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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   33364 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers' Union
Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee
Which stated that the people
Had squandered the confidence of the government
And could only win it back
By redoubled work. Would it not in that case
Be simpler for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

The ongoing riots in the UK and the senseless destruction they have caused remind me of Bertold Brecht's famous poem he wrote in response to the 1953 East Germany strikes. While Brecht, himself a communist sympathizer, initially intended his poem to be a satirical polemic about heavy handed work quotas it recently struck me that he might have been more correct than even he had anticipated.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "to dissolve" as "to become dissipated or decomposed". After seeing the behaviour of the rioters right now as well as the rhetoric that has been coming from that class of people over the last few decades one must wonder if the right solution isn't really to dissolve the people. By this I don't mean immersing them in sulphuric acid until dissolution but rather dissipating their population density as a fraction of the whole country until there is no longer enough of a critical proportion of people which can light the fuse so to speak. There's a reason why even though there are far more "natives" in London than Sunderland the violence in the former has been more chickenhearted and more easily put down.

These rioters are generally low human capital people who take out a lot more over the course of their life than they put in. It's not scientists and lawyers you see giving the middle finger to police officers and pushing garbage bins in their general direction. I think it is perfectly fair to say that as a group they are best characterized as failures who have disappointed their betters and what's more don't even think there is anything wrong with their current state and behaviour. They are even confused and disoriented about the flashpoint of the current disorder: unlike what their prejudices told them the person who killed the three girls in Southport was not a fresh off the boat Muslim migrant but rather a black Welsh 17 year old child who had been born in the UK having a schizo moment. The true facts about the stabbing coming out did not placate their desire for an orgy of violence in the least.

Furthermore they live off the tax contributions of people like me and instead of being thankful for what they are given they blame us for making the country worse and want to bleed us even more. I like to quip that if the majority of people want to see a human parasite they would be better served by looking in the mirror instead of the Times Rich List and I think that applies perfectly here.

Another good example of a city that had some riots is Manchester; when the thugs tried their trade there they were met with swift counter protests bigger than what they could muster and were forced to disperse, leading to no public damage. It appears that the violence only really gets out of hand in the minor cities where the concentration of "natives" is too high. To prevent future riots the obvious solution is to reduce this concentration or namely, to dissolve the people.

Whenever there is dissolution there must be a solvent. And what would make the best solvent here? The usual answer provided by the left is something like "integration" where rich and well off people are asked to live amongst the lower classes in the hope that they will have a civilizing effect on the poors. Normally this is done by mandating the building of housing intended for poor people very close to housing occupied by the well off. While this may work at preventing tantrums from being thrown in the first place it won't do very much to quell them if they happen: a bunch of effete button pushers (Note: I count myself as among this group) doesn't put the fear of God into anyone. They would never have the guts to go up to the rioters and do this (choice moment: the rioter responding with 2 fingers when asked how many brain cells he has).

Instead the best solvent you can get is someone who will also stand up to debauchery when it rears its ugly head: migrants who are unafraid of giving it just as good as they get (see above video). And what's more, unlike the low tier "natives" who Great Britain is saddled with because they were born here the non-natives are all people who were either themselves selected by the UK as being positive for the country or descendants of such people which means they still have a portion of the net positive genetics (I'm ignoring refugees here because they make up a very small proportion of total migrants and something tells me the rioters of today wouldn't be happy if illegal migration stopped but legal migration continued at the same levels as today).

In fact a more reasonable word for these migrants would be "elects", since they are the chosen. Each and every single legal migrant in the UK has been collectively chosen as being worthy of being allowed into the country. They should be accorded the respect such an honour deserves instead of being told that they don't belong here. In fact the reason so many of them were chosen in the first place is because the "natives" have continued to disappoint the real decision makers day in day out for the last however many decades where importing so many migrants was the only choice left to keep a stable state going: firstly refusing to take care of older family members and foisting them onto the state and then refusing to have enough children if they're net contributors/having too many children if they aren't net contributors. Any attempt to talk sense to these people about how a welfare state with sub replacement birth rates and no migration is unsustainable was (and is) met with fingers in ears and "na-na-na can't hear you". Is it any surprise that with such a badly behaved lower class the elites decided to do away with them like you do with a bad employee and get someone new?

And we shouldn't forget that many of the migrants had far worse starting conditions than the gentlemen throwing bricks but through industry and positive sum contributions to human flourishing have managed to make something of themselves, only to be looked at enviously by the people who previously have been appropriating the wealth of the successful and now want to get even more at the elects' expense.

So yes, the elite class in the Western world has taken Bertold Brecht's words to heart. When confronted with unruly and disruptive lower classes it really is simpler for them to dissolve the people and elect another. I for one am looking forward to the consummation of this process; we'll probably end up with fewer riots at least.

  • -35

Although I wouldn't have been nearly so sweeping about the 'badly behaved lower class' myself, I enjoyed this.

You are posting in bad faith.

Despite the ultra-abundant color you added to your screed, aren't you simply preaching to the choir? This basically comes down to usual pro-eugenics stance, the merits of which are well known. To strongman the opposition, I would say that your solution is probably impractical as there are only so many immigrants a country can take in at once, due to issues of providing adequate housing and scaling up healthcare and such, and also only so many immigrants of 'good worth' who are willing to immigrate, especially in scenarios where housing is hugely insufficient and they must pay hefty premiums on their first home. Also, there are likely to be hidden disadvantages to ultra-diverse societies that mirror the current disadvantage you are noting with regard to the British riots; see the BLM riots, Paris riots, and so forth that have occurred in high diverse areas. So it is unlikely that the issue of 'underclass' rioting will go away if only partial eugenic solutions you are proposing are implemented. Furthermore, ethnic division might remain persistent owing to probable ethnogenesis events caused by intermingling. In order to succeed in the goal of reducing the underclass, even greater eugenic efforts would be required, ones that could be scaled up to an extreme degree, and the ethnic aspects you find disagreeable are probably ineradicable and largely based on narcissism.

Replacing local proles with foreign ubermench works so long as the ubermench are superior enough to supplant the proles but inferior enough to remain subservient to the whims of those who imported the ubermench.

The filter thus becomes the selection entity, and the selection entities are self-motivated to advance their own specific interests and not those of 'greater society' or whatever truism we wish to pretend exists. Family reunification just wants to flood the land with their kin, employers want cheap labour, refugee advocates want to prove the success of their project. The only people at the levers who exercise any discretion in filtering migrants are the civil servants, and they are optimized to do the job and fuck off with minimal trouble, so the only pressure they face is whichever idiot is screaming at them to let in every single mirpuri in the valley. Is it any wonder then that migration is so endlessly broken?

Allllllll right, then.

On one hand, sharing your opinions isn’t against the rules.
On the other, baiting angry responses is the central example of “more heat than light.”
On the gripping hand, you are remarkably consistent, and none of the mods want to deal with this shit on a regular basis.

Ninety day ban.

Are angry responses a metric you truly want to go by? For example, your average HBD post on reddit would elicit angry responses.

It looks to me like an earnestly-held opinion argued eloquently. Both honest and civil, yet heating the psyches of his respondents in a way that is very en-light-ening. Who would tell you about their own insecurities and hypocrisies?

Did he write "bait"? Of all the possible combinations of intentions? I don't know. I do know that "bait" keeps an ostensibly objective community from wrestling with the cognitive dissonance of a two-tiered rule system. I know that a ban would assuage the user base's hurt psyches.

As for the verbal riots and "angry responses" - Pour la canaille, Faut la mitraille! Conceding to the impulsive behavior of the mob is exactly why the HBD crowd has been kicked out of every mainstream community. I believe anyone angry about @BurdensomeCount's well-stated yet heterodox views should do some shadow-work.

This ban is transparently what it is, and themotte continues to surprise no one.

Could we ban a popular user for once instead? Every non-janitorial moderator action I see these days just reinforces the same tiresome monoculture that makes people rightly talk about themotte as a basically ideologically monolithic/predictable entity. At this point we have wound up with one single community-scale trapped prior; "moderation follows community sentiment" by explicit statement and this sort of "if it makes too many people angry, it causes us work" reasoning, and community sentiment follows moderation by gradually evaporating people who don't like the prevailing view cluster, attracting people who like it and occasionally banning those who bump into the Overton window's frame too hard.

A two-week ban for every angry response would have been a better choice for the sake of the forum's long-term ability to fulfil its original purpose.

We didn't ban BC for making people angry. We banned him for wanting to make people angry. The original purpose of the Motte includes understanding the culture war, not waging it, and I think that this post was a pretty clear example of the latter.

Even that's not enough on its own. But it wasn't on it's own, since BC had such a long history. What do you do when someone repeatedly announces that he doesn't give a shit about your community norms? When his actions are consistently more inflammatory, more obnoxious than his peers? You start to think about showing him the door. Or, as cjet put it,

The whole Internet is available for trolling, and waging the race/culture war. Start a sub stack, post on Twitter, post on Facebook, go crazy. Just stop bringing it here.

For what it's worth, when "popular" users actively fish for angry, knee-jerk responses, we do ban them, too. FarNearEverywhere is a good example.

I was hoping that I wouldn't need to dig up living examples of posters (because I think it just causes resentment and distrust - a bit of a sense of camaraderie is one of the things this place still has going for it), but how does e.g. this not fall under the category of wanting to make people angry? How does this wall of polemic and gaslighting word games not? Is it just because the people it would make angry are unlikely to be in the audience and stick their neck out? A rule that you can't make the people here angry but are free to do smug little victory dances where you dunk on groups that are not on the forum is also an obvious recipe for reinforcing any existing biases.

Even that's not enough on its own. But it wasn't on it's own, since BC had such a long history. What do you do when someone repeatedly announces that he doesn't give a shit about your community norms?

Go back to a time when community norms were actually applied in a way that got in a way of the victory-dancing for the dominant group, and you'll find plenty of declarations to the effect of not giving a shit about community norms too.

The ideological homogenization of the forum is not the sort of problem that can be solved without making representatives of the entrenched ideology angry. I want it to be solved, and don't think it can be done without either aggrieving them in any way that can be slipped past moderation (so its representatives feel less welcome and leave) or enforcing the rules on them evenly (so they behave in a way that is more likely to enable retention of other groups). Either way is bound to make them angry. Since we've established that I also want to make people angry, may I inquire about the resulting delta in my social credit score?

The entire post is just a thinly-veiled sneer. It's not written to invite engagement, it's just written to spit on the outgroup and get a rise our of gullible/impulsive Mottizens. When I see that guy's username I can already predict the thrust of his posts. So I think mod action here is justified.

I do think we have too many right-wing drive-by shitposters, though. I imagine that the only reason they don't get modded more often is simply that they get reported way less. I admit I'm guilty of not reporting them simply because right-wing sneering is merely distasteful to me while left-wing sneering angers me.

I'll start trying to report low effort right-wing sneers more often.

ETA: I might be wrong here, but I think this would only partially fix the problem. The other half is that IME the average educated leftist* is very averse to exposure to heresy, hence TheSchism and the regular flameout posts in the vein of "I cannot in good conscience continue to post in a community that platform $BAD_THING." And so we mostly only have either long-suffering dissident leftists (thank you for your service!) or vindictive leftist trolls who quickly get banned. I think this is a broader cultural problem that can't be fixed without letting leftists police the boundaries of discussion which would defeat the purpose of this place.

*right-wingers are more heresy tolerant because they're bombarded with enemy propaganda 24/7; the polarity was different decades ago

Furthermore they live off the tax contributions of people like me

I never thought of it that way before but maybe having some ingroup on the dole is good so they can stir up trouble if outgroup tries to get some freebies.

I'm surprised by how many people assume you're posting in bad faith. Maybe it's because we've talked one on one, but I'm pretty convinced these are your real opinions.

Also, just for some context, these opinions are pretty bog standard for the vast majority of elites in the West over the last few hundred years. So it's not like they're crazy beyond the pale. Although I'll admit they're stated provacatively.

All that being said, I strongly disagree. My main disagreement stems from the way modern society is set up. When you create a distinction like 'elite' versus 'stupid peasant' there's an inherent assumption that the way we currently order society and assign social status is somehow correct or right. I strongly disagree with that assumption.

Our modern world order vastly overweighs 'rational,' left-brained, rules-following, logical types of intelligence. While at the same time totally disregarding and not rewarding intuition, vibes-fluency, social skills, grasping of the gestalt, right-brained thinking, religious thinking, et cetera. This situation is extremely problematic.

As others have said, if we had a society that promoted a more balanced, virtuous person to elite status, that would be cool and elitism would be more justifiable.

And while yes left-brained type thinking leads to extreme power over the natural world, it's all useless as hell if we can't actually get along with each other, or live happy productive lives. And right now most can't. I think that the vast majority of 'peasants' actually are much more in tune with their intuition than the majority of elites. They have to be because they don't have the intelligence to rely on. And the vibes are shit right now, my dude. Mainly because those in power don't care about the vibes at all and think they're pointless BS.

Anyway, while I can sympathize with your point a bit, I think you're missing a big part of the picture.

Also, just for some context, these opinions are pretty bog standard for the vast majority of elites in the West over the last few hundred years. So it's not like they're crazy beyond the pale. Although I'll admit they're stated provacatively.

I don't have an exhaustive understanding of the UK but it sounds like he's expressing the median Londoner's opinion, candidly.

Our modern world order vastly overweighs 'rational,' left-brained, rules-following, logical types of intelligence. While at the same time totally disregarding and not rewarding intuition, vibes-fluency, social skills, grasping of the gestalt, right-brained thinking, religious thinking, et cetera.

Really? I've always thought the opposite. We generally reward those who are likeable, who are able to get other people on their side. Anyone in a leadership role, for example, needs to have people skills, not the sharpest analytical mind. Isn't it the perennial complaint of the wage slave that those at the top only got there by being smooth talkers or getting chummy with the powerful?

Also you seem to conflate right-brained thinking with being "virtuous", which I find odd. The two seem unrelated.

I think virtue is a balance of the two, or at least a balance is necessary to become virtuous. Therefore if someone is more right-brained in a left-brained society, they are likely closer to virtue.

That being said just being right-brained on it's own isn't virtuous.

In terms of historical human life, we are skewed far towards rationality. We aren't, in fact, entirely left-brained because as you point out, we tend to make decisions in a right-brained way anyway. Ian McGilchrist's book The Master and His Emissary talks about this, but basically the right brain is the more emotional center, and emotions tend to control our decision making no matter how rational we think we're being.

But when you try to force everything into a rational lens, you end up with a lot of problems.

Maybe it's because we've talked one on one, but I'm pretty convinced these are your real opinions.

I have no doubt that these are his real opinions. But the sincerity of one's convictions doesn't preclude one from posting in bad faith.

Count's posts on race/immigration are designed to be maximally inflammatory while not technically violating any rules, in an effort to provoke banworthy responses from other users. It's a more rhetorically elaborate version of "I'm not touching you". Even if that's not his conscious intent, that's certainly the effect it has. That's where the accusations of bad faith posting come from.

Personally I feel it's important that minority viewpoints be protected on TheMotte however. There's nothing about Count's viewpoint in the abstract that's against the rules. So the best thing that people can do is simply not take the bait, and only report posts that contain actual rule violations.

People openly call for murder charges against abortionists here with no censure. Talking shit about native working class uk citizens though? That is beyond the pale for some reason?

But the sincerity of one's convictions doesn't preclude one from posting in bad faith.

It literally does.

Bad faith (Latin: mala fides) is a sustained form of deception which consists of entertaining or pretending to entertain one set of feelings while acting as if influenced by another.

I don’t see what’s bad faith about it if he honestly believes what he is saying. Count posted a basic argument in favor of anti-populist forced racial integration. It’s not a great argument; it can be attacked pretty easily, but it is structurally sound. It’s not a fringe opinion either. Lots of people believe the things that Count is saying for the reasons that Count gives.

Also, just for some context, these opinions are pretty bog standard for the vast majority of elites in the West over the last few hundred years. So it's not like they're crazy beyond the pale.

I've read a lot of books from the last few hundred years, and heard a lot of stories from my grandparents about what it was like growing up, and I've never once seen them sneering at the British working class. There was a status hierarchy, and probably a certain amount of selective obliviousness about how that hierarchy was kept in place, but in general it would never occur to the aristocrats of that time to sneer at working-class people for being working class. What else should they be? The elites of that time were Christians and believed that everyone had their role to play in society.

It's only postwar, when social mobility became possible and then expected, that you start seeing sneering like @BurdensomeCount. And even then, only really in the last 20 years as mass immigration and wokeness took off (and the economy died). When I was growing up the working class were treated with great respect. There was sneering at scroungers, but that was the working class sneering at those who couldn't be bothered to work.

There is also the memory of postwar socialism to consider. The socialist government made a concerted and largely successful* attempt to destroy the aristocracy and the capitalists, and those who remain aren't going to forget that in a hurry. My parents had bricks thrown at them in the 70s and they definitely haven't forgotten.

*The upper classes are still over-represented in positions of influence, but not as the upper class. It's the difference between, say, a plutocratic society where powerful people inherit companies, and a plutocratic society where powerful people get expensive volunteering opportunities to garnish their CVs.

Okay this is totally fair. Bog standard was a bit too much.

But this strain of eugenics type thinking has been around in intellectual circles for a few hundred years. Intellectual weren't always in charge of the elite class though, you're right.

I come out in hives whenever I try to read anything by the Bloomsbury group, so I wouldn't really know. I got the impression that the eugenicists were interested in making the working class better for its own sake to some degree, rather than just swapping it out for the highest-IQ people around, but I might well be wrong about that.

You've read a lot of books and I read a comment on Saltburn... The gist is random redditor claims that it isn't unheard of for middle class kids to pretend to be working class because it carries more favor with the elite kids.

As an American who lived in London for a bit, I met several people who seemed completely identical to the rest of the English at first-blush[1], but they'd eventually confess to me that they're quite ashamed of their obvious(??) working class upbringing. The forward-ness of this surprised me, because I had many English acquaintances who would never open up about their feelings like this on other topics, no matter how much we were drinking. I do wonder if being an outsider helped them confess this to me, or if this is just something you have to voice to everyone.

Anyway, it sounded markedly different from meeting someone from the Midwest in NYC confessing their shame at growing up in corn fields of Indiana or whatever. The person from the Midwest just felt good to be in NYC, like they escaped. Whereas the persons I met in London very much projected that they could never escape their class, and this deeply affected them.

Can this shame lead to rage as this down-trodden feeling class is apparently ignored while the government falls all over itself to support problematic foreigners? I can see that, 100%

  1. In hindsight their accents were different though it's not like they were speaking blatant My Fair Lady style Cockney

I think it's fair to say that the working class are usually much more emotionally open that the upper and middle classes, and are the subject of alternating envy and disapproval for that reason. It's certainly true for the people I knew.

Fascinating, my experience has been middle class people insisting that they're working class.

So what you are asserting is basically

  1. The Great Replacement is happening.
  2. That is a good thing.

From that, my priors would normally be that you are a right-wing troll, but given your elaborate post and knowledge of Brecht, I don't think that is the case.

I do not share your disdain of the 'native' poor population. In my view, the value of a human being is not given by how well they thrive in their place in capitalism. While capitalism is by far the most effective economic system, I don't believe it is the voice of a just God, but more like the voice of an alien Elder God, and the best thing we can do is to obey it in places where it can see (like wage levels) and then fix his shortcomings in other places (cash transfers to the poor). To declare "you could not survive on the wages Azatoth has seen fit to assign to you, hence you are worthless" seems utterly bizarre.

It is also unsurprising that the 'native' poor are generally not very happy with the current system which places them on the bottom with few prospects of moving upwards. All too often, they turn to far-right politics. To be fair, the main focal point of anger of anti-immigrant extremists are not academic immigrants, but unskilled workers. While I think their focus on immigrants is misguided and they should focus on demanding more redistribution of wealth instead, I can also see that they are likely affected more by immigrants than the liberal elites who live in the nice part of town and know they will not have to compete for their job with an immigrant from some third world country tomorrow who is happy to work at a fraction of their wage.

So, in practice, I have some disdain for some of the people in every group. The poor who vote Nazi because they think this time, it will fix things. The liberal elites who have adopted woke ideology where compassion is handed out to minorities but refused for the poor with the wrong skin color. Immigrants who come here and think they can raise their daughter according to traditional Islam.

The Great Replacement is happening.

That is a good thing.

This mask slipped off at the beginning of the Obama administration. Obama staffers liked The Emerging Democratic Majority. I haven't read it, but I've been told it claims that demographic trends will flip a few states such as Texas blue, then the Democrats will rule forever. It turns out this misunderstands how committed American Hispanics are to voting for progressives. "Now that we've imported enough Hispanics, we're done losing elections" was the misplaced hope those Obama staffers had. Or as you might rephrase it "yes it is happening and it is a good thing".

Isn't this the forever-issue with importing votes as a left-wing party. Essentially everywhere outside the anglosphere is built on identity politics and culture that is far right compared to the prevailing Western Democracy. Any successful immigrant project will tend to pivot over time from 'I vote Democrat since they facilitate my immigration' to 'Got mine, now I'm culturally conservative'

Some culture war issues like abortion still pivot around ethnicity/religiosity even if they're nominally Democrat voters.

Yes. Those optimistic Obama staffers and the people who wrote that book may ultimately be correct. Though not on the timeline they imagined.

But also there's a weird trick in that as Hispanics increase in proportion of the population, they increasingly self-identify as white and vote accordingly. So the Democrats are (foolishly?) chasing an asymptotic function of Hispanic voters.

And that isn't even necessarily a losing strategy long-term. They could turn Texas blue with some amount of importing fresh voters and a lot of help from former Californians fleeing their bad governance but ironically importing it with them. But as of yet Texas is purple-red and Florida is even deeper red, so these types are wailing and gnashing their teeth about the missed expectations.

I think there is a real problem from the point of view of a typical lanyard Democrat in that, for seemingly no reason, around half the population votes against them. And that keeps being true despite large demographic changes.

You remind me of the historians described in Asimov's foundation who would do no original research, but instead compare and contrast academics of their past to construct their arguments. You are obviously well-read on NrX/reactionary argumentation, but twist it with neoliberal points. It's impressive, but in the same way that Rainbow Dash in a jar of suspicious liquids is impressive. One must pause in astonishment at the seeming inexplicable nature of the effort.

the elite class in the Western world has taken Bertold Brecht's words to heart. When confronted with unruly and disruptive lower classes it really is simpler for them to dissolve the people and elect another

I wonder if the Chinese elites had similar sentiments before Mao wiped them out.

To paraphrase a video essay I'm becoming more and more fond of, 'These people don't realize they're one bad week way from being dragged out into the street and burned at the stake.'

To paraphrase a video essay I'm becoming more and more fond of, 'These people don't realize they're one bad week way from being dragged out into the street and burned at the stake.'

I just watched through that whole thing. It was interesting but I think the author drastically overestimates the number of people that engage with what he is talking about meaningfully.

'These people don't realize they're one bad week way from being dragged out into the street and burned at the stake.'

They "don't realize" it because it's not true. Because who's going to be doing the dragging? Your average citizen is still comfortable enough, and has too much to lose. Even if they didn't, they're too weak. This sort of talk (like that of "2nd amendment remedies") is pure ego-saving bluster. Put the slightest pressure on them, and they submit utterly. Security can and will see off any half-hearted and half-assed attempts that might occur.

Security can and will see off any half-hearted and half-assed attempts that might occur.

Actually, the most recent instance of security didn't do anything to stop an incredibly half-hearted and half-assed attempt - it was sheer dumb luck that the target moved his head and the attempt failed.

Except in that case, the target was not a member of the elite I'm talking about, but probably one of their biggest rivals/enemies.

(choice moment: the rioter responding with 2 fingers when asked how many brain cells he has)

You’re aware that this is a rude gesture, right? If someone asked me that question, I’d likely respond with one finger, but it would be a horrible misinterpretation to assume that I meant I only had one brain cell.

Yes, I am aware it is a rude gesture (dating back to the time just after Agincourt when the English archers stuck up their two fingers at the French to show they would continue to shoot at them; likely the person who made this gesture wouldn't know this, I'd be surprised if they could name even the war in which Agincourt happened), however that doesn't mean it's any less stupid to do this when there is an alternative reasonable interpretation that makes you look very stupid.

  • -35

Wow, you're really smart, mister.

This adds nothing. Don't do this.

@BurdensomeCount's comment can be boiled down to "please allow me an additional paragraph to sneer at the proles." What better response is there than to sneer back? It's certainly not a ban-worthy comment but is genuinely deserving of some mockery. I considered writing up a sincere rebuttal (honestly, the alternative reasonable interpretation probably makes it a better rude gesture) before deciding that this conversation probably is not the place for sincerity.

Comment length can be an okay proxy for comment quality but they are not the same thing, and my comment was less snide and spiteful than the one I was responding to.

Yah well he might be banned for his sneering, so do you want the same treatment that he gets?

He won't be banned for the comment I responded to nor should he be, and my response to that comment was still less banworthy. Failing a ban, social censure is the next best response.

He won't be banned for the comment I responded to

Disagree

nor should he be

Disagree

my response to that comment was still less banworthy.

Agree

Failing a ban, social censure is the next best response.

Agree, which is why I'm saying it was bad.

You may be missing some uniquely UK context here, being a late arrival to our fair shores and having no familial history of time we last stood alone in WW2.

It's not actually anything to do with Agincourt, it's from much later (possibly related to a cuckold's horns - calling your opponent a cuckold is an old sport - there's a brilliant banner from our civil war on the topic) but no one appears to have a definitive answer to its real origins other than the earliest photograph is from 1901 (it doesn't even appear in cartoons or drawings before). It was used a lot during WW2 as a more mocking form of the V for victory when we were standing alone against invasion, playing on Churchil's use of the symbol, and can be summarized as "Up yours".

It always signals disrepect, defiance (typically of authority) and a general "fuck off". It's not a number or related to archery, and it seems a bit... uncharitable to assume others are stupid here especially if you yourself are running off an urban legend yourself. The meaning is clear.

Interesting. I did not know the Agincourt origins were an urban legend. You learn stuff every day. I freely admit that I was misinformed and thank you for helping me improve my model of the world.

It always signals disrepect

Now this is a bit too strong a statement. For one the two fingers sign also symbolizes bunny ears so it doesn't always mean disrespect. I have fond memories of pranking friends with think back in my carefree youthful days.

It's not a number

This I also disagree with. Holding the index and middle finger up is the British sign language method of indicating two.

Churchill

Extremely overrated Prime Minister of the UK. I have no idea why he commonly comes near the top of the UK's list of PMs. Sure he got the country through WWII but there was nothing exceptional about him personally that led to this. He provided competent governance in difficult times and little more (see what happened the second time he became PM). It was the times he lived through that made him notable rather than the reverse. Had WWII not happened he'd be almost as forgettable as Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Even the Marquess of Salisbury was a tier above Churchill.

For one the two fingers sign also symbolizes bunny ears so it doesn't always mean disrespect. I have fond memories of pranking friends with think back in my carefree youthful days.

Bunny ears (at least in the UK) would be with a pronated hand position i.e. palm facing away. The gesture of disrespect is with the palm facing inwards.

This I also disagree with. Holding the index and middle finger up is the British sign language method of indicating two.

I've never seen someone indicate two with the palm facing inwards.

I've never seen someone indicate two with the palm facing inwards.

That's literally the sign for two in BSL, see the linked page which has a photo of a person making the sign.

And I'm saying I've never seen that gesture used that way. And I've seen plenty of people using two fingers to indicate two.

I don't know BSL and if that's the official sign then that's the official sign, I guess. Although I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the person responsible for that website just googled "person displaying two fingers" and used the first image that came up.

They've got photos for all the BSL symbols in the same artistic style so it's not just random internet photos but rather images specifically made for the page. For instance here's the page for cat: https://www.british-sign.co.uk/british-sign-language/how-to-sign/cat/

I think it's pretty clear two fingers palm inward is indeed the BSL sign for the number 2.

I (American) remember ordering two beers at an English pub, holding up two fngers, palm-inward, and being told by the bartender something to the effect of "Mate, never do that. Palm facing me."

however that doesn't mean it's any less stupid to do this when there is an alternative reasonable interpretation that makes you look very stupid.

Your alternative interpretation is not, in fact, reasonable. Neither the recorder nor his audience nor you nor I are at all confused about the meaning of the gesture. Pretending otherwise is just another example of waging the culture war.

The middle finger is less likely to be misinterpreted as "one" because people don't usually count starting from the middle finger.

I wouldn’t say it’s any less likely, but rather that both are equally unlikely. Neither gesture admits of any reasonable interpretation other than the one that was intended, at least not to a British audience.

When you own yourself, you own yourself.

It's of course easy to propose optimizing the natives away when the framing is: only parasites are victimized, and not really. How do you justify this encroachment, again? What is being built?

I admit I see this post as a high effort variant of your occasional outbursts of hostility towards the natives. If you were 'chosen', then it was a mistake.

Just so you know, this is under discussion by the mods. There is a serious argument for permabanning you. Not so much for this post alone (which is clearly intended to be provocative but "I am one of the Elect and fully in favor of crushing the white peasants" is not a forbidden opinion), but because your record is terrible, you've been skirting a permaban for a while now, and the fact that you clearly play this card whenever you want to see how much indignation you can stir up is something that rhymes with rolling.

This post is mostly so the 14(!) people who have reported it so far (granted a couple were AAQCs) know that we're not ignoring it. But since the post in itself is sort of borderline and you've been a 50/50 good contributor/absolute shitheel until now, no one wants to pull the trigger unless/until we have a quorum.

Could we perhaps add an "I find this amusing" option to the Report menu? I feel like a little trolling and provocation should be forgiven when executed with sufficient panache.

Keep him. He's unique.

My opinion as well. With apologies to the mods, who no doubt have more work because of him. But it makes the site better to have the variety.

For what it's worth, I don't think there should be moderator action against him. The ideal of policing on tone and not content we had once upon a time served us well, and there is nothing wrong with the tone here; most people also seem to believe that he is speaking from the heart.

I can't help but notice that the people shouting for a ban the loudest are those that I would predict are offended by the content the most, and many of them have proven amply that they have zero reservations about proudly proclaiming their own controversial viewpoints in a way that is bound to cause aneurysms in those who disagree (and often with much less attention to tone). Especially as we never see any moderator action for the umpteenth "women pretend that abortion is an important right" or "yes, one Israeli is worth more than a hundred Palestinians" posts, doing anything here (and even merely engaging in the sort of modhat stop-and-search that this post is) sends the wrong signal.

I mean, I reported him. I don’t think the content is necessarily ban-worthy, he just seems to be writing intentionally to troll/flame bait one of our resident white nationalists.

Fortunately they’re a calm bunch.

He's jerking our chain for sure. But also, this is a good post in terms of thoughtfulness and laying out an argument.

Intentionally provocative and well reasoned in equal measure. This is his best work in my opinion. If only the median troll put this much thought into his posts.

It is not so reasonable to declare lower class immigrants elects (the chutzpah!) to the dirty, lazy, good for nothing natives. I imagine this was for effect, which means it is effortful if intentionally provocative.

I did ask for a steelman for what I see as* the UK establishment position. This is far more culture warry than steelman-y. The most steelmanistic part is describing a need for migration, the rest of it is one half elitist scrutiny, one half deferential multiculturalism that I'm not sure anyone really holds as a true blue belief. Which could be read as satire if we did not believe the writer is attempting to rustle "our" jimmies. That's good writing even if unintentional.

This post is borderline too uncharitable/provocative. It is not exceptionally thoughtful, although I did report it as a based post. Which in my mind exists beyond an AAQC in another dimension. It's a different kind of post. Is it a shitpost? Yeah, kinda, but a tolerable and interesting one. One you get away with maybe a couple times a year if you're a prolific poster? I always appreciated lefty affirmative action in this space. I vote minor janny spanking, but I also do not deal with you weirdos all the time.

I vote minor janny spanking

I vote "make him smoke the whole pack". If he makes one of those "at least he started an interesting conversation" threads, he has to answer to every comment addressed to him, or get banned.

"to every commenter addressing him", maybe? Not being able to out-type the sum of 10 people trying to rebut you shouldn't be banworthy. But one reply to each of those 10 people is probably a fair requirement, and as a bonus it would create an incentive for the 10 to initially only post one comment with their best arguments, which would slightly reduce motte-and-baileying, troll feeding, and dogpiling.

Oh, that's potentially good discipline. Is the expectation that you have to give up the act and engage more candidly in replies? Otherwise you invite dedicated trolls and jannies try to prevent that.

Yeah, that's the idea, and that's the danger. Though the latter has a self-correcting mechanism in that non-rules-conforming responses lead to a ban anyway. Though yeah, it does lead to more work for the mods.

Dodging hard questions was my biggest issue with Hlynka so I'd like to see some sort of expectation in that regard.

I totally vote for a ‘smoke the whole pack’ rule for people like Hlynka, burdensome, etc.

I like this.

Not well reasoned, just somewhat well written. It relies heavily on the assumption that UK immigration policy is actually selective, and on average imports people of higher calibre than the natives, and furthermore that those who do not realize this are idiots.

So, the meat of the argument is just wrong, and the rest is just sneering. In terms of thoughtfulness and laying out an argument, it's not a good post.

I think there’s a great benefit in having someone like that around. It’s like the various shades of anti-semites, or actual fascists or whatever other normie-repellent ideologues hang around here but you don’t get to meet elsewhere. It’s good to know what other people truly think, unburdened (ha!) by social stigma. Hell, it’s half the reason I’m here.

I disagree with a ban for this.

Agree. It's a cogent and civil argument that doesn't come close to violating any rules. I don't even think it's trolling (in the traditional sense) because I think he genuinely thinks this way. Is he posting it because he knows people disagree and will engage? Yes, but who posts anything here and doesn't hope for engagement? I much prefer this to the umpteenth out group dunking that everyone joins in on.

It's a cogent and civil argument that doesn't come close to violating any rules.

I think that calling your political opponents "low human capital people" and "human parasites" could reasonably be interpreted as a violation of the boo outgroup/waging the culture war rules.

I certainly don't think that Count should be permabanned over this post. But even on a less inflammatory topic, I would expect a post like this to catch a tempban.

"human parasites" is a value judgement but "low human capital" is simply a factual claim about their education/skillset.

I don't even think it's trolling (in the traditional sense) because I think he genuinely thinks this way.

I am 80% sure he doesn't. I doubt even a devoted racist wouldn't notice he's getting the basic chronology backwards. Also bailing out of the conversation the moment someone brings up tangible facts to contradict the core thesis is classic troll behavior here. He's clearly just doing it for the reactions.

+1. While there's an obvious element of trolling for reactions from the crowd, a lot of stuff would slide right by if it didn't get reactions from the crowd. Target this level of vitriol at a group that isn't here or that the denizens don't identify with and it's a normal day ((though most of those posters don't hang around))

If you think he's worth keeping around, do you think you can actually defend his argument? Your comment makes it sound more like you know he's a troll, and you want him to keep trolling people you don't like.

If you think he's worth keeping around, do you think you can actually defend his argument?

I could steelman it, but I don't particularly agree with it so I'm not sure I particularly want to at length. It's a meaner variant of the Great Sort hypothesis offered by a Murray or a Lee Kuan Yew in the past. That first worlders have been "sorted" successfully into the smart and the dumb by various mechanisms, such that those "still" poor are the absolute worst, the hard cases, the genetic dregs. LKY talks about this when discussing the professionalization of union organizers in Singapore: in the early days there were many smart workers in the union, but today any intelligent Singaporeans end up in white collar jobs, so if you continued to draw union chiefs from the shop floor you would get people too dumb to function as good union chiefs.

My problem with banning him has less to do with people I like vs people I dislike as with wanting to avoid calcifying the userbase of the motte. Near as I can tell, this is being banned for jimmy-rustling, rather than for any content problems. Certainly we see similar posts about groups that are primarily out-groups to mottizens, the "bioleninists." A similarly structured argument about Palestinians, negroes, women, gays, illegal immigrants, etc would be skated by. ((Though I will note again that those posters who get obsessed with that kind of posting do tend to eventually catch bans anyway)) I'm positing that if we label it banworthy to offend the userbase of the motte, then at that moment we set the userbase in stone and preclude any changes in the future, because anyone who wants to join will find offensive material targeted at them to be common, and that turnabout is not fair play. That is akin to announcing official forum positions: one can, but is not required, to believe that blacks or arabs are inferior; one cannot believe that working class whites are inferior.

Those whose jimmies have been rustled can simply choose not to participate.

I should note that I recently complained about the Count in another comment, for his use of a minced oath, which I find to be annoying behavior.

I could steelman it,

That's the thing though, I didn't mean "come up with a defensible version of what he said" I meant "defend what he actually said". I don't mind someone having and promoting his point of view, I'd love to have a conversation with someone who actually believes it, and I'd have a hundred questions for them that I'd love to ask. The thing is it's the kind of questions that quickly point out various issues with the worldview, and so, from past experience, they tend to go unanswered. Which in turn leads me to believe he doesn't actually hold any of these views, and is not willing to debate them, he's just looking for a reaction from the resident chuds.

That's what rustles my jimmies, not his views. Yeah, people shouldn't take the bait, but it will always be easier for a single troll to throw a granade and delight in the ensuing chaos, than it will be for a group of people to maintain discipline and not respond.

I've personally got a long history of banning people for sarcasm/satire. Back on the old forum I pulled the trigger on a long ish term ban on user lazygradstudent(?) for writing a long satire post that imitated the form of the most famous satire "the Irish should eat their babies".

I'm not currently involved in the mod discussions with @Amadan and others, because I'm on vacation. I feel like a routinely see the worst crap on this forum popping up when I'm on vacation. Or maybe it's just when I read here more often.

I think I recently spoke against giving burdensome a permanent ban because I thought he had been better lately. Not even a week later he responds to one of my comments with obvious culture war race war stuff and I give him a two day ban on the spot.

@BurdensomeCount comes back and his takeaway is that I just wanted him to spend more effort on his culture/race war posts.

So fucking frustrating. No dude, wtf is your problem? My whole point is don't just write stuff to kick off the culture/race war on this forum.

I don't do enough modding these days to be all that helpful. Other mods are way better in most ways. But it's moments like these that make me think I should step away completely.

I have a three year old and a five year old. The five year old seemingly has a better ability to behave and understand rules than some people on this forum. The three year old is worse behaved. So this seems like a skill that is learned between 4 and 5 years old.

I'm pretty sure I remember being more patient with misbehaving forum participants before I had toddlers to compare them against.

Two week ban is my recommendation. Which is basically my cutoff point where I start thinking of you as a toddler with the inability or aggressive unwillingness to control your behavior.

The whole Internet is available for trolling, and waging the race/culture war. Start a sub stack, post on Twitter, post on Facebook, go crazy. Just stop bringing it here.

I am one of the Elect and fully in favor of crushing the white peasants" is not a forbidden opinion

Honestly saying "I am one of the Elect and fully in favor of crushing the white peasants" may be stupid, but it isn't a forbidden opinion.

Dishonestly saying it to deliberately provoke backlash in favor of the white peasants (or to just provoke reactions, period) violates several rules, including the one about speaking plainly.

I don't think it is, nor should be, against the rules to merely argue in favor of an opinion one does not sincerely hold. If the poster breaks the rules in other ways, that's a different story, but I think it's fine and even valuable for people to be allowed to play devil's advocate.

If he wants to play devil's advocate, he could say he's playing devil's advocate, not pretend he actually believes what he's saying.

What difference does it make? We should be evaluating the argument, not the person making it. The sincerity of the person making the argument doesn't change the validity of the argument.

First of all, this is only true if the argument includes no personal observations or other claims that might be false. Second, this is only true if you're an ideal perfect arguer who notices BS 100% of the time and can never be fooled by it. If you're an actual human, you don't want to bother with someone who's likely to make a lot of invalid arguments, because you might fail to notice some of them because you're an actual human.

this is only true if the argument includes no personal observations or other claims that might be false.

A person arguing for a claim they genuinely believe in is at least equally capable of (if not more capable of) making up false anecdotes, or exaggerating true ones. In general, personal anecdotes should get very little weight as evidence of anything.

If you're an actual human, you don't want to bother with someone who's likely to make a lot of invalid arguments

A person arguing for a position they truly believe is at least equally (if not more) likely to make invalid arguments, due to blind spots or confirmation bias or a simple desire to win the argument.

My experience is that humans don't behave that way.

More comments

Well said. Hope he does not get banned.

You don't think he genuinely means this?

He is certainly not trying to provoke a reaction in favor of the white peasants. He genuinely is a Muslim chauvinist who disdains white normies. Is he trying to state things in an inflammatory manner and trigger people and provoke a reaction? Yes. He both favors hating on the white "peasants" in favor of muslims, and is willing to distort the facts of the performance of both groups to promote this idea that natives suck, migrants are superior that he obviously likes.

The idea that the ideology of "natives suck, migrants superior" can not be sincere, doesn't make sense at all. Examples of this ideology among migrants isn't rare and it exists even among a component of native elites who push above their weight due to appeasement and toleration by others.

The post is structured as a politically-flipped parody of an argument from an immigration critic, with some asserted (by the parody) racism. In that way BurdensomeCount opens the discussion by mocking those who disagree with him.

As the post goes on it begins to seem that the poster also asserts the parody's claims as true, which he may indeed believe. This gives him cover (I am expressing my sincere opinion!) and baits his interlocutors into answering the parody they'd have otherwise ignored at the moment they are angriest. As a probably unintended side effect it sucks all the oxygen out of the room, preventing a more patient and interesting subthread from arising.

A frank summary of events and his opinion may have led to an interesting, if somewhat heated, discussion. I don't think that's what BurdensomeCount was looking for.

I'm trying to figure out on what proportions this actually describes your beliefs, amounts to an instance of trying a different belief on for size, and is an exercise in tricking the resident contrarians into vigorously defending the polar opposite viewpoint. Either way, the statement about fewer riots at least seems baseless - I actually happened to be in London in 2010?11? when the minorities were rioting, and it still looked more serious than the pictures we are seeing now.

The 2010 rioters were gang members and other assorted types. You won't find me defending them at all, they have a honor based culture and the solution with them is public flogging and total humiliation until they become clowns in the eyes of their peers. That rioting was caused by bad selection policies used by the UK in the past labouring under the usual blank slate delusion ("if we just treat them well they'll turn out no different to high tier humans") and I wouldn't recommend electing those sorts of people ever.

Fortunately countries now realize, at least for legal immigration purposes, that all human beings are not equal and are at least making some effort to select the ones likely to contribute vs not. I don't expect this to be an issue for future migration unless the UK degenerates to such a point that high tier migrants themselves pass on the UK for better destinations and we end up left with the dregs of society.

  • -17

Let me try to guess what's going on here? There's a really obnoxious bait-and-switch that white supremacists tend to do (it's really important here to emphasize "supremacist"). Everything is at first justified through the lens of something like meritocracy or "master morality ---look at how inferior these examples of other races are, or look how "multiculturalism" is just "slave morality" where the strong are forced to support weak parasites (since Nietzsche is on everyone's mind again from the recent ACX post) .

However, when push comes to shove, it becomes very clear that their true motivation is not any kind of meritocracy or "master morality" at all---it's just wanting the members of the group they're part of to have increased status for the sole reason of having been born into that group. This is of course decidedly anti-meritocratic.

Posts like the OP's are a great way to highlight this contradiction (I tried something similar with this question posted on the old site). If you're actually going to judge some people as superior to others because of their achievement and greatness, no reasonable judgement is going to come out the way white supremacists (and racialists more generally) say it will. It really emphasizes that they have no basis for their positions besides naked, defecting-in-the-prisoner's-dilemma selfishness.

Of course, all the liberals hate the argument because you're judging some people as inherently worth more than others and all the racial conservatives hate it because the judgement is actually by merit instead of what they want: arbitrarily putting the group they were born into on top. See also the Nietzsche article's description (section X) of why everyone gets mad a Richard Hanania despite him being the only actual "honest-to-goodness Nietzschean master moralist".

In summary, think of this as "Ok, Mr. white supremacist, I'll grant you your stated motivation that we should follow some kind of 'master morality' and judge some people as superior and therefore of greater worth than others, let's see where that actually takes us. Oh, it should actually make you sound like Richard Hanania, supporting skilled immigration and all, instead of whatever you are. You really don't have any grounding in your policy preferences besides naked selfishness in favor of your birth group do you?". Whether the OP actually believes that you should rank people this way is less interesting.

However, when push comes to shove, it becomes very clear that their true motivation is not any kind of meritocracy or "master morality" at all---it's just wanting the members of the group they're part of to have increased status for the sole reason of having been born into that group. This is of course decidedly anti-meritocratic.

Neither master morality nor slave morality nor selfishness have anything to do with it. I expect to be treated differently in my own house compared to the plumber who comes over to fix the taps. If my mother suddenly started calling the plumber her son, then gave me a fiver and threw me out onto the street, I'd be horrified. Who wouldn't?

If I went to Italy, or Bangladesh, I wouldn't expect to be treated like a native because I'm not one. If I stay in the (foreign) country I'm in now, I will never become a CEO because they want local companies to be owned by local businessmen, and that's fine, that's the deal. Likewise if I move to a village in Derbyshire or something.

This is sort of my point: if someone is able to positively contribute to the country they immigrate to, integrate well into the social fabric, be involved with the local community, etc, then it's their country too (I'm not going to use your "house" framing since that manipulatively plays on intuitions about small family groups that do not at all apply to countries of millions). You judge people by their actions instead of where they arbitrarily happened to be born.

Of course someone with OP's absurd level of contempt for such a large fraction of his country's population is at the very least not integrating well into the social fabric. However there are many other people that satisfy all the above requirements that you would arbitrarily exclude to their and your own country's loss.

I wouldn't expect to be treated like a native because I'm not one.

You are explicitly rejecting any sort of meritocracy here---is that actually what you mean to do? It is complete nonsense to have a privileged class of "natives" who through no hard work of their own are forever in a separate superior class that is locked out to everyone else.

(@jeroboam, look how quickly we get someone saying that all immigrants, even the positively contributing ones, should be forever treated as inferior)

It is complete nonsense to have a privileged class of "natives" who through no hard work of their own are forever in a separate superior class that is locked out to everyone else.

I wouldn't say it's complete nonsense. No filter will ever be perfect, so if you allow mass migration with naturalisations and descendant-of-immigrants citizenship, you are likely to see some level of cultural/political supplantation. That makes immigration potentially a win-lose, with the "lose" being the marginal native voter agreeing to it who values culture over economy. Having no naturalisations for people from different cultures might be enough to make that a win-win and get the immigration legalised... at least, assuming that it's not reneged on by Parfit's hitchhiker.

I might not be fully sold on this logic, but there's an argument there.

You judge people by their actions instead of where they arbitrarily happened to be born.

Well, this isn't true. My brother arbitrarily happened to be born the same parents as me, but that fact plays a much stronger role in our relationship than any other achievements of his.

(@jeroboam, look how quickly we get someone saying that all immigrants, even the positively contributing ones, should be forever treated as inferior)

I don't think you can take a particular Motte poster's position on immigration as particularly emblematic of broader societal consensus.

My brother arbitrarily happened to be born the same parents as me, but that fact plays a much stronger role in our relationship than any other achievements of his.

You continue to use this bad analogy equating interactions with small, <Dunbar number groups with countries of tens of millions, so lets go into more detail here. In your social life you can judge people by all kinds of arbitrary things that made them closer to you. However, you can't do that in professional settings where you're interacting with larger groups of people. For example, if you're organizing a party, it's ok to invite your brother over someone else just because they're your brother. If you're an HR person a big company, it's not ok to hire them for a job over someone else for just that reason.

This is a huge part of the western value of professionalism.

I'm not going to use your "house" framing since that manipulatively plays on intuitions about small family groups that do not at all apply to countries of millions

You judge people by their actions instead of where they arbitrarily happened to be born.

This is a straightforward clash of worldviews. I have a positive sense of my people as a people with a thousand years of shared history and shared culture. Clearly you don’t feel the same and neither of us are going to argue the other into their favoured moral intuitions. I am not manipulatively trying to sneak in inappropriate intuitions to win an internet argument, I am describing my sincere opinions.

We literally have the words ‘homeland’ and ‘motherland’, so I’m hardly the first to feel this way.

@jeroboam, look how quickly we get someone saying that all immigrants, even the positively contributing ones, should be forever treated as inferior

Again, you are unintentionally trying to force my reply into your preferred moral framework. Superiority and inferiority are entirely irrelevant. Many migrants are clearly superior to at least some native British on all counts, but that doesn’t make them native. In many cultures, guests are treated with a solicitude greater than family, but they’re still guests and expected to behave appropriately. Real relationships with real people cannot be ranked on a strict 1D scale.

if you're organizing a party, it's ok to invite your brother over someone else just because they're your brother. If you're an HR person a big company, it's not ok to hire them for a job over someone else for just that reason.

If we’re talking bad analogies, the idea that if you don’t import literally every person in the world who is better than your stupidest native person, you are basically like a nepotist hiring his brother seems very tortured to me. This is the reason I stopped being a liberal - it is absolutely incapable of considering the actions of people at any scale other than the individual.

You are explicitly rejecting any sort of meritocracy here

No, I’m not. Saying that because I don’t want mass immigration (>50k people a year) I would be happy with selecting people for jobs at random is a big leap of logic.

Look, clearly we aren’t going to agree, because our axioms are too different, but we can at least try to understand each other. If you genuinely believe that any group feeling on a larger scale than family can only be based on selfishness at best and bigotry at worst, then obviously you’re going to end up against nativism. However, try suspending that assumption for a moment and see what you get.

Look, clearly we aren’t going to agree, because our axioms are too different

Ok, let's try this if you're interested in discussing at an annoyingly meta level: I don't see this belief

that any group feeling on a larger scale than family can only be based on selfishness at best and bigotry at worst

as an axiom, but rather a necessary conclusion from deeper principles justifying morality. Specifically, I 100% agree with the very end of this article

I want to help other people in order to exalt and glorify civilization. I want to exalt and glorify civilization so it can make people happy. I want them to be happy so they can be strong. I want them to be strong so they can exalt and glorify civilization. I want to exalt and glorify civilization in order to help other people.

Scott Alexander of course always says things way more eloquently than I can. The (admittedly extreme) individualism you're calling out isn't an axiom, rather, at our current level of technological development, it's the best way to achieve all the good things---to exalt and glorify civilization, etc. See here and ymeskhout's broader point in the original post.

Actually that helps me understand you a lot better, thank you.

I want to help other people in order to exalt and glorify civilization. I want to exalt and glorify civilization so it can make people happy. I want them to be happy so they can be strong. I want them to be strong so they can exalt and glorify civilization. I want to exalt and glorify civilization in order to help other people.

I agree with all of this. The thing is, my shining example of all that we could be is Victorian Britain circa 1850, which clearly involved individualism but also religion and a profound sense of who we were as a people. I'm not saying it was perfect, but it was pretty damn good, and could have been a lot better if we'd had modern technology and levels of economic development.

Now, in your linked comment you basically say that times change and the latter things resulted from the 20th century pivot towards extreme individualism. I used to think so too, but it no longer seems self-evident to me. The rise of countries like China (which did badly under full communism but OTOH pretty clearly hasn't embraced liberal individualism now) on the one hand and the decay of Britain / Europe / US despite those countries not becoming measurably less individualistic has muddied the individualism <-> prosperity relationship considerably in my eyes.

You might also say that you're primarily in favour of full individualistic meritocracy rather than individualism per-se. Tautologically, getting the most effective possible person for the job is most effective, at least on an individual-level, short-term scale. Whether that's true on a longer time scale, I don't know. My sensibilities are affronted by blatant nepotism and discrimination(*) but at the same time I think a big part of the dysfunction that Western societies have gone through in the last few decades has been essentially a sublimated cry of despair on behalf of middle-class people who are exhausted by the perpetual struggle not to fall from their current position and resentful of the constant pressure to strive for positions they can't realistically achieve. I suspect the majority of people were mostly happier with more structured expectations and a somewhat more rigid social structure. (I would be interested to know how you think things will end up: do you envision a natural slackening of the rat race one day, or a continued and perpetual struggle? If the latter, the resultant technological progress and prosperity may not be worth the candle.)

So I think I see where you're coming from, but I broadly disagree on how we get there and how adaptive modern liberal globalism is. I think we need a mostly-homogenous, high human capital society with a relatively but not completely inflexible social structure, where it's possible for the most intelligent people to rise in rank and to move around but doing so is neither common nor expected.

To return to our original point of contention, I also have a strong sense of my people as a people, and I care about maintaining my homeland's culture. 20 years ago, when I thought that liberal globalism really was hugely beneficial, I pushed those feelings down and supported mass immigration because I thought it would be worth it. Now, it seems very obvious that mass immigration wasn't and isn't worth it, and so I strongly oppose mass immigration. Discussing this with people, I was horrified to find that many people who I thought were likewise patriotic pragmatists aren't - some actually do regard people as completely fungible, and others support mass immigration in order to destroy a traditional English culture that they despise.

(*) For me, this depends on scale. Only considering your friends and family for a job is very bad, only considering those in your local church is pretty bad, only considering those within 100 miles is understandable most of the time, only considering those in your country is basically fine. 60 million is a big pool.

In your linked comment, you talk about Von Neumann, Einstein, and Edison; I'm happy to let the few thousand literal geniuses in the world go wherever they like. Say, those with IQ > 140 if you want something quantitative.

my shining example of all that we could be is Victorian Britain circa 1850

I'm going to first go even more annoyingly meta: I'm not so happy with this sentence because it seems to be framed as just a personal preference that can't really be justified by more than "I personally like it". Everyone sort of has "inner values" based on such idiosyncratic preferences, but it always feels to me very morally wrong to try to argue with others by nakedly stating them (in harsher words, this is what I called "naked selfishness" before). Rather, you ought to find universal reasons that work for everyone---either extremely compelling "poetry" to convince others to have your same idiosyncratic preferences, or better, links to universal values like reducing suffering. Obviously you have a lot of these universal reasons which are explained more later in the post, so this is a nitpick. Also obviously, I have nakedly selfish reasons for preferring individualistic meritocracy since it gets close to my shining example of something like early 2010's San Francisco Bay Area (before housing availability/infrastructure issues really started kicking in). However, if I can't find universal reasons to support it, I should seriously question whether this preference is reasonable. At the very least, I should never expect them to be compelling to anyone else and keep them to myself.

So now lets get into the universal reasons.

the decay of Britain / Europe / US

I don't have much personal experience with Britain/Europe, but I don't really see much decay in the US, not coincidentally, the country where individualistic meritocracy is the strongest. Particularly in technology, the US continues to produce world-changing breakthrough after breakthrough---AI systems, fracking, mRNA vaccines, etc. Though it's hard to feel this because of relative status effects and short memories, people in the US have more than they ever used to---bigger houses, better cars, more variety at the grocery store, better entertainment, etc. It's also not a coincidence that the technological breakthroughs in the US come from its most individualistic, diverse, and open areas like San Francisco or Cambridge, MA.

I would even say that the most compelling explanation for decay in Europe is actually this attitude, which is far more prevalent there:

only considering those within 100 miles is understandable most of the time, only considering those in your country is basically fine. 60 million is a big pool.

This promotes a sort of closed-mindedness and resistance to change. If you want scientific and technological progress, you need novel ideas. If you want novel ideas, you need to be tolerant of weirdos, immigrants, and outsiders. Conversely, if you close yourself off to the unusual socially, you're also going to lose the drive to create the new technologically---"why do we need more, our village is good as it is!".

Finally, 60 million is not a big pool at all. I'm in math, and the median best mathematician from a region of 60 million doesn't hold a candle to the world's best. Furthermore, agglomeration effects are really important for new ideas so it makes a big difference if one country can concentrate high-performers in one place. I guess if you're making this exception:

Say, those with IQ > 140 if you want something quantitative.

then it's not so bad (though 145 IQ is 3 standard deviations which is on the order of magnitude of 1/1000 people so there are around 10 million of them in the world. This is smartest kid in your year in your school district level, not world-changing genius).

I suspect the majority of people were mostly happier with more structured expectations and a somewhat more rigid social structure. (I would be interested to know how you think things will end up: do you envision a natural slackening of the rat race one day, or a continued and perpetual struggle? If the latter, the resultant technological progress and prosperity may not be worth the candle.)

I think this is the most compelling argument against my point. As far as naked selfishness goes, I much prefer the rat race since it pushes me to achieve much greater things than I would otherwise. At some level, you can justify it in this way: sacrifices we put up with currently to make the future better. However, I think a much better justification is that the people happy with the rigid social structure were those on top. For everyone else, being at the bottom is even worse if you're forever stuck there and there's nothing you can do about it. Having hope and agency over your life is really important for happiness, and if sacrificing the top 10% to stress is worth it to give this to the bottom 90%, then that's a worthwhile trade. I realize though I might just be typical-minding here---maybe as you say the chance to rise makes most people more stressed and unhappy than being stable in even a pretty low place.

Either way, once society is wealthy enough that everyone's non-status needs are met, I expect the rat race to eventually resolve itself by splitting into a million parallel races so that everyone can feel high-status by being in the top 1% of something---some niche video game, sport, academic field, etc.

As the final point:

I also have a strong sense of my people as a people, and I care about maintaining my homeland's culture

Do you have universal reasons why maintaining your homeland's culture (in more of a sense than various minority groups are able to maintain their cultures within US-style multiculturalism) is important? I think there's something around monocultures being bad---like you can argue that my vision of progress coming from all the new ideas from mixing cultures is sort of a dead end since it won't work anymore once everything is mixed and homogenized. Again, however, I think US-style multiculturalism resolves this issue pretty well.

there are many other people that satisfy all the above requirements that you would arbitrarily exclude to their and your own country's loss

Also, for the sake of clarity I would like to state that I believe the optimum level of immigration is not zero. I sympathise with the above people, and would like to take some of them.

However, I do not believe it follows that, because taking in any given one of these people would benefit the country, taking all of them in their millions would. I believe that the optimal proportion of non-natives in society is approximately 1-2%. Enough to act as grit in the national oyster, but not to change its character.

We are taking far, far more than that and so I currently oppose immigration.

However, when push comes to shove, it becomes very clear that their true motivation is not any kind of meritocracy or "master morality" at all---it's just wanting the members of the group they're part of to have increased status for the sole reason of having been born into that group. This is of course decidedly anti-meritocratic.

This explanation doesn't match reality. In the US and the UK, many minorities have incomes which far exceed those of the main genetic stock. And there is very little outrage about this. To a first approximation, no one is mad about all the Asians and Jews who came to America and immediately vaulted to the top of the status ladder.

People are angry about the immigrants who commit crimes and just make the country a shittier place generally.

Sometimes, it really is that simple.

People are angry about the immigrants who commit crimes and just make the country a shittier place generally.

It really isn't just this, however deeply I wish it were. I encourage you to try writing something defending skilled immigration on this forum and see what sorts of responses you get.

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Hey! I thought you liked my reply!

Unfortunately, that conversation was more the exception than the rule, not to mention that there seemed to be an easy compromise resolution that didn't harm either of our conflicting values.

There are definitely enough other posters here that do not produce very good replies.

One our mods is a skilled migrant from India and his posts about his struggle get massive upvotes.

It's hard to tell a particular guy that he should deport himself, especially when he's a pillar of the community. But that doesn't mean you can't get an anti skilled immigrant polemic up voted.

You can get anything upvoted if it's insightful enough. The claim was that a post defending skilled immigration would be received poorly, not that one opposing it would be received well.

Him being a skilled medical worker and humanizing the process are parts of that, though. Nobody's saying foreign doctors should be kicked out, but moreso that importation of people to fill pointless laptop sinecures which could go to locals preferentially due to producing little but emails and meetings.

Some professions and peoples are simply seen as net accretive to a society, and people trust their gut instincts on who is a decent fit. Doctors are always welcome, fruit pickers and garbagemen flip on either side, landlord 'investors' are parasites, foreign preachers are threats.

More than anything else though, humility is expected. No one expects effusive genuflection and simpering from foreigners, but sneering entitled assholes are unpopular regardless of origin. Irish travelers are probably more unpopular than jihadis, but that doesn't mean some sneering IIM money mover disparaging the locals will be ignored when the purge comes. Doctor Human will have people of note standing up for him, the parasite coterie will be thrown to the grinder regardless of origin.

Oh hi, I was just looking at this absolute clusterfuck of a situation after arriving in Scotland and wondering whether it was worth wading in while jet-lagged

You're right. I've written many a word about my desire to emigrate from India, and I would say that almost 95% of the feedback I've gotten was supportive. In fact I'd go so far as to say that the support of pseudonymous strangers on this niche internet forum made a great deal of difference, especially when I was at my lowest.

I would say that people are more inclined to be nice and welcoming to me than the modal immigrant. I'm well spoken, clearly preferring the way most of the Anglosphere or the West works to the point I decry most aspects of my own country and, as @Forgotpassword points out, a medical professional is a rather sympathetic figure. How many people want fewer doctors around? (The answer is existing doctors, but their power only goes so far).

I hardly think the West or its denizens are literally perfect, but they're still a gross improvement over how I've spent most of my life, and a very important difference between me and the Count is that I don't bite the hand that feeds.

I have absolutely no desire to see the West become more like like the Subcontinent. I'd rather not see a flood of unskilled immigrants bring the welfare system to its knees, or cause a breakdown of the religious tolerance and high trust a place is known for. I'm perfectly content with the existing British elite, and were they to gradually admit foreigners into their ranks, I'd much rather they be westernized by the time they hold power rather than nakedly bringing in the mores and behaviors of their home nations.

All I can really say is that people are a great deal more welcoming to a would-be immigrant when they're not actively sneering at them. Of course, Count makes a great deal more money than I do and is effectively unimpeachable thanks to Western norms of freedom of speech, so the reader is welcome to decide who's in the right here, or who is being rewarded for it. I just consider it an immense privilege to be let in here in the first place, and I'd rather not make people regret that decision.

This comment makes me vaguely uncomfortable.

On one hand, sure, someone who has such a deep level of contempt for a large percentage of a country's population probably should not be welcomed into that country. However large of a salary they earn, they're not going to be contributing positively to the welfare of people they more-or-less think are subhuman.

On the other hand, immigrants that do positively contribute on net in all aspects of society (i.e. not just monetarily) deserve to be welcomed. From the inside view of an individual person, it's morally commendable to always be grateful for what you have and not think you deserve anything. However, from an outside view, you shouldn't expect that high moral standard from others who do actually deserve the welcome.

And sometimes its just so satisfying to see white supremacist rhetoric about certain groups turned back on them this eloquently. The whole idea of judging large classes of people as subhuman and worthless is absolutely despicable, but sometimes you just want to say, "ok fine, I'm done with this, let's just accept your premise that we should do so. Wow, the 'worthless' groups aren't actually who you thought they were. Look at that, guess it's not such a good idea for you after all".

Why would it make you vaguely uncomfortable? As far as I'm concerned self_made_human's attitudes are perfectly valid, and should really be the norm for all immigrants. Is it the deference for white people that makes you feel uncomfortable?

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And sometimes its just so satisfying to see white supremacist rhetoric about certain groups turned back on them this eloquently.

Alternatively, your moral resistance to racism observably diminishes so long as it's aimed at the "correct" race. Suppose the Count is wrong on the particulars, and an examination of the statistics reveals that, in fact, migrants in the UK are "worse", by whatever standards you are now flirting with, than the native underclass (and note the obvious dishonesty of comparing all immigrants to only the worst of the natives). If it turns out the natives are in fact better, does that mean the white supremacists had a point all along, or does it just prove that your entire interest in the topic begins and ends with its utility toward bashing the outgroup?

Between this and the luria-posting last week, Hlynka continues to age like fine wine.

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I hardly think the West or its denizens are literally perfect, but they're still a gross improvement over how I've spent most of my life, and a very important difference between me and the Count is that I don't bite the hand that feeds.

I would say that I don't bite the hand that feeds me either. In fact this is a charge I would lay at the feet of the lower classes rather than apply to myself. They are the ones who firstly live off the taxes people like me pay and then instead of displaying gratitude towards us instead come out and say we need to tax the rich more. End result is that not only do we fund their lifestyle but we also continually get told that we aren't doing enough!

I don't think at all the that lower classes of the UK feed me in any way whatsoever. It's amazing how little value I get in the UK for how much taxes I pay. It's significantly worse than mainland Europe too where at least if you are a high earner and you get laid off you're given a big portion of your salary (think 70%+) for a period of time by the government until you can find a new job. The idea there is that because you put in more previously, now you are entitled to get more out of it. They have a contributory system.

The UK on the other hand has a redistributive system. My reward for losing my highly paid job here is that due to having more than £16,000 in savings I am not even eligible for the standard benefit the unemployed get in the UK! Sure you can say I benefit from living in a modern well run state but there's nothing particular to the UK's people or culture that gives rise to that. I would benefit in much the same way were I living in Singapore, the UAE or Japan all of which have very different social systems.

What I do benefit from in the UK's global tier financial prowess but that has nothing to do with the common man who if anything is envious about our success and keeps trying to bring us down a peg. The structures that enable me to have the job and earnings I have are the product of elites, not the proles.

or cause a breakdown of the religious tolerance and high trust a place is known for

Religious tolerance I agree is good. Trust though, as argued by Bryan Caplan in his Open Borders book, is highly overrated. There are clever ways around it that if you're smart enough to navigate mean you can live basically similar lives in a low trust environment as you do in a high trust one.

I'd rather not see a flood of unskilled immigrants bring the welfare system to its knees

I want to see the welfare system destroyed, it's corpse burned, the ashes grindered and launched into the sun. Western whites won't see sense through reasoned argumentation on why the welfare system is a capital-B Bad thing for humanity and I think bringing huge amounts of low tier immigrants with very different beliefs and lifestyles until they viscerally feel disgust at their taxes going to support the degeneracy is the best way to get it dismantled (note: this is not to say these people are more degenerate than low tier westerners, it's just a different kind of degeneracy that westerners won't be as accepting of).

Count makes a great deal more money than I do and is effectively unimpeachable thanks to Western norms of freedom of speech

Free Speech is amazing. I only wish we had something more like what the Americans do in the UK. Truth be told my belief system is very similar to that of the early Liberals of the 18th Century: it's fundamentally Western in origin but very different from the current zeitgeist in the West.

I think bringing huge amounts of low tier immigrants with very different beliefs and lifestyles until they viscerally feel disgust at their taxes going to support the degeneracy is the best way to get it dismantled

Isn't a lot of this the reason for the rioting, though? The local untermensch are frustrated by the decision of their 'betters' to import foreign untermensch who make their untermensching lives less pleasant (and frequently are the beneficiaries of programs and efforts to integrate and advance the foreigners that locals don't have access to) whilst fighting for resources.

You have evidence, then, that those claiming meritocratic principles here are opposing all immigration? There are certainly people here against all immigration; nationalists see skilled immigrants as competition and the less-skilled ones as trouble. But they're open about it.

BurdensomeCount is just a troll, he has been at this for some years despite his alleged superiority.

I think BC is a real person and I think his disdain of us and the values we possess is genuine, as his desire to reinstate a antiquity era moral phantasm over what we have now.

It's bait, and I'm tired of even pointing it out, let alone taking it.

His whole schtick is posting this bait about how white people are subhuman and deserve to be replaced by supposedly enlightened subcontinentals like him, never mind that it's trivially easy to check the stats on how much his Muslim cohorts in Britain consume in services relative to the taxes they contribute. He should really just be blocked as there's no point engaging; it's just racial revanchism masquerading as bourgeois indignation.

I do not think white people are subhuman, most of my friends are white and so are some of the smartest people I know (far smarter than me). If anything I'd say the average white is better than the average non-white. However the difference is that the average white is here living the high life off my taxes while the average non-white is not.

his Muslim cohorts in Britain consume in services relative to the taxes they contribute

The Muslim cohorts in Britain right now are made up in large parts of the descendants of illiterate rural farmers. This is all due to poor selection policies of the UK in the past. I don't think they consume more in services than contribute any more than you'd expect of the descendants of illiterate rural farmers to do when placed in a welfare state.

These individuals are not "my people". Back home "my people" rule over them with an iron fist and keep these kinds in line, which is something the UK doesn't do and then acts shocked they go wild when all the restrictions placed on them to make them behave are removed.

Modern Muslim (non-refugee) immigration to the UK is no longer these types of people but rather mostly made up of middle class+ people who are going to have middle class+ kids and net contribute to society. That is what I am calling for more of, not more illiterate rural farmers.

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The Muslim cohorts in Britain right now are made up in large parts of the descendants of illiterate rural farmers. This is all due to poor selection policies of the UK in the past. I don't think they consume more in services than contribute any more than you'd expect of the descendants of illiterate rural farmers to do when placed in a welfare state.

Back home "my people" rule over them with an iron fist and keep these kinds in line, which is something the UK doesn't do

So, instead of just the locals disappointing the decision-makers, the elites that decided to take such people and make them the elect are the disappointments?

So what's the point of the whole rant?

Modern Muslim (non-refugee) immigration to the UK is no longer these types of people but rather mostly made up of middle class+ people who are going to have middle class+ kids and net contribute to society. That is what I am calling for more of, not more illiterate rural farmers.

This might have been true pre-pandemic but deliveroo student and carers visa that have allowed new immigrants to sponsor dependents have certainly changed the equation to the point that UK Indians no longer out-earn White Britons. Of course you don’t bring up social housing statistics either - strange that despite White Britons being such bums they are only 20th on the list of proportion of UK ethnicities living in social housing behind the supposedly superior “elect”.

I guess the people should perhaps dissolve their rulers since they can’t even be trusted with selecting properly.

Hindus ruling over muslims with an iron fist is also cope given the history of hindus being subjugated by foreign sultanates repeatedly thanks to the fractured nature of India. Try asking a gujurati to support a sindhi against a bihari and somehow it will be a tamil that benefits.

Unless he was saying that hindus rule over lowe classes with an iron fist. He is correct there, but whatever merits there are in that logic are not explicatable in polite society.

Indeed

They are even confused and disoriented about the flashpoint of the current disorder: unlike what their prejudices told them the person who killed the three girls in Southport was not a fresh of the boat Muslim migrant but rather a black Welsh 17 year old child who had been born in the UK having a schizo moment. The true facts about the stabbing coming out did not placate their desire for an orgy of violence in the least.

Ignoring the unseriousness of the rest (great bait, btw), this bit struck me because I've seen this take a lot from commentators on social and traditional media. I don't get what the rioters are supposed to be confused about, has a large number of them or some kind of representative spoken out about these riots being specifically directed against Muslim immigration? Under the idealized policy that most of the rioters would likely endorse for the past and present UK, the actual perpetrator wouldn't be in the country because his ancestors wouldn't have been let in, regardless of his religion.

You are kind of right here. Although they initially spread around false claims that the killer was muslim recently arrived by illegal small boat crossing, and were chanting 'Stop the boats', they have now changed the tune to 'There ain't no black in the union jack'. So the target is broadly focused on other races.

I wonder how things would have gone if it had turned out the killer was white English, or a white immigrant from another country. Can only speculate, I guess it would have cooled things down but I'm not actually certain about that. Once the trigger has been pulled, maybe the bullet can't be slowed.

So the target is broadly focused on other races.

Or in other words, white people are [race] rioting to serve the interests of a certain subset of white people with non-white people as the excuse.

Functionally identical to a BLM riot, which is probably why it looks the same; I guess we're about to see if it actually is a two-tier justice system or if the police are constitutionally incapable of stopping riots. I figure it's a little of both (the pro-BLM faction in particular has been overdrawn on its supply of white feathers for a long time).

I wonder how things would have gone if it had turned out the killer was white English

The same way it would have gone if George Floyd were white. Cassus belli in civil conflicts are interesting in that the law of large numbers guarantees you'll find something intolerable to touch off on eventually.

These rioters are generally low human capital people who take out a lot more over the course of their life than they put in. It's not scientists and lawyers you see giving the middle finger to police officers and pushing garbage bins in their general direction. I think it is perfectly fair to say that as a group they are best characterized as failures who have disappointed their betters and what's more don't even think there is anything wrong with their current state and behavior.

I know I shouldn't be feeding the troll, but I am curious. Have you considered the inverse formulation?

When you are not sneering at Western culture and expressing your disdain for "the natives" you will often wax on about how poorly run your home country is and how pleased you were to escape.

What if the reason your home country is poorly run is that it's elite is comprised of people like you? That is "effete button pushers" who only extract value from a system/community without ever adding any value.of thier own.

Other users such as @RandomRanger and @functor have already touched on this idea, but what if the reason for our superior western standards of living is those very "low human capital people" you despise so much? The kind of person who remains orderly and organized even in a riot. Perhaps the reason that Great Britain has declined from owning half the world to its current state is that its "elites" have chosen to privilege parasites such as yourself over the yeoman steelworkers and Tommy Atkins who actually built the Empire.

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This is.. impressive. Hats off for a scissor statement with atomically sharp edges. I've had real life get in the way for the past few weeks, and I certainly don't envy the other mods when they saw this glowing a bright shade of green in the report queues.

I suppose your viewpoint is common enough among the elite, especially upper class immigrants, but considered too uncouth to state quite so baldly. Are they/you almost certainly richer and smarter than the average native denizen of a nation? Yes, but I'm filled with perplexity that it can give anyone such a superiority complex.

As far as I'm concerned, my presence in the UK is a privilege. For me.

It's a mutually positive sum exchange, where my talent and hard work is rewarded with a ticket to a country that treats me better, in exchange for which said country gets a law-abiding citizen providing a valuable service. I certainly don't feel any sense of entitlement, or that the average person or the underclass here needs further stomping of boots on faces.

Any attempt to talk sense to these people about how a welfare state with sub replacement birth rates and no migration is unsustainable was (and is) met with fingers in ears and "na-na-na can't hear you". Is it any surprise that with such a badly behaved lower class the elites decided to do away with them like you do with a bad employee and get someone new?

Let's grant the premise. Even then, the way the UK has gone about accepting migrants has been rather farcical. As far as I'm concerned, the only migrants a country should allow in are those who will be a net-positive. Asylum seekers are an altruistic luxury, and no country should feel beholden or forced to take in people who won't contribute.

And the UK has chosen poorly. There are no end of migrants who are of questionable or even negative value. Indolent, criminal, unable to assimilate and then further demanding that the rest of the country bend over backwards to accommodate them. Do native Britons have a large underclass about which the exact same things can be said, barring the assimilation? Yes, but the problem is only worsened by accepting terrible immigrants.

Propping up a welfare state with people who are likely to end up consuming more of that welfare than they pay back in taxes, is, to put it simply, a wretched idea.

Further, I fail to see how the blame can be dumped on the shoulders of the British working class. Declining birth rates seem to be nigh universal in any nation with a modicum of wealth, and even poorer nations like India and Nigeria have seen birth rates plummet even if they're still above replacement. It's very far from fair to decry them for it, and worthy of being replaced wholesale by immigrants, who inevitably fall to the same issues.

The biggest downfall of your ideology is that it's toxic. It's one thing for an average native to see skilled immigrants come in and compete for jobs, or at least hardworking immigrants who do jobs that the natives can't be arsed to. It's another for said immigrants to immediately clamor for more of their compatriots, who clearly don't pull their weight, with the implicit undertone that this is their punishment for being ill-behaved proles. Well, in your case, it's rather explicit. And eventually, the locals cotton on, and we end up with the events at hand.

So yes, the elite class in the Western world has taken Bertold Brecht's words to heart. When confronted with unruly and disruptive lower classes it really is simpler for them to dissolve the people and elect another.

If that's the case, then they're voting for a questionable voter base. The kind of people doing the counter-protesting strike me as worse than the protesters, and the latter only exist because the former have been doing their darnedest to turn the country into something it wasn't.

I'm lucky to have been let into the UK. Is it a perfect place, or even where I'd love to live in a perfect world? No. But it's a step up from the subcontinent we hail from, and I think it's incredibly poor form to go about clamoring to get rid of the locals or dilute them into insignificance. Terrible taste at the least, and you say you pride yourself on yours. And your proposed cure, which seems to be bringing in even more MENA migrants, is a cure worse than the disease as far as I'm concerned. There's only so much you can change the demographics of a country in short order before it becomes unrecognizable as the same.

and even poorer nations like India and Nigeria have seen birth rates plummet even if they're still above replacement.

I thought India was below replacement and Nigeria was an exception to the trend due to ethnic dynamics?

I'll have to check the exact figures, but most of India is below replacement barring a few states like UP and Bihar, which are widely considered by Indians to be basket cases. Even they've trended downwards, it's a rather secular disease of modernity and few places seem to be immune even if they're dirt poor.

Its interesting to me that mods can apperently see who reports which comments. I'd have assumed that reports would be anonymous.

Good to know.

The mods include the site administrator, so it's kind of a given they can even if it weren't stated explicitly. Sharecropping sites like Reddit where the mods are just slightly more privileged users and the people running the site aren't cooperative are a special case, not how most internet sites works.

Fair point but still something to keep in mind going forward.

I don't know if your username is intended as a reference to this classic but I like it either way, and if so, mad respect for the deep cut.

Despite being 13% of the population, some of our regulars account for 56% of the reports. It helps to know who's making them!

I'll keep that in mind and be extra sure to keep an alt account in my back pocket.

Furthermore they live off the tax contributions of people like me

What do you actually do as a self-described effete button-pusher? Something in finance I'm guessing. Much of finance has nothing to do with the real economy, it is an actively parasitic element. This is especially so in Britain, where the pound is propped up by a bloated financial sector to the detriment of real industries. We do not need enormous derivative and collateralization schemes to advance technological civilization. Things ran just fine (indeed they ran better) back before financial services was prestigious and lucrative. Indeed, the lesser sons of well-to-do families did a far better job running the financial system than the galaxy-brain quants and managers running it now. This financial experiment of 'lets transfer our industries to poor countries to exploit labour differentials' was the most idiotic decision in human history, it was naked looting of national strength for private gain. Only now are the astonished thieves in the economic and political class realizing the extent of their folly. Only now are they beginning to understand what happens when they break the social contract.

Things ran just fine before millions of Indians and Africans were imported to Britain. Indeed, the country was one of the greatest world powers, at the forefront of science and industry. There was next to no crime. There was a strong social contract. There were no Pakistani rape gangs aided and abetted by the same anti-racist ideas that aid you.

These same people that you keep sneering at are descended from the ones who saved India from Imperial Japan, who would probably have been somewhat less lenient with the affirmative action quotas. Do you feel no shame in constantly abusing your benefactors?

All of the problems the elites are flailing and failing to manage are purely self-inflicted. Demographic decline? Maybe they shouldn't have tried so hard to lower fertility due to 'overpopulation'. They could've kept making houses so that young people could've had families (but that would've lowered real estate appreciation). Refusing to take care of older family members? They installed the pension system, they made the perverse incentives. Their whole job is to lead, that's why they get their privileges and pay.

the non-natives are all people who were either themselves selected by the UK as being positive for the country

They were selected because some greedy university wanted to pump up its income by selling access to a higher-wage labour market. They were selected because they keep labour costs down and pump up property prices. They were selected because some Labour politician wanted to rub the Right's nose in diversity, like you've been saying.

The elites have indeed been mashing 'defect' as hard as they can and are clutching pearls the moment their subjects begin to retaliate.

I am a finance professional as you guessed correctly. I make sure our markets stay functioning smoothly which has positive knock on effects elsewhere. Britain is a net importer, the common man benefits greatly from the pound being as strong as it is, if it were to collapse his energy bills would skyrocket to the levels of 2022, but permanently. Plus I pay huge taxes directly paying for the common man's lifestyle.

Indeed, the lesser sons of well-to-do families did a far better job running the financial system than the galaxy-brain quants and managers running it now.

If this is the case then how come they were all outcompeted by us? Those people can still try and enter the industry, it's just that when you have a 1v1 on a firm level where one has galaxy brain quants and the other has upper class art history majors the quants send the art history majors packing (side note: I'd probably say I know more art history than your average art history graduate from a non top ranked university, so it's not even like they can hold their own on their chosen field; this isn't me bragging about how much art history I know, it's me dissing the quality of the average art history course).

All of the problems the elites are flailing and failing to manage are purely self-inflicted.

I agree all of those problems are caused by the actions of elites (mostly because I see elites as the actors while the proles are the acted upon). Lack of housebuilding in particular has been a very big issue. I blame the acceptance of left wing blank slatist ideology for this though instead of any desire to defect against society. The elites of the time genuinely believed what they were doing was best for society. Fortunately they are capable of learning and nowadays you'll easily find many examples of elite human capital speaking out against each of those past mistakes.

  • -10

I am a finance professional as you guessed correctly. I make sure our markets stay functioning smoothly which has positive knock on effects elsewhere

No, it is more likely that you engage in parasitising on actually useful industries, do thinly veiled hazard or legally steal money.

Yes, some parts of financial sector are useful, but judging from your hutzpah I guess that you are engaging in Enron-type activities.

You sound like a commie

If you want to meaningfully criticize someone's argument you should put a minimal amount of effort into being both substantial and civil. This isn't it.

Why is Britain now a net importer? Britain was the workshop of the world, they produced everything! Now they're a financial hub with a few high-tech gems like ARM and Deepmind (foreign owned of course). They just dropped out of the top 10 manufacturers for the first time despite being the ultimate incumbent.

If this is the case then how come they were all outcompeted by us?

Because the old financial system was working to advance the national interest, not just their own private interests. Or at least they weren't sufficiently efficient in pursuing their own private interests that they could harm the country. Yes it is more economically efficient to shut down the British car industry and import from Thailand, from the perspective of the individual company or consumer. But it is not a good thing for the country as a whole to lose industries, lose jobs and end up with deprived areas, mass unemployment and welfarism. Take the case of the last British steel mill getting shut down by Tata because it was unprofitable... I have no doubt that makes financial sense for Tata. But what happens if you have other industries that need steel, where are you going to get dense, integrated supply chains and knowledge-sharing effects? You're not going to get them, Korea will get them. Suddenly Britain is less competitive overall and imports are even higher. Each step of the deadly spiral seems very reasonable yet it ends in collapse, capital flight and brain drain. The pound is too high but can't be lowered without greatly affecting living standards, so more and more industries erode and the problems get worse and worse.

In South Korea and China they repressed the financial system, they forced banks to provide capital for industrial and technological development even where it was less immediately profitable than other areas. Now they're highly developed, advanced manufacturers with huge numbers of robots per worker. Britain has fallen behind in automation because they chose a quick-fix approach of importing cheap labour to drive growth. It's not remotely sustainable in the long run, it's only that from the perspective of a firm it must seem like a great thing. Bring in more consumers and keep wages down, no need to raise investment and compromise profits in the short-term! Never mind the impacts on productivity...

Private gain is not necessarily good for the country. A well-functioning financial system supports other national industries like an organ, it doesn't consume them like a cancer.

'...there is no freedom where the State totally controls the economy. Personal freedom and economic freedom are indivisible. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t lose one without losing the other.'

She knows a little more than you about the conditions Britain found herself in and what we needed to get her out. Shame we fell behind on our obligations.

Smart, consistent industrial policy is not the same as 'have unions striking until the end of time' or 'poorly managed nationalized industries using capital equipment from the 1920s because the treasury-brained managers refuse to invest in modern machinery and instead raise pay for workers unsustainably high wages for political reasons'. It's not egregious for me to specify 'smart' policy, British management of industry really was just dumb. The stupidity was the problem, not state involvement.

Britain is not Australia or Canada, it cannot coast upon resource wealth. Britain must have a strong manufacturing sector, not a single financial/services hub and everyone else on welfare or make-work.

The way to get real per capita growth is R&D and capital deepening. The state has the power to incentivize both and should do so. The state should not just get out of the way and let the market bring in cheap labour, ignoring the externalities. The state should not just let banks build up a housing bubble (regulations are a major factor in this too) for their own profit, ignoring externalities. The state should not let key industries be sold to foreigners and be asset-stripped.

I think I should just copy paste my favorite talking points because they keep getting validated: urban elites side with foreign migrants against rural poor because political capture is the win condition for urban elites, taking from the till as they pretend to dispense the spoils.

Foreign migrants are not self selected for automatic contribution, at least in the west. The exploitable loopholes of family reunions and illegal crossings allow for an endless volume of low human capital migrants, especially mirpuris and roma for the UK, to enter unchecked and unmonitored.

The big difference is that the urban elites are happy to loudly decry white trash as the true threat, but will not say a single word about crime by foreigners. Pretending it doesn't happen makes it worse, claiming that the foreigners are actually British and therefore the crimes represent British values just makes the difference in framing more obvious.

Countries can do without a surplus of chip shops, phone sellers and cab drivers. Muslims aren't council workers or fruit pickers, and more focus will hone in on the migrant breakdown to make sure migrants are indeed 'selected' for optimality.

I find the lack of self awareness of the British middle class and above to be fascinating. Despite losing an entire empire they still can't see the issues with their behaviour. Do you not think Marcus Aurelius and Alexander the Great found some of their peasants dumb and brutish? Yet they lived among them, fought alongside them and worked hard for them. The UK has some of the most working class people in Europe. Despite having industrialized far ahead of most of the rest of Europe, your country failed at uplifting its people. They are behaving like hoodlums because the people who are supposed to take the role of the parents in the country have completely abdicated any sense of responsibility. Your ancestors took illiterate peasants and got them to build Australia, Canada and the US. Current elites are crying because people called them the wrong pronoun. Current elites are hiding in an area they can barely afford to live in and whining that the proles are throwing trash bins at the cops. William the conqueror was royalty and acted like it. The current elite act like boy emperors in China in the lead up to some major war. A fish rots from the head, and a society does the same.

The British elite got their people to build the first railway system in the world, the current elite couldn't build HS2 while Uzbekistan has high speed rail. The UK is failing as a state because the elite is corrupted to the core. They cargo cult aristocratic traditions while failing at leading a nation. The fate of Britain is going to be a Guatemala with few areas in which people can play with horses and pretend they are nobles, just like their ancestors in the 1800s.

If a class of pre-schoolers have chased the teacher out of the classroom, it is the adults fault for abdicating their role as adults. If the population is revolting against the elites, it is because the elites have abdicated their role as elites.

The post above is written in the spirit of Versailles in 1789.

The Industrial Revolution brutalized the British working class.

This assumption probably won’t count as anything new, but it seems to me that the overall leftist strategy in the current culture war over (in essence) MtF transsexual boxers in the Olympic games hinges entirely on the following unstated assumptions: a) TV viewers generally aren’t that interested in women’s sports in the first place b) the sort of sports where these particular MtF athletes seem to predominantly want to excel at are generally seen as low-status in the eyes of suburban middle-class Blue Tribe normies c) the relative number of cissexual women genuinely interested in such sports is insignificantly low.

there are many other possibilities there:

  • they may genuinely believe that MtF gives you female body and FtM gives you male body, and based strategy on that
  • they may genuinely believe that woman and man are as strong among top performers
  • supposed transsexual boxers are not actually transsexual
  • they may consider it as acceptable side effect and do not care about woman sports

and so on

These are just beliefs, and beliefs alone do not guide the culture war. Those who wage it take other considerations into account as well.

I am confused how it changes things. You listed bunch of possible beliefs and implied that there are no other options. I mentioned some other possibilities.

I think it makes sense to differentiate between personal beliefs that are held as self-evident for whatever emotional inclination, and deductions/assumptions made about the outside world that encourage you to engage in culture-warring.

they may genuinely believe that woman and man are as strong among top performers

In this case it's true that there are women as strong as Imane Khelif (though to me that's more evidence that she's not a man). She's got 9 losses on her record, if it weren't for a difference in weight classes she would be facing one of the Irish boxers who beat her handily in the 2020 Olympics again.

if it weren't for a difference in weight classes she would be facing one of the Irish boxers who beat her handily in the 2020 Olympics again.

I'm not sure "cuts weight and loses, puts on a bunch of muscle and starts kicking ass" is exactly an argument in favour of 'khelif is not that great anyways' or whatever people are trying to argue here. I did watch part of the Broadhurst fight now, and Khelif is certainly visibly more muscled now.

I'm not sure "cuts weight and loses, puts on a bunch of muscle and starts kicking ass" is exactly an argument

A man is going to have an easier time cutting weight, less of the female bodyfat that is more or less uncuttable.

Sure -- but he will be weaker. Khelif is 6'1", and fought Broadhurst at 62.5 kilos, which is what, 135lbs? I'm 5'10", and I don't think I've ever been 5'10" and 135 lbs; by the time I got to my full height in high school I weighed like 145 and was weak as fuck.

So "loses to Broadhurst, eats some cheeseburgers and puts on ten pounds of muscle" (also much easier if you have some testosterone in the mix) explains quite well (to me) why Khelif is more dominant now than before?

I'm not gonna look for vintage photos, but this looks pretty different to me than the Broadhurst video.

Male pro at 5'10 135

Extra test gets you extra muscle. A male minimum health body fat is 8-10%, while for women it's closer to 16-20%.

Also, on wikipedia she's listed at 5'10". Assuming she cuts some weight, probably walking around at 150-160. Which is roughly the height and weight I was when I started rowing in college.

It's 183 cm from the tape on the match you linked -- this is quite a big difference as to how much weight one should be carrying. (not to mention pretty far out on the bellcurve itself for non-testosterone-puberty enjoyers.)

favour of 'khelif is not that great anyways' or whatever people are trying to argue here.

'Khelif is not that great anyways' is a hard argument to make given that she's now fighting for a silver medal. 'Khelif handily beats everyone except for other medal winning boxers' just means she's a top contender.

I did watch part of the Broadhurst fight now, and Khelif is certainly visibly more muscled now.

I was talking about Kellie Harrington who once had a 32 fight winning streak and is fighting for gold tomorrow. Women's boxing isn't that big of a sport, you are going to have lots of skewed bouts until you get near the end of the tournament because the best fighters severely outmatch the rest.

The mtf transgender part has no basis in fact, the whole reason people have felt able to defend the Algerian boxer is that she is as she is through accident of birth (though it's unclear what condition, if any, she has).

Many people feel very sympathetic to someone born and raised as a woman suddenly being told by some (probably corrupt) governing body: "you're a man". All the rest of the discourse about this issue, on this occasion, follows from that feeling. There could be a proper discussion about whether the ioc should have specific gender criteria and how to enforce them but not in the heat of this rather triggering edge case.

Nobody has to tell her "you're a man". They can just tell her (assuming she fails these tests) "You have an intersex condition which disqualifies you from participating in women's events".

I feel like I’m seeing a lot of examples of news stories inciting ideological clashes lately where the news story in question is an off-case or even completely irrelevant. A non-trans athlete triggers a big kerfuffle about trans athletes. A spree killing by a Christian (second-generation) British national triggers riots about Muslim immigration.

If we’re speaking of strategy, it seems like a bad one not to pick more central examples to get exercised over.

I don't know/care if anyone made this point already in the media, but it's relevant to mention that Rwanda was never a British colony, so any argument that this is all somehow indirect blowback from British colonialism has no basis.

People don't trust the media to be honest about certain things, so they jump to what seems like the likeliest reason the media would lie. "Random stabbings of people who couldn't possibly be involved in gang beef was probably done by a Muslim" isn't a bad bet, neither is "person who looks like a man and is accused of being one is trans" (though this one is arguably less excusable because there was information available ahead of time. I think lots of TRA arguments have made it hard, as intended, for normies to separate out intersex and trans)

Not to get all Hananian about it but riots and randos on Twitter are basically uncontrollable phenomena driven by impulsivity anyway, can't expect much strategy in general.

People don't trust the media to be honest about certain things, so they jump to what seems like the likeliest reason the media would lie.

Well, at least the anti-media people are finally getting smarter (something that Orwell notably did not predict).

Every lie, including by omission, incurs a debt to the truth, and the media (and by extension the faction the media supports) is very indebted. And now that everyone knows they're unreliable we've gone back to the time-tested heuristic: you believe that which is in your class interest to believe.

It would be justice if those whose shops were looted seized media property in turn (those [likely-to-be] immigrants who just lost their employment along with the owners). I don't think it's come to that yet, though.

As far as I know, knife crime of any sort in the UK is disproportionately committed by non-Muslim black youths, but that's such a pure hatefact that not even the local "extreme right-wing" wants to mention it.

I ran into the number once and it actually is a bit uncanny how the disproportion almost matches a certain racist hatestat about the US murder rate. I can see why people wouldn't want to bring it up. An absurdity but there you go.

But this was clearly not a "normal" stabbing, nor some sort of casualty of spillover gang violence like a drive-by.

Left-wing poasters on the Imane Khelif row are well aware that Khelif is not trans, and are pointing and laughing at the ignorance of right-wing poasters who suggest that she is. The left-wing argument against policing female athletes' biology (namely that it is demeaning to the athletes, and that the intersex corner cases that it throws up are hard to adjudicate) long predates trans being a shouting issue.

The simple cheating case which sex testing exists to catch (a non-intersex cis man entering a female event) has never happened in the Olympics - and as far as I am aware it hasn't happened in international-level athletics either. What sex testing throws up is arguments about whether certain AFAB (a rare occasion where "asssigned X at birth" is accurate and useful terminology) intersex people are "real women". And the science to adjudicate those fairly while maintaining competitive balance has only been done for middle-distance running.

I think sport needs to decide what a woman is and enforce it - particularly in a world where there are biologically male people with "woman" on their government ID - but I understand the case for throwing up your hands and saying "can't be done" given how destructive intersex-in-women's-sports rows are.

The simple cheating case which sex testing exists to catch (a non-intersex cis man entering a female event) has never happened in the Olympics - and as far as I am aware it hasn't happened in international-level athletics either.

Trans identified males (non-intersex) taking over female sports has been happening at all levels of competition (including international) for several years now.

https://www.shewon.org/

Documents the phenomenon closely, with citations.

Number of Female Athletes 717 Number of Medals* 1055 Number of Competitions 522 Number of Sports 37

The simple cheating case which sex testing exists to catch (a non-intersex cis man entering a female event) has never happened in the Olympics

The question is: how much of that is because sex testing was mandatory? It could be that sex testing never had any useful effect (“my rock keeps tigers away”) or that it was quite effective at dissuading would-be cheaters. The argument “we didn't catch any cheaters, so therefore sex testing was always useless” is not logical.

The mainstream media is basically taking the tack of "how dare anyone question these women?". Which, as you say, only works because the percentage of the audience interested in women's boxing is epsilon. If they cared -- especially if they had a favorite who was not in question -- they'd totally understand questioning those women. I think this is mostly for domestic (US) political consumption, to throw shade at people on the right.

And these particular women are not, as far as I know, even suspected of being transsexual. They are suspected of being intersex. Transgender activists often attempt to use intersex disorders and persons to blur the gender binary or support their claims of the possibility of transition, but they're wrong to do so.

In the literal sense of the word, they aren't trans. But that doesn't really matter. In a practical sense, in the context of the culture war, they are.

No, they're not, and whether they are or they're not is in fact a point of contention in the culture war; trans activists try to imply that trans people are much like intersex people. In fact, the terms AFAB and AMAB were appropriated (if you will) from terms used for intersex people.

Strategy?

This is vibes, through and through. If you’re on team A, she’s a persecuted trans icon. Team B, he’s a dirty poser. There, your social media post is ready to go.

Never mind that Khelif never claimed to be trans, because that would take away from how Brave and Oppressed she’s being. Or that the closest thing to medical evidence is a half-assed statement by an org that already resents the IOC, and they won’t even commit. No, the average culture warrior gets to have full confidence that these athletes are woke partisans, for better or worse.

These circumstances aren’t conducive to strategy.

Vibes alone don't explain what's happening. In this case, both sides seem to be willing to turn this into a culture war issue because - for different reasons - they think social circumstances favor them, and their messaging will be well-received as a result. If this condition weren't met, one or both sides would drop the issue, and there'd be no culture war over it.

That sounds like vibes to me. Thinking the social conditions are favorable is like thinking the stars are right.

I wouldn't say sociology and astrology equally count as junk science.

But how many people propagating this issue are either sociologists or astrologers?

I think amateur sociology falls back on a few easy intuitions. Most important is “My team is obviously correct.” When someone says “you’re on the wrong side of history,” that’s rarely the result of a principled analysis. It’s argument by analogy to situations with the preferred emotional valence. Vibes.

Or that the closest thing to medical evidence is a half-assed statement by an org that already resents the IOC

The is a bad look for both sides, not just the one you seem to malign. I doubt the only available gender test is looking at the passport as the IOC appears to imply.

Yeah, I don’t disagree.

Both athletes got disqualified from a recent event, and they did fail some sort of test. Odds are good it was chromosomal. The IBA has been vague, though, so the IOC has jumped on that vagueness to suggest whatever the test was, it doesn’t supersede the other evidence. Mainly that Khelif has always had the legal status of a woman, both in a country which doesn’t give a damn about trans politics and in the previous Olympics.

Which…it’s reasonable, no? The burden of proof should be on the accuser who wants to supersede the passport and birth certificate. The IBA should be able to provide their testosterone or chromosome or whatever test.

To be clear, I think there’s a good chance that she is XY, and that this gets confirmed in the next week or three. I don’t think that has to be a disqualifier. She was clearly womanly enough to get approval for the past however many years, lose to Broadstreet, etc. So I’m inclined to argue with people who act like she’s Randy Savage.

The IBA should be able to provide their testosterone or chromosome or whatever test.

The claim from the other side is that they are not legally allowed to do so due to health privacy laws, which also makes sense to me.

I haven’t seen anybody notable arguing that Khalif is a trans icon; she’s not trans.

I think ‘Team A’ broadly assumes she has a DSD, but is considering social identity over genetics. And it’s mostly speculation from both sides since nothing is confirmed about her genetics or hormones.

Imane Khalid is not trans. There’s a reasonable- but not ironclad- argument that she has an intersex condition which should preclude her from competing in the women’s division, but she just objectively isn’t trans.

The problem is, if your argument starts with "no, she's not a man, although she isn't exactly a woman either", chances are you'll instantly lose the normies.

"A rare birth defect has caused her to have both female genitalia and functional but undescended testicles" should cover it for most people?

It should. But it still leaves you having to explain why you let that individual compete in female boxing, in the Olympics.

"Normies don't think people who have ever had any sort of testicles should be in female events" is indeed something that the IOC ought to explain in light of their policies.

Something just finally clicked for me.

For years, and years and years and years, the bailey of trans was defended with the motte of intersex. Arguments about how it occurs in nature played loose and fast with definitions of trans or intersex. Arguments about how it's genetic or something you were born with involved similar free association between trans or intersex. For 10 years the steelman for trans acceptance and "the science" involved quoting studies about intersex people.

And now, suddenly, when the wrong people are conflating the two in a bad way "Woah woah woah, she's not trans, she's intersex! There is a huge fucking difference, can't you tell? idiot."

And I almost fell for it. It's so easy to get caught up in current year and that tepid thread of logic from all of only a few years ago that brought us to this point get's washed away.

We don’t actually know she’s intersex. We know the IBA excluded her on gender grounds on one occasion, they won’t specify why. The IOC claims she isn’t intersex.

The IOC didn't test him. The IBA did. They are trying very hard to not get sued for revealing sensitive medical information.

Neither of the XY competitors even pretend to live as women.

Neither of the XY competitors even pretend to live as women.

Oh, that changes things. I could have sworn I'd read they live as women.

Edit: do you have a source? I went googling and could not check this (some sources say 'they identify as women' but I guess there's a further question of how they 'live').

Edit: do you have a source?

https://instagram.com/boxing_ting

https://instagram.com/imane_khelif_10

I mean, what does it mean to „live as a woman“ in current year? Surely there are some butch lesbians having the same style. But this is very male-presenting.

Yeah but that's hardly unusual for womens' sports. The elite female athletes I've met have generally trended towards butchness, and that's been the trend forever. Look at the drama with the WNBA & Caitlin Clark with a tacit theme of 'the traditionally black & lesbian-dominated WNBA don't like that they've suddenly become palatable due to the success of a white woman'.

Neither of the XY competitors even pretend to live as women.

Care to provide evidence they live as men?

Neither of the XY competitors even pretend to live as women.

What do you base this on?

Neither of the XY competitors even pretend to live as women.

Important if true, but warrants at least a link. (That unambiguously states this, not just kinda-sorta suggests it if you squint right.) As this stands I'm skeptical.

https://twitter.com/Glinner/status/1820585888734203937

This looks like a perfectly reasonable set of PT gear for a woman to wear, though. It's not, by western norms, very feminine, but Imane Khelif is butch and Algeria probably has very different norms compared to the west.

The IOC claims she isn’t intersex.

No, that's the infuriating part. The IOC never clearly stated that they believe Khelif isn't intersex. (When an official accidentally said “this isn't a case of a DSD” the IOC published a rectification on Twitter stating that the official had meant “transgender” instead, tacitly admitting it might very well be a case of a DSD.)

The IOC intentionally abolished sex tests, because they worked too well: they identified some AFAB XY athletes, and the IOC didn't want to be the bad guy that has to tell male “women” with 5-ARD that their bodies are not female enough to be eligible for women's sports.

If the IOC had any integrity, they would say clearly: “We decided to include intersex males in the women's sports competition, so whether the IBA's assessment that Khelif is an intersex male is correct, is irrelevant.”

But they don't do that. They vaguely imply that the IBA is wrong, refuse to do any testing on their own, and let people take their sides in the culture war. It's infuriating cowardice. The IOC needs to decide whether or not XY-males with 5-ARD are allowed to compete. If so, they should say clearly that they don't care if Khelif is biologically male. If not, they should propose meaningful measures to keep males like Khelif out.

Regardless of how evasive IOC is being, I'm not inclined to assign IBA enough trust to move the needle from the zero hypothesis in this case. Not when their Russian pro-Russian CEO has every reason to be pissed that Russia isn't allowed to compete in the Olympics and every reason to stoke Olympic trans athlete controversies.

You don't find it strange that the IBA would stake its reputation on a claim that, if false, could be easily disproven with a simple cheek swab and PCR test? Don't you find it strange that neither the IOC nor either of the accused athletes have chosen to disclose any details on their medical condition?

And even if you believe that the IBA wanted to throw shade regardless of the truth (which is plausible), don't you agree that they'd be more likely to do that if they had actual proof? (Which is definitely not impossible; intersex athletes have been outed by sex tests many times, that's why the IOC stopped sex testing in the first place.) If so, you should agree that by Bayes theorem, that the fact that they have raised the issue increases the probability that the athletes are male.

Don't you find it strange that neither the IOC nor either of the accused athletes have chosen to disclose any details on their medical condition?

IIRC they also either didn't appeal or withdrew their appeals after the original IBA ruling. Possibly because going further would have made the matter clear, as with Caster Semenya.

I don't necessarily agree that the intersex argument for trans acceptance is a motte and bailey, any more than the "dolphins have hairs" argument for dolphins not being fish is a motte and bailey (under a morphology-based taxonomy scheme of animals.) Trans activists who bring up intersex people are using them to point to a weakness in people's unreflective definitions of sex, and then adopting a "lumper" position that trans people should be included under their identified sex because of that ambiguity.

There's a few possible places that argument could go wrong:

  1. It could be the case that intersex people do not exist, or are easily and uncontroversially able to be categorized as one sex or the other. (Thus a merely two category system is tenable.)
  2. It could be the case that intersex people do exist, but that there are easy and uncontroversial membership tests for "man"/"male" and "woman"/"female" that can be easily used to categorize non-intersex people. (Enabling a straightforward three category system.)
  3. It could be that the boundaries of sex are indeed fuzzy, but that for splitter-related intuitions we don't want to include trans-women among women, and trans-men among men, even if we might allow intersex people membership in those categories. (Two categories with fuzzy, ambiguous borders.)

For my own part, I do think the existence of intersex people is a good argument for "sex" being messier than commonly believed (the same way that I think ring species and occasionally fertile hybrids point to the concept of "species" being messier than commonly believed), but I don't really use that as my argument for trans people. Instead, I have something closer to a socio-legal "adoptive sex" model, where a society can create fictive "sex" categories the same way that adoption can create fictive "parent-child" relationships. Each society or subculture gets to decide what the package of rights and privileges associated with "adoptive sex" are, and so might chose any variety of constructions surrounding bathroom inclusivity, prison inclusivity, and sports inclusivity. For my own part, I'm really only a partisan for there being some sort of protections for employment, housing and financial services, since I tend to think those are the most impactful domains, and I'm okay with less important private businesses denying services or discriminating in most other domains, since I tend to think the market will work itself out in the long run.

Whatever else you may say about capitalism, it does tend to erode discrimination under certain conditions. Black people needed a Green Book from the 1930's to the 1960's, but today every gas station wants the public's money enough that the the only color they care about is your green cash. I doubt McDonald's will ever start denying service to trans people, gay people, etc.

This is silly, it's important to actually get the facts straight and one shouldn't respond as if attacked when corrected on the facts. The question of how to categorize people with rare genetic defects and whether to rule them in or out of sports competitions are entirely different to the same questions applied to natal males or natal females who identify with the opposite sex and undergo treatment to approximate as much as possible the body and experience of the opposite sex. One can come to the same conclusion on both, and I broadly do, but we must actually keep our thinking straight here.

This is silly, it's important to actually get the facts straight and one shouldn't respond as if attacked when corrected on the facts.

Who has corrected anyone on the facts here? The actual status of the controversial athletes is being deliberately hidden from the public, and the other side is just assuming that these hidden facts are always on their side.

Also please give me a definition of "trans person" that doesn't cover intersex people, before making fun of my "ignorance".

A trans person is a natal male or female that identifies with the opposite sex and seeks to undergo treatment to approximate the experience of the opposite sex as close as possible. An intersex person is someone who is born with a rare but identifiable physical ailment that complicates the standard XX/XY binary options that naturally describe male and female people. I'm very sympathetic to annoyance that the various authorities haven't clarified the situation but as far as I know no one who has looked into it seriously thinks this is a trans person.

The problem is it's the very same people (broadly) who spent the last 10 years obfuscating and playing loose and fast with the trans/intersex distinction that are now rolling in and yelling at people for not understanding the trans/intersex distinction. There was little to no difference between the two when it suited them, now there is all the difference in the world when it suits them. And there are no "facts" about how we morally or intellectually should distinguish between the two, only social convention. Which the narrative controllers have decided is now turning on a dime so that they can continue their monopoly on deciding right and wrong, unburdened by their previous statements or arguments.

This is silly, it's important to actually get the facts straight and one shouldn't respond as if attacked when corrected on the facts.

The suspicion is that those facts are being weaponized, and that the same people doing the "correcting" would be soft-pedalling them or even being actively misleading if they didn't fit the narrative they wanted to push (and, in fact, have a history of doing just that). You can't (well, okay, shouldn't) make arguments for years on end that rely on conflating "trans" and "intersex" and then get all huffy and indignant when people confuse the two in a way that you don't find politically convenient.

(Generic "you", not necessarily you personally.)

The suspicion is that those facts are being weaponized

Fighting the facts is just never a good look. When you start out saying something that isn't true you pretty immediately lose the persuadable audience. It's not good strategically and more importantly to me, it's not good epistemics. Keeping these things straight matters.

You can't make arguments for years on end that rely on conflating "trans" and "intersex" and then get all huffy and indignant when people confuse the two in a way that you don't find politically convenient.

They weren't doing this though, or at least not the more serious people. Certainly intersex people come up in discussions of exactly where to draw lines on defining what it is to be a man or a woman because they're exactly the kind of edge case bullet people need to bite if they want to rigorously define "woman" and people arguing for expanding the definition will naturally make you bite those bullets. The claim wasn't that trans women and people who were born with a vagina and womb but have an odd genetic disorder are exactly the same thing, just that they're both category errors(or at least the trans advocate will try to claim that trans identification ought to make them a category error, I find this argument dubious).

They're obviously quite different for many reasons, most important to me because intersex is a very objective kind of thing, we can run tests and know what is going on. For this reason we're not at high risk of mistakenly giving someone, especially a kid, inappropriate life altering treatment. We have no risk of a social contagion of intersex diagnoses. Because of this I think we can and should calmly sit down and determine what should be done about these cases where nature is the only party at fault. I do still think in that calmly sitting down, if we avoid invoking the trans culture war mind killing, the natural outcome would be banning intersex cases that provide advantage from serious competition. And invoking trans people in this discussion is not helping.

That's exactly the problem though. Recognizing the motte and Bailey doesn't lead naturally to therefore attack the motte harder. Instead you recognize and you keep the fight in the bailey, you endeavor to cut off the motte so they can't support the bailey.

Here, I fear that those concerned about trans participation in women's sport are setting themselves up for a fall. Everyone from JK to DJT have publicly attacked Khelif, who is going to leave Paris with a medal around her neck. Perfectly timed for a TV special on CBS Sunday morning, where the crew takes a look at her life growing up, her training, how she never knew about her DSD diagnosis, talking head from the IOC comes in to say it's fair, the "attacks" she suffered, and then gets some talking head with an MD to come on and say "Intersex disorders are very common and gender is really complicated!"

Conflating rare invisible intersex disorders, or just having (eurocentric) masculine features, with being trans is what the TRAs want. They want terfs to make themselves look bad attacking sympathetic targets.

It bears noting two things-

One, Imane Khelif is an extremely sympathetic target. She collected scrap metal to fund bus fair to her boxing gym she attended over the objections of her strict Islamic father in rural Algeria. She isn't trans, she probably has a rare intersex disorder that nobody in Algeria has ever heard of, and being non-gender conforming in Islamic Arab societies is not fun, especially when it isn't your fault and nobody can figure out why you aren't like the other girls.

Two, a lot of the core population of the west has their well of sympathy completely exhausted. I don't care about the oppressed Arab woman rising above the odds anymore. Trans genocide? Bring it on, and if some unfortunate intersex get caught in the crossfire that's the cost of doing business.

Two, a lot of the core population of the west has their well of sympathy completely exhausted. I don't care about the oppressed Arab woman rising above the odds anymore. Trans genocide? Bring it on, and if some unfortunate intersex get caught in the crossfire that's the cost of doing business.

I'll go a bit further. At a certain point, it feels emasculating to have to give all of the caveats about how obviously it's a complicated issue and everyone deserves dignity and so on while your enemies just call you a bigot when they're strong and then putter around pettifogging about hormone classes and doing it by weight when they're weak.


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