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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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This just sounds like someone trying to justify their hobby

Both scott and moldbug's big blogs started as discussing stuff on the internet, posting comments, and small blogs. The big hits are valuable, and it's useful for many people to try to get there, even if only a small few do anything useful with it. This isn't true of video games, or even competitive sports, nothing significant is gained when the top .0001% of competitive game/sports players filter to the top and win their competitions.

Also, something that 'justifies a hobby' can still be true. You're stating / assuming the thing being contested (is posting about politics and ideas useful), and then saying "you just believe as a justification for ", without proving it. Why should that be convincing?

There are lots of things to do more useful than toking and fapping, but none of them need justifications this thin and abstract

I think a look at the history of mathematics or philosophy thoroughly disproves this. A lot of worthwhile activities had justifications much, much more abstract.

So now he's toking down while crashed in Bumfuckistan, who cares? Maybe everyone else here is a bodybuilder who writes symphonies or something, but don't try to tell me that something as trifling as your personal flavor of "being an internet goblin having long-winded arguments over bullshit" makes you enlightened.

how is me claiming i'm enlightened relevant here? And where, or when, did I claim that? We started with "lazing around smoking weed is bad", and then you brought up "but discussing politics is just as bad, so you can't criticize weed" (... how does that make it less bad?), and then "you're trying to show your superiority / enlightenment by lording your writing over the poor weed-smokers" (but you brought up the writing!). Is any attempt to stop someone from wasting their time, or thinking it's dumb they do that, necessarily wrong because of psychoanalytic contortions?