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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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I really like your comments on culture war and I disagree with this take for a few reasons. My intention is not to be rude, in case my response sounds off, please let me and I can reword it better.

None of all of the above is to imply that I agree with any and all criticisms of Ireland’s policy on immigration, or that I am personally opposed to immigration into Ireland - I am not. All I’m saying is: before you lecture anti-immigration activists on their hypocrisy, first ask yourself whether you’re guilty of the exact same hypocrisy in the other direction.

Will quote a celt in response here, Aidan Maclear

Just reminding everybody that the Left has nothing to do with principles, and you cannot defeat it by attacking its purported moral principles as hypocrisy. Power knows no hypocrisy. Claims of hypocrisy only work when they are used by power against the weak and principled. Because if you’re weak, the only thing backing up your claim to power is said principles.

Claiming your powerful enemy is a hypocrite is simply a claim that they are powerful- because otherwise they could not get away with hypocrisy.

While the forces of darkness steadily advance their power, people like Ben Shapiro make a lot of money snarking off from the sidelines about their lack of principles. It sells well because it makes a lot of gangly college Republicans feel smug and superior for an hour or two. It changes nothing and has the potential to change nothing.

The pursuit of political power is not fair and anyone abiding by moral principles the other side does not keep is outright incorrect. You cannot cooperate with those who defect. I am neither a nationalist nor am I Irish but I would much rather lean towards waht keith woods says on the topic of migration. Even if you dont have crimes being commited, suppose the people migrating are very smart, you still would have some levels of soceital breakdown after the number exceed a threshold. I know people irl who are scamming their way and getting their relatives and friends to ireland, they dont see themselves as irish and explicitly move out because they can reap benefits from the taxes the actual irish pay and live in a society they created which they could not back home.

On the topic of Conor, this was a civil proceeding, not a criminal proceeding where a girl retroactively took back her consent. I am not sure if we can even call him a rapist legally since he did not serve time in jail, in case it does turn out after a fair trial that he violated her consent, I will hope for justice for the girl involved.

The anti-migration people doing what any political movement that wins always does, it is not ideal behaviour in some place like this forum or in ones family or house but if the people who are against you start doing underhanded things, the only way you can get any peace is by winning against them and that cannot be done via morals. There are examples of the political class letting go of rapists, this case in England for instance. I am obviously against having rapists or other criminals in any movement but he has not been judged to be a rapist by the criminal court. I am not a rape apologist but there is nothing wrong in being a hypocrite in my opinion if you are up against people who routinely do the same thing. You defect against those who defect.

The pursuit of political power is not fair and anyone abiding by moral principles the other side does not keep is outright incorrect.

I thought Tit for Tat with forgiveness did a lot better than spam defect strategies?

Point of order: TfTwF does mostly spam defect against defectbots (just not 100% as true TfT does).

Objection, relevance?

The pursuit of political power is not fair and anyone abiding by moral principles the other side does not keep is outright incorrect.

I thought Tit for Tat with forgiveness did a lot better than spam defect strategies?

TfTwF doesn't "abide by moral principles the other side does not keep". It occasionally extends an olive branch, but then goes right back to defect-spam if it's not taken.

There is room for counterargument to @mrvanillasky's position, but it's entirely based on disputing the IPD frame; TfTwF does not do what you're arguing for and pure CooperateBot is not a winning strategy. This is why I said "point of order", as I was disputing the analogy rather than the conclusion.

TfTwF doesn't "abide by moral principles the other side does not keep"

I think it does? The moral principle of occasional forgiveness. The other side does not have such a rule. Is the key word here 'abide'? Is it incoherent to say someone abides by a rule that is only implemented say 10% of the time? Like, we abide by a rule of spot checking 10% of our products? Or is abide not important and there is some other reason you think it is not an example of a rule the other side does not keep?

  1. We're operating in meta-land here, where "co-operate" = "abide by principles" and "defect" = "ignore principles for partisan gain". Or at least, that's the frame @mrvanillasky was using. Talking about abiding by principles of how often to co-operate vs. defectors is thus not addressing the point because that's another meta-level up.

  2. I would indeed make that claim about "abide".

  3. I will note for the record that TfTwF only actually beats TfT against things extremely similar to "TfT plus noise", and that in the TfTwF mirror the one that's slower to forgive wins.

Given that the left has won since the 1500s, I'm less inclined to believe that. You turn the other cheek but you do fight back once that's no longer an option

This reply, from @mrvanillasky, seems to be saying he wants to move from a cooperate bot into some kind of TfT bot, because he is tired of hitting cooperate only to get burned because the other side didn't.

It seems at least somewhat germane to discuss the kinds of strategies for defecting that the right is going to take, when making a general call for the right to start defecting more.

  1. I am not sure if I am really on the wrong meta level.

  2. I think we will just have to agree to disagree, TfTwF is a program, it is hard for me to imagine anything being more capable of 'abiding by a rule', as that is the very nature of the beast.

  3. I quoted the specific phrase I did for a reason, outright incorrect seem to me, to say something more like 'This strategy is never correct' more than it says 'In this specific situation this strategy is not correct'.

  4. (1+3)If you narrowly define 'abiding by moral principles' to mean 'cooperating with a defect bot' then sure, but I don't think it was unreasonable of me to not define it that narrowly, given the actually discussion was of real world politics and these toy models are just abstractions anyways.

edit: formatting

can you please tell me what TfT, TfTwF mean here?

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