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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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Do you believe false things?

You, high IQ, well educated, traveled and read motte denizen, you personally?

Not ordinary mistaken trivia knowledge, for example when you are unsure whether US has 50 or 51 states, or on what continent is New Guinea, but when facts about the world that serve as bedrock of your beliefs that happen to be totally delusionary, at catastrophical odds to reality. Can it happen to you?

It happens frequently. See the famous poll where about one in 20 of "very liberal people" believe that tens of thousands of unarmed blacks are annually killed by police.

For non-US example, see this poll among Palestinians, where one third of population of Gaza believe that Israel has less than 500k inhabitants.

"No, it cannot happen to me! I was trained in martial arts of rationalism by ancient master Yud the Yumongous! I am unstoppable!"

Well, it can happen not only to "brainwashed libtards" or "dumb Ayrabs".

It happened to credentialed rationalist and one of Yud's disciples.

The short xeet that went viral:

Until I was 38 I thought Men's World Cup team vs Women's World Cup team would be a fair match and couldn't figure out why they didn't just play each other

And the long essay where Eneasz Brodski at request of his readers and haters explains how it happened:

How To Believe False Things - by request, this is an explanation of how I got 38 years old believing a match of World Cup men's team vs World Cup women's would be fair.

TL;DR: EB learned about relative strength of men and women as we all learn all things we know. From his own experience, from media, from experts. EB trusted them all, without considering that his experiences could be extremely unrepresentative, media could be completely fictional and experts could just plain lie to his face.

All this person is describing is remaining forever a child. It's actually kind of amazing. He blames that on being neurodivergent? I can't really assess whether that's a valid defense of his willful ignorance or not.

Even in his own post, he repeatedly points out all the places he recoiled from any exposure to base reality.

Men don’t compete against women, so a casual watching of a nearby TV during a conversation doesn’t give any observations. To notice a difference I would have to look for the reported numbers somewhere on the screen, write them down, and compare them across the events.

I mean, on the one hand, I can't recall the last time I actually watched the Olympics either. On the other hand, you are rarely comparing similar numbers here either. If it's some track event, all the men's times will be clustered, and then all the women's times will be clustered say, 30% slower. You aren't comparing decimal places here. Even casual observers should notice.

I opted out of gym as much as possible, it was humiliating and vulgar. The only post-puberty phys ed class I was forced to take was sex segregated so I wouldn't have had any opportunity to see differences. In earlier gym classes I didn’t look around much. Why would I? Are people comparing themselves to see how many jumping jacks they can do? I just wanted it to be done with.

I mean, did his school never do the Presidential fitness tests? He never noticed how different the standards were for even barely pubescent boys and girls?

Nothing about this entrenched ignorance seems accidental. Some seed was planted that caused him to recoil from any confounding evidence. And it's like after he got through childhood carefully selecting the reality he was exposed to so as to not challenge his pre existing views that were passed onto him, he just never gave it another thought ever again. Nor spent any time being physical with women, as even relatively sedentary man strength is often greater than female gym bunny strength.

Judo class in college was quite awkward. The men were all bigger than me and surprised by my strength, while the women were feathers and twigs and it felt like doing the moves right might break them. Also judo-pinning women feels rapy and uncomfortable.

Aikido might be a BS martial art, but the women there were athletic lesbians with some sturdiness, and there was no need to throw anyone to the ground and lay on top of them.