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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2173 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 1, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Tell me honestly: Am I boned?

I've worked in a small Australian tax accounting firm for 1.5 years. Every single time I ask for feedback on my performance people state that my work quality is very good and that I'm responsible; I was recently given one of the most complex jobs in the firm and I had my manager state in my last one-on-one review that she was impressed I was able to complete it with relatively few review points. In spite of this, I always get a score of 3 (meets expectations) when I'm being rated.

In addition, I often blow internal budgeted time on clients. For context I am badly, chronically burned out and have a tendency to collapse after every workday - it was particularly bad in Nov-Dec24 when a family member died, and the excess of writeoffs from this period has resulted in me getting a job review on a specific client to which I booked most of my billable time. I am not looking forward to that review. Lately I also find management being a little colder to me and I'm not sure if that's because we're nearing the busy season or if they actually have an issue but aren't willing to say anything. Everything about this feels so disconcertingly fake and I'd prefer people be direct with me; I would not like to get fired without much prior foreshadowing.

The final aspect that makes me paranoid is that they're introducing a new staff member tomorrow. I've been killing myself with anxiety for the past month or so and I can't really tell if there's something to this, or if I'm just psyching myself out.

You're not boned but it sounds to me like something has to change. Being 'badly burned out" and collapsing after every work day isn't sustainable. You shouldn't worry about being fired, you can always find a new job, you should be worried about actually severe burn out. Burnout where you can't work at all for a long time and possibly never being able to work full time in your current position again.

I don't know what you need to change but something clearly has to. You only have one body. Don't break it.

One failure mode of a good employee is where all your effort and good will for management is captured by your immediate supervisor but then they don't advance you further up the ladder because you're so productive in your current role. Usually this is remedied by switching jobs. Maybe I'm mediocre but mostly everyone I know of get Meets Expectations, usually because supervisors see it as a perfunctory task, instead of something that could be instructive. Not sure how it works in Australia, but in the US the pattern is usually a bad performance evaluation and an action plan for improvement once they decide to let you go. But sounds like you might get a better position if you get a new one.

One failure mode of a good employee is where all your effort and good will for management is captured by your immediate supervisor, but then he doesn't advance you further up the ladder because you're so productive in your current role.

Some would call this a successful avoidance of the Peter Principle rather than a failure.

People in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.

Tell me honestly: Am I boned?

No. If you get fired, you'll find another job, and there's at least a decent chance that your next job will be much better for you, as this one seems to be a poor fit.

So the worst case scenario isn't that bad.

Edit: A mis-post.

Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man’s hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man’s worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.

Reminds me of one of my favorite movie dialogues:

Warden: Did you enjoy God’s latest gift?
Teddy Daniels: What?
Warden: God’s gift. [points to the sky] The violence. When I came downstairs in my home and I saw a tree in my living room, it reached out for me like a divine hand. God loves violence.
Teddy Daniels: I…I hadn’t noticed.
Warden: Sure you have. Why else would there me so much of it? It’s in us. It’s what we are. We wage war, we burn sacrifices and pillage and plunder and tear at the flesh of our brothers. And why? Because God gave us violence to wage in his honor.
Teddy Daniels: I thought God gave us moral order. Warden: There’s no moral order as pure as this storm. There’s no moral order at all. There’s just this; can my violence conquer yours?
Teddy Daniels: I’m not violent.
Warden: Yes, you are. You’re as violent as they come. I know this because I’m as violent as they come. With the constraints of society we’re lifted. And I was all that stood between you and me? You would crack my skull and eat my meaty parts. Wouldn’t you? But Cawley thinks that you’re harmless, that you can be controlled. But I know different.
Teddy Daniels: You don’t know me.
Warden: Oh, but I do.
Teddy Daniels: No, you don’t. You don’t know me at all. Warden: Oh, I know you. We’ve known each other for centuries. If I was to sink my teeth into your eye right now, would you be able to stop me before I blinded you?
Teddy Daniels: Give it a try.
Warden: That’s the spirit.

Always wondered if he wasn't based a little on Judge Holden.

It might be, but I feel like this theme of naked violence superseding all other concerns is rather universal. It pops up pretty much regardless of time and place. It's in the Iliad and it's in Roman history and it's in Mein Kampf and it's in The Wild Bunch. There may be situations in which it seems out of place, but none in which it truly is out of place. Like the good book says:

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.

Hard to dispute. If God wanted, we could live in Winney the Pooh physics where nobody gets seriously hurt beyond saying 'oh bother'. An omnipotent can do anything.

Uh, could you repeat the question please?

Well crap. It was meant as a reply to https://www.themotte.org/post/2013/smallscale-question-sunday-for-june-1/331790?context=8#context, but I fumbled. I have corrected my error, in so far as any error can ever be corrected.

Why do Redditors compulsively refer to weapons of war designed to maim and kill people as “toys”?

How much of playing with toys is some kind of evolved behavior for practicing the use of a weapon designed to maim and kill animals and people? Humans spent an awful lot of time as hunter-gatherers who have a long learning period and are expected to be very handy with some sort of primitive weapon as adults. Maybe weapons are toys because toys are weapons.

Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man’s hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man’s worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.

Clark, who led last year’s expedition to the Afar region of northern Ethiopia, and UC Berkeley colleague Tim D. White, also said that a re-examination of a 300,000-year-old fossil skill found in the same region earlier shows evidence of having been scalped.

–The Yuma Daily Sun

I gotta say, knowing the context doesn't make this look much less like 3am drunk philosophy.

Fair. I know there are plenty of angles from which Blood Meridian is just edgy cringe.

Has no one here been in the military?!

Weapons of war are very commonly referred to as toys in the military. And there is a simple reason: They are fun. There really is nothing more fun than wielding the power to end life. 4 star Marine Corps General James Mattis famously said:

It’s quite fun to shoot them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people.

And basically everyone in the military agrees. Some non-military folk use the word "toys" to mock the military's enjoyment of violence, but for the most part people use the word positively.

(I say all this as a former Naval officer who was become a committed pacifist. One reason among many for the transformation is just how fun it is to kill.)

(I say all this as a former Naval officer who was become a committed pacifist. One reason among many for the transformation is just how fun it is to kill.)

I can fully see how this would be true of mowing down dim figures with ranged weapons at a distance, videogame-style. Can I ask, from curiosity, if in your experience it's also true of killing in hand-to-hand combat, where you can see/ hear/ smell the physical damage being done and watch the life leaving people's bodies?

I don't have firsthand experience. But I've been around lots of marines who have. And I'd say infantry type jobs very strongly select for people who find the infantry "fun".

Notably General Mattis (quoted above) was an enlisted infantryman before becoming an officer and served as an infantry rifle platoon commander in his first leadership roles.

Also don't forget that gladiator fights in the Roman Colosseum were widely considered entertainment. There is a famous account from Augustine's confessions where he related an account of a friend Alypius. Alypius was outraged about the morality of gladiator fights and refused to participate. But some friends dragged him to the show anyways. Here is Augustine's account of how Alypius learned to enjoy the violence:

Alypius kept his eyes closed and forbade his mind to roam abroad after such wickedness. Would that he had shut his ears also! For when one of the combatants fell in the fight, a mighty cry from the whole audience stirred him so strongly that, overcome by curiosity and still prepared (as he thought) to despise and rise superior to it no matter what it was, he opened his eyes and was struck with a deeper wound in his soul than the victim whom he desired to see had been in his body. Thus he fell more miserably than the one whose fall had raised that mighty clamor which had entered through his ears and unlocked his eyes to make way for the wounding and beating down of his soul, which was more audacious than truly valiant--also it was weaker because it presumed on its own strength when it ought to have depended on Thee. For, as soon as he saw the blood, he drank in with it a savage temper, and he did not turn away, but fixed his eyes on the bloody pastime, unwittingly drinking in the madness--delighted with the wicked contest and drunk with blood lust. He was now no longer the same man who came in, but was one of the mob he came into, a true companion of those who had brought him thither. Why need I say more? He looked, he shouted, he was excited, and he took away with him the madness that would stimulate him to come again: not only with those who first enticed him, but even without them; indeed, dragging in others besides. And yet from all this, with a most powerful and most merciful hand, thou didst pluck him and taught him not to rest his confidence in himself but in thee--but not till long after.

That's such a vivid account of the overall thought process; thanks for posting! If St. Augustine's depiction is accurate, it sounds as though there's a strong element of visceral carnivore/ hunting drive in there, which I guess checks out. It certainly makes sense for a partly meat-eating species to have a mode where it enjoys the sensory experience of catching and ripping apart a living animal while it screams. "Eew fresh meat, its pain gives me the squick" isn't exactly a survival-friendly instinct.

Has no one here been in the military?!

I haven't, so that's at least one. I did join the Peace Corps right after Gulf 1, which was my halfass way of serving without having the prospect of killing anyone. I think a few members have definitely served and have posted about it, but possibly didn't see this thread or assumed anything to do with reddit wasn't worth replying to.

It's a way to trivialise a serious matter and avoid an expectation of treating it seriously. Much of the time it's probably a habit they do subconsciously without considering how it affects the framing.

It's also an implied admission of distance (physical/social/psychological); those weapons are far away and pointed at someone else. Nobody describes a weapon as a toy when it's present and pointed at themself.

Probably because it is a game.

It's just part of a broader trend of infantilized language that reached its zenith with the millennials who shaped the culture and vocabulary of reddit, cf. "adulting", "girlboss", referring to people in their 20's as "kids" at risk of being "groomed" by anyone even a few years older than them, etc.

It's also a way to denigrate what a portion of the population think is a constitutional right. No one would think a toy deserves special protection so that's why they push that phrasing.

I think it's a more general pattern of referring to (some) adult male-coded things that way. "Toy" wouldn't be out of place referring to motorcycles, power tools, or construction equipment either. Loosely, I think it implies "nice to have" in a way that maybe isn't really necessary.

I'm not sure I'd use it for weapons in a hot war, though. Maybe for (morally-justified?) exercises of technical superiority: the F-22 is a very shiny toy that has but one (unmanned) aerial combat victory to its credit, right up until it isn't. Quasi-disposable drones operated from safe and secure Nevada are maybe toys. A battle rifle handed to a grunt in a trench with live fire overhead is not a thing to joke about.

That’s the thing if they were talking about their Gucci AR that they only ever took to the range I could see it, but when you’re talking about an artillery system in a currently ongoing war that is definitely going to kill people, it feels so ghoulish.

War is ghoulish endeavor. There was a saying that only losing generals have glorious victories, because they are the ones that haven't seen what battlefield aftermath is after winning.

Could you provide additional context? Is this about drones?

Literally any kind of weapon. Small arms, artillery systems, cruise missiles, ships, heavy bombers. Every time there’s a new weapons system delivered to Ukraine it’s “Ukraine has some fun new toys to play with” or “Operation Spiderweb destroyed a lot of Russia’s toys”. Once you notice it, you notice that they do it constantly and it’s really started grinding my gears.

Reddit is to my gears as a big bag of unshelled peanuts and gravel would be if thrown, bag and all, into a fine clockwork. There is only grinding. Short extremely niche subs, I can't stand visiting the site.

What happened to SteveKirkland a.k.a. @SteveKirk a.k.a. SteveAgain a.k.a. @Gooofuckyourself?

Last I saw of him was getting banned for a month for snarling at the mods, but it's been over a month, his username's changed to that last one, and he has a "banned user" without an expiration date on his profile.

Did he go nuts in PMs or something?

Must have been. The problem with ankle-biting the mods here is that, unusually for mods, they appear to be mostly competent (which is the reason I don't use Discord any more- jannies there are all universally terrible).

It's unfortunate, but what can you do.

So, what are you reading?

Still on the Iliad, Dialectic of Enligthenment and McLuhan's Classical Trivium. Dipping into the Metalogicon.

Just read Chili and the Chocolate Factory, it was quite fun.

Now reading Findel's Embrace which is enjoyable but probably not quite as good as the author's other works.

Still on The Perfect Heresy.

I'm still on Journey to the End of Night. I liked it at first during the WWI bits, but it turned into a slog when he became a doctor, and honestly while I would have described it as razor sharp initially, by the time he gets to America I kinda lost the plot and don't really get what's going on at all anymore. I'll probably grind it out because it's so recommended, but I'm clearly missing something here. Also, is the African interlude just a Heart of Darkness parody?

In between I read American Sniper over Memorial Day weekend, for the holiday and whatnot, after seeing it referenced on here. I'm still really thinking about it, and trying to think about the entire Iraq disaster and how it reflects on the book and vice versa.

Did you watch the movie adaptation of American Sniper? I found myself surprised that Bradley Cooper accepted the role. A lot of hateful jingoism that is par for the course for these guys, but not very Hollywood.

If you have a long range shooting fetish anywhere near mine, a great follow up is the non-fictional Out of Nowhere

I plan on watching it this week if I can find the time. I remember reading about the workouts Chris Kyle had Cooper do for the role. I like Bradly Cooper in general (go Birds!) And I'm interested to see how the film came out.

iirc during the Africa/America section the narrator is also losing the plot somewhat

I guess he lost me too. Reading the book it feels like, looking at the date, it presages a lot of stuff I like that came later (Sartre, Camus, Kerouac) but I'm not actually enjoying most of the book.

I'm reading All Things are Full of Gods by David Bentley Hart.

How is it? He’s one of the writers who I like in short form, but get a bit lost in his longer works.

Eh I'm like 50 pages in and stalled. It's interesting and I like his arguments but yeah very dense.

Until the Sea Shall Free Them: Life, Death, And Survival In The Merchant Marine

Written by one of the journalists who covered the sinking of the Marine Electric back in 1983.

A bit like a dried-out nonfiction Grisham legal thriller once it gets back to shore.

The Wager by David Grann. A pretty compelling narrative of the events surrounding the shipwreck of the HMS Wager in Patagonia and the return of its crew to England. It's got a good smattering of woke nonsense (referring to Magellan's crew as conquistadores? Really?), but it almost seems like it was bolted on in a subsequent revision so it's easy to ignore. Those poor bastards really had a hard time of it.

I read the three volumes of Worth the Candle that have been published on Kindle. It’s interesting but somewhat flawed - the main storyline doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere, partly because every villain gets killed not long after their introduction. I’m also annoyed that in the third book they start trying to modernise Aerb with Earth technology just like every isekai ever.

Yeah, Worth the Candle falls off IMO. After a certain point they drop the modernization angle though (why would you not go for high explosives and machineguns given your situation). There are some great fights though.

The King in Yellow, sort of a pre Lovecraft, Lovecraftian set of weird short stories.

Is it any good?

Three stories in. It's interesting because Chambers (the author) took the Ambrose Bierce idea of Carcosa, and developed it into his story cycle, but then I think because of Chambers doing this then Carcosa was later used by other writers including Lovecraft, Gaiman, and even George RR Martin (as well as Nic Pizzolatto in True Detective season 1). The stories so far are not bad but more freaky and evocative than anything else.

The last three stories are probably the weakest, if you find The Street of the Four Winds too twee, you might want to skip to the last one. It wasn't really written as cosmic horror so if that's your hook you'll find them annoying. What I love about the king in yellow is because I see it as kind of an attempt to explain the philosophy that everything is narratives in narrative form.

Interesting, I actually preferred the last few stories over the first few ones, which is a bit like the opposite of most people. Perhaps I'm too much of a softie but the more romantic and human theme of them left more more fulfilled at the end of the story compared to, for example, In the Court of the Dragon.

I do feel like it's self consciousness that made me flinch from those stories when I first read the book, although it was also the fact that I was going in thinking it was the precursor to Lovecraft and assuming that meant tentacles. They've grown on me since, I connect particularly strongly with Hastings in Our Lady of the Fields, but they do feel out of place in the modern context of the King in Yellow. Maybe it's the non-western elements of your upbringing? I still think back fondly on one of my best friends from primary school - a Bangladeshi guy named Raymond - for convincing me that romance is an important part of stories, I would have missed out on a lot of excellent poems and great stories, and a lot of flirting with ladies, if I hadn't listened.

Wow, someone has read it! Thanks. I'm a completist and they're pretty short so I'll probably read the lot, but thank you.

Do you have any Lovecraft recommendations? I've only read one (The Dunwich Horror) but I think I could probably get into his writing. Of course Chambers isn't Lovecraft but there's a thread there.

I would second The Colour Out of Space. Lovecraft himself considered it the finest of his works, and I think it's a purer example of purely Lovecraftian horror compared to some of his other works.

To add to what has been said, the Color out of Space, Pickman's Model, The Statement of Randolph Carter, From Beyond, Herbert West - Re-animator, The Nameless City, Nyarlathotep and The Whisperer in the Darkness are all a lot of fun too, and it's usually a good idea to start with his short stories, because the quality of his prose varies wildly in his longer works. If I had to be picky, the Color out of Space has a special place in my heart but The Rats in the Walls is an objectively better short story, Nyarlathotep is his best poem by a mile and At the Mountains of Madness is my favourite of his books, although Shadow over Innsmouth is a close second.

Great stuff, thanks.

"The Rats in the Walls" "Shadow over Innsmouth", "The Shadow Out of Time" and "At the Mountains of Madness" are probably among the most widely acclaimed. I own & really enjoyed the Necronomicon, nice hardcover and quite comprehensive collection of tales, so as a completionist that might be your thing.

Edit: Also, dunno how much you already know that, but the SCP Foundation is in many ways the modern equivalent of part-weird part-(eldritch)-horror of lovecraftian stories. Also definitely worth checking out.

Thank you for that!

Seconded "The Rats in the Walls". Scared the shit out of me.

SCP Foundation

I've read the anti-memetics division series and mostly enjoyed it, and a few others that were a lot of fun like the vhs tape of the Celtics game where the crowd became aware they were in the video. What are other great SCP stories?

I definitely agree with the idea that SCP is the modern repository of Cosmic Horror, in that Lovecraft relied on a kind of Satan-of-the-Gaps theory of the supernatural. Cults in foreign colonial ports, ruins in the remaining unexplored regions on the map, demon worship in the non-Anglo population of New England that the "respectable" parts of the world never touched.

But today most of those gaps have been closed, so to write in the same style and not just write a period piece, you need to move to new gaps. You have to write for today. Where do Demons hide in a world where I have satellite photos of the whole planet on my laptop, and people in the Congo have smartphones?

In general, the curated lists as well as the GoI-Hubs are a good place to start since they give some info, so you can judge better whether it's the kind of story you like. But the top-rated ones are almost all great, and going in blind is just more effective for many of them. Btw, it's no coincidence that almost all highly-rated stories are older.

For some of my own recommendations, to keep with the Lovecraftian (meaning grand-scale horror tied into smaller exploration stories):

-the Daevite stories. There's quite a lot of content so there is bound to be some hit and miss, but the core idea is solid and a nice twist on Lovecraft.

-SCP-2935, aka the dead planet

-SCP-093, aka the red sea object.

And some other personal favorites:

-SCP-3008, aka the IKEA dimension

-SCP-1689, aka the holding bag of potatoes

-SCP-2718, aka what happens after?

-SCP-1562, aka the tunnel slide

-SCP-3003, aka the end of history

-SCP-3673, aka the ballet room

-Parawatch Hub. Just some honest, small scale mystery/horror.

More comments

What are other great SCP stories?

Revenants is just a few pages but quite good.

Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb - whom I somehow never read while devouring hundreds of fantasy novels in my teens and twenties, and whom I had no idea was a woman until recently.

It really is a big world out there.

Read first 100 pages today - really pretty good.

Start with the Assassins books. Her website has a reading order.

The two ship series have a lot different feel than the assassin series. I really like the first two assassin trilogies but I could leave the rest, really.

Besides both being really long fantasy series I'd be suprised if Malazan fans really enioy the Rote novels and vice versa.

Curious what you think once you finish them!

I like Hobb! What are your favorite fantasy series out of the many you've read?

I’m be read The Malazan Book of the Fallen 3x now and am just waiting it out a few more years until my next read through. I’ll include his other books set in the universe next time as well. It’s my favorite series, and really my favorite piece of entertainment.

I started with Stephen King at 10/11 or so but didn’t read the Gunslinger saga until my late 20’s and still haven’t read the last 50 or so pages. I stopped one day and wanted to savor the ending … and then just never went back? I love all of the standard King novels but especially Insomnia.

Then quickly moved on the Sword of Truth and then Wheel of Time. I’ve read both twice. For WoT I didn’t read the ending written by Sanderson yet, and for SoT I stopped reading after book ten I think. I want to re-read both again but I think maybe I’ll let it lay until retirement. They both have many slug filled … hundreds of pages at a time.

All of The Black Company books. I would rank these second to Malazan for me. They’re Malazan light even I would say. I love how fast and readable they are and love all of the various crews and hijinks they get up to.

Tad Williams has two fanatic trilogies in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn books that’s more fantasy typical and Otherland which is more sci fi and is 4 books. I’ve never read this one again but it’s stuck with me for going on 25 years now.

The Black Jewels Trilogy really had an impact on my sexual thoughts as a youngster, for better or worse.

That’s off the top of my head. There’s like 12-15 trilogies I’ve read and can’t recall tbh. I’ll have to walk through a 90’s B&N and rekindle my thoughts.

Hah I have read almost all of these except for the Black Jewel. And never finished WoT rip. Thanks for answering though. Malazan is the bomb.

Have you read the preceding assassin series?

I have not but after taking a fantasy break, I’m ready to jump back in the large and now massively back logged ocean.

If you liked the magic ship series you should definetly go back. The assassins series is set in the same world (but a different location) and is arguably superior.

I'd recommend all her books except the soldier son series. She likes to challenge or torture her characters but I found that series too bleak for my tastes.

Far too many books, including Skin in the game by N Taleb. But I did finish one book (on investing) this week!

The Primal Hunter, by Zogarth.

How far along are you? I've considered picking that one back up

Almost 2/3 of the way through the first book. I'll probably continue the series, though the MC's build is reminiscent of the MC from He Who Fights Monsters, another LitRPG series that I've been reading.

Ah ok, I stopped way ahead of that for both stories. They are both pretty enjoyable for a while. Both characters have their quirks that can make it hard to read them on their own for extended time periods.

I can certainly relate to that! In fact, I'm a few books behind on He Who Fights Monsters because Jason can, at times, be insufferably eye-rolling. Right now I like Jake a little better but I don't find Zogarth's writing style to be quite as engaging as Shirtaloon's overall. Still, for me there's lots to like in both series and as I've said in last week's thread, I'm a cheap date for Kindle books!

I generally read stuff on Royal road but it is often a pipeline for kindle books.

Personal top tier: Mother of Learning, Discworld

Do you have any recommentations for sources that analyze current military conflicts in a relatively unbiased way? I know (alas on youtube) William Spaniel, Colonel Riesner (both mostly on Ukraine), and ATE Chuet (in French) on all matters related to aviation (but in French).

Is there any source on other conflicts (such as the Gaza war) with a low propaganda portion?

I'm a big fan of /r/CredibleDefense , although engagement and post quality have both been on a gentle downward trend over the last year or so

The Austrian military ("Österreichs Bundesheer" on YouTube) also puts up good presentations on Ukraine semi-regularly

Perun and Mike Koffman both good, especially for Ukraine

Admittedly, I don't follow Gaza much

I would give a strong endorsement to The War Zone (twz.com), although they’re more news than analysis, really, and so maybe not quite what you’re looking for. A lot of defense industry news and more technical articles as well. They do have their biases (in the current conflicts that’s fairly strongly pro-Ukraine and mildly pro-Israel, if memory serves) but they generally keep them in check and provide very detailed and thorough reporting. I’ve been reading them for a long while now and they rarely disappoint. In the early days of the Ukraine war they were probably the single best source for a picture of what was going on, even breaking some events first at times, and they’ve built up a good level of access to officials and industry types (especially considering they’re an independent outfit) to get interesting stories.

Suppose you were the de facto “leader” of a large progressive social network in real life. You have heard frightening accounts from other social networks, where members have damaged the health of the network through antisocial behavior. Sometimes this leads to its destruction. Maybe they redirected all the attention in the group toward their own plight or pet cause; maybe they mistook an occasional unkind word for deep prejudice and tried to alienate members; maybe they become a roommate and stop paying the rent; maybe they make unreasonable demands, ruining the dynamic of the network; maybe they constantly guilt and catastrophize, ruining the enjoyment and fluidity required to motivate social activity. What norms would you put in place to exclude these antisocial individuals from social events and social spaces?

Hard Difficulty:

  • Can’t use any ideological test

  • Can’t judge by appearance

Legendary Difficulty:

  • Can’t judge by speech pattern

  • Can’t use any explicit social hierarchy, but can only filter or weed out antisocial members through group habits and group norms

What norms? Basically the most common norms of all - the "cool" people run the group, and whoever they decide don't vibe with the group, goes. It's the oldest rule in the book.

Autistic legalism is a popular solution for running ideologically based-groups, for a simple reason- it works.

Now you’d have to convince people that your rules are fair, applies fairly, and important enough to merit shunning violators. But there is a reason it’s the historically tested solution.

Is there a general term for the sort of broad political position of 'secular/atheist individual who believes in Darwinian evolution so deeply that he is led to reject liberalism, high modernist utopianism, and much of the "Enlightenment" project'?

Are you talking about social Darwinism?

That might be a subcategory of what I'm talking about, but not everyone goes as far into laissez-faire as they do (after all, we're social animals, and building cooperative communities is part of our extended phenotype).

What does it mean to "believe" in Darwinian evolution?

To actually take it seriously as something that matters in the world, including the present day; and not just treat it as a creation myth — something of the long, long ago — to serve as an alternative narrative to Genesis.

In slightly less broad terms, to recognize things like Darwinism meaning you can have telos without a (conscious) telos-giver (what makes an adaptation an adaptation?); or to reject the creationist-adjacent idea that evolution is always so "crude" and "random" that even the smallest amount of Intelligent Design will always do better (that's how you get High Modernism). Back in the last century, quite a lot of effort into AI was about trying to work out how to Intelligently Design a mind top-down, while others worked on more evolutionary, bottom-up methods like neural networks. Well, who proved more fruitful there? Or recognizing that there isn't one single "environment" to which creatures — or social institutions — adapt, but countless local ecosystems. Just as there's no "perfect bird" — only birds perfectly adapted to particular conditions in particular places — there is no single "ideal government," only governments ideal for a particular people, in a particular place, with a particular culture, at a particular time in history. (I seem to vaguely recall de Maistre having said something relevant to this point.)

It's about recognizing that the idea that some armchair "experts", with just a couple months of mental work, will necessarily "outdo" the products of evolution — whether that's the folks confident about vast enhancements without trade-off via genetic engineering, tankies who think that this time their socialist central planners will beat free markets, or Seeing Like a State-style High Modernist social engineers.

I mean, there are plenty of people who don't, disproportionately on the right.

This is so easy a dunk as to not be worth posting, but do you honestly think people on the left believe that Darwinian evolution applies to the human brain? I'm not seeing any major political faction which meaningfully believes in evolution.

See, you're already adding qualifiers like "meaningfully". For you to believe "meaningfully" seems to mean that you have to accept the conclusion that brains of different ethnicities have been subjected to divergent evolution enough to have significant impact on group capabilities.

I think "believe in" is the proper breakdown, as from Pratchett:

It’s hard to believe in the gods, he thought, when certain people are never struck by lightning. Why doesn’t it happen? If the gods wanted people to believe in them, they’d show themselves occasionally. That’s the whole point.

After all, you never needed faith in the postman. You just knew the postman would come, rain or shine, and deliver the mail. You didn’t have to believe in him. He was just there.

It was the same with the gods. They were just there, too, and you didn’t have to believe in them any more than you had to believe in the sky. You just knew they were there.

And if you didn’t believe in something, then it couldn’t help you.

By that standard, most biologists don't "believe in" evolution, it's simply there. My guess would be that someone who "believes in" Darwinian evolution uses it as a guiding principle and might do things like driving increased competition or having a lot of children. Or maybe a completely different set of beliefs. It's not like social movements stick close to their namesakes.

You just knew the postman would come, rain or shine, and deliver the mail. You didn’t have to believe in him. He was just there.

Yeah, until the Postal Service goes on strike. There are a lot of things we believe in without critically analyzing them, just because our beliefs are never challenged. But that doesn't mean they can't be.

And if you didn’t believe in something, then it couldn’t help you.

I love Pratchett, but he is making an exact opposite of the correct point here (which is fine because guess what, he's writing fantasy). The sky works the same whether you believe in it or not. You can believe the sky is totally fake, but it won't change any practical result - you can still fly an airplane, enjoy sunbathing and get wetted by the rain. However, I am not sure the concept of "evolution" is the same way. If you're a biologist and you accept it, would your actions and results be different than if you did not? The sky is the territory. The evolution is a map. It may be argued it is a great map - so be it, but it's still a map. You can choose to reject a certain map and use another one - with better results or worse, but you can. You can't "reject" a territory - you can ignore it, but that'd be still just a change of a map (to a much worse one).

Dark enlightenment / NrX / Moldbuggian Silicon Valley reactionary philosophy in general. More of a 2007-2017 thing though, even though Moldbug and Thiel are still somewhat influential.

Perhaps, but Moldbuggian solutions in particular seem, at least to me, more about making High Modernism more efficient — and cementing the power of technocratic Blue elites — through eliminating (the pretense of) democracy (and the Landian variety is anti-human).

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