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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31624 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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December 13, 2022

My friend and I recently got into a lengthy discussion over the topic of interracial dating while having coffee one morning. What made it specifically interesting was the perspective from which we both were perceiving it. I am a white Christian reactionary, and he is a mixed-race homosexual man. We were at a bar the previous night and i had politely declined a black woman's advances, and when asked why in the morning i explained to him that i have a strong preference for white women. I explained that i do find other races of women attractive, including black women, but that i simply cannot picture myself married with a woman of a different race and desired children who resembled myself. I don't usually explain this to people, but he seemed fairly interested.

It is here where he interjected and told me that the way i view interracial relationships were wrong, and that sooner rather than later the west will be a homogenization of all different races. He explained to me of a recent study he had read that said that interracial marriages already encompassed 30% of all marriages and is at upwards of 93% acceptance rate among the population, and both are projected to climb. This shocked me, as I explained to him that within my main communities that are predominately white I still found interracial marriages to be relatively rare through simple observation. I told him there is absolutely no way that is correct, as there is no way 30% of white people are in interracial relationships.

That night I did some more research and found out the realities of it. Now the biggest hurdle is that i can only really make claims based on marriages, there is no data on interracial dating. The data may be far higher when we take that into consideration but i could find nothing to substantiate any definite claims. The claim of 30% is not true. As of 2017 17% of the overall population is in an interracial relationship. There is also a 94% acceptance rate of interracial marriages in aggregate.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/05/18/1-trends-and-patterns-in-intermarriage/

https://www.asanet.org/wp-content/uploads/attach/journals/apr20srefeature.pdf

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2378023118814610

It gets more interesting the more you delve into the makeup of the interracial relationships themselves. While definitely seeing an increase, White people have had the lowest growth of interracial marriages in the last forty years. Only about 11% of the white population will intermarry. And the gender disparity between white men and white women who intermarry are exactly the same as they were in 1980.

Among white newlyweds, there is no notable gender gap in intermarriage – 12% of men and 10% of women had married someone of a different race or ethnicity in 2015. The same was true in 1980, when 4% of recently married men and 4% of recently married women had intermarried.

Unlike many other ethnicity's, the intermarriage rates among whites are also constant regardless of education levels.

Among white newlyweds, the likelihood of intermarrying is fairly similar regardless of education level. One-in-ten of those with a high school diploma or less have a spouse of another race or ethnicity, as do 11% of those with some college experience and 12% of those with at least a bachelor’s degree. Rates don’t vary substantially among white newlywed men or women with some college or less, though men with a bachelor’s degree are somewhat more likely to intermarry than comparable women (14% vs. 10%).

For comparison, Black intermarriage rates have tripled since 1980, from 5% to 18%. The most dramatic gap in all the data exists between college educated black men and women.

Black men are twice as likely as black women to have a spouse of a different race or ethnicity (24% vs. 12%).

Also, just as a sidenote that shocked me, 54%! Of US born Asian women marry outside their race.

Overall, while whites have the largest amount of people intermarrying simply due to sheer logistical numbers, they are statistically the least likely to date outside of their race, and relatively equal rates for both men and women. I brought this up to him the next time I saw him, and he was quite shocked at this. He brought up an interesting question.

Considering that the general acceptance of interracial marriage is so high, why is it so relatively rare? We came up with a couple conclusions

  1. There is simply not enough intersection or engagement between different ethnic communities. If you are a certain race, you most often will associate with others of the same ethnicity simply due to family connections/religious affiliations etc.

  2. Most are outwardly accepting of it, but secretly discourage it. This is what I personally think it is, just simply based on my actual experiences. My parents could go on and on about however noble their intentions are, but if I brought home a black woman or a native woman, they would be supportive but be incredibly disappointed. I also see many white women disparaged in friend groups if they date inter-racially as well. I even found studies that suggest this has been measured (Could be misrepresented however)

https://www.psypost.org/2021/01/study-uncovers-a-gendered-double-standard-for-interracial-relationships-59477

  1. Religion. Most ethnic groups have different religious beliefs that would be difficult to compromise on if starting a family. It would be difficult if I were to date a Hindu woman for example, because then quickly come into contact with irreconcilable differences. She wants to have a Hindu wedding; I want to make Christian vows. She wishes to raise our child Hindu; I was to raise him Christian. I don’t see any way how these could be reconciled. Most of the successful interracial relationships I’ve ever seen have always had a shared religious belief between them. It just makes everything way easier.

It is also interesting that both my friend and I came into the conversation of interracial marriages with the context that that means some sort of mixture of whites. We never considered that the majority would be between different ethnic groups. It actually came into my head reading this article from refinery.

https://www.refinery29.com/en-ca/2021/12/10794659/interracial-relationships-black-women-whiteness\

While I resent much of the post-modern perspectives about race this is not the place for that, but I couldn’t help but notice that I ended up agreeing on many of her points. We do look at interracial relationships much like the perspectives that she presents. But the fact still remains, even in a period of time that is most likely the most accepting of interracial marriages throughout any point in history, almost to the point of encouragement, Interracial relationships still remain relatively rare.

I would suggest reposting this in the newer culture war roundup thread. Virtually no one will visit this older thread anymore.

This morning, I started thinking about the ethics of AI-generated porn. One of the arguments I've heard against AI-generated porn is that it could be used to generate child porn. That got me thinking: is AI-generated child porn unethical? There are no children involved, so no one is being directly harmed. So the question seems to be how consumption of generated child porn by paedophiles would affect their likelihood to commit paedophilic acts.

One possibility is that consuming the stuff would increase the urge of paedophiles to commit paedophilic acts. Another possibility is it sates some inner urge and makes them less likely to harm children.

Anyone have opinions on this?

There’s also the fact it makes it dramatically more difficult to identify actual child porn.

Before the reports come in - we already disallowed this as a top-level post. Yes, we (multiple mods) suspect trolling (if you're not trolling, @ShockJock, then sorry, but picking a username like that and dropping in with this as your introductory post sure looks and smells like a troll). But we told him he could post it in the CW thread.

List of alleged ex-FBI people working for Twitter.

Quite a lot of names. 16 directors or managers. All hired since the '16 debacle.

Reminds one of the Chinese demand for CPC members being in company management.

Is it random ? Or does this support the claim Twitter is uniquely important in the information landscape as a place where journalists get their stories and hang out.

same thing with fakebook. it's mainly for child exploitation, drugs, kidnapping, stuff like that. Given that twitter is 100% public, unless you make your profile private, just assume anything you tweet will be read by FBI

fakebook. it's mainly for child exploitation, drugs, kidnapping,

No. Facebook was good for creating a social network graph of much of the world.

I presume it can and does facilitate those things, but that could have hardly been the primary objective.

just assume anything you tweet will be read by FBI

We hope so.

There's nothing more fun than dropping sinister, oblique hints about offline conspiracies when talking to people who are known to have an FBI file.

he's saying "trust and safety people at facebook are for combatting child exploitation, drugs, kidnapping", not "facebook is for that"

exactly

I was sure it was meant to be a joke.

Btw, to be a good catcher of %x% means you needs to understand %x% MO, become a %x%!

Also you can legally watch materials forbidden to others.

If 'trust and safety people at facebook' are anything like the trust and safety people over at twitter, it could go either way.

Takes one to know one situation.

/images/16708592693026352.webp

this clearly is not him saying anything about children being sexy. pedophiles might say things like "children are cute and independent and have personalities and deserve to make choices and love just as much as we do. oppressing them is bad". this is a statement about how a baby crying and exaggerated porn sounds, after being distorted by layers of walls, to him, sound similar. it is not the kind of thing you'd say because you're a pedophile or to signal pedophilia.

like, where in that message does it relate 'having sex' to 'with children'?

also just for context several motteposters (including me), often right-leaning, probably some that you like, have said much, much worse things than that on rdrama - as jokes!

  1. Stereotypical porn sounds are nothing like a baby crying. Baby crying is the worst sound known, it demands attention.

To spell it out for people on the clock, sadistic porn featuring children might sound like a baby crying, for the reason that it's sadistic and involves harming small children, hence the crying.

2)

it is not the kind of thing you'd say because you're a pedophile or to signal pedophilia.

And what kind of thing is that?

What do pedophiles do to signal that they are what they are ?

Is it musing about how kids should have access to sex apps used by adults ?

Wondering aloud, in public, about the age of consent ? Advocating for a lower age of consent ?

3)

probably some that you like, have said much, much worse things than that on rdrama - as jokes!

I'd be surprised. But you're free to dig some up.

this clearly is not him saying anything about children being sexy.

No, he said that on his other account that he scrubbed apparently:

And yeah, apparently, that image can't be uploaded.

/images/16708666196986835.webp

Ah, here's the image file it won't upload in the first one:

/images/16708664599802046.webp

Chalk it up to your bias and/or blatant hostile misconstruction. To me he's clearly talking about the man being hotter because the man is demonstrating care.

Agree I don’t think twitter hiring a lot of FBI is anything that weird. What’s weird is how color coded and blue tribe the FBI seems to be now. Red tribe seems the FBI as having declared war on them.

Now that the FBI is explicitly labeled a different tribe than Musks it seems as though their assumed to be against him.

yeah, pre-2008 the FBI was solidly red it seemed

They're cops. They're still gonna be solidly red.

The FBI are not police (except FBI Police, but that's a whole 'nother story).

Volunteer reddit moderators purged trump supporters from their subreddits with no institutional backing whatsoever! You'd expect - and did see - the same from progressive twitter moderators without FBI intervention. Most being hired after '16 is explained by most twitter hires as a whole being recently - if a company's exponentially growing employee count (including if it overhires), most employees are recent. Thinking the FBI is somehow a specific central organ that's dictatorially intervening isn't right - are there even any specific pieces of evidence for that - distributed consensus and pressure from all parts of civil society, including your leadership and employees is much more accurate. And 'pressure from leadership and employees' is just being part of it and agreeing!

Also, most of those employees are in 'security', as opposed to 'trust and safety' or similar, and ex-FBI hires make sense for that.

Of course it makes sense you put them in 'security'. They're ex-FBI, duh.

But are they doing actual security, or are they there to ensure compliance ?

The political editor over at Newsweek who got the half-Arab/half-Russian reporter fired was officially doing something related to sports.

His slack activity showed something else.

Because twitter is where marching orders for all the second-hand ideas dealers are handed out.

It's where likes and retweets can be used to reward worthy causes and sink unworthy causes.

Thinking the FBI is somehow a specific central organ that's dictatorially intervening isn't right

The entire plot against Trump was very heavy on FBI people.

FBI apparently orchestrated the J6 farce.

You know, when it comes to you, I can't decide whether you're a reflexive contrarian or something else entirely.

We can read their "experience" tab on linkedin (most of them aren't visible logged out, cba to make a throwaway):

Doug leads the Special Security Support Team for Twitter, managing Corporate Security efforts to detect, assess and mitigate threats to Twitter's most visible employees and events.

Focused on crisis management; business continuity; flexible & remote workforce security; and security training & education for the best flock of rock stars in the world. 💙

• Generate crisis management plans for offices, data centers and events. Lead efforts to test the crisis framework of those plans via tabletop exercises with leaders worldwide.

• Proactively and reactively lead teams to assess and manage global incidents and crises affecting Twitter’s employees, offices and reputation.

• Integrate with global risk teams to assess validity and priority of risks. Utilize intelligence data and findings to drive decisions.

• Collaborate with operational managers to ensure procedures are in place to support and/or minimize risks to employees who are traveling or receiving threats online.

• Responsible for oversight of Twitter’s emergency communications system.

--

FBI apparently orchestrated the J6 farce. ... You know, when it comes to you, I can't decide whether you're a reflexive contrarian or something else entirely.

To illustrate the point with some hyperbole - If, hypothetically, I was a dark elf silently plotting to dismantle the USG, execute Plan Moldbug, and install BAP as Emperor, it'd still be (if I was talking to other live players who too might take action) worth contesting confused claims about how the Cathedral works and uses power - lest my allies box shadows and spend years on based political projects that accomplish nothing.

You expect Intelligence people to put things like "* And oversees compliance with government directives and assorted 1st Amendment violations" in their LinkedIn?

twitter has "trust and safety" people whose job it is to censor threats, cp, racism, extremism, etc. there are a lot of people who explicitly that. the people that OP linked whose profiles I could view and get information from very clearly laid out security (computer or physical) roles instead.

rewording my question: do you expect them to put a smoking gun in their Linked in profiles?

Them working for T&S isn't a smoking gun though, it'd just be twitter hiring people to do a task they explicitly claim they are doing and intend to do. If an ex-FBI person is 'preventing extremism on twitter', they're just one of a hundred twitter employees doing that, it isn't illegal or anything. Most 'normal' people, and especially the 'cathedral', will just read that as 'fbi person who works at twitter now', and not infer any "government directives" or "1st amendment violations". Despite that, the linked individuals are just twitter hiring people with security skillsets for security roles.

Them working for T&S isn't a smoking gun though,

Nobody said that it is, why are you fixated on it?

FBI apparently orchestrated the J6 farce.

What's the evidence for this?

What's the evidence for this?

Evidence in addition of proven FBI SOP of infiltrating, manipulating and inciting all kinds of "right wing" "racist" "extremist" groups?

What standard of evidence? You are not going to see evidence "beyond reasonable doubt" until documents are declassified (wait few decades) or fall of the regime and opening of archives (good luck waiting for this).

But, for starter, see this twitter thread listing interesting events around this event (sourced from impeccable mainstream sources).

https://twitter.com/BoltzmannBooty/status/1422298278188748802

You got me wrong. That was not an adversarial comment. I actually know next to nothing about this whole thing.

From a (very cursory) reading of that twitter thread (God I hate twitter, I hope Elon sinks it soon), it seems as if there were a handful of FBI undercover agents among the Proud Boys, one of the many groups involved in Jan 6. Then there is some far-fetched speculation that they may or may not have been among those people giving orders? Unless I am missing quite a lot, that's fishy, but a far cry from "the FBI orchestrated J6".

Not only FBI, Secret Service and DHS were also informed in advance that Trumpers will spontaneously decide to desecrate the temple of freedom and democracy.

Some non-Twitter links from non-respectable sources digging deep into this rabbit hole.

Meet Ray Epps: The Fed-Protected Provocateur Who Appears To Have Led The Very First 1/6 Attack On The U.S. Capitol

Meet Ray Epps, Part 2

This means Epps came to the Trump speech early in the morning with the sole intention of recruiting a mob to follow on the heels of the Capitol breach team he would personally oversee while Trump was speaking—the very breach team we have covered in this report whose operators would remove the fencing, signage and barricades before the masses would arrive at the Capitol.

Let’s put this all in context:

Ray Epps flew 2,300 miles from Phoenix, Arizona to Washington, DC for a Trump rally, supposedly as a Trump supporter.

Epps arrived at the rally entrance more than two hours early, camped out to constantly shout recruiting instructions about coming to the Capitol after the speech, but then skipped out on the speech itself, because he was too busy personally orchestrating the Big Bang Breach Team that kicked off the riot and tore down the fencing, barricades and signage, which made rallygoers totally unaware of the legal booby trap they had walked into.

Article is one year old, what happened to Ray Epps since then? Arrested and tortured like the rank and file rioters?

Nothing. NYT debunked all crazy conspiracy theories, there is no need to do anything.

During the interview, committee officials said, Mr. Epps said that he was not an F.B.I. informant and denied reports that he had urged protesters to go into the Capitol at the behest of federal law enforcement agencies.

"the fbi has informants in right wing groups and sometimes encourages lone wolf terrorist attacks to pad their arrest and conviction numbers" isn't evidence for "the FBI orchestrated a bunch of people showing up on Jan 6". That there were some informants at Jan 6th doesn't prove much - if J6 was fully organic, the FBI would still want their informants there to inform, and even if those Proud Boy people weren't used as informants at all, they'd still show up to the protest considering they're proudboys.

if you avoid politics, reddit can be tolerable...sometimes.

I feel like every message board has had purges since 2016. Whoever moderates anything has had to decide if their Trump or not Trump. It’s a weird world that things that had a great deal of bipartisanship for decades suddenly found themselves needing to choose a political party. It always felt like it was coming more from blue tribe spaces, but perhaps red tribe has down it too. I feel like any blue tribe tilted space has had full moderation of anyone Trumpy since atleast 2020 (which includes non-Trump lovers who weren’t full on board with every narrative).

Many of the purges occurred BEFORE 2016; it was Gamergate that revealed how deep the rabbithole went.

So I've been spending some time on the radfem pipeline. It's been my opinion for some time that radical feminists, like Marxists, are correct on their analysis of their subjects, with no regard to one might think about their solutions. Take the topic of promiscuity; a trait that was historically seen as far more taboo in women that it was in men. Double standards?

The argument is that the male desire seeks virgin wives and prostitutes. The whores will provide sexual release without reproduction and emotional investment to minimise the demand on men’s resources. On the other hand, virgin wives are meant to provide both sexual and reproductive services but exclusively to him so that his resources and labour are spent on his family and progeny alone. While relations with promiscuous women are intended to be secretive and secondary. Essentially, they play the role of sexual garbage collectors who clear the excesses when no one's watching. This is especially true for fighting men, who are separated from their families for extended periods in foreign places and under hard conditions. They miss female company, they seek comfort, relief from loneliness, sexual desire, and recreation. War-like conditions create a huge demand for such promiscuous women, who either seek financial reward in exchange, or security, or both. And so, when a woman has multiple partners, she is slotted into the whore sub-class automatically. This sub-class doesn't demand respect or commitment, they knows their place and that they're not likely to move up the ladder, and so they're viewed as the lowest value women. And in an age before industrialisation when paternity tests weren't even a twinkle in anyone's eyes, and of constant conflict and strife, such promiscuous women with kids especially would lose out of the support structure. Perhaps these standards did make sense in this period. But what role do such standards play now, in ultra societies like the West, with large populations, high levels of specialisation, divisions of labour, lasting peace and advances in medicine? The breakdown of families comes to mind, which is of course for a myriad reasons, to a point where families are becoming far too expensive to sustain. We still have sufficient demographics and functional infrastructure and institutions to keep civilisation alive, even if we reach SK levels of atomisation.

So here's where I'm less certain; will decadence necessarily mean decline? Or maybe we'll just draw out the inevitable and decline will come very slowly, say over a few centuries? Should we turn to traditional norms to reverse this trend? If so, how can traditional norms become tenable enough to be a potential solution?

Radical feminists have the same simplistic and faulty “analysis” as Marxists. For traditional Marxists, all history is to be analyzed as class struggle between workers and capitalists. Capitalists use their privilege in form of property of capital to allienate workers and politically oppress them in order to perpetuate and reproduce that whole system called capitalism.

For radfems, the history is to be analyzed as a gender struggle between men and women. Men use their male privilege to oppress women to perpetuate the whole system called patriarchy.

To me all these new causes are basically the same recycled template of dialectical leftist conspiracy theory - just with a new name for oppressed and boogiemen. They just change the name for this boogiemen secret power group and for the system they create. What they all share is the Manichean dichotomy of these forces, analysis that is always reduced to simplistic power relations and the name of the whole conspiracy. So you have whites vs POC, white privilege and white supremacy. You have cishetero vs queer people, normalcy and cisheteronormativity and so on.

As with all conspiracy theories, there may be some grains of truth of various sizes in there, you can have some fancy sounding language and so forth. But similarly to any other conspiracy theories, the analysis runs backwards from belief to “arguments”.

And so, when a woman has multiple partners, she is slotted into the whore sub-class automatically

Nope. That's not how it works - a women with very high bodycount are pursued for long term relationships and some with way lower than them are viewed only as warmer, self cleaning flesh lights. The buckets mostly exist. But the criteria for sorting them is not the body count.

This analysis is shallow. Look further, past sociology to biology, evolution, existentialism.

Men and women, life and death. Two-track sexual reproduction, r/k selection, oxytocin, genetic imperatives, labor specialization, class war.

Monogamy is a temporary peace treaty, not a utopian end-state.

Family bonds and the gatekeeping of them rises and falls with the necessity of the family. Peace and prosperity tend to reduce this necessity, which increases the number of people outside functional family structures. If peace continues indefinitely and prosperity increases endlessly, this works fine. But, if either stop, family value increases rapidly and those caught outside are going to have a rough go of things, especially those already marginal in some way. Individualism is a luxury good.

It's been my opinion for some time that radical feminists, like Marxists, are correct on their analysis of their subjects

I disagree in general. Maybe they might be right on some things, but in general their analysis usually suffers from having to always frame things into a position that women are oppressed, even when it doesn't really make sense. They have a whole term for this, "benevolent sexism". When men hold doors for women, to a feminist it's not because society values women and wants to treat women well, it's because society erroneously thinks women are too weak to hold their open doors. When men stand up for women, it's because men think women need their saving, etc. When women get less severe prison sentencing then men, and there are fewer homeless women, it's somehow because society hates women. I think they're way off base in their analyses of these sorts of things.

Well, is it not true that women are often afforded more gentleness and kindness than men would be in many situations, due to a sense that they're physically and mentally weaker? Children are also not punished as harshly when they engage in criminal action and while it would be absurd to suggest this betrays a hatred for children on the part of adults, I think it would be uncontroversial to argue this does stem from a widespread perception that children are the social, intellectual, emotional and to an extent moral inferiors of adults (more innocent, but less able to accurately judge the moral weight of their actions).

To my mind women occupied a position in society quite similar to the one children hold today until fairly recently; considered precious and in need of protection, but also undoubtedly the social inferiors of men. And I think in spite of how socially stigmatised open sexism is against women today, traces of that old arrangement do linger and lead to things like women being treated with kid gloves. While this isn't oppression and is beneficial (a man's life is literally considered less valuable than a woman's, just as an adult's is considered less valuable than a child's) it's not hard to see why feminists would object.

Children are also not punished as harshly when they engage in criminal action and while it would be absurd to suggest this betrays a hatred for children on the part of adults, I think it would be uncontroversial to argue this does stem from a widespread perception that children are the social, intellectual, emotional and to an extent moral inferiors of adults (more innocent, but less able to accurately judge the moral weight of their actions).

Two things can be true at once. We love children and we think they are inept. We don't love them because they are inept. The two are not causally linked.

We don't love them because they are inept.

I'm not sure where I gave the impression I believed that. Maybe it sounded as if I was saying the ineptness of children was the only reason they're not punished as harshly as adults? Of course adults have instinctual feelings of love and protectiveness towards kids independent of their belief in the children's ineptness, and those are part of it too, but much of the argument against trying them as adults centres on their inability to understand the full consequences of their actions. So, you know, it's both - the "benevolent ageism" in this case stems both from love of children and knowledge of their inferior faculties.

Yes, but even if that were the root for the "benevolent sexism" against women (which really is just a euphemism for special treatment), I don't see how you can twist that around and argue that, no really, this massive perk is actually a disadvantage because...?

It is not like this ostensible presumption of female weakness or inferiority works to their disadvantage anywhere. We are not talking about two sides of one coin here. The argument goes like this:

  1. Women have a clear advantage in one specific field

  2. This advantage is really because of disdain for women

  3. No, I can't point to any instances where this disdain has any negative effects for women

  4. The clear advantage is therefore a disadvantage!

  5. QED women are oppressed

I did say it is beneficial and not oppression (I grant feminists would probably disagree with that assessment) but nonetheless if you are a feminist whose goal is to attain for women the same level of respect afforded to men, having men treat you with kid gloves all the time could be seen as patronising, if indeed it does stem from a lack of faith in your abilities. And a lack of faith in your abilities could lead them to be unwilling to trust you with large amounts of power or responsibility. Even just being seen to receive this treatment could reinforce the notion that you need it and couldn't succeed on your own.

I could believe that the special treatment that women receive is patronizing and demeaning if feminists didn't demand it

The other crazy thing about 'benevolent sexism' is that it was necessary! How would women feel if, after women joined the workforce, men had treated them like any other men? Apoplectic. We're not even allowed to mention our dick and balls anymore, let alone slap them onto a table to win an argument and impress the senior partners.

let alone slap them onto a table to win an argument and impress the senior partners

People did that…?

edit: i mean i’m rather taking this metaphorically but out of morbid curiosity…did people really do that?

More comments

Charitably, the core of feminist analysis would be that gender norms exist, and if you fall outside them, you will have a worse life than if you met them. Even if you meet them, there'll be parts of them that meaningfully hurt your well-being. I think few people would argue against this, and it's not a huge leap to go from there to saying that they should be loosened if not dismantled.

Where much feminist analysis falls short is in trying to shove all gender norms into the oppressor/oppressed dynamic. I'd go so far as to say it's self undermining: if women inherently lack all agency in the matter and are just flotsam on the tides of the patriarchy, it removes all recognition of the individual agency women have to dismantle those norms.

To take your analogy at face value:

There is no norm re. drinking hydrofluoric acid. You are free to purchase, free to imbibe, and free to die stupidly.

Likewise gender rolls. Even if they provide some sort of benefit along the lines of not drinking deadly acid, that still doesn't mean they should be enforced. People should be allowed to make idiot decisions as long as they only kill them selves, and let Darwin sort it out on the back end.

Counterpoint- if people for some reason wanted to drink hydrofluoric acid, it would quickly be made illegal. Heroine(far less harmful) is illegal for that reason.

Likewise if we determine that gender roles are necessary and good, then not officially providing state favoritism to them is, from non-libertarian frameworks, no longer the default- it has to be specifically justified.

Not if gender roles are something which requires collective buy in to exist. If so, then defectors are in fact harming the group, and thus something you would want discouraged, in the same way you would want to treat any other tragedy of the commons defector.

So I've been spending some time on the radfem pipeline. It's been my opinion for some time that radical feminists, like Marxists, are correct on their analysis of their subjects, with no regard to one might think about their solutions. Take the topic of promiscuity; a trait that was historically seen as far more taboo in women that it was in men. Double standards?

Yes, but as Aristotle reminds us, unequal treatment of unequal things can be called for. Women stand to lose much more from sex than men and are hence much choosier. Being chosen for sex by a woman translates to "you are so attractive that the risk of carrying your offspring is a price I am either willing to pay or actively seek". Being chosen for sex by a man just means you are above a certain fuckability threshold.

This differential means that women have always been able to garner favours in exchange for (the promise or suggestion of) sex. Most feminist activism after the first wave is about how this transaction is to be structured. The traditional marriage model exchanges security of paternity plus household chores and child rearing for a wholsesale package of protection and provision. Social changes of the past couple of decades have lead to most women now getting most of that for free, via the state taxing (mostly male) productive labour.

So now we have two battlefields: one is to extract more favours for women as a class (favourable hiring conditions, female-exclusive professional perks, female quotas, all kinds of handouts) in exchange for... women existing. And the second is an inter-sex fight: should attractive women be allowed to collect additional favours from men via trading (the promise of) sex away? Isn't that mean to the women who can't or won't do that? And doesn't that lower the exchange rate of sex? This is what it is mostly about, all the window dressing about this being all about the big ol' mean patriarchy is a distraction.

Yes, but as Aristotle reminds us, unequal treatment of unequal things can be called for. Women stand to lose much more from sex than men and are hence much choosier. Being chosen for sex by a woman translates to "you are so attractive that the risk of carrying your offspring is a price I am either willing to pay or actively seek". Being chosen for sex by a man just means you are above a certain fuckability threshold.

This differential means that women have always been able to garner favours in exchange for sex.

And this dynamic of women being able to garner favours in exchange for sex is what leads to the generalised condemnation of promiscuity in women. Contrary to basically all established belief, it is women and not men who stand to gain from the repression of female sexuality. The fact is that restricting women's willingness to provide men with premarital or extramarital sex through several methods serves women's interests in an important way. It restricts men's ability to access sex, and since the supply has been restricted this means women can push the price of sex up to incredible levels (demanding long-term commitment through marriage, transfers of wealth and resources, and so on). The more they restrict their sexuality, the more they can relitigate sex relations in their favour. Even when she is already in a partnership the widespread suppression of female sexuality can benefit her by indirectly restricting her mate's sexuality - it prevents her partner from simply going out and finding another woman (an especially salient risk once she is old and her mate value has declined). So the promiscuous woman is scorned, not primarily by men, but by other women. It is a female sex cartel, a union enforced for the interests of the group as a whole. Here is a blog post containing plenty of evidence in favour of this view.

As a case study that allows us a glimpse into a very extreme version of this dynamic, we can look at the phenomenon of FGM, responsibility for which often erroneously gets shifted onto men. The fact is, the practice is most zealously supported by women, and the female peer group teases girls who have not had the operation. There are studies of men in these countries which do not indicate that they prefer women with the operation (so this can't be argued to be a reflection of their preferences), rather, they actually prize women without the operation because they enjoy sex more. Link. Fieldwork in villages that at the time were newly beginning to adopt FGM as a practice shows that the impetus for the practice comes from the girls themselves. The girls were going out to other villages and getting excisors to cut them regardless of the fact that their parents and the tribal chiefs hated the practice and strongly condemned them for doing so, and over time it became culturally entrenched. Link 2.

All this seems congenial to the theory that the cause of female genital cutting and its subsequent spread likely comes from females themselves, with male acceptance and support for the practice (and their consequent attitudes surrounding it) merely being secondary to and following from widespread female uptake of and support for the practice. Really it's very clear to me that the feminist viewpoint of "patriarchal oppression" is just utterly misleading, and I'm a bit dismayed (though not surprised) that people still give it the time of day.

So the promiscuous woman is scorned, not primarily by men, but by other women.

This always made sense to me and seemed to match what I encountered and saw in the world. That is, until gen-z men started to become visible to me on the internet about 5 years ago, who seemed to be the ones lashing out at women with shaming language about 'thots' and 'thirst-traps' (any women publicly using their good looks on youtube/twitch/etc). By my priors, I would have expected men to be quite fine with women dominating instagram/streaming/asmr/whatever, while some women would be trying to enforce against the defectors with various levels of slut-shaming. And by my reading, the young men aren't simply playing catch-up with new norms and trying to signal their new virtues -- it's more like: "damn you for tempting me to donate my hard earned money!" Am I misreading this as a phenomenon?

I'm pretty certain that this is a selected very online group you're looking at, because the loudest voices on the internet will tend to be people who are not representative of the general population. A huge portion of terminally online people will likely be lonely men who are suffering from lack of sex and companionship and relationships (which I think is something that's very important to people), and who will be frustrated that they can only obtain any semblance of these things through a paywall. They likely see women starting accounts, getting huge amounts of attention from men around the world, and they compare and contrast that with their own situation where they get so little attention that they're tempted to pay for a simulacrum of attention and desire. I can imagine it feels miserable, and it's hard for me not to be at least a little bit sympathetic.

In other words, I think there is a massive difference between the lashing out at Twitch thots you're describing and actually wanting to restrict female sexual behaviour. The lashing out is not because they think women make themselves too sexually accessible and want to restrict their activity, it's precisely because of the opposite reason: because women are not accessible to them. Furthermore, I doubt this attitude can be extrapolated to the general male population out there for the aforementioned reasons, and would caution against any hasty generalisations.

Fieldwork in villages that at the time were newly beginning to adopt FGM as a practice shows that the impetus for the practice comes from the girls themselves.

Forgive me, but I've looked at your links and read your comment multiple times. Do we actually know why girls would go seek out surgery themselves, seemingly believing that it will benefit them individually? It seems that it would be something to be imposed on the young, not something the young volunteer for. Thank you.

It certainly is bizarre, but we can theorise on the reasons why. In both villages covered in the article, male desires certainly do not seem to have driven it. In Myabe, the prevailing view at the time of adoption was that men prefer uncut women as sex partners. Similarly, in Bakum, where the practice was adopted at an earlier date, whether a girl was cut or not had little effect on her ability to marry, and that only changed once the practice was already entrenched. Parents and authority figures do not seem to have been the driving force, either, in fact parents and chiefs were extremely strongly opposed to the practice and its spread. In Bakum, their acceptance and participation in the cutting ceremonies only happened after it was already common. So the pressures leading to its emergence have to come from somewhere else.

Some evidence in the article seems to suggest that other girls do, even at an early stage of adoption of the practice, provide pressure. For example in Myabe, where female genital cutting was a recent phenomenon at the time of the study, "The girls attribute their desire to participate in the cutting ceremonies to pressure from peers and to the spectacle of the coming-out ceremony that follows the period of healing. The event draws a great deal of attention in the village." Although there are few long-term consequences for not getting cut, girls do admit to "teasing friends who opted not to attend" cutting ceremonies, so there is evidence there that seems to suggest that the girls were experiencing some level of soft social pressure from other girls who did have the operation. Similarly, in Bakum, some of the first girls in the village to be cut were taunted by their friends "on the other side of the river" and enticed by them into participating.

It makes sense to me that it would be primarily the female peer group promoting it, and not parents or authorities or some shadowy patriarchal cabal. As mentioned earlier the female peer group at large benefits from restricting female willingness to provide sex and girls would therefore be concerned with getting those in their peer group to adhere to a set of sexuality restrictions. So I think this looks like the organic bottom-up emergence of the "female sex cartel" I mentioned earlier.

Because adolescent girls are extremely susceptible to social pressure?

Incidentally, the west currently has a lot of adolescent girls seeking double mastectomies under the mistaken impression that it will benefit them.

I disagree with what I think the thrust of your post is, namely that social pressures are artificially "restricting" or "repressing" female sexuality. I think it's pretty much entirely biological.

I would hazard to guess that in an imaginary society where female sexuality was completely unfettered and unstigmatized...that female humans would still want sex less than male humans, and would still be choosier in their partners than males. In every mammalian species this dynamic exists, especially for placental mammals - because the investment necessary during pregnancy is so high. Female humans have particularly invasive placentas, very risky pregnancy and birth because of head size, and particularly helpless young that demand an extreme amount of care relative to other mammalian young (even other great apes). It is not surprising, therefore, that female humans have been selected to be discerning rather than horny.

I don't have too much to say here because I don't have too many opinions on how society should look on this issue, but I will note that I always find it pretty funny how people on both ends of an issue (like sex-positives and sex-negatives) will often frame their preferences in terms of how it would benefit women, without too much concern for what that would do to men. On the other hand, a benefit to men is generally framed as negative and generally contextualised with how it would hurt women. It's based on a foundational idea that women are the appropriate beneficiaries of social norms, so rigging the system in women's favour is viewed as legitimate, whereas doing so for men (or even just relaxing women's attempts at rigging things to benefit themselves, like their attempts at artificial price-fixing in the sexual marketplace) is bad.

EDIT: clarity

It’s interesting how even in in this comment you buy utterly into the ‘women as a class’ Marxian conception of “gender conflict”.

Given that this is how the conflict is presented and fought and how its spoils are distributed, it rather becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. What makes it different from other class conflicts though is that there is absolutely no class solidarity on the other side. Men see other men as friends or rivals, not as brothers-in-arms in the sex wars.

For women it's:

Women see other women as friends or rivals, AND as sisters-in-arms in the sex wars.

I agree with a lot of your post, but your actual original premise ("Radical feminism is essentially an unhelpful defensive response to the sexual revolution") is untrue. For two pretty straightforward reasons: One, radical feminism predates the sexual revolution. Two, most of the early radical feminist literature supported sexual liberation, if not outright sexual libertinism. People (in this thread even) who argue the sexual revolution was mostly just a ploy by men to get access to sex are wrong. Not that there's no truth to the idea some men loved the idea of free non-committal sex and supported it for this reason, but the idea that feminism and women more generally did not play an active and leading role in the sexual revolution is false.

Radical feminist ("second wave") texts such as Beauvoir's 1949 The Second Sex, Friedan's 1963 The Feminine Mystique predate or coincide with the beginning of the sexual revolution.

Other, slightly later radical feminist texts, such as Firestone's 1970 The Dialectic of Sex or Millet's 1970 Sexual Politics, call for sexual liberation, either explicitly or implicitly (it's explicit with Firestone, it's more implicit with Millet who says sexual repression of women is an oppressive tool of patriarchy). The idea that radical feminism is a defensive response to the sexual revolution is historical revisionism by more contemporary radical feminists who realise that the sexual revolution actually was negative for women (and the majority of men for that matter, not that it matters to them), but don't actually want to condemn earlier feminists works or the whole political project of feminism so the 'reinterpret' them or otherwise reframe it (most often is the "true sexual liberation has never been tried"). "Men created ('false') sexual liberation for sexual access" is unironically a radical feminist revisionist myth.

So what was Women's Movement, and all the people who supported it then? Just unwitting pawns of Big Sexual Entertainment, too stupid to see their strings being pulled by Hugh Hefner and Hollywood? I don't buy it. Even if Hefner and co did contribute to it (which they did to some small degree), these women and feminists did still have agency. It's also just begging the question of why did women accept the Sexual Liberation narrative, when women had long been the sexual moral arbitrators? Why wasn't Hefner and co suppressed like in any other moral panic that women are so capable of? If you want to attribute it to something than other feminism itself, you're better off looking at birth control, domestic technologies and other technologies in the postwar era.

How about ‘true sexual liberation has been tried at least to some extent, and is inherently exploitative of women (and children), under pretty much any economic system’?

I was making a humorous reference to the 'true communism has never been tried'. Many contemporary radical feminists will still support the notion of a 'sexually liberated society' in the same way communists will support the idea of a communist utopia. The joke being that communism has been tried and failed, and similarly that sexual liberation has been tried and failed. But it doesn't stop the radical feminists continually idealising how next time ("real" sexual liberation) will work.

The women's movement and sexual liberation movements were separate movements, even if parts of them were at times connected and at other times different parts were counterposed to each other. (Many) women accepted the sexual liberation narrative for the same reason many men did: because they wanted to have sex. Some of these women called themselves feminist and others didn't.

Some of these women called themselves feminist and others didn't.

So how many called themselves feminist, how many anti-feminist, and how many rejected to orient themselves on this axis?

Because for any policy, no matter how closely it is associated with some ideology, there were those that wouldn't identify themselves with that ideology, and some that did identify with it, but opposed that policy.

Thus rendering, by your reasoning, any statement that implies a correlation exists between support for X and idenfying as Y, false.

There's also the fact that the dissident right and reactionary logic more generally is outside the mainstream, and women are mostly conformist. Plus their often open misogyny in the true sense of the word- not the sometimes-charming view of women as needing to be taken care of, but something that often fades into outright hatred.

If you find reactionaries with trad values and a victorian view that women need to be protected and taken care of, they often have gender ratios close to even, even if that view entails restricting women's freedom for their own good. I'm not going to claim this view is popular, but it isn't notably less popular among women. It's the hatred of women that drives them away.

almost as little discussed as that the Tianenmen Square protests began as nationalist riots by students who opposed African exchange students sleeping with Chinese women

I think you are confusing these protests with the Nanjing protests of 1988-1989. A common mistake.

There were students who opposed African exchange students at Tiananmen Square, but the preciptating event was the death of Hu Yaobang, who had nothing particularly to do with African exchange students. In fact, there weren't many African exchange students left in China by that point.

By "a direct line of continuity" are you saying that opposition to African students had a profound impact on TS or that it was how TS began?

impossible to decouple them

What do you mean "decouple"?

Take the topic of promiscuity; a trait that was historically seen as far more taboo in women that it was in men. Double standards?

I don't know about that, considering how many of the same feminists will turn around and say it's fine for only women to have reproductive rights since they're the ones that bear the consequences of accidental pregnancy. Surely this should be the same thing?

It seems difficult to argue against that both historically and in the general population today, female promiscuity is viewed less positively than men. Yes, there are small numbers of sex negative feminists who believe male promiscuity is evil and female promiscuity is more or less amoral in the sense of being value neutral. There are larger numbers of people who view male sexuality as potentially threatening within a broader framework where both sexes' promiscuities are viewed as about equal(and some of these people are on the left, with promiscuity viewed positively, while some are on the right, with promiscuity viewed negatively). But most people today still view male promiscuity positively-to-neutrally and female promiscuity negatively. I find that people on the motte.com tend to overestimate how woke the general population is(spoiler alert- not very, although they're also not tradcons). And historically the default society tends to think it's very important for women to be virgins at marriage, and for a man, quite strange or very rude to ask.

Yes, many feminists think that women should have reproductive rights and men shouldn't. To be frank, this is mostly about trying to benefit women as a class and not give their opponents ammunition(can you imagine the amount of ammo it would give to the pro-life movement if men had the power to demand their partners get abortions, or otherwise had some legal method of exerting pressure to that effect?), not disapproval of male promiscuity. Demanding men who don't want to be a father be required to get a vasectomy is actually evidence in favor of this model; after all, a vasectomy by definition preserves the ability to have sex while preventing impregnation.

I don't understand your argument.

The breakdown of families comes to mind, which is of course for a myriad reasons, to a point where families are becoming far too expensive to sustain

What does this have to do with men seeking virgin wives and prostitutes?

So here's where I'm less certain; will decadence necessarily mean decline?

What decadence? Decadence of men seeking virgin wives and prostitutes or decadence of men failing to seek virgin wives and prostitutes? Decadence of prostitues not suffering enough consequences from being prostitutes? Decadence in the number of virgin wives? Also what decline? Of fertility? Of families? How does it relate to the topic of men seeking virgin wives and prostitutes?

Should we turn to traditional norms to reverse this trend?

What traditional norms? The traditional norm of men seeking virign wives and prostitutes? And also which trend? And how do they help? And why did these traditional norms go away?

to a point where families are becoming far too expensive to sustain.

Can you expand on why you think families are too expensive to maintain?

will decadence necessarily mean decline?

I believe so, and I think it might take a century or two. The future will belong to the people who "show up" genetically which means eventually the vast majority will have hardcore trad parents and or grandparents, hardcore in the sense that they resisted the current corrosive liberalism by virtue of their personality traits, cultural or religious tradition, or whatever. There was some triumphalism during the age of New Atheism about how fast many faiths were hemorrhaging members, but I think that those were the easy pickings and eventually a hard core will remain, and the numbers will stabilize and then reverse course. Of course, it's possible by then that the groups will be small enough that they can successfully be painted as "dangerous to democracy" by liberals and destroyed with punitive laws, taxation, lawfare, and targeted propaganda. Who knows.

how can traditional norms become tenable enough to be a potential solution?

I've come to believe that this is impossible, or at least unbelievably difficult. Liberalism, scientism, and humanism have thoroughly penetrated every level of education, entertainment, and "common sense" morality, to the point where it's the water in which every westerner has been swimming for at least several generations. This is a trumph for the secular humanist/liberal projects, but unfortunately it turns out that the axioms in which these projects rest lead to beliefs that are incompatible with societal flourishing (while being great for - a certain definition of - atomized individual flourishing). It's hard enough to remain Christian swimming in this water, nevermind trying to convert the fish who believe they are totally at home in it! It would be like parachuting into North Korea and trying to convince a random North Korean farmer --while you are both still in North Korea -- that the U.S. president is actually a good guy and Americans mean them no harm and that they should unilaterally disarm and then engage in trade with the archenemy. Even if the farmer wanted to, the years of slogans, of propaganda, of emotional speeches by the dear leader would make it extremely painful to change his mind, and even if he did, he would be under constant mental and emotional pressure to "deconvert." So it goes with traditional values today. Absent an authoritarian right wing theocratic coup, I think you're out of luck.

I believe so, and I think it might take a century or two. The future will belong to the people who "show up" genetically which means eventually the vast majority will have hardcore trad parents and or grandparents

What about once we get solid tech for 'test-tube babies' or otherwise take out the inconvenience and risk of pregnancy? I don't see this talked about often, but the time is coming. Much of the conceptual work has been done on artificial wombs, what's really holding us back is regulation. To point to your own username, don't you think that this type of advance will change the game when it comes to reproduction?

Color me doubtful on artificial wombs. You basically need to implement an artificial version of every single organ in order to build a proper artificial womb, and all of those other artificial organs will be much more profitable sold to elderly people with deep pockets and failing organs.

That's before you even manage to convince a zygote to implant on your artificial membrane.

And keep in mind, we're having difficulty keeping baby formula on the shelves.

You'll still need people to actually raise the children, and the time and effort required for childrearing is unattractive in a society that offers lots of other pleasures for far, far less commitment.

I suppose test tube babies could have a large impact if we reach a point where the family has been so discredited as an institution that people are comfortable with the government creating and raising children. But even then I imagine there would be objections on progressive grounds -- why create more children in a planet that's already overpopulated? Why not just allow still more immigrants to come in if we simply need more people?

Why would it? Fear of pregnancy is not the main reason for childlessness. "Kids are unaffordable" may or may not be true, but it's not usually intended as a reference to the cost of childbirth.

Modern people who don't have kids don't have them because they don't want to raise them, not because they don't want to make them.

I believe so, and I think it might take a century or two. The future will belong to the people who "show up" genetically which means eventually the vast majority will have hardcore trad parents and or grandparents, hardcore in the sense that they resisted the current corrosive liberalism by virtue of their personality traits, cultural or religious tradition, or whatever.

Do not expect any "religious gene" or "trad gene". If there is any genetic trait that insular religious sects select for in their members, it is going to be WORM type of brain.

"In your childhood, listen carefully to authority figures and never ever in your whole life question what you have learned."

Just like insects on small islands with nowhere to fly tend to lose wings, the new type of human will lose any curiosity or "openness of mind".

I am finding myself increasingly convinced that very few people value such things as "openness of mind" or "freedom" as ends in themselves, anyway. (Some who do tend to be "fools who take things seriously," as I call myself, which would be a type pretty overrepresented here.)

I mean, I, who have at least convinced myself that such things are good, would justify them something like this: freedom (and curiosity and so forth) are important because we can never be perfectly sure that we have things right. We could still be wrong about something terribly important, and so, to avoid trapping ourselves in a Hell of ignorance, we forswear the ability to ever secure ourselves into any supposed Heaven of enlightenment. (After all, reaching such a standard of absolute perfection is infinitely unlikely, so intellectual humility tells me.)

But a lot of people don't share that view of intellectual humility. A lot of people believe that they already do have the way to produce that Heaven on Earth, and if only people would stop disagreeing or disobeying, everything would be perfect. In light of this, "freedom" and "openness of mind" and "intellectual humility" and "democracy" (Erdogan: "Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off.") are valued ultimately as pretenses or covers just to keep the current hegemons from cracking down on them long enough to get The Right People with The Right Ideas into power. And after that, it's time to pull the ladder up behind them; slam and lock the door, to ensure that the ways by which the truth came in would never tempt anyone away.

This doesn't even particularly depend on the beliefs themselves: it isn't some flaw unique to the "trad" or to the "woke" or that can't be shared by anyone, really. It's just a question of confidence versus humility: after all, if you really did know for sure the Ultimate Truth, wouldn't all the process of truth-seeking from then on really be just a dangerous temptation from which no good can come, that nobody should be permitted to bother with? Even I would agree, but no matter how sure I am in my beliefs or how important they are to me, I forswear the right to say that I really for sure have the ultimate truth, for if everybody who thought that way before me was wrong - I should be chastened by the fact that the odds are very much against me, so I will give up the right to secure my Heaven so I don't end up creating Hell.

Isn't it pretty well established that likelihood of having religious beliefs, and social conservatism, are both at least partially genetic?

Unfortunately the intellectual commons are just barren nowadays. I think it was a mistake to throw open the doors to allowing everyone to comment on politics/society etc. We should've kept the masses happy with bred and circuses, while a trained aristocratic class a la @2rafa quietly keeps things running in the background.

Ironically it's easier to be liberal when you're in a constrained, elite social group, because you can select for high decouplers.

We should've kept the masses happy with bred and circuses, while a trained aristocratic class a la @2rafa quietly keeps things running in the background.

Be very cautious of endorsing an unaccountable set of leaders, for they may very well decide you and yours are next on the chopping block.

I'm pretty sure it's the trained aristocratic class that's keeping the intellectual commons barren.

When we had a trained aristocratic class, they went all-in on Marxism. This does not strike me as a great idea.

If there is any genetic trait that insular religious sects select for in their members, it is going to be WORM type of brain.

Citation sorely needed. This just sounds like some uncharitable "all religions are cults and believers are just brainless automatons" claptrap.

"In your childhood, listen carefully to authority figures and never ever in your whole life question what you have learned."

But their parents will have spent their entire lives actively resisting and disobeying authority figures to adhere to their traditions? That sounds like the opposite of your 1-dimensional strawman.

As a side note, I've engaged with you several times here and you're only ever abrasive and uncharitable. I'm not really sure what your goal is, but it doesn't seem to be to convince those who may disagree with you, so I'll probably reply less going forward. Feel free to have the last word.

Maybe he phrased it churlishly, but I see what he means. The trads are less defying authority than they are preferring one authority over another. Among the traditionally-minded there are many highly intelligent people. In my little homeschooling circle there are computer programmers, a guy with a phd in engineering physics, a woman with a masters in musical accompaniment, etc. They are also all evangelical Christians. Normally we don’t think of evangelicals as highly-educated, but these people border on hyper-educated. Except that both their education and religious inclination depend on strict adherence to agreed-upon truths. I, a de facto wordcel, show up and try to make conversation about ideas- their ideas! Physics! Music! Code! and it’s the embodiment of the NPC meme. They absolutely cannot think outside their boxes, and even thinking inside their boxes takes the form of mere recitation of principles. If the regeneration of the West ever comes, it will come after the traditionalists’ descendants recreate something like worst aspects of the middle ages. So expect it in 400 years, not 200.

The trads are less defying authority than they are preferring one authority over another.

Is this not equally true of non-trads in general? In the words of the poet:

"I'm an emo kid, non-conforming as can be

you'd be non-conforming too if you were just like me."

Have you seen a general population of normies that actually qualify as "defying authority" or "thinking for themselves" or "persuing individualism" in some truly rigorous sense?

Almost definitionally, no, because normies are ‘people more conformist than the reference group’.

eh, for this purpose, read "normie" as "normal", "not unusual", "not outstanding."

Take the Atheist community. Is it your experience that the average atheist in, say, 2010 was unusually non-conformist?

That's an interesting anecdote, thanks for sharing. I'm not too surprised to hear it since I've come to believe that the overwhelming majority of people are the way you describe. I work in tech in a very blue tribe and progressive company. The engineers here are smart, heck even the salespeople here are pretty smart relative to most salespeople I've met. In my first year here I (perhaps unwisely) tried to discuss ideas with some of my closer colleagues. Each time, I was met with talking points or indifference. I think that the vast majority of people are just uninterested in and/or incapable of contributing to a discussion about complex abstract ideas. Now I mostly talk about TV shows, beer, or people to get along.

If the regeneration of the West ever comes, it will come after the traditionalists’ descendants recreate something like worst aspects of the middle ages.

The "respect for authority" gene can't be mutually exclusive with creativity. If it were, humanity would never have gotten to where it is today. Widespread suspicion and rejection of authority is a very recent and, I suspect, very American phenomenon. The vast majority of people in history just took the authority of their rulers and social betters as a given, and yet somehow they managed to produce beautiful art and novel ideas all the same.

Also, I think this depends heavily on your definition of "regeneration." If it means "a return to liberal secular humanist values, the sexual revolution, and atomized individualism" then yes, I agree. But to me that would be degeneration, not regeneration.

If these supposedly stultified traditionalists built a society based on respect for hierarchy and love of God, county, family, and peace, I would see that as a regeneration of Western society to its former glory. A modern observer might think therewould be less "creative ferment" because there might be no more tumorous postmodern skyscrapers, no more "piss Christ" exhibits, no more international NGOs evangelizing an ever expanding list of "human rights" to coerce societies to ever greater levels of "freedom." But then he might be missing the innovations in classical architecture, the Renaissance in symbolic religious art, or the flourishing of local "intermediate institutions" binding communities and families closer together in a way that is sorely missing in his own time.

Sure, but among my tradcath circle there's many people who have large families and will then talk philosophy or speculative linguistics or musical composition or literature until they're blue in the face. My anecdata is more or less the opposite of yours.

This might be old news.

A Swedish newspaper published a report, ostensibly a leak from RAND that purports to be a cynical summary of what anti-atlanticist Europeans believe to be the US strategy - sabotage Europe by denying it Russian energy, forcing investments and people to leave for the safer haven of US. Example of that is this substack post by disgraced academic Noah Carl.

The report is not very long and could very easily be a fake.

My intuitiojn says I think it's probably a fake, well within the capabilities of some of the less stupid Russian disinfo experts to create. Certainly I can imagine Russian spooks may have at least one or two people like Ilforte, but rabidly nationalist, who could make that up during lunch break.

Anyway has anything to say about it? I'm assuming the newspaper isn't a well-regarded one or a very professional one. But then I've heard very dire things about Swedish journalism, namely that it was extremely well aligned in the service of the 'liberal' left agenda of endless migration and self-hatred. That was years ago, things may have changed.

I remember this being shared in WhatsApp groups. Ilforte has written enough about this document that I have nothing to add.

This, or a similar hoax, has been bouncing around the internet circa March or April, I think. I recall seeing it on /r/stupidpol, /r/credibledefense, /r/moderatepolitics, telegram channels, etc. So other outlets have been aware of it for six months now and have chosen not to push it, including outlets quite friendly to pro-Russian/anti-imperialist viewpoints. Which isn't a perfect test, someone needs to be first and sometimes stuff slips through the cracks. But for a low-tier Swedish newspaper to be the first to push this story seems very lacking in credibility. I could sorta believe they broke it if the leak were fresh, for whatever reason, but I can't believe that they were the only ones to notice this big document bouncing around the internet.

Anyway has anything to say about it?

The alleged article or the sentiment behind it?

The report is very likely a fake, for reasons already mentioned. I will note that the use of roman numerals isn't discrediting in and of itself- RAND does use sometimes publish reports and use roman numerals for the agenda / methodology / executive summary portion before the main report itself- but rather the cover page itself is a red flag. The image claims this is a research report, but RAND Research Reports have a general style of presentation, include front-page opening images and color. You can peruse RAND Research Reports via a search of their website, as the pictures show.

https://www.rand.org/pubs.html?pub-date=20211210%3A&series=Research+Reports

Another formatting red flag is the mis-classification label. The first page graphic- which says this is 'Confidential' under 'January 25, 2022'- is mixing a few things. For one, RAND isn't an American government agency, and while it's a common belief in various circles that it's a distinction without a difference, classification (mis)labeling is one of those areas where it matters. 'Confidential' is an American classification labeling, and when reports are classified, the documents have various formatting requirements such as having the label on each page, and portion-marking individual paragraphs. This is so that the readers can reference various parts of the document at various levels or contexts. If the implicit argument is RAND is part/an extension of the American government, this would be a job-retraining failure. If the more defensible position is that this is something RAND wrote for the government, it would be customer abuse. A lot of companies/groups with regular engagement with governments will develop their own, internal control measures rather than mis-use the government's own classification system.

A third red flag is the front page distribution list. Aside from the placement on the page- above the Executive Summary, which is where the RAND logo is placed? Really?- I assume by WHCS they mean White House Chief of Staff, but that's not an office, and wouldn't be in the same context as three letter agencies. Also conspicuously absent from the distribution list is the Treasury Department- a kind of big omission of any report nominally on economic analysis. Instead, the list is primarily the big spooky externally known 3-letter agencies... when there isn't a need for that information to be on the Executive Summary Page in the first place. That's the sort of information you track on a cover sheet, so you don't need to re-publish a report every time some new office is involved.

Overall, the formatting has a lot of red flags, and most of the potential explanations- 'they didn't follow their usual practices because of the need for secrecy'- ask people to be dumb in different ways. 'This was made by someone who thinks this is how the Americans work' is much more likely...

...not least because the article really doesn't reflect how the American government national-security types think about this general topic, or Europe, and so the report reads like 'this was written by someone who thinks this is how the Americans think,' or even 'this is written by someone who wants other people to think this is how the Americans think.'

The Americans don't talk about the Europeans in terms of 'sovereignty.' The American establishment viewpoint is that the Europeans already have it- it's the anti-American/anti-American-empire-ists who would frame the European alliances as non-sovereign, not a quasi-government report. Nor is a Biden-administration solicited report going to talk about Europe in terms of 'if one day we abandon Europe,' when the opening year of the Biden administration was ABT, or Anything But Trump, with even the exceptions subject to rebranding for the 'we're back' theme. Nor would the US of Jan 2022 been talking about Ukraine causing a 'controlled economic crisis' to plan for the duration of 2022... because the Americans were planning for a relatively quick and short Russia-Ukraine War. The Americans were flowing insurgency-friendly weapons into Ukraine, but not heavier conventional equipment, because of the expectation that Russia would have a conventional victory in short order. Second and third order effects of that would be the expectation that- as happened repeatedly before- German and other European interests would press for normalization of Energy supplies (and even currently, with the gas price cap, set a price above what was generally being charged, ie. not actually capping prices or flow). Broader pushback against sanctions primarily has not happened because Ukraine remained in the fight... but Ukraine remaining in the fight was manifestly not something the Americans were planning on. If Ukraine's government had toppled in the first month, months 2-10 of the war, and all the sanctions discussions that occurred, would have gone very differently.

Meanwhile, the report doesn't identify various things the American national-security types would raise about if it WAS an American product. Like the description of the German economic pillars: that wouldn't be Russian gas and 'cheap French electrical power.' The other pillar would be something akin to 'exports to China,' because that's something the Americans care about far more than French electrical imports, and is relevant to the strategic-level topic. There would be mentions that the German military under-spending, because that's been a long, long on-going complaint from the American perspective that goes hand-in-hand with the Russian energy reliance- both are decades-long-issues that have been persistent issues in mind.

Add to this the plethora of pejorative framings and boo-light words almost specifically driven to incite German/European emotions ('trap,' 'lack of professionalism of current leaders,' 'thanks to our precise action,' the whole 'French dependent on AUKUS' framing)- which just so coincidentally predicted a political context almost a year later after multiple unpredicted inflection points in the Ukraine unforeseeable at the time, which is just so coincidentally being leaked at a time when those framing devices and predictions are most salient to ongoing contexts...

...while also embracing the framing that Ukraine was an American trap, and that Russia was 'provoked' so that it would be 'possible' to declare Russia the aggressor...

...in a report nominally authored in late January 22, when the Russians had already been moving their invasion hardware along the various invasion axis assembly areas in the clear logistical buildup that the American government was publicizing at the time, but that this report makes no reference to...

Obvious false-flag information effort, targeting people who are only vaguely familiar with the alleged participants or Ukrainian context, or stroking the biases of those vulnerable to agreeing by what Stephen Colbert once called the truthiness of it.

To me, this looks like "The Protocols of the Elders of Columbia." What stands out to me most is that it doesn't feel like it's written from the authentic perspective of somebody in on such a scheme: usually, the harms inflicted by one's foes are much less sadistically targeted than one imagines them to be.

The very first paragraph of the Executive Summary has red flags: "the uncontrolled issue of cash" instead of "issuance," "dollar supply" rather than "money supply."

Also, "loss in the position of the Democratic Party in Congress" is odd phrasing, and I doubt that RAND would refer to "costs for us" rather than "costs to the United States."

And "the" is omitted in "a major obstacle to it is growing independence of Germany," and is used unnecessarily in other places. Classic English language learner errors.

It's an error that I believe is more prevalent in Slavs, who don't use that many definite articles. Or any. Not clear. What do you think /u/georgioz ?

Germans probably wouldn't make that many similar errors, on account of them using definite and indefinite articles.

Heinlein's (quite good, actually) book 'Moon is a Harsh Mistress', where the Lunar colony has a significant Russian speaking component is written without using many definite articles.

The use of articles varies subtly even between languages who generally use them; Romance languages use articles in many situations in which English does not, and vice versa.

The only Slavic langauges with articles are Bulgarian and Macedonian (which sometimes considered as a dialect of the former) and they don't look similar to types in English etc.

Polish has no articles at all. But more importantly, as I understand, they do not exist in Russian language.

a/an/the is an irritating stuff for me.

Having a brief read of it, I'm inclined to believe it's a fake. Honestly, the grammar in some parts is so odd I don't think it was even written by someone who has English as their first language. Some things that make me suspicious:

1. The page numbering. The pages are numbered using roman numerals rather than the normal arabic characters. This is common for things like the preface to reports but my general experience (admittedly limited) is that executive summaries tend to be part of the main body and numbered appropriately. Additionally there are no page numbers visible on the title page or copyright page but the "Executive Summary" page starts at "iii". It's normal for title pages and copyright pages not to be numbered but they also are generally excluded from the numbering system altogether such that the first page after them ought to be "i", not "iii". Either two numbered pages are missing between the copyright page and the "Executive Summary" titled page or something odd is happening here.

2. Some of the acronyms on the "distribution" line on the title page don't mean anything to me. "Dept. of State", "CIA", "NSA", and "DNC" are all presumably clear enough (although, an odd grouping) but "WHCS" does not seem to be anything I can find with a Google or Wikipedia search and the only ANSA that seems relevant is... an Italian news agency? Of course, just because I can't find any relevant hits doesn't mean they don't exist but I'm not sure what they are supposed to indicate and no likely matches suggest themselves.

3. Grammatical and general formatting problems. For example the final paragraph on page "iii" (which is also a single sentence) reads (emphasis added):

Besides, if the U.S. is for a certain period is engulfed by domestic problems, the Old Europe will be able to more effectively resists the influence of the U.S.-oriented Eastern European countries.

of course, it's possible the repeated "if" is something an editor missed, but it is suggestive. The document uses the "Old Europe" construction in a number of places, apparently intending to mean Western Europe. I've never heard this construction before and would be interested if anyone has examples of other RAND reports that use it. The first paragraph on the last page has the sentence

The scenario under consideration will thus serve to strengthen the national financial condition both indirectly and most directly.

"both indirectly and most directly" is not a construction I have ever read in English and does not read like natural English to me. There are other constructions that seem odd but these were the ones that jumped out the most.

4. The whole thing is written much more... directly... regarding its goal of harming various European countries to the benefit of the US than I would expect. Not that people planning bad things never write them down but this is, like, "notes on a criminal conspiracy" level. I would expect any descriptions of intentions, estimates of results, and desirability, to be written much more circumspectly. With much more room for plausible deniability, especially by an operation like RAND.

  1. The page numbering. The pages are numbered using roman numerals rather than the normal arabic characters. This is common for things like the preface to reports but my general experience (admittedly limited) is that executive summaries tend to be part of the main body and numbered appropriately. Additionally there are no page numbers visible on the title page or copyright page but the "Executive Summary" page starts at "iii". It's normal for title pages and copyright pages not to be numbered but they also are generally excluded from the numbering system altogether such that the first page after them ought to be "i", not "iii". Either two numbered pages are missing between the copyright page and the "Executive Summary" titled page or something odd is happening here.

There are other formatting issues on the pages- RAND doesn't usually put their symbol, or date and (mis-)classification on the Executive Summary page- but I will note that the roman numerals itself isn't off.

RAND regularly has a numbering divide between the main-body of a report, and the pre-body pages that include the copyright page, the agenda, but also the executive summary. Pre-main body material will be in roman numerals, with main body reports in arabic characters. The 'missing' pages would likely have been the Agenda and the Methodology pages... but the implication they were only a page each, on an executive summary this length, is itself a red flag.

Note also that "the Old Europe" is suspect; a native English speaker would not include the article there.

Old Europe is a bit of an odd one since it hasn't really been used prominently in almost two decades, but it got some traction when the Bush admin used this framing to bash France and Germany in comparison to Eastern European countries that supported the Iraq War adventure.

I agreefully with your reply and believe you are right.

Hopefully Ilforte won't be insulted by my OP.

to be written much more circumspectly.

Given the levels of narrative control the US blue state possesses, that is perhaps a prudent attitude that is no longer necessary.

I've been amazed by some of the opinions I've seen - for example, that when FBI pressured Twitter to censor Trump, that was a 2nd amendment violation, but that Trump is the guilty party. It's a very powerful take, a case of 'woke are more correct than the mainstream'. Yes, Trump failed to rein in the deep state and keep it within acceptable limits.

Not that he was ever likely to do so, but doesn't the responsibility lie with the big boss ?

Why would I be insulted? That's all true, down to the trouble with missing or unnecessary articles (I despise the very notion of a definite article). I've been advised to agree to this career path, too.

Might even be flattering – that article is making rounds, apparently. Months ago, I've asked a Swedish guy what he makes of it. His conclusion was the same as the consensus here: BS.

Nevertheless, I think we have enough legitimate leaks and official admissions and absence of satisfactory responses to accusations coming from European figures to tell that such undermining of European economies and sovereignty and poaching of talent is, if not a proactive policy, then certainly not a negative scenario in the eyes of Anglo/American State Security. (We might even suspect that such immediately discredited fakes are part of the master plan to hide the truth, like in Eliezer's Meta-Truther 9/11 story). There are only two decent objections: «what if the europoors figure it out» and «strong Europe benefits the US»; neither is particularly watertight. As Russia grinds itself to fine paste on Ukrainian fortifications, Europeans become increasingly irrelevant, and they don't have a choice of allies anyway – not like they can turn to China; neither will they be of much help in the coming war, so the expected value of prolonging the agony of the Western half of Eurasia and maintaining appearances is below that of quickly reindustrializing the US and dealing with the East.

That's a cynical way of looking at things, but what can I do. Half a year ago I've written on «great replacement» and the same epistemology should apply here – adjusted for greater secrecy and moral particularism of spooks.

Some links from mainstream sources:

  • Wikipedia, The Wolfowitz Doctrine: «Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. … We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.»

  • The Guardian, Key US-EU trade pact under threat after more NSA spying allegations Espionage: «The impact of the Der Spiegel allegations may be felt more keenly in Germany than in Brussels. The magazine said Germany was the foremost target for the US surveillance programmes, categorising Washington's key European ally alongside China, Iraq or Saudi Arabia in the intensity of the electronic snooping. … Under the international intelligence agreements, nations are categorised by the US according to their trust level. The US is defined as 'first party' while the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy 'second party' trusted relationships. Countries such as Germany and France have 'third party', or less trusted, relationships.» Note however that American sources at the time were pooh-poohing this whole narrative.

  • National Review, Lord Ismay, NATO, and the Old-New World Order: «The purpose of the new treaty organization founded in 1952, Ismay asserted, was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”… Ismay, a favorite of Churchill’s and a military adviser to British governments, had a remarkable sense of history — namely that constants such as historical memory, geography, and national character always transcend the politics of the day. … Lastly in his triad of advice, Ismay referred generically to “Germany” — without specifying a contemporary friendly and allied West Germany, juxtaposed to the Soviet-inspired, Communist, and hostile East Germany. Again, the East–West German fault line existed in Ismay’s time; yet he reduced all those unique differences of his age into a generic “Germany down.” … Once again, if there were not Angela Merkel’s increasingly defiant Germany, it too would have to be created. Some in the United States were troubled that Angela Merkel, from a beer hall in Munich no less, recently lashed out at the United States and promised that Germany might just have to navigate between the U.S. and Russia — quite a thought from a Germany once saved largely by the United States from its own carnivorousness and later likely Communist servitude.»

  • Bloomberg, Macron Accuses US of Trade ‘Double Standard’ Amid Energy Crunch: «“The North American economy is making choices for the sake of attractiveness, which I respect, but they create a double standard” with lower energy prices domestically while selling natural gas to Europe at record prices, Macron said at a news conference in Brussels following a meeting of European Union leaders.»

  • On Twitter, a video of some French guy who's allegedly an Economy Minister: «I think it's time for us Europeans to tell our American friends that we are very concerned about the Inflation Reduction Act and that it could cause the deindustrialization of Europe.»

  • Peter Zeihan on the same topic: «And so Biden's general position is: you can suck it». A few of my regular opponents are Zeihan stans, share his smug attitude towards Old Worlders, so it's neat to have it on record.

And so on and so forth; if someone is to make the case for EU as an independent pole, I'd rather it was an actual European.

Ultimately it doesn't matter, Europeans have sovereignty but not enough sovereignty to weasel out of this global house of cards collapse. The strong do what they want, and the weak suffer what they must. Putin is generally correct in his theoretical understanding of geopolitics; the only issue is, he ignored most dimensions of strength and was deluded regarding ones he believed all-important.

Why would I be insulted?

I feel were you tasked with doing something like that, you'd have written it more professionally, thus associating you with such sloppy work might be a bit insulting.

E.g. downloaded a bunch of RAND papers, studied the style, fixed the language, and so on.

But I guess if you were just to write it quickly so it could be flogged to infowars tier outlets, no problem.

Also - I should have been more clear that I think the idea that US likes a weak Europe and tries to ensure that happens is almost certainly true.

I really do not care for Atlanticist bullshit after all the America-caused shit we've had to deal with.

Even absent wokism, I'd probably still be somewhat against them being over here.

However - thanks for your reply; if I ever go the way of effort-posting in Czech trying to wake the normies, I'll have something to go on.

and they don't have a choice of allies anyway – not like they can turn to China; neither will they be of much help in the coming war

What coming war ? You mean the US / China match that they're trying to get Europe involved in ?

Given that Europe does have some armed forces, probably enough to stop Turks from doing something stupid, and that France has nuclear weapons, why can't Europe just sit it out ?

What coming war ? You mean the US / China match that they're trying to get Europe involved in ?

What sense do you think they're trying to get Europe involved?

For lack of a navy, Europe is not a credible contender in the Pacific, nor is it a decisive economic, political, information, or social influencer in the region. There would be no time to move European forces militarily, and the availability of European navies in the region would make them more useful as neutral observers than active participants.

Given that Europe does have some armed forces, probably enough to stop Turks from doing something stupid, and that France has nuclear weapons, why can't Europe just sit it out ?

Aside from that no one east of France trusts French to provide nuclear guarantees for anyone but France? It's the wrong question. Sitting out is expected. The question is one of ongoing trade with China during a China-US war.

'Strategic autonomy' from the US isn't being forced to fight in the war- the US has had more than enough wars with sit-outs that it's not a credible issue- but being able to keep economic trade going with both the US and China, and not being forced to divest from one side or the other. The Americans, for various reasons, are not particularly interested in protecting the maritime commerce of allies into a country they would be in a hot war with. Many European countries, also for various reasons, are not particularly interested in cutting off key export markets they've become economically dependent on to sustain their domestic economies.

The American nightmare wasn't if there was a war, but the Europeans didn't come when called. The American nightmare was if the US embarked a naval blockade, but then German cargo ships showed up to sail on through anyway. Or if the Americans called on the regional allies, but French and European arms suppliers leveraged their supply chain influence on countries like Australia to keep them neutral and isolate the US from necessary partners. Or if the US called for sanctions on China, and the EU said 'no thanks' and threatened retaliation against the US if the US went against companies doing business in the US for also maintaining business in Europe.

Of course, the Ukraine war has a way of reframing things. What 'Europe' might have tolerated if it were Taiwan was not tolerated in Ukraine, and in doing so set precedents for divestment and de-globalization that have set normative expectations for a US-China conflict in case of a Taiwan. There will be no European Consensus of threatening EU-level retaliation against the Americans enforcing China sanctions, or even the prospect of major European actors pressuring the Americans to let Taiwan lose in the service of protecting European economies.

The Europeans will not be expected to send forces or fleets to help the Americans or defend anyone else from China. They will be expected not to prioritize their Chinese economic ties over American economic and security ties, if they wish to maintain the later. The choice will be sovereign, unless one's definition of sovereignty entails an unconditional commitment of American military guarantees and access to American markets even when trading with American enemies during an American war.

I'm assuming the newspaper isn't a well-regarded one or a very professional one.

Undersells it a bit. It appears Nya Dag is not "not well regarded" in the sense NYPost is but maybe more in the sense of Alex Jones.

Now that doesn't need to be an instant "boo", but one should consider that even with reputable newspapers, just that it made it to a newspaper doesn't make thing necessarily a credible nor true. The journalist should be expected to show that they did the legwork to prove the veracity of the leaked documents. The newspaper does not claim to have done anything besides receiving images of report that has "RAND" written on title page.

So, uh, the latest Twitter Files just dropped. This one is about Trump and his removal.

Taibbi claims the following.

  1. Twitter post-Trump-ban was now willing to carry forward a policy of "the president can be banned" no matter what.

  2. At least 1 executive did not consider Trump's tweets in isolation i.e they considered the context surrounding the man, his policies, and supporters as well, and they were discussing this with Gadde.

  3. Trust and Safety team members were meeting with the FBI and DHS regularly during this time period.

  4. Twitter was actively engaging in fact-checking against some class of tweets (the particular example is whether Trump's claim about a rigged election would count as a violation if the supporting facts were wrong).

  5. Twitter was aware that they would not necessarily look good if it came out that they were partnering with the FBI/DHS to evaluate misinformation.

In my opinion, this one is somehow even weaker than the first reveal. Most of this was already known through other sources, it just gives additional information to existing claims about bias. Nothing new was revealed, which is now an argument many are using to claim that this is all a waste of time.

I'm totally down to believe that Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi had to post their reveals on Twitter, but the theatrical nature of the reveals is, in my opinion, actively hurting whatever points they want to make. The discussions are increasingly becoming about how the information is being handled over what, if anything, is being shown to us.

I subscribe to the Sunday edition of the Seattle Times. I've noticed that for two weeks in a row there has been no story on The Twitter Files. There is one story online.

Some stories printed in the A section this week that made the cut (headlines my own): Joe Biden supported gay marriage ten years ago (front page); some Americans still working in Russia (also front page); Santa Claus visits a native village in Alaska; rural voters less likely to approve of Biden's climate efforts.

this isn't news to some because they knew or assumed cynically. this isn't news to others because they don't care or supported it. i doubt those of either lean who find this surprising(newsworthy) come here.

social media giant meeting with letters agencies and also quieting political opposition. . . to downplay this is, from naivety, ignorance. else bad faith. the former is what gives weight to the latter. that rhetoric has not been on simple just action--we did what we must and would again--and instead is talking about talking about it says enough.

i do not hold to free speech because i have such certainty that all speech is permissible. truly, there may be things that shouldn't be talked about. i hold to it for the simple philosophy that seems commonly forgotten. none can be trusted to make the decision. so this affair only bothers me because i have seen exactly how contemptibly foolish yoel roth & co were as they wielded such control over what i could read. they were not worthy. of course, none are.

In my opinion, this one is somehow even weaker than the first reveal. Most of this was already known through other sources, it just gives additional information to existing claims about bias. Nothing new was revealed, which is now an argument many are using to claim that this is all a waste of time.

Yeah does seem weak. Of course the FBI looked into it . The FBI looks into anything of national interest, and Jan 6 certainly is.

I'm totally down to believe that Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi had to post their reveals on Twitter, but the theatrical nature of the reveals is, in my opinion, actively hurting whatever points they want to make.

Good for their brands. More $, more subs. I think it shows how banal it all is. This great machiavellian conspiracy is just some functionaries who could not be less enthusiastic about the jobs they have been tasked with.

Yeah does seem weak. Of course the FBI looked into it . The FBI looks into anything of national interest, and Jan 6 certainly is.

Twitter "Trust and Safety" was meeting with the FBI not just after January 6, but before the election.

a presidential election is of national interest too. It looked like the FBI was investigating possible voter fraud or something amiss. they are understandably vigilant about this sort of thing. There was a 2016 campaign on twitter regarding fake dates https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/social-media-influencer-charged-election-interference-stemming-voter-disinformation-campaign

The FBI is not, in fact, the Department of Misinformation. They have no valid role in preventing people from making the modern equivalent of the hoary old joke about "due to unexpectedly high turnout, Party A votes on Tuesday, Party B votes on Wednesday", nor prosecuting them for making it. And I doubt that's all they were up to; in fact we know it was not because they were giving false tips about Russian disinformation ops as well.

That is treason, Johnny!

Using an avenue of interstate commerce to commit fraud is indeed a federal crime, as is conspiring to deprive citizens of the right to vote through the use of deception

This is an obvious fig leaf for attempting to control political discourse.

Attempting to trick people into not casting a valid vote is not "political discourse" any more than physically intimidating voters is political discourse, Do you maintain that the FBI has no valid role in preventing that? Whether what the FBI did in this case was an attempt to control political discourse is a different question than whether the FBI can legitimately seek to prevent this sort of election fraud in principle. Your claim that the answer to the latter question is "no", given that the activity in question is illegal, makes no sense. "This law enforcement agency has no valid role in enforcing the law that they are charged with enforcing" is a nonsensical claim.

Attempting to trick people into not casting a valid vote is not "political discourse" any more than physically intimidating voters is political discourse

These are two entirely different things. The FBI has no valid role in preventing the former, perhaps unless those attempting to do so are falsely representing themselves as government officials. Just talking shit like "hey, you can vote for CandidateThatSucks by text" is still protected by the First Amendment; physically intimidating voters is not.

And this was certainly not all the FBI was doing.

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Damn, better not tell any jokes on your private farm, where you only grow crops for your own consumption. You never know who might be listening.

You seem to be arguing that a law which seeks to prevent someone from depriving others of the right to vote in federal elections is somehow no more proper than is a law which limits growing crops for your own consumption, which is a claim whose legitimacy is less than self-evident. Regardless, whether a law is or is not sound policy is irrelevant to whether a law enforcement agency has a "valid role" in enforcing that law. OP's claim to the contrary was, to quote Justice Thomas in another context, "uncommonly silly."

No, you misunderstood. I'm saying that since growing your own crops, for on your own farm, strictly for your own private consumption is interstate commerce, according to you, telling someone an obvious joke while on your farm is also "using an avenue of interstate commerce to commit fraud" and "conspiring to deprive citizens of the right to vote".

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The discussions are increasingly becoming about how the information is being handled over what, if anything, is being shown to us.

So you don't like how it is being handled or that everyone is talking about how it is being handled?

It's actually a pretty common political strategy. They don't want to talk about the actual topic, because it makes them look bad, so they claim everyone already knew that and change the subject to discuss the discussion. Then not only can they pretend to be above it or bored, but they can even lament the state of things and complain about the loss of focus - giving them outs that don't require any status loss.

I don't like how it's being handled because I think doing this on Twitter means authors can't expound as much as I'd like. No one is reading an 80-tweet chain, even if you might read the equivalent were it a substack post. But I also dislike how people keep using the "it's just right-wing theater" argument. I understand that for some people, there's fundamentally nothing wrong with Twitter choosing what to remove or who to ban upon nothing but their own thoughts. But I don't like the theater argument being used as some kind of substitute for actually defending this idea. Mind you, if a person is choosing to attack the Twitter Files by claiming it was theater, I wouldn't mind that argument there, because now it's an argument about motivations.

No one is reading an 80-tweet chain, even if you might read the equivalent were it a substack post.

I keep hearing things like this, but it's never actually explained or defended. What, exactly, is so onerous about reading tweet threads compared to articles? Is there a mobile device limitation I'm unaware of as a prolific desktop user? Just... scroll down as you read? I'm eternally baffled by this complaint.

My main complaint is that it slows my reading speed to a crawl. I think partly because space is used inefficiently, and it also just makes it slower/harder to parse text when you dont have paragraph structure.

The entire point of a tweet is to be small and catchy (hence the character limit which has itself been doubled from 140 to 280). There's a reason most news publishers don't wholly publish on Twitter even if their article is free - quoting a catchy portion or the title and then linking to the article seems like more intuitive.

There are definitely people who would read 80-tweet chains, but the audience for that consists of people who just like reading long-form content (people like us for the most part). A lot of media and people are turned off by having to commit a lot of time to doing something (observe the increasing trend towards short-form content when it comes to watching online videos - TikTok, Youtube Shorts, etc.)

Is that not a fully general argument against articles, too? I don't get the impression people are complaining about tweet threads because they're long; they're complaining about tweet threads because they're tweet threads, for some reason.

My frustration with tweet threads is that they're fundamentally a hack around the character limit. People want to be able to say longer things, but they can't, so they make tweet threads. But this is precisely what tweets are not meant to be used for, each one is supposed to be stand-alone. Twitter revolves around and conditions people to make shorter posts, which is why I say that people on Twitter are less likely to read an N-tweet thread even if there is an equivalent amount of text in an article. The medium conditions your attention span.

An article would be more succinct. A tweet storm has the obvious benefit of being more viral.

I don't see how an article would be more succinct. Tweet threads are basically just articles split up into chunks 280 characters long, rounded down to the nearest sentence.

an article allows you to list the most important things first. Instead of having to read 10-100+ 200-word tweets having to decide what is the most important item (assuming you do not give up), with an article you can explicitly say what it is, with evidence.

Err, Twitter threads can list the important things first. They're just... words. You can choose to put first the words that are most important.

No one is reading an 80-tweet chain, even if you might read the equivalent were it a substack post.

I'm not sure about that.

I've read multiple.

In my opinion, this one is somehow even weaker than the first reveal. Most of this was already known through other sources, it just gives additional information to existing claims about bias.

Huh? Maybe in the "it's not happening, and if it is, it's a good thing" sense. Wikipedia is still calling Twiiter shaddow-banning a "conspiracy theory" (even as they admit it turned out to be true). Hard evidence comes out that it was in fact happening, and you go "pff, everyone knew that"?

Hard evidence comes out that it was in fact happening, and you go "pff, everyone knew that"?

But we already knew that? I mean just publicly, we knew that Twitter was taking a stance against "misinformation" and trying to add corrections to people's tweets. Mind you, I don't think the exact specifics were known to the public, but I also don't consider "news flash, Twitter has active infrastructure and action to combat what they don't want" to be something particularly revealing.

Wikipedia is still calling Twiiter shaddow-banning a "conspiracy theory" (even as they admit it turned out to be true).

It's Wikipedia on a topic that is now salient to politics, did you expect that the people editing it were more interested in substance over ideology?

Secondly, the shadow-banning thing is an annoying conversation by virtue of being over definition. My understanding of shadow-banning is that no one can see the content in question, though the user would never know this without logging out and checking for their content. This is how Reddit does it, from my understanding, and how a lot of people are thinking about this topic.

However, I don't agree with this and think we should amend the definition based on how Twitter operates. If a celebrity starts noticing their tweets get no engagement, they'd realize it immediately as something being off because there's a direct link between followers in a way that doesn't exist on Reddit. So if Twitter makes it so that only followers see that content, then we should say this person is shadow-banned. However, there's a caveat to this in that technically, the content wasn't hidden, just maximally deboosted, meaning even the amended definition wouldn't fit. I think that's a small and irrelevant point to quibble over, personally.

If I have any problem with how people are doing this debate more publicly, it would be that definitions aren't being tabooed.

But we already knew that? I mean just publicly, we knew that Twitter was taking a stance against "misinformation" and trying to add corrections to people's tweets. Mind you, I don't think the exact specifics were known to the public, but I also don't consider "news flash, Twitter has active infrastructure and action to combat what they don't want" to be something particularly revealing.

I think there was an implicit assumption there, they're filtering Twitter randos, not democratically elected politician during an election campaign. Like, I'm supposed to be outraged at Cambridge Analytica, or that the Russians spent their pocket money on a handful of Facebook ads, but shrug it off when Twitter is actively limiting the reach of politicians they don't like?

It's Wikipedia on a topic that is now salient to politics, did you expect that the people editing it were more interested in substance over ideology?

I didn't, but as they say, "we live in a society". I can't pretend there isn't a huge amount of people who think Wikipedia is neutral.

However, there's a caveat to this in that technically, the content wasn't hidden, just maximally deboosted, meaning even the amended definition wouldn't fit. I think that's a small and irrelevant point to quibble over, personally.

I mean, that's just how people were using the word "shadow banned" all the time. Check sodiummuffins link for an example.

If I have any problem with how people are doing this debate more publicly, it would be that definitions aren't being tabooed.

Tabooing definitions might be a good idea when there's a true misunderstanding between people who actually want to understand each other. It's not going to work in a fight between political rivals. They'll just find a way to abuse tabooing definitions to score political points.

I think there was an implicit assumption there, they're filtering Twitter randos, not democratically elected politician during an election campaign.

That would be a false assumption then because we knew since 2020 that Twitter was willing to publicly declare some politicians' tweets to be "misinformation".

Tabooing definitions might be a good idea when there's a true misunderstanding between people who actually want to understand each other. It's not going to work in a fight between political rivals.

This is true but trivial. I think there are many people who might be fundamentally missing the point by focusing on the trivial nature of what term is used to describe the action.

I disagree, the point is to make the post much less visible, not to remove it entirely. Many shadowban implementations, and I think even reddit, allows shadow banned content to be seen if directly linked to. They did the important thing regarding shadow banning, kill someone's/a meme's ability to go viral the way they/it naturally would have if not intervened on. Twitter isn't used as a private hosting platform, it's used a means to virally disseminate information. It is a totally useless tool if that ability is cut off.

Many shadowban implementations, and I think even reddit, allows shadow banned content to be seen if directly linked to.

But how would you even do that? You'd have to have separate accounts, at which point you're ban-evading, or you're just doing more work than necessary.

Among other things, a purpose for that particular implementation is so that past links -- written or noticed or indexed before the account was shadow-banned -- still work. Reddit also allowed mods to manually approve their messages, although it's not clear whether this was 'allowed' only in a technical sense rather than a norm one.

What's your definition of "shadow-ban"?

According to urbandictionary

Banning a user from a web forum in such a way that the banned user is unaware of the ban. Usually takes the form of showing that user's posts/profile/etc. only to that user; other users never see them. Considered underhanded chicken-shit behavior.

And according to Twitter

People are asking us if we shadow ban. We do not. But let’s start with, “what is shadow banning?”

The best definition we found is this: deliberately making someone’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster.

So, what accounts is it alleged Twitter shadow banned, according to either its own or the pre-Twitter-Files definition? As far as I can tell the actions Twitter is alleged to have taken are:

  1. De-boosted some accounts such that their content would not appear in one's timeline, but could still be viewed if they went to the posting account directly (i.e. not shadow banned) and;

  2. Hid some accounts from auto complete in the search bar, but which could still be viewed if one navigated directly to the posting account (i.e. not shadow banning).

As far as I can tell this new post-Twitter-Files definition of shadow banning as any kind of limit of an accounts reach is entirely invented for the purpose of claiming Twitter lied about not shadow banning people (in the same blog post where they are extremely clear about what they mean by shadow banning).

The term "shadowban" was invented in the context of phpbb-style single-thread forums, which were usually fairly low-traffic. The visibility of the specific post in a specific thread is very binary there - either you see it in the correct position, or you don't. So Shadowbanning there is a simple concept with a specific meaning.

Twitter works very differently in that it's theoretically a flat system and every tweet by every user is at the same level. Time is the only natural thing to filter by, but even that doesn't really work that well - if you follow 10 people, you probably don't really want the one that tweets once a day to be effectively invisible due to being drowned out by the one who tweets every 10 minutes. There always has to be some sort of algorithm in place to determine which order tweets show up in. A strict "shadowban" meaning your tweets never show up outside of viewing your timeline would be easy, but also very obvious. But when you have an unknown and unaccountable algorithm deciding whose tweets are seen when by who, it's equally easy to make any tweet show up less or lower for any reason you feel like. If your tweet gets 10% of the engagement you would have expected, well who's to say whether it just wasn't a very good tweet, or it was artificially deboosted?

Shadowban is a popular term for the concept, but the literal meaning isn't very useful when it comes to representing how Twitter actually works. It seems like a motte and bailey situation. One side could say Twitter doesn't shadowban because they never actually do the exact literal meaning. The other side can say that artificially suppressing the reach of a tweet in more subtle ways may technically not be the literal meaning, but it's the same idea, and they need a word to express it that is understandable and has some punch to it.

This is completely false, shadowbanning has been for used for many years to refer to any kind of ban or hiding of someone's posts that is hidden from the shadowbanned user even if they are still possible to access to some degree. The website everyone used to check if they were shadowbanned on Twitter was shadowban.eu, which specifically checked for "Search Suggestion Ban", "Search Ban", "Ghost Ban", "Reply Deboosting" and (until it was deprecated) "Quality Filter Discrimination". Today other websites like this one also use the term shadowban for the same methods.

Nobody tweeting about how they were shadowbanned was claiming that their tweets were completely invisible - obviously so, since there would be no point in tweeting about it and everyone would have already noticed. Reddit-style complete shadowbans are trivial to see by just looking at your own posts with an incognito window or TOR, and on Twitter would be immediately noticed for anyone with followers, making them a much less effective form of shadowbanning. Reddit's shadowban system was originally designed for use against spambots, while Twitter's was designed for use against humans.

EDIT: Also this is the opening of the Wikipedia article which calls Twitter shadowbanning a conspiracy theory:

Shadow banning, also called stealth banning, hellbanning, ghost banning and comment ghosting, is the practice of blocking or partially blocking a user or the user's content from some areas of an online community in such a way that the ban is not readily apparent to the user. For instance, shadow banned comments posted to a blog or media website will not be visible to other persons accessing that site from their computers.

By partly concealing, or making a user's contributions invisible or less prominent to other members of the service, the hope may be that in the absence of reactions to their comments, the problematic or otherwise out-of-favour user will become bored or frustrated and leave the site, and that spammers and trolls will be discouraged to continue their unwanted behavior or create new accounts

The "less prominent" part has been in the article since 2017, since before the "conspiracy theory" part.

I appreciate the links! It seems more people did refer to Twitter's actions as "shadow-banning" than I was aware of, even if Twitter itself did not.

What's your definition of "shadow-ban"?

The second one you quoted is fine, with the caveat that it doesn't have to be undiscoverable to everyone.

As far as I can tell this new post-Twitter-Files definition of shadow banning as any kind of limit of an accounts reach is entirely invented for the purpose of claiming Twitter lied about not shadow banning people (in the same blog post where they are extremely clear about what they mean by shadow banning).

And as far as I can tell, insisting that to meet the definition of "shadow-banning" content has to be made 100% undiscoverable is entirely invented for the purpose of claiming twitter hasn't lied about shadow banning people.

I agree. Twitter does shadowban and has lied about it. They have multiple degrees of shadow banning, but it exists. They are not going to say they do, but it has the same outcome.

I think this is just a new halfway measure that didn't have a specific term. Would anyone be unhappy with calling this as "partial shadowban" or something like that?

I disagree. I've been around the web for a middling long time. Been banned and shadow banned and so on... rather often in my teenage years. I still kept getting banned well into my thirties.

Honestly I forgot how many times I got permabanned from somewhere. I mean, when you find out you can make dignified, reasonable Americans absolutely lose their temper and go ape by posting at them about 13/50, twin studies and race and IQ, it gets rather tempting to do so. (the psychological reasons why I did so are rather clear in hindsight)

Got several months-long bans on SSC and motte. So, I have extensive experience with being on the wrong end of moderation.

A shadow ban is that you and only you can see what you post. This has been, unless my memory is fake, the understood definition for at least a decade if not more.

If you're logged out you can't see what you post.

It's relatively trivial to spot - you get zero interaction, you log into Tor and you can't see yourself.

You could do a search and this is what would come up. Reddit does it to content it doesn't like. I've ran into it numerous times while posting on the old motte about Reddit policy team being composed of very spooky people.

So, technically, twitter isn't shadow banning.

Perhaps we could use the term 'throttling' here?

In practice, having all your responses being hidden under "more replies", having a search suggestion ban means, that only people who follow you or who are very thorough will see your content or replies.

It's not as strong as a shadow ban, but it definitely limits your reach and influence. It is Twitter putting its thumb on the scale under the banner of 'fighting hate'.

It was also something most right wing accounts I followed were subject to. People like Nick Land, 0hp Lovecraft (still has a search suggestion ban), Steve Sailer etc.

Unless you followed them, you'd have a hard time seeing their activity.

Honestly I forgot how many times I got permabanned from somewhere. I mean, when you find out you can make dignified, reasonable Americans absolutely lose their temper and go ape by posting at them about 13/50, twin studies and race and IQ, it gets rather tempting to do so. (the psychological reasons why I did so are rather clear in hindsight)

Very easy to be banned on reddit subs. Not even race/HBD stuff. Just ideological disagreement.

True, however, in my twenties I often got banned for simply just being too spicy or just too unhinged. I'm not the world's most reasonable person once I get going, and especially if caffeine and alcohol are involved.

I generally avoid combining the two, as it's very likely I come up with what they call a 'powerful take' and if you do that on a US libertarian forum, you're out.

E.g. that "ackshually, some amount of misogyny is good because a healthy dose of it counteracts the women-are-wonderful effect and thus cuts down on harmful, manipulative behavior of women, thus enhancing societal health".

See my post above, more subtle forms of shadowbanning like Twitter uses have been called "shadowbans" for many years. Including by the shadowban.eu site that everyone used to check.

It was also something most right wing accounts I followed were subject to. People like Nick Land, 0hp Lovecraft (still has a search suggestion ban), Steve Sailer etc.

I did a search and all 3 of those accounts used the term "shadowban" that way years ago:

https://twitter.com/Outsideness/status/934264497639899136

https://twitter.com/Outsideness/status/1184531291741577217

https://twitter.com/Steve_Sailer/status/1588375202953854976

https://twitter.com/Steve_Sailer/status/1192976470802460673

https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1311276706553094146

People on Twitter talking about shadowbanning were referring to the Twitter form of shadowbanning, not the too-obvious Reddit method.

Twitter has something like 5 levels of shadowbaning. The worst is being totally ghosted on the site. Or having all your comments be hidden in 'show more' , or search result ban. Most people who think they are shadowbanned are not , but rather think they are because their tweets seem to be getting less engagement. but this can be due to many reasons, such as posting links or hashtags or embedded tweets instead of text/pictures, which do the best. Tweets with links are throttled compared to plain text, video, or pictures.

I agree. However:

But that's the linguistic ambiguity the censorious are exploiting. We should perhaps rectify it ?

I don't understand how the requirement to be undiscoverable to "everyone" is being invented. The word "everyone" is right there in the definition Twitter gave of what it considered shadow banning back in 2018. Now, maybe your own definition has never had "everyone" as a requirement, but Twitter seems to have clearly communicated that their definition included "everyone" and so, on their own understanding of the term "shadow-banning", did not "shadow-ban" anyone.

Update on the "Code is Speech" Front

Organizations like FFTF/EFF have long argued from a principle that "Code is Speech". Most recently, they applied their reasoning to maximum extent on behalf of Tornado Cash. I have long argued that while they are pointing at the barest kernel of a Motte (there is one case where pseudocode was being used in a textbook to provide an example in order to illustrate the ideas contained in the text, and that was deemed protected speech), examples like Tornado Cash are the Bailey, with the argument seeming to be something along the lines of, "Anything that you choose to do with code (...something, something, maybe as long as you open source it... something...) is protected speech." Ergo things like: Tornado Cash was open source code, therefore protected speech.

Matthew Green, a prof at Johns Hopkins, notable for being part of the Keys Under Doormats group and partnering with the EFF on Tornado Cash, joined with Andrew Huang, an inventor/engineer, to apply this principle in challenging the DMCA. They wanted to write code to bypass digital content restrictions, disseminate the ideas/methods of that code, and create/sell a device that implements it and allows the purchaser to just use that code to bypass said restrictions. They knew that there was a good chance of getting dinged by the gov't on DMCA grounds, so they filed a pre-enforcement challenge to see if the courts would bless their "Code is Speech" position and give them an assurance that they could not be prosecuted for those actions. This week, the DC Circuit weighed in.

The court split the case pretty much exactly between the Motte and the Bailey. That is, instead of treating the pair of individuals (and their respective proposed actions) as one in the same, the court recognized that the two individuals were proposing different actions - Green wanted to publish a book that describes ideas/methods for circumventing digital content restrictions (with example code), while Huang wanted to build/sell a device that actually implements that code and performs the actual action of bypassing such restrictions in the real world. The government had already conceded that Green's publishing of a book would not violate the DMCA, and so they could simply peel his part of the challenge off and ignore it (he's effectively already protected by the government's concession, so there's nothing else the court need do). Separately, Huang's device does not communicate any speech/expressive content. People would be buying it to use it, not to learn about how algorithms work. Therefore, Huang would not receive First Amendment protection.

I think this line is in about the right place, both as a theoretical matter and as a practical one. Practically-speaking, most people aren't going to be buying Green's book, then sitting down and coding up their own implementation to bypass content restrictions. So, to the extent that one thinks that reducing copyright violations is a worthwhile goal, this line probably does most of the job. I can already hear the rejoinder coming, "But isn't that pointless, because some people can still just go implement that code!? Once it's out there, it's pointless!" But it's not. Practically, there's still a big barrier to implementing it; the vast majority of people won't bother. No other law ever has ever been judged by its ability to 100% stop 100% of possible violations; that would be absurd; but it's somehow still commonly thrown out there in tech law arguments. Instead, if we embrace this speech/implementation divide, these cases are easy, and they usually come out the right way as a practical matter.

Tornado Cash: sure, it's fine for people to abstractly know how to use code to launder money; most people won't do it; maybe some small number will somewhere; if you actually do it, especially if you actually do it in a way designed to make law-breaking maximally-convenient for the masses (and you actually help the North Koreans launder money when you do it), you're going to get sanctioned.

Apple v. FBI: Recall, the FBI attempted to force Apple to help it break into the San Bernadino shooter's phone. Some tried to claim that writing code for the FBI to use would have been compelled speech. This case is another indication that if a follow-on to Apple v. FBI actually worked its way through the courts, 'compelled speech' would not likely be the grounds on which the gov't would lose.

I've posted about this idea before, but it's still relevant: someone should create a code-to-book encoder/decoder. Imagine if you had the following Python code:

def bubbleSort(arr):

    n = len(arr)

    for i in range(n-1):

        for j in range(n-i-1):

            if arr[j] > arr[j + 1]:

                arr[j], arr[j + 1] = arr[j + 1], arr[j]

You could rewrite it in a human-readable, deterministic and rigorous way as something like:

Create a new function named "bubbleSort" which has "arr" as a parameter.

Within that, assign the variable "n" to the value returned by the function "len" when it is passed "arr" as an argument.

Make a for loop with index "i" and the iterable returned by "range" when it is passed "n-1" as an argument.

Within that, make a for loop with index "j" and the iterable returned by "range" when it is passed "n-i-1" as an argument.

Within that, make a check testing the truth of the following statement:

the "j"th index of sequence "arr" is greater than the "j+1"th index of the sequence "arr"

If the previous statement is true, assign the variables "j"th index of sequence "arr", and "j+1"th index of the sequence "arr" to the value of the "j+1"th index of sequence "arr" and the "j"th index of the sequence "arr", respectively.

This concludes the if check initiated three paragraphs ago, the for loop initiated four paragraphs ago, the for loop initiated five paragraphs ago, and the function definition initiated seven paragraphs ago.

You could then publish it in .epub format and (hopefully) gain First Amendment protections because it's human-readable instructions. Someone else could download it and pass it to a program that knows "Create a new function named" translates to "def" and all the rest.

I think similar trick was already used to bypass US export limitations for strong cryptography

Export control bypass was done with printouts for long code and a t-shirt for short.

DVD decryption was the code that was most memorably made human readable and published in song form. It's weird that I can't find the song on YouTube, though. I presume that's just because it is (and I am...) too old, but I wonder if DVD manufacturers are actually still trying to fight that lost battle.

I think this argument gets more fuzzy as AI like ChatGPT gets better at writing code from English text. (I asked ChatGPT to do exactly as written above and attached the output as an img here). As it Chat-bots like this get better, the clever hacks as you call them will get much more intertwined with general sit down and read coding books. Cause a simple translation into the Chat-bot will generate you the code you want to see.

/images/1670737778046671.webp

Here's a very trivial and absolutely unclear case: literate programming.

Consider the style of Jupyter notebook in which one produces a document, intended for human consumption (i.e. full of explanatory markdown cells) but which also has executable code cells.

If you publish the notebook under the belief that people will execute it, then you would not be protected. Intent doesn't really care about how direct or indirect you make the implementation; all that changes is the difficulty of proving it.

There's no bright line here at all. Give the right programmer a bunch of machine code (just hex numbers), and they can read it and tell you what it does. Perhaps laboriously, but the same is true of Ancient Greek.

Literate programming is also executable.

Take any jupyter notebook, click "restart run all" and it re-executes the code cells.

I agree with you that the line is about in the right place. The pearl clutching about North Korea in that twitter thread is pretty unconvincing, unless they have been using crypto to keep their country afloat since 1948.

Tornado Cash: sure, it's fine for people to abstractly know how to use code to launder money; most people won't do it; maybe some small number will somewhere; if you actually do it, especially if you actually do it in a way designed to make law-breaking maximally-convenient for the masses (and you actually help the North Koreans launder money when you do it), you're going to get sanctioned.

This seems pretty uncharitable to me. As far as I know, there is zero proof that Tornado Cash was made "to use code to launder money" as opposed to using code to allow the anonymization of funds. (I have personally anonymized my own crypto many times for no malicious purpose nor to launder anything, just to avoid certain accounts from being easily linked to my broader crypto net worth.)

Can that be used to launder money? Sure. But there's still a huge difference between making a mixer and a money launderer, same as there's a huge difference between making Tor and making the Child Porn and Drugs Transfer Protocol (CPDTP), between making a gun and a Mass Shooting Delivery Device, etc.

To me healthy societies have some bar that technology must cross beyond "Somebody used it to do something bad." before it's prohibited (especially since a lot of technologies that have been used for worse are allowed in spite of this supposed standard, usually because the actors behind them have connections).

But the lesson from Tornado Cash is clear: You need not only cryptography, but also steganography. Don't let the bad actors who are against privacy even know you're exercising your right to it and you won't have to worry how they feel about it.

Does this reasoning apply to regular people/businesses, too, or just wiz-bang "crypto"? Like, suppose a boring, regular organization like HSBC decided that they just simply wanted to make a system (probably involving code somewhere) that allowed for anonymization of funds, so they created a new line of "Mixer Accounts". KYC? Anti-ML laws? Nah. Those things would obviously have to just be ignored, lest they break the principle of anonymity.

Does a healthy society say, "Eh, they couldn't possibly help it if someone bad used this product that is obviously designed to facilitate money laundering... to launder money"?

EDIT: I realized that it could be useful to just finish my argument through instead of waiting for a response (I'm probably going to be busy a lot later today). If (your response might not, and if not, then this may not apply) you embrace that argument for boring, regular organizations, then you don't need any wiz-bang "crypto"! Instead, all you need to do is convince enough people in the rest of the world of your position that you can simply repeal anti-money laundering laws. That'll do the trick just fine. Then, Switzerland... or Burmuda... or Panama... or hell, even just HSBC will be more than happy to step up and offer exactly the product that you want to be legal. We simply roll back the clock to a world before such laws, and no one will be surprised that those products are used by criminals to launder vast quantities of ill-gotten gains and by the rich/powerful to evade taxation. And if you succeed in rolling us back to that world, it seems quite plausible that many of the people who come after will start to see exactly the same problems that people in the past saw and think, "Hmmmm, I wonder if there is a way that we can fix these obvious problems?" I feel like this is one of those moments where my favorite distillation of the Fundamental Conservative Insight is extremely relevant: "You are not smarter than the entirety of history."

Yes, I think people should be allowed to transact in fiat cash as much as they want and don't support a "cashless society". Have we forgotten that's anonymous too? What's wrong with making digital cash, as it has always proclaimed to be, more cashy?

Eh, they couldn't possibly help it if someone bad used this product that is obviously designed to facilitate money laundering

Again, you have zero proof of this. Based on my knowledge of the community it's far more likely that the author is just a dedicated cryptography fan and privacy freak as opposed to having any interest in money laundering. These people are nerds. They don't do anything that they'd need to launder the proceeds of.

Yes, I think people should be allowed to transact in fiat cash as much as they want

So, the theme of my OP is that practical limits are important. Actual, physical cash presents a similar practical limit. If you're transacting in flat cash for 99.9% of the regular, legal transactions that most people do, there is zero practical difficulty. But, if you're trying to move $100M of ill-gotten gains internationally, it's hard to do it with physical cash.

As an example, folks like Nick Weaver argue that the only reason ransomware was ever a thing was because of crypto; if it didn't provide a relatively easy way to send huge quantities of money overseas to criminal gangs, there basically wouldn't have ever been any point. I mean, play this scenario out. Some digital thugs in Russia attack your business' network, demand $50M for the decryption key. You start negotiating how to pay it. Literally all of the methods that involve regular digital cash are non-viable ("Yeah, we'd love to do that, but that's 100% going to get rejected by the banks who are trying to comply with anti-ML and other criminal laws. Sorry. Any other options?"). If you're going down the route of, "Whelp, just gather up $50M in physical cash and physically transport it over to a mutually-agreed-upon non-extradition-treaty country..." that's going to be a practical no-go for most companies. If the the Russian digital thugs literally could not figure out how to practically receive such payments from Regular American Corp., there'd be no real money in ransomware, and it would dry up to be just the background nuisance that computer viruses used to be.

What's wrong with making digital cash, as it has always proclaimed to be, more cashy?

What's the difference between this and a "Mixer Account" at HSBC or in the Bahamas or whatever? Regular bank accounts are already "digital money". This is probably the biggest thing that causes misunderstanding; yes, we've had "digital money" for decades - it's called a "bank account" most of the time. It's money that is kept in the form of ones and zeros in a spreadsheet with a trusted intermediary, rather than crypto, which is money that is kept in the form of ones and zeros in a ..."not spreadsheet" (which is basically a spreadsheet; unless it was with FTX, in which case, it wasn't even in a spreadsheet) with a different form of trusted intermediaries (some would point to how there are actually only a few really big players in crypto mining, others would generalize trust like Vitalik). What's wrong with making the digital money that we already have "more cashy"?

Well, the obvious thing that's wrong with it is the massive money laundering problem! That's why we've spent significant quantities of hard and soft geopolitical power on setting up wide international collaborations to counter regular digital money laundering efforts.

People still have regular digital money, and they still use it for the 99.9% of regular, ordinary, legitimate transactions. And they still use cash, too. I'm not arguing for or against a "cashless society". I think cash is pretty fine; I use it. I think cash will live and die on its own merits, particularly whether it has benefits in terms of things like ease of use, low transactions costs, and such that continue to outstrip the alternatives. I think that letting cash continue to thrive but continuing to enforce money laundering laws for digital cash (whether regular digital cash or wiz-bang digital cash) provides a nice practical balance of interests.

Eh, they couldn't possibly help it if someone bad used this product that is obviously designed to facilitate money laundering

Again, you have zero proof of this. Based on my knowledge of the community it's far more likely that the author is just a dedicated cryptography fan and privacy freak as opposed to having any interest in money laundering. These people are nerds. They don't do anything that they'd need to launder the proceeds of.

I almost didn't respond to this, because I didn't see how it was relevant. I think you're implying that I've somehow claimed that the people who made tornado cash did so because they wanted to launder money for themselves? Is that right? Because if so, I haven't actually claimed that. Whether they're nerds who are just trying to fill a (black) market need or businessmen at HSBC, what's the difference? Because one group thinks that it's "neat"? They think it's "wiz-bang"? Like, who cares? Either way, I'm just looking at the outcome. Are they creating a system that is basically designed so that it's primary use is going to be massive money laundering? Yeah, that's gonna be a problem.

Hey, look, if you could devise a scheme that was like Tornado Cash... but wasn't primarily useful for massive money laundering, I think most people wouldn't care all that much. Like, for example, if your technological product made it pretty easy for people transact like, a few thousand bucks anonymously or whatever, but somehow presented real, practical difficulties to just smashing it like an "easy button" to launder hundreds of millions or billions, people probably wouldn't care. This might be technologically easy/difficult to do; I don't think I care (I mean, I do kinda care, because I'm also a nerd, and it would be "neat" and "wiz-bang" to think about how to do this); I mostly just care about what the actual, practical effects of your product are in the real world.

Am I supposed to agree that privacy should be degraded in traditional banking contexts? If HSBC could feasibly create mixer accounts, then I'd support that too. They just can't. So that's why I support crypto instead. It being "wiz-bang [sic]" has nothing to do with it. What's philosophically correct or not is the issue.

If globohomo's blood money raising initiatives aren't compatible with modern technology, that's on them. Given the relative value of each, I would much rather they be castrated than privacy or technology. And whatever bad actors are doing has zero to do with invalidating my right to financial privacy or not wanting every random customer service Indian at where I cash my crypto out sometimes to know how much I have overall. (As, after all, that's me quite potentially protecting myself against those same bad actors. I'll take using my own right to my privacy to protect myself over the "benevolence" of established authorities any day.)

As an example, folks like Nick Weaver argue that the only reason ransomware was ever a thing was because of crypto; if it didn't provide a relatively easy way to send huge quantities of money overseas to criminal gangs, there basically wouldn't have ever been any point. I mean, play this scenario out. Some digital thugs in Russia attack your business' network, demand $50M for the decryption key. You start negotiating how to pay it. Literally all of the methods that involve regular digital cash are non-viable ("Yeah, we'd love to do that, but that's 100% going to get rejected by the banks who are trying to comply with anti-ML and other criminal laws. Sorry. Any other options?"). If you're going down the route of, "Whelp, just gather up $50M in physical cash and physically transport it over to a mutually-agreed-upon non-extradition-treaty country..." that's going to be a practical no-go for most companies. If the the Russian digital thugs literally could not figure out how to practically receive such payments from Regular American Corp., there'd be no real money in ransomware, and it would dry up to be just the background nuisance that computer viruses used to be.

Most ransomware targets individuals in bulk and plenty of it has requested non-crypto forms of payment like gift cards, prepaid cards, Ukash, MoneyPak, YooMoney, etc. So "folks like Nick Weaver" are factually wrong.

If HSBC could feasibly create mixer accounts, then I'd support that too.

I think we've hit the crux; you just don't care about the money laundering problem that 95% of the rest of the population cares about a lot. I don't think there's anything more to say here other than, "Just try to convince enough voters to repeal anti-ML laws and see if you're smarter than all of history."

Most ransomware targets individuals in bulk and plenty of it has requested non-crypto forms of payment like gift cards, prepaid cards, Ukash, MoneyPak, YooMoney, etc. So "folks like Nick Weaver" are factually wrong.

If it's an empirical question, please provide some empirical data. Or at least a made-up estimate. What percentage of ransomware payment flows do you think is crypto vs. non-crypto?

you just don't care about the money laundering problem that 95% of the rest of the population cares about a lot.

Proof? I'm going to bet that a frighteningly large portion of the population doesn't even know what the literal phrase "money laundering" means at all. In any case as a someone who is not a (small d) democrat this means very little to me.

What percentage of ransomware payment flows do you think is crypto vs. non-crypto?

I have no idea but the answer is mostly irrelevant. If I pointed out that 95% of people currently use highway A over highway B, that still wouldn't be a justification to say that 95% of highway travel would disappear without highway A; the hypothetical carrying capacity of highway B (including any expansions that might inevitably be made to it in a world without highway A) in that case is the real determinant, not what it carries now versus highway A.

I think without crypto you probably wouldn't see big money heists targeting governments and corporations as you mentioned, but then again these are all entities that deserve the most to be targeted and I would much rather see WokeCorp lose 500 billion over a week due to a targeted ransomware attack than any granny lose her family's baby photos. So I guess crypto existing proves itself to be a good thing again.

you just don't care about the money laundering problem that 95% of the rest of the population cares about a lot.

Proof?

The obscene quantities of hard and soft geopolitical power spent to build international coalitions to rein in the problem. Whether or not you're a small d democrat, this effort has been led by small d democratic nations, because the vast majority of those populations oppose corruption, criminal activities, and money laundering. So I guess you have two options: 1) Convince enough folks to just knock it off with the whole anti-ML thing, or 2) Build the power of your authoritarian country enough that you can flaunt the international anti-ML order. No wiz-bang required.

the hypothetical carrying capacity ... (including any expansions that might inevitably be made to it in a world without [alternative]) in that case is the real determinant

We've pretty much known the carrying capacity of gift cards, prepaid cards, etc., because these things have been used in money laundering efforts for decades. That large international coalition I mentioned went to a lot of work to massively restrict the carrying capacity of these methods. Let's put a number estimate on it again. Suppose all of crypto died tomorrow. By what factor do you think these other methods would increase in scope? 2X? 10X?

these are all entities that deserve the most to be targeted and I would much rather see WokeCorp lose 500 billion over a week due to a targeted ransomware attack than [bad thing happens to person framed as an innocent to whom a crime happening would be tragic]

The boo in this section makes a bit of my soul die, despite how much as tales of corporate malfeasance disgust me, and despite how much megacorps believe they should oppose me in the Culture War.

Feeding criminal enterprises gives them resources to commit more crimes. Crime does pay like drugs do make you feel good.

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