small child.

Anyways, though I think the article actually does make an excellent point in that media attention is not fair at all in its coverage of mental fitness for both candidates (and honestly, that goes for both sides, though the Fox side of things is considerably more overt and distorted in my opinion) that's not the main point I wanted to make. I want to turn this a bit on its head. Pollster Frank Luntz likes to say something that has always really stuck with me. It's not what you say, it's what they hear.

What happens when we apply this paradigm?

We're not talking about the surface level of meaning in the sharks and such. Like I said, the claim that Trump was claiming shark attacks are increasing (rather than just being featured more prominently in the news recently) is a little tenuous, but this misses the point. What people hear is not an opinion about sharks. They hear someone discussing some interesting recent news with them. It's echoing some fears and validating them. It's attempting to pass the famous Beer Question and succeeding. I think a lot of Trump's comments follow this pattern. Sure, it's often incoherent. I think people don't realize how much so until they really listen to an unfiltered Trump interview. However, the main takeaway for a listener at this rally is not obtaining new facts about sharks or boats. It's getting a sense for the candidate and what they are like. What they perceive is that Trump has connections, that he likes thinking outside the box, that he rambles a lot, that he is in tune with what's happening in the world around him, and things of that nature. There's a little bad in there, but it's mostly a positive impression.

This shows up in other areas, too. Biden is (understandably) very careful about specific words and phrases when asked about Israel and the war, in what he says. What people hear isn't someone thoughtful, however. They hear someone who doesn't have an actual plan, who wants the problem to go away. The fact that Trump has deliberately said almost nothing about his opinion heavily hints the same (the debates are going to be interesting).

Now, are we wrong to completely ignore the actual content of Trump or Biden's words? Sure. Probably. A lot of hay has been made about Trump's vindictiveness and threats about what to do about the Justice department and other major agencies if he wins again. But I'd argue that people already do hear the vindictiveness in his voice. They will weigh it alongside other things on the scale, and in November they will decide. Does this mean words are irrelevant? No. The media will do, if not its job, than certainly something approximating it if you squint. We will hear about details if we know where to look. But completely ignoring tone and the "what they hear" part is a major, major blindspot in the media. I get it, it's hard to talk about the impression a candidate gives, because that's a straight expressway to bias leaking in. But certainly an attempt should be made.

So yeah, I guess the tl;dr is that left-wing media still doesn't get Trump because they only look on the surface, and when they do a deeper dive, they aren't charitable. The question becomes this: If we accept that discussing a candidate's tone and impressions are equally as valid as the content of their words, how can media (if it even can) depict and discuss them fairly?

The difference is people already expect to hear Trump say some dumb shit, Biden supposed to be and generally is more competent and his gaffes stand out much more.

Trump is an idiot, and the shark thing is just more idiocy, but he’s cogent and amicable. Which wins him zero points with people that think he’s Satan incarnate, but makes him a fun underdog to root for by his black pilled conservative online base. Biden seems like he’s tired and waiting for his afternoon nap most days. He has the charisma of an old slug.

So yeah, I guess the tl;dr is that left-wing media still doesn't get Trump because they only look on the surface, and when they do a deeper dive, they aren't charitable.

I could very well use this sentiment to describe the right’s dismissal of Obama in 2008 as “surface level” and “uncharitable.” Many a conservative radio personality enjoyed making fun of the “tingle down the leg” of Obama’s adoring media fan base. It doesn’t help that Obamamania was best represented as a “feeling” by his supporters, with excited yips for “change we can believe in” coming from his young, weirdly obsessed fans. Trump supporters similarly seem to be saturated with “feelings” that Trump is the answer to decades of corruption, that he’s going to clean up the swamp and make America great again.

Same shit, different tribe. Real governance is much less fun than leg tingles and shark stories.

Really, really interesting Obama comparison I did not expect. There's some fascinating shifts going on with time about views on the Obama years. There's a group who think he sold out to the moderates, there are some who think he was a closet moderate (or even neocon) all along, some who still think he's like the Antichrist, some who think he was a dreamer who got crushed by political reality and infighting, and some who don't really remember much about him other than "good vibes" and that he didn't seem to have very many major scandals.

Uh, Biden is not saying oddball shit off the cuff. He’s not mixing up names and dates. He’s getting lost in the span of less than ten feet. He’s sitting in imaginary furniture. He’s babbling, baby-like, in the middle of prepared speeches. He’s shitting himself in public. He’s talking to dead people.

Biden has always tried to greet a ton of people individually, as a politician. I can hardly remember the names of actual people I've lived with as roommates sometimes, and he has tried to remember everyone in politics for decades and decades. There are over 500 people in Congress alone, right now, let alone in the last 60 years. That's a ton of names to keep in mind. So I do cut him some slack if he forgets one or two have died or mixes them up. He also mixes up words historically, due to a childhood speech impediment. So does my mother, and she's 55 and very sharp.

More worrying is "sitting in imaginary furniture". Are you talking about a few days ago? I had to look this up. The video was deceptively edited. It's classic misinformation. You can clearly see in a more full video that a chair is right there, and he was hesitating because he wasn't sure if it was time/appropriate to sit down right then or not. The same has happened to me on stage, and I'm 30. The fact this seeped into your perception of the situation should be a little concerning, right?

This might be a moot point in some general sense, because we're getting a pair of debates pretty soon. I think that will be a pretty decent barometer of how they are both doing.

I've seen this video making rounds as well. The thing with Biden is he seems frozen in a smile, uninvolved with what is happening. He seems tuned out, unaware and unresponsive. I don't necessarily think he should have been dancing around, his hips probably hurt! But his frozen, immobile body and face is unnerving.

I think there has been a very noticeable change in just the last two months. He just looks checked out.

Sharp declines do sometimes happen in two months. But it's not the norm. Usually it takes much longer. I wanted to be sarcastic about this, but I'll be upfront instead: two months exactly coincides with the start of general election season. I am inherently suspicious of a narrative that says "oh it's much worse in just the last two months" when of course partisan narratives sharply increase like clockwork at exactly this time of year, every four years. That doesn't mean Biden is totally fine and dandy, but skepticism should be the word of the day.

I've seen people claiming Biden is old and senile for the last six years, when they weren't claiming he died and was replaced by a surgically altered body double. They have pointed to weird speech gaffes, reading teleprompter cues out loud, and Biden falling off his bike.

I have mostly ignored these examples.

Lately it actually seems like he's as senile as people have been trying to make it seem.

I'm a little surprised you didn't also go for "Everybody knows Biden is super sharp behind closed doors".

If you or your mother are displaying with regularity the same 'symptoms' that Biden does with increased frequency - at age 30 or 50 - I would be worried about mine and my own's well-being. I am getting flashbacks to the article written by a 30-something male about how RBG's workout routine nearly killed him, and then she croaked not long after.

I think both Biden and Trump's behind-the-doors performance is highly variable on the day. I further don't like the situation we're in (though who does?) because kind of like how theoretically the Supreme Court is supposed to avoid not just impropriety but the "appearance of impropriety" as well, I would hope that moving forward we avoid even the appearance of mental decline in powerful leaders (Constitutional Amendment, anyone?)

The incident referred to happened a few days ago: Biden was at Normandy attending DDay commemorations, when he leaned over awkwardly, made an unusual series of squatting motions, and then resumed standing upright. At some point after this Jill Biden escorted him off stage. Critics suggested that Biden shat himself. Critic-critics suggested that, no, Biden was obviously just confused (but not in a senile way). I couldn't really make it out myself.

Leaping to call it misinformation as you have done really triggers my BS-detectors and I politely request some elaboration, or I will have to conclude that you were subject to the misinformation campaign of calling uncomfortable ideas as misinformation campaigns. There are a lot of explainers arguing that there is no evidence Biden is going senile, and every gaffe is fine.

Real Biden connosieurs of the past weeks prefer this clip of Biden standing passively during the White House Juneteenth lawn party, anyways:

https://x.com/_johnnymaga/status/1800331299108049364

At some point after this Jill Biden escorted him off stage.

Am I the only one thinking that not so much he wants second term, but his wife wants second term as first lady ...

Two things can be true. Biden can be showing signs of trouble, and videos can also be deceptively clipped, edited, or spliced to make things seem worse. We can be upset at both. We don't have to fall for one particular narrative just because tribalism or something else.

Here is the first youtube video I found that shows both the original, shared clip from a GOP account, and a slightly longer clip, where Biden actually sits down. I'd say that the original partisan video makes it seem as if he doesn't know if a chair even exists behind him, and you yourself summarized it as "sitting in imaginary furniture" which is solid evidence of that fact. A full video makes it, in my eyes, pretty clear that he thought they were about ready to sit down but then second-guessed himself. Sure, wanting to sit down too early can be an indicator of frailty. Whether it falls into outright "disinformation" or is it more just regular partisan mud-slinging is a slightly more difficult question. But let's not motte and bailey this. The video is clearly and incontrovertibly edited so as to give an incomplete and deceptive message. The real discussion is, "how bad is the manipulation". (Note on youtube link: I didn't listen to any of the rest of the commentary, just found it for putting both videos in quick succession for brevity)

Armchair diagnoses aren't necessarily invalid or inherently unreliable, but we need to be pretty careful with them. A lot of the resources out there are inherently unreliable -- viral clips, personal attestations by both obvious opponents like Johnson as well as allies like a campaign co-chair, and I really don't know what else you're supposed to base it off of (especially since most people don't watch full rallies or speeches). That's why I say the debate is really going to be a good demonstration, of much higher evidentiary quality than a lot of what's out there. I worry that a lot of people are going in to the debate having already made up their mind, based on excessive truth-weighting of random twitter clips, rather than something more substantive (i.e. the debate)

Biden is worse than four years ago, and just his age should, in theory, be enough to disqualify him (along with Trump), this is someone we're giving command of the military, they need to have top-tier judgement. But ... you should go watch an hour-long uncut interview with Biden on youtube. He's clearly not senile. He is slow, he makes more mistakes while talking, and most of all the way he moves his body is incredibly rigid and strange and creates an infirm affect. But he can engage in complicated arguments. You're basing your view of Biden on the worst clips selected from hundreds of hours of video tapes. If a camera was watching me 8 hours a day for the last 6 months, there'd probably be at least one ten-second clip fitting for inclusion in a biden senility compilation

Can i get receipts for the imaginary furniture and shitting himself, please?

https://x.com/RNCResearch/status/1798685173216927843

Longer video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=y3bHBGyICbA&t=15374 (skip to 4:16:25 if the timestamp doesn't work)

That is neither him shitting himself nor him trying to sit on imaginary furniture.

boats don't sink simply because they are heavy

I mean, boat sinks iff weight(boat + contents) > weight(water displaced by boat at zero freeboard). Sure, "contents" includes any water that's gotten into the boat, but it's still primarily about weight.

He's setting up a round of "would you rather" with the choices being "risk getting bitten by a shark" and "risk getting electrocuted". In the process, he bends the laws of physics and makes a digression in which he humorously mocks "them" for trying to explain away all the shark attacks that have supposedly been in the news lately. The clip got a laugh out of me the first time I watched it (specifically the "because they misunderstood who she was" part). I wouldn't question the mental acuity of any of my 130 IQ friends if they said the exact same thing from beginning to end, modulo style.

There's no comparison between this and Biden-tier gaffes. This isn't even a gaffe, just working-class-coded banter.

just working-class-coded banter

Which from what I’ve seen, means the same thing as gaffe to anyone who doesn’t interact on a peer basis with working class men.

I will say, despite my general defense in another adjacent comment, that I DO think you're broadly correct. Circling the wagons around Biden is doing him nor the country any favors. Nor is attempting to rely on big speeches -- which I will say I think is less a tactical, hide-Biden decision, and more Biden's own misunderstanding of the world. I think that he believes just like how certain speeches are famous in history, that people pay attention to them and find them inspiring. That they are the most effective way to spread his message. I think he's wrong. That's not how people communicate effectively in today's world, much less in politics. He should be doing fireside chats, he should be featuring people around him that he will actually be leaning on to help with the more than 1-man task of governing. Sure, the media occasionally covers speeches, but most people rarely read those articles, and if they do, they don't watch clips of the actual speech. It's wasted effort. The campaign is a total disaster.

There's a world where he leans into "I'm pretty sharp, but just in case, I have help" that actually works as a campaign, but it's not this world. I think Jon Stewart rightly and effectively skewered the attitude of "let's not talk about it, and if we do, deny deny deny" as a terrible idea.

I am what you might call a disillusioned voter. Over the past year I have become passionately convinced that elected officials, in all levels of government, and irrespective of the major party they affiliate with, are not working with Americans' best interests in mind. They are more concerned with taking personal jabs at each other than they are working together to solve problems affecting us at the local, state and federal level. They only take into account the needs of the most vocal, influential, wealthy or powerful individuals. They only care about staying in office as long as possible, at any cost, instead of taking the time to listen and truly understand their constituents needs. They all regurgitate the same talking points, how the other party is evil and you can't trust them, instead of being bridge-builders and leaders. I could go on.

I've become so convicted in this, that I believe the best way to vote is to cast a completely black ballot.

Reasons:

-Your ballot is still counted, and will contribute to voter turnout statistics.

-You have the right to cast a vote for no one.

-You don't have to worry about picking the lesser of two evils, since you're not making a selection at all.

-Your vote for no one affirms that you believe democratic processes are important, and your lack of selection communicates dissatisfaction with the major parties. A sizable voter turnout with no candidates selected may cause them to change their platform to appeal to dissatisfied voters.

Arguments against this that I am not persuaded by:

"But that means the [party/candidate I oppose] will win." Yes, that will likely happen. No, it does not bother me, nor does it pursuade me. And that will be the case unless and until we are able to get more effective leaders on the ballot. It may very well take a darker period in our country's history to wake enough people up to the issues with the two-party system.

"But aren't there things that [major party] supports that you also support?" Yes, but I do not wish to involve myself in partisan politics, anymore. I believe that candidate selection should be based on their character, their ability to be charitable, kind, compassionate, driven, and most importantly, a leader who is willing to actively listen. I want nothing to do with the whole, "the other party is bad so you must vote for me" BS. I could care less about political parties at this point. Get more decent human beings up for election and then I'll consider voting for them.

"But you should vote to support [social issues]." I'm not voting to support a cause. I'm voting to find the most qualified candidate.

"It's anti-democratic not to pick a candidate." It's anti-democratic to not show up at the polls. It is completely democratic to cast a blank ballot. You're freely communicating that no candidates are fit to hold office.

"Then vote for an independent or minor party candidate." Independant candidates are not always on the ballot and with the stranglehold the major parties have on our election processes, minor parties will never gain a meaningful foothold in public offices. Ranked choice voting and citizen-funded elections would help, but no major party candidate would support it because it means the major parties would have less influence.

"But you need to vote this way or with this perspective, because reasons." No I don't. I have the right to cast my vote how I see fit, just as you do. I'm really not a fan of collective ideologies surrounding voting.

Other than the above, I am willing to hear any other arguments.

I came to similar conclusions as you a long time ago without much disillusionment about politics because of the simple math of voting: the only way that my vote matters in terms of who gets elected is if one of the elections in which I voted was decided by exactly 1 vote, after all the recounts and such, and the odds of that happening are so astronomically small that the very real guaranteed cost of taking the time and effort to go to a place to vote or to fill out a form and mail it in aren't worth it. However, I voted in the 2016 and 2020 US elections for 2 different reasons, which you might find compelling.

First of all, I don't think I'm a very good liar, so I wanted to place myself in a situation that I wouldn't have to lie convincingly. Given that, I wanted to honestly be able to say that I voted for the first woman president of the United States merely for the historic reasons (whether or not I think the whole "first person of [x] in position [y]" should be historic, it is historic) which is why I voted in 2016. Didn't quite work out that way, but the chance of positive upside seemed worth the cost. In 2020, I voted for Biden, because I wanted to be able to honestly say that I helped to vote out Donald Trump from the White House, lest I face severe negative consequences from people who consider not voting against Trump to be a mortal sin. Of course, the exact mirror situation could happen with people considering not voting for Trump to be a mortal sin, but my own assessment of my risk was that Biden supporters were far more likely to enact such negative consequences on me than Trump supporters. I'm not sure I'll vote for Biden again this year rather than abstaining like I did in 2012, since the fervor to keep Biden in the White House while preventing Trump from getting back in, for some reason, doesn't feel as strong now as the fervor to knock Trump out of the White House in 2020 (I'm guessing that Covid & the riots of that year probably had a lot to do with it).

the only way that my vote matters in terms of who gets elected is if one of the elections in which I voted was decided by exactly 1 vote, after all the recounts and such

I think this is underselling it a bit: my mental model as a self-identified swing voter is that my vote or the votes of others like me could be the deciding factor in an otherwise-close race. My vote is worthwhile, because if everyone who felt that way voted together, it would actually merit attention from The Powers That Be.

But I will also support casting a blank ballot as a better, valid protest vote over not casting a ballot at all.

my mental model as a self-identified swing voter is that my vote or the votes of others like me could be the deciding factor in an otherwise-close race. My vote is worthwhile, because if everyone who felt that way voted together, it would actually merit attention from The Powers That Be.

I used to think somewhat like this, but I realized that whether or not I decided to vote, I wouldn't affect the behavior or votes of others like me. Others like me will make their decisions on whether/who to vote based on their own beliefs and values. Those beliefs and values will likely be similar to mine, and so their decisions will likely be similar to mine, but it's not as if me changing my mind now to vote would influence them to make similar decisions.

but it's not as if me changing my mind now to vote would influence them to make similar decisions.

It's not that it would influence them, it's that the hundreds/tens of thousands of other "you"s are also considering the exact same choice. If all ~75,000 of the statistically equivalent "me"s out there in the country all decide 'who cares about my 1 vote', then we may all tip to the side of not voting. But maybe if I decide that I must be part of a statistical block of similar people rather than a super unique individual, then maybe all the "me"s also decide that, and we end up voting anyway.

At least that's how I like to think of it (even if I'm overestimating the number of "me"s out there, on any given simple issue it grows much larger).

In 2020, I voted for Biden, because I wanted to be able to honestly say that I helped to vote out Donald Trump from the White House, lest I face severe negative consequences from people who consider not voting against Trump to be a mortal sin.

While I am aware that such people exist, have you actually encountered them in any meaningful context in real life? My friends are pretty much all normie blue tribe liberals, some even work for the federal government, and no one seems all that surprised or bothered that my views do not match their own.

Are you?

No, at least not people to the extent that the negative consequences I face from them would be considered "severe." It can be a bit difficult to guess at due to the fact that I've literally never met a single open Trump supporter among my IRL social circles, though I have a friend who's fairly right-wing and occasionally, hesitantly, shyly open about it, and the extent of negative consequences tends to be just ostracization rather than anything severe. In retrospect, I was being paranoid in a similar way as the people in 2016 who were saying death camps for gays would be around the corner if Trump got elected.

Yeah, I get the reticence, particularly within a monoculture of people that aren't necessarily close friends. I'm just asking because my own experience with being hard-right on a number of issues, including things like advocating the elimination of multiple federal departments, just doesn't seem to get actually get me any real blowback. Maybe it's because I tend towards either being kind of jokingly sardonic or dryly policy focused rather than coming off as a cultural enemy, but it's just really not consistent with what I hear people expecting.

I mostly understand how the electoral college incentivizes a two party system, but it still boggles my mind about why with so much dysfunction and dissatisfaction a new party just doesn't cannibalize any party. Heck even splitting a party should have been possible, what is it with American politicians so sheepishly toeing the party line? Obviously we know a party overtaking other is possible since Republican party took over the Whigs vote. We know that outside candidates can make an impact if it wins like Reform party. What incentive does one have to prefer an already established party other than the obvious ones like connections to donors, rising up through the ranks faster etc?

Because it's much simpler to primary people - like, in a parliamentary system, yes, Trump would've created the America First Party and gotten 21% in the parliamentary elections, and maybe gotten a coalition with the Mitt Romney-led Republican's, etc.

Also, here's the thing, yes, a lot of people are upset with the current parties, but nobody agrees that much - some people think both parties are too left-wing, some parties thing both parties are too right-wing, some parties think they're too war-mongering, others think they're too soft, etc., and so on.

The Whig's had also been falling apart for basically 20 years over splits over slavery, and the reality is, there is no issue in America today - even abortion, immigration, etc. that comes close to what slavery was in America in the 20 years in the lead-up to the Civil War, so there was that. Also, whether you think the Democrat's or Republican's are weak, they're both getting 45-50% of the vote every national election - a party would have a chance if say, the GOP was losing 60-40 every time, because hey, why not try if we're losing anyway. But, since both sides believe that defecting means the side they agree with even less could win and install a lot of terrible policies, you stay as a good soldier and try to win the next primary.

My whole take is that your individual vote is meaningless, but as soon as you participate in discussions with other people about your vote with the attitude of treating it seriously and thoughtfully, suddenly your vote regains meaning. You play an important role that can only be seen in aggregate, but can be seen clearly. You affirm the importance of the vote, and equally as important, you have the opportunity to nudge someone's viewpoint. In an optimistic view, if you speak with say 15 people about what or who you want to vote for, and change 1 person's mind and nudge 2 others, this chain can self-propagate. If those people -- even just the one! -- speak with 15 people, then you could have a distributed albeit real and tangible effect. It's also on an order of magnitude greater than your singular vote.

As they say about a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear, if you cast your vote without ever speaking your intentions to another soul, it may as well not have happened. Talk about it, and you get a drastic paradigm shift. That's my take.

I'll even go out on a limb for a bit and say that if people truly care about an issue, and achieve a sensible majority about it, sometimes there's a time lag (occasionally pretty long) but the US democratic system usually ends up representing these opinions at the end of the day. For example, I'm bullish on Congress banning individual stock trades within the decade, even though classic political microeconomics/game theory says this would be irrational.

I don't want to convince you your vote isn't meaningless, but I sense a free lunch here. Would you be willing to vote the way I ask, since you are indifferent to what the actual result of the election is?

What do you have in mind?

Straight Democrat in all possible cases.

I will say this. The DNCs platform is closer to what my views tend to be, which I would describe as a bit of social democrat and a bit of libertarian. Not hard-in-the-paint, taxation is theft libertarian, but individual rights-supporting, freedom of the individual-supporting libertarian. From the social democrat side, I take support for universal healthcare, gun control reform, and higher taxes on the wealthy.

That having been said, I won't vote straight Democrat because I believe the DNC would not entertain some of my personal ideas -- for example, a complete overhaul of our election system, an independent nonpartisan commission for confirming federal judges and cabinet members, term limits on members of Congress and a Citizen's Assembly. I don't believe their career members or their donors would want anything that could threaten their ability to stay in power.

I have not heard of any cases where one could exert more influence by participating less. Just as you feel your vote has no weight today, your lack of a vote will not have weight either. If you had any preference at all for one of the candidates, on any small issue, you give up what little you were doing to shift things.

If you want to exert more power, then exert more power. Participate in local politics, write a blog, spam memes, win hearts and minds, live a double life as a nocturnal caped crusader.

I agree with you completely, and I take it a step further by not voting at all. Whatever marginal benefit my blank ballot would have on voter turnout statistics is negligible compared to the inconvenience of voting.

I have become passionately convinced that elected officials, in all levels of government, and irrespective of the major party they affiliate with, are working with Americans' best interests in mind

I'm guessing this is a typo, you probably mean "are not working with Americans' best interests in mind"

At any rate, I don't expect many people here will disagree with you

Yes lol. Thanks, I just edited it.

Your vote for no one doesn't matter: the only thing it does is create, in your mind, a relationship between you and "democratic processes." It cannot change the results of the election, and a burst in spoiled ballots isn't going to influence policy or governance.

The main effect of casting your ballot is going to be how it influences how you think and relate to the State, granting it more legitimacy than actually exists. It's the secular equivalent of hating religion, getting nothing out of it, and nevertheless insisting on going to church with a constant grimace on your face to register your objection.

(It's still better than voting for "the lesser of two evils," which has a tendency to drive people to adopt a tribe and shift their positions to make the lesser evil feel less evil or even actively good.)

I'm not voting to support a cause. I'm voting to find the most qualified candidate.

The way our system works in practice is that our votes are only for causes. Biden isn’t Biden, Biden is the team of qualified agents behind the name who promote a particular agenda. The same with Trump (perhaps to a lesser degree because he’s not well-trained in politics). They are not writing policies, agendas, calendars or speeches. They don’t even write their own biographies.

Your view hinges on the idea that a blank ballot is more meaningful than a 0.0000001% influence on the country. But it’s not. No one will care about your blank ballot. It’s healthy to be disillusioned and not give a shit about the election, and that’s why it’s only every so often that you have to vote. It’s worth it given the minuscule amount of time invested. You concede that there is a lesser of two evils and that’s what life is about, you should always pick the lesser of two weevils.

The way our system works in practice is that our votes are only for causes.

Correct, and I feel that votes should be for the right candidate, instead.

Your view hinges on the idea that a blank ballot is more meaningful than a 0.0000001% influence on the country. But it’s not. No one will care about your blank ballot.

That's fine, that doesn't bother me.

It’s healthy to be disillusioned and not give a shit about the election, and that’s why it’s only every so often that you have to vote.

I would give a shit about the election if the major parties weren't so polarized and concerned with circlejerking and if minor party and unaffiliated voters had equal representation on the ballot. Thus, I disagree with your last sentence and instead suggest that you shouldn't vote for anyone.

We go to the ballot box with the election system we have, not the one that we might want.

Well, then in that case, I choose not to go to the ballot box at all.

All I can say is it was ever thus. Politicians optimise for politics, that's what makes them politicians.

My recommendation if you're uninterested in supporting one of the candidates on offer is to write something on your ballot instead of leaving it blank. Give whoever sees it some indication of what you want and why you're dissatisfied instead of making them guess.

Yeah, I may do that instead of leaving it blank, especially since SSCReader says it would likely not be counted.

Your vote for no one affirms that you believe democratic processes are important

But why would you believe this? After all, it's those same democratic processes that gave us our current parties and politicians. Have you considered that maybe this is the inevitable outcome of the system and its incentives?

I believe that candidate selection should be based on their character, their ability to be charitable, kind, compassionate, driven, and most importantly, a leader who is willing to actively listen.

You can believe that, but that's clearly not how they're actually selected, and I don't see how to change that. What if that goal isn't really achievable?

Get more decent human beings up for election and then I'll consider voting for them.

What if modern democracy isn't actually compatible with having "decent human beings up for election"? Consider that perhaps the nature of American politics makes the current crop you find so distasteful unavoidable. That this unfortunate outcome is simply what American democracy is.

What if some better democracy, with better candidates, simply isn't achievable, and the only choice is between the current dysfunctional, partisan democracy that has you disillusioned; or abandoning democracy altogether?

What if some better democracy, with better candidates, simply isn't achievable, and the only choice is between the current dysfunctional, partisan democracy that has you disillusioned; or abandoning democracy altogether?

Intermediate options have certainly existed. The available policies with regard to democratic representation aren't universal suffrage or bust.

The available policies with regard to democratic representation aren't universal suffrage or bust.

Except, first, I'm not sure how restricting the franchise would resolve the issue in question, at least not without restricting it down to a tiny fraction of the population. (But which one, then?)

Second, I'm not sure how it would be done. Because I remember once looking up, over a decade ago, the historical precedents for narrowing the franchise — without eliminating it, that is. And while it's been awhile I do remember a few things from what I was able to find. First, that no nation with universal adult suffrage has ever even tried to narrow the franchise back from that (again, as opposed to suspending or ending democracy entirely). That the only one I found that tried to go back from universal male suffrage was the 2nd French Republic, with the 31 May 1850 electoral law. This mostly served to let Louis-Napoléon grow his support with the people by opposing it, and he undid it the next year, and restored universal male suffrage, during his December 1851 auto-coup, in which he assumed dictatorial powers, and which led to a new constitution a month later that essentially ended the Republic, and set the ground for the Second Empire officially declared that following Christmas. And lastly, that every place that tried to narrow the franchise significantly saw massive political unrest, destabilization, and, similar to ol' Napoleon III, some sort of coup or dictatorship emerging.

Sure, there were some times in early US history where various states made changes to their voting laws that removed the franchise from some subset of voters; but in all of those cases that I found, those same changes also expanded the franchise to some other, generally larger, set of new voters, leaving it an expansion in general.

Tl;dr, the franchise never really gets narrowed in any lasting manner, only expanded or eliminated.

But why would you believe this? After all, it's those same democratic processes that gave us our current parties and politicians. Have you considered that maybe this is the inevitable outcome of the system and its incentives?

I have not considered that. However, just because the outcome is inevitable doesn't mean it shouldn't be changed.

What if modern democracy isn't actually compatible with having "decent human beings up for election"? Consider that perhaps the nature of American politics makes the current crop you find so distasteful unavoidable. That this unfortunate outcome is simply what American democracy is.

Well, yes, I agree that it isn't compatible. That's why I would hope that undervoting across the board might help communicate that we need to come back to basics -- mutual respect, recognizing the humanity of every individual, etc.

What if some better democracy, with better candidates, simply isn't achievable, and the only choice is between the current dysfunctional, partisan democracy that has you disillusioned; or abandoning democracy altogether?

Then perhaps democracy as a system of government should be retooled or abandoned.

However, just because the outcome is inevitable doesn't mean it shouldn't be changed.

If it's inevitable, doesn't that mean, definitionally, that it can't be changed? At least, not without replacing the entire system itself.

That's why I would hope that undervoting across the board might help communicate that we need to come back to basics

What makes you think it's a matter of "communicating"? That doesn't really change the fundamental incentives, nor does it address irreconcilable differences in fundamental values, or deeply incompatible group interests.

Then perhaps democracy as a system of government should be retooled or abandoned.

In which case (particularly the latter, which is my position), voting a blank ballot — which, as you note, affirms belief that the current democratic processes are important — is not the right response.

(Indeed, it remains a bit of a question, how one best expresses in a democratic election opposition to democracy and elections.)

Amusing anecdote: I remember a few years ago when some dime-a-dozen voter advocacy group did an AMA on Reddit. In light of the recent controversy over election fraud, a Redditor asked about what steps are taken to ensure the sanctity of elections. The advocacy group gave a boilerplate response about how elections are super duper secure, and that even if, hypothetically, election fraud did occur, it occurs in small enough numbers so as not to impact elections.

To which a glib Redditor responded, “kind of like how my single vote is too small a number to impact elections?”

The mic drop was deafening. He did not get a response.

Generally, very low voter turnout is considered a signal that people become disillusioned and that a change of course is needed.

Marking you ballot in any way except the accepted one on the other hand is usually considered a simple mistake and counted as such. So currently the message you are sending the politicians, as seen from their pov, is that you're happy with the system as-is, but you just failed to follow very simple and easy to understand instructions.

I'm wondering if you misunderstood. I'm saying, folks should go to their polling place, ask for a ballot and intentionally submit it blank. You still get marked down as having voted, and those ballots would conceivably get counted along with marked ballots under voter turnout stats, but it wouldn't be counted in the results.

Having run elections before, blank ballots we just put in a pile and basically ignore. Those who are written on but not filled out correctly, we did have to report on specifics, but blank ones the only thing we reported was the number, and given we don't know if it was supposed to be a protest or someone's pen didn't work and they failed to notice or something else, we didn't actually carry that through to our election reports in any meaningful way. There are always blank votes, but being blank doesn't actually tell you the person meant to submit it blank.

Your assumption is that the people running the elections will interpret a blank vote the same way you meant it. I am not sure at all that is true.

If there were some kind of publicized campaign (Vote for none of the above!) then maybe. But without it, a blank vote doesn't carry useful information in and of itself.

Yes, I understand you correctly. I've had the discussion on not voting vs false/unmarked voting vs protest voting a bunch of times by now. Whether you keep it blank or do whatever else that results in your vote not counting, it will at best just not end up being noticed at all. The voter turnout is high, the good parties are being voted for, everything is fine. At worst, if people look at statistics on unmarked/wrong ballots they'll just conclude you're to dumb to fill out the ballot appropriately. I've seen that literal reaction in action "oh did you know that like 10% of ballots end up not being counted because they're unmarked or so? That seems high." "Yeah some people can't even vote lol".

Imo the correct course of action is either not voting (after all, if you're disillusioned about something, you would usually not continue engaging in it) or protest vote.

I think it’s the opposite. Very low turnout means voters are largely happy with the government and don’t think it’s worth spending a few hours voting.

High turnout means you have two groups with broad disagreement that you care deeply about. It gets me to vote. In my view the left is completely insane and the right has some (not all) good policy. If I were in Europe it would be even more important as I think those countries are dying thru immigration.

I'm reporting on how it's perceived by the establishment politicians, and they're usually pretty clear that high turnout = good. Likewise, the establishment media will usually report negatively about record low turnouts and positively vice versa (unless the wrong parties are being voted for, but OP takes care not to do that).

Do the politicians who won actually care about low turnout? The losing candidates and liberal media in my neck of the woods always complain about low voter turnout after every election, but I’ve never gotten the impression that the winners mind in the slightest.

In the short term, no, but in the longer term a low turnout means increased risk in the next election, which drives prioritization and strategy.

The nature of low turnout is that the lower it is, the less stable it is for the incumbent, because ever-smaller groups of interested voters can be decisive in upturning it if they either switch or even just re-enter the voting ranks next election. As voter participation can be volatile, this means that it's relatively easy for sudden surges of voter engagement to turn against an incumbent. As a result, politicians would rather win with low engagement than lose, but what they really want is higher voter turnout of their base, to be more resilient, and a failure of turnout on their end means- even if victorious this time- that things need to change.

Personally, I'd consider this an advantage of voluntary over mandatory voting systems. In mandatory voting systems, there's considerably less volatility as there's a lot less sway in overriding existing factionalism / voter commitment to past votes. (People are less likely to vote against something / someone they've already voted for, and such.) While whether volatility is itself good or bad is questionable, in my view it's an important part of being able to actually challenge incumbents, and incumbents have enough built-in advantages that challenges to them on irregular voter sentiment sways is a good thing.

This seems like a misunderstanding of the reasons our democracy is failing to deliver compelling candidates. It's not the system, it's not the candidates, it's not some shadowy "they" at the top that will see the signal in your blank vote and adjust things to compensate. It's that we, the voters, have no single coherent thing that we want or can demand. Some few individuals, over represented on this forum, have thought out coherent ideas but as citizens in general we collectively want lower taxes and more government spending. We want less immigration but cheaper labor. We want our burgers to cost less but the guy flipping them to be paid more. What we would want is impossible so we can't have it.

What's the platform you imagine a better class of candidate would even run on? We've all had the self indulgent experience of imagining the speech we'd give on the campaign stage to bring the nation together. But after your elegant and coherent vision is expressed to the camera the other guy is going to accuse you of wanting to raise taxes or failing to support some popular increase in services and they'll be right.

The truth is that we're a divided people under a system that is designed to lock shut if there isn't a mandate. Our representatives can't push through what we want because it's not popular enough but they can shut down the other guy's thing that also isn't popular enough and we're going to keep supporting them in that shutting down because we find their radical ideas repellent. That's the way things are and they way things will stay until we as a nation are able to come back together and unite under a shared vision.

Vote blank if you want, it won't do anything because it can't do anything. You're screaming into a void and no one is listening.

Well, that is an incredibly bleak outlook, but also sadly true, I feel.

I think its a little bit the system. I think first past the post combined with primaries distorts things towards polorization in a way that RCV and multi member districts would somewhat alleviate. Like most things where there is a large and persistent problem there is a good chance that perverse incentives are the issue and a difference system with different incentives could help.

"But you should vote to support [social issues]." I'm not voting to support a cause. I'm voting to find the most qualified candidate.

What does "most qualified" mean to you? For me, it's the person most capable of advancing the causes I support. Politics isn't and shouldn't be some HR checklist of who had the most jobs that are roughly similar to this job and can tick the boxes for being "qualified". I want them to agree with me on the issues I care about the most and demonstrate the capacity to legislate accordingly.

I guess I'm looking for something that most people don't want: politicians who are authentic human beings. They all seem to be robots parroting whatever the most recently trending culture war issues are and then saying what they think the public wants. None of them give a shit insofar as what keeps them in office.

Here is an example of a candidate I would consider supporting. According to his bio, he seems to be running to genuinely represent his district and won't play partisan games. https://www.robert-smith.org/

I mean, he seems fine, but his website and platform look more-or-less bog-standard blue-state Republican running for Congress to me. Sure, he dresses it up in non-partisan "let's just roll up our shirt sleeves and get it done" language, but this looks exactly the same as half the Republican congressional campaign websites I've seen.

Sounds like you just prefer an older version of Republicans who aren't trying to do a bad Trump impression. There's plenty out there, they're just out of political fashion and haven't been doing well in primaries the last 8 years or so.

It's not so much that he's a Republican that would attract me to vote for him, but the fact that he (allegedly) is willing to engage in bipartisanship.

At this juncture, I would vote for any decent human being that isn't MAGA and isn't beholden to their party's interests. Maybe I'm asking for the moon, IDK. I'm just sick of all this shit. I'm 30 years old and there's elected people acting like out-of-control toddlers.

And all Im saying is these types of candidates are everywhere. Throw a rock while in a purple suburb and you'll hit one. The whole "let's set our differences aside and put people over partisanship" shtick is as old as partisanship itself. Candidates espousing things like that are pretty common. I just don't see the need for doom if all you're looking for is a normie centrist. Your dreams aren't unachievable. Move to a suburb and start volunteering for local campaigns.

I just don't see the need for doom if all you're looking for is a normie centrist. Your dreams aren't unachievable. Move to a suburb and start volunteering for local campaigns.

There aren't any normies centerist candidates in the suburb that I live in. And no one wants to vote for a normie centerist because the don't take polarized hard-line stances. No one appears to want to elect critical thinkers.

No one appears to want to elect critical thinkers.

Is the problem that people aren't good critical thinkers, or that you don't like the product of their thinking? The two are easily confused.

We had a thread about BLM and its consequences last week; it drew some engagement, but not, I think, as much as it deserved. "Critical Thinking" seems like it ought to offer a fairly solid answer to whether the consequences of the BLM movement are more dead black people than WWII, Korea and Vietnam combined, in a shorter amount of time. Once you have an answer, though, it doesn't seem to me that critical thinking offers cooperative solutions to the problem, and it's pretty clear that this is because there are no cooperative solutions. Polarized hardline stances are, in fact, sometimes the correct response to a sufficiently fraught situation. It seems to me that we're in such a situation.

Is the problem that people aren't good critical thinkers, or that you don't like the product of their thinking?

There aren't any good critical thinkers, and if there are, they mask it with their ad homs and personal or partisan attacks.

Polarized hardline stances are, in fact, sometimes the correct response to a sufficiently fraught situation. It seems to me that we're in such a situation.

I don't have a problem with this. What I do have a problem with, is approaching folks on the opposite side of the argument with dehumanization, with bickering, and disrespect.

Like, if the spat that happened in that committee hearing last week between AOC and MTG happened in my presence, I'd tell them they're both wrong for attacking each other and walk away. Like, you wouldn't act like that in public if you weren't a politician, so why is it OK when you're in government? And I know that's very naive to think, but we're talking basic human decency here, even towards people like MTG who say vile and disgusting things every day.


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On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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