site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1110 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 14, 2025

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

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

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

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

My Chinese coworker says that this image is a reasonable representation of the controversy over whether Mandarin and Cantonese are dialects or languages. What is your opinion on the topic?

In practice, "a language is a dialect with an army" seems to be the correct rule. There are instances of nations sharing a common language (the Anglosphere and friends), but also plenty of adjacent countries that can understand each other but declare them separate languages (I hear Swedish and Norwegian are almost identical) and countries that can't understand speech, but consider it a single language (China).

I think the language/dialect distinction is a bit like the religion/cult distinction: at the big picture most generally agree on the idea, but any concrete example can be argued over indefinitely.

I'd argue that Korean and Chinese are more separate languages than Italian and French.

Chinese is a tonal language and Korean is not, and they have different writing systems.

Italian and French have nothing that divides them to this extent, either in spoken or written language.

As for Chinese and Cantonese I have no idea, I'm not terribly familiar with them even if I've studied some Mandarin. My general rule though is that languages are separate if they aren't mutually intelligible.

I genuinely don't understand why your coworker put spoken Korean and spoken Chinese in the same bubble, they're mutually unintelligible and come from different language families, even if they used the same writing system for a long period. This on its own makes the rest of your coworkers claims suspect to me.

Take the Nordic languages: Swedish and Norwegian are clearly the same language as they are easily mutually intelligble both in written and spoken form. With Danish it's a bit murkier but seeing as the written form is clearly mutually intelligble with both Norwegian and Swedish, as well as large amounts of the local dialects, even if it can be a bit difficult, I would still put it as being the same language but at the outer edge.

Icelandic on the other hand is its own language seeing as both written but especially spoken Icelandic is not really mutually intelligble with the other Nordic languages.

Broadening things to the Germanic languages it's easy to see that German is separate from the Nordic languages. It uses mostly different words and even has different grammatical structure, it's clearly a separate language even if there are overlaps and a common history.

I genuinely don't understand why your coworker put spoken Korean and spoken Chinese in the same bubble, they're mutually unintelligible and come from different language families, even if they used the same writing system for a long period.

His position is that a particular speech can be part of multiple languages depending on how it is written. The exact same hanzi/hanja passage of writing can be understood by speakers of Mandarin, Cantonese, and Korean, so they are dialects of the same language, regardless of mutual intelligibility between the three speeches—but Korean speech also forms part of the Korean language when used with hangul.

That is more of an artifact of how logographs work than evidence of that the languages are the same or even meaningfully related.

The characters are pronounced differently in the different languages and and used very differently grammatically.

You could write English nouns with Chinese characters, that doesn't make English Chinese.

Is your coworker perhaps a Han supremacist?

The characters are used very differently grammatically.

He has claimed previously that grammar isn't really a thing in Chinese.

You could write English nouns with Chinese characters, that doesn't make English Chinese.

I think he would disagree, if I'm understanding his position corrrectly.

Is your coworker perhaps a Han supremacist?

I have no idea.

He has claimed previously that grammar isn't really a thing in Chinese.

Do not trust this man.

Who wrote this and what languages does this person know? The inclusion of Korean speech in the bubble of Chinese language is already highly suspect. Both Japanese and Korean utilize roots from Classical Chinese, analogous to the use of Latin/Greek roots in most European languages, but they are structurally completely different and originated independently. The closest analogy in Europe would probably be something like Hungarian, which uses many of the same Latin/Greek roots as other European languages but has a totally different structure/origin. Including those languages in the bubble of "Latin" or "Greek" would tell me that person knows very little about European languages.

The language/dialect controversy is not that complicated. The distinction is artificial. There is some basis in mutual intelligibility, but this is clinal, so where to put cutoffs is subjective. The cutoffs are generally correlated but can differ between spoken and written language. Written Portuguese is generally more comprehensible to Spanish speakers than spoken Portuguese. Cantonese/Mandarin is just a more extreme version of this, but is only a difference in degree, not in kind. The "Chinese language" is essentially like creating an entity called the "Romance language", of which Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. are "dialects". After all, they also use a shared writing system just with more variation.

China's a long history of fracturing looms heavily in their cultural heritage. The government has a vested interest in minimizing any potential source for internal regional conflict and reinforce the idea of a single, unified China. Having a single national "language" helps tremendously in this regard. Therefore, for largely cultural and political reasons, they push the idea of a "Chinese language", much like a someone who conquered the southern half of Europe might try to push the idea of a "Romance language" to promote unity.

Who wrote this and what languages does this person know?

I drew this diagram in an attempt to understand my coworker's opinions, not necessarily as an endorsement of those opinions.

I am fluent in English and know a fair amount of Latin. He is fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin and mostly intelligible in English.

The inclusion of Korean speech in the bubble of Chinese language is already highly suspect.

Hanja?

The "Chinese language" is essentially like creating an entity called the "Romance language", of which Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. are "dialects". After all, they also use a shared writing system just with more variation.

My coworker's argument is that the Romance languages would be dialects of Latin if they all used the same speech-independent writing system (as they used to when they were called Vulgar Latin)—but they use phonetic writing systems, so they're languages instead.

I seem to remember someone on this site posting about a study or studies about how men of husband/father age were the unhappiest and/or most depressed group of people. I think the age range was like 30-55 or something. Anyone know about this? Am I making it up? Can’t seem to find it.

Is there a better way than Google Maps to navigate public transit in a city? It doesn't seem to do effective (or at least comprehensible) route-finding between transit types, e.g. start here, walk over to here, take this train type identified by this designation to this location, then walk to the destination. And this surprises me, because it feels like it should be technically simple compared to everything else going on. I've also had issues before where it tries to direct me to station entrances that simply don't exist.

There has to be a better way!

I like transit - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thetransitapp.droid&hl=en_US

Some cities will have their own app for their public transport. They're sometimes good.

I've heard people recommend Citymapper here in UK/Europe. Their website says they're partnered with Via in the US.

I think Citymapper was better last time I used it, although I understand it got a bit shitty when it got bought out

Do any of you spend any time with or around Native Americans? What are they up to these days?

I've been reading the 1970s novels of James Welch, which describe the modern lives of Native Americans living in Montana and other places; and that's the most up to date information I have. I guess I wonder if they've been absorbed into atomized individualism, if they still have a big alcohol problem, if there are any interesting cultural developments in general.

(In Welch's novels, I would say they've already been partially consumed by the main stream of American life, suffering from a wistfulness and purposelessness that may only partly stem from the loss of tribal structure and power over the land, and which may just as much originate in the inherent pointlessness of American working-class life as some then saw it.)

“Reservation Dogs” is a Hulu comedy about modern native life that was largely written and performed by native americans. It’s largely an “early 2020s woke” show politically with some exceptions, but many on the native subreddit seem to have found a lot of the background details to be very accurate and it doesn’t shy away from depicting the squalor, alcoholism, reliance on welfare, single motherhood etc that a lot of people mention.

I am somewhat curious about this myself. I've been watching/reading '90s content (most notably Northern Exposure, which might deserve an effort post at some point), and realizing that Native American representation has just dropped off a cliff culturally.

My personal thought is that purity spirals have made it difficult to portray Native Americans well enough to steer clear of progressive backlash, and so directors/producers choose the safe option of "doing something else." Which is disappointing, IMO, because the native cultures are surprisingly diverse and interesting in their own right (although sometimes oversold as almost flawless). See where the Land 'O' Lakes butter girl went.

Do any of you spend any time with or around Native Americans? What are they up to these days?

This depends dramatically on which tribe you're talking about. Tribeless natives are just integrated into the general population, though some remain within tribal orbits. Very generally speaking, the tribes with casino money and relatively small populations are doing extremely well, functioning as basically very large, very wealthy families (thinking here of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux in Minnesota, or even the Seminole in Florida). Those with sizeable reservation land are also in pretty good shape (most obviously, the Navajo tribe in the Four Corners area), though larger population and land area also means larger disparities between members. There are still a fair few Navajo grandmothers out there raising their grandchildren in derelict homes where they have to haul in potable water and get electricity from a generator. Smaller and more isolated tribes face similarly impoverished circumstances.

I have some experience living near different reservations around the country and I think maybe the best way to put it is that class differences are exaggerated for enrolled members; wealthy Native Americans are some of the wealthiest Americans, poor Native Americans are some of the poorest Americans, and those in the middle may as well be invisible. The wealthy and educated families are basically aristocrats, and they spend a lot of time and effort to keep it that way, often training in law and business to keep up their "most favored nation" status and ethnically inherited superprivilege. But the poor and drug- or alcohol-addicted are some of America's neediest people, living in squalor in homes they didn't buy, spending money they didn't earn. This leads to an interesting sort of "noblesse oblige" where the well-off tribal members sometimes dedicate significant time and resources (their own, as well as the federal government's) to "uplift" programs, building schools and homes for their downtrodden brethren, enacting jobs programs, and otherwise practicing a geographically and ethnically constrained form of communism. But no small number of this quasi-nobility also walk away from the reservation entirely, washing their hands of the fruitless frustration and thankless toil to seek their own personal fortune. These return to the reservation, if at all, only for a comfortable retirement.

I am if nothing else impressed with the shrewd leadership and entrepreneurial initiative that the quasi-nobility has shown, particularly in those tribes where the genetic remnant is so vanishingly small that they really are more plausibly white (or sometimes black) than "Native American." The Supreme Court some time ago asserted that the Fourteenth Amendment did not alter the constitutional status of Native Americans because tribes are political entities, not ethnic or racial ones. This fig leaf has been a boon for most Native Americans in America's post-colonial phase, to the extent that the tribes are land rich, government subsidized, and exempt from numerous regulations of general applicability.

But the boon is unevenly distributed, in ways that suggest mere resource redistribution might not address the core of the problem, and might even be a part of the problem. Very probably, I think, Native Americans would be much better off overall if we abolished tribes and reservations entirely, awarded the land to its residents in fee, and worked to integrate and mainstream them into American society. But this would undermine their tribal identity and heritage, as well as their aristocracy. And so the unflattering stereotype of the poor, drunk, welfare-dependent "Indian" persists as the reality of a permanent Native American underclass--not, as is sometimes suggested, as the byproduct of white colonial oppression, but as the "cost of doing business" for their own wealthy, educated tribal leadership maintaining the hierarchical status quo.

Adding to this- my uncle is in contact with the natives in Louisiana. There used to be a native (lower)middle class, who were indistinguishable from the local creole/cajun working class population except for some family stories. Since they opened the casino, any functional(lots of them are severe alcoholics but alcoholism is rampant in the area anyways) ones are among the local wealthy, and they mostly hire non-native workers- either local or imported from Mississippi- for the actual doing work at tribal businesses over their own less functional coethnics.

These Indians are shrewd businessmen whose customers often do not realize they are at an Indian casino; it has a French Louisiana theme and they run courtesy shuttles to Houston. They also love Trump and are in deep with the Louisiana Republican Party. It is highly probable that the ruling clique wins elections(chiefs and tribal councilmembers are elected, and almost certainly corrupt- although again, French Louisiana) through cash/kind handouts to the less fortunate among them. They are not readily distinguished from the surrounding population physically or by mannerism.

I appreciate the detailed answer. I live in Ohio, where there haven't really been any since the time of Anthony Wayne. I have a sense that, as with things like the Celtic Revival, Chinoiserie, etc., there was a period in the 20th century where there was, for a time, a broader cultural interest in "Indian" things; but this has waned, and now they don't seem to have any particular presence in the wider cultural arena. I don't think I can name any living Native Americans. Perhaps the absolute number simply isn't high enough. So I just find myself curious about - what are their politics? What are their unique subcultural practices in 2025? How did the Internet change their lives? In America you see things like Chinese laundries, Hispanic roofing crews, Vietnamese nail salons; apart from casinos, do the Native Americans have some thing like that? Perhaps I'd just have to go and see.

But as you note, the experiences of Native Americans in Florida vs. Oklahoma vs. Alaska are so different that it may not even be worthwhile to think of them as a single bloc.

There seems to be a lot of native Americans doing skyscraper construction.

Not sure where you're at, but historically I think this was specific to the Mohawk for some reason? Not sure if they're still at it, but they are famous for working on a lot of the original skyscrapers in NYC among other places.

Lots of lower class Cherokees doing it in DFW.

Apropos cancellations from the right, is there any way to get a professor in trouble for teaching about social justice instead of the content they were supposed to teach? Especially if they are assigning most of the semester grade for writing and talking about social justice, not what's in the course description? Especially if it is a required course, with no option to change sections?

Apropos cancellations from the right, is there any way to get a professor in trouble for teaching about social justice instead of the content they were supposed to teach?

This will depend on how far from the subject matter you've strayed. Class in politics, law, literature, philosophy? Probably not. Class in calculus? Almost certainly.

Especially if they are assigning most of the semester grade for writing and talking about social justice, not what's in the course description?

This certainly would strengthen the case.

Especially if it is a required course, with no option to change sections?

This probably doesn't help you much.

The first step is to talk to their supervisor, usually a Department Chair or Dean. Bring clear evidence. Explain that you have some concerns and be sure to mention that you are afraid to talk to the professor directly, because you are concerned about retaliation. If the Chair seems unsympathetic, go to the next step up (Dean or Provost, usually). If they seem unsympathetic, escalate again. If you try to escalate prematurely, you'll be sent back down ("we don't handle that directly") so you have to be able to say "I already spoke with $SUBORDINATE, they were not helpful." If you get all the way to the President, you will most likely be talking to someone who is very annoyed to have you in their office, and who will seek the quickest, most effective way to ensure that you never darken their doorstep again.

If by now the problem still has not been resolved, you have to choose between taking your lumps, and going nuclear with a social media offensive. If you're at a public school, then the next level of escalation is your state representative. If they're a Republican, they will appreciate the opportunity to get some TV time advocating for you against the tide of Woke. If they're a Democrat, your options are fewer, but not nonexistent, depending on the particulars of your case.

(At some point it will become clear that this whole process is much, much more of a hassle for you than just giving your professors what they want. But obviously not everyone finds that sufficient deterrence.)

There's almost certainly nothing you can do, unless it's a state university in a red state with a very particular hook in the course material so sufficiently egregious an elected official or journalist can use it to rile up some sleepy boomers. Welcome to the ivory tower - it's not going to get any better.

With enough publicity you could make faculty uncomfortable, but "in trouble" based on something like a viral X post that embarrasses the school is a longshot. A publicity route requires your case to be egregious or for your case to be at one of the universities already in the hot seat. I don't recall the last time I read a story in the wild of a professor eschewing course material to make the class about themselves and their beliefs. Especially not one with severe consequences. This is common enough to border on uninteresting.

If you decide you care enough, then you should start building a dossier yesterday. Syllabus, e-mails, rubrics, published learning outcomes if they exist, recorded lectures, etc. That's going to bring about any type of return for a decision to commit to the bureaucratic process. I don't think you're going to find a shortcut around a formal complaint. At the end of your effort all you might have is more uncomfortable relationship with Prof. SJ and the corrected grading accommodations. Give'em hell.

Is it English/Writing? The only vocally woke professor I had in college was for Writing. You have to write about something, so that's the easiest place for them to shoehorn in social justice BS.

Education, so same issue. (I've taken a decent number of education classes, and they were mostly at least attempting to teach according to the course description)

You live in the south, correct? Contact your elected officials and ask who to get in touch with to make a brouhaha.

The usual complain publicly on the twitter would do it, or PM someone privately from the Trump office?

Alternatively I bet the White House has a phone line you can call for unrelated matters and they might be interested in something like this or know who to kick it to. Same for certain right leaning journalistic operations like Fox.

If you are from a pro-MAGA district one of your elected representatives would potentially be interested, it is shocking how amenable house offices are to randoms.

What happened last week? I mean this literally, it's was such a deluge that I feel like I forgot significant things in it. Asking here to sanity-check.

  • Charlie Kirk assassination, world-altering shitstorm, the swings of the manhunt
  • Iryna Zarutska murder, up-to-genocidal frenzy, progressive release of ever-more-uncensored video
  • Russian drone incursions into Poland
  • Nepali zoomer revolution, burning down parliament and beating ministers, Discord election
  • Israel bombing Qatar
  • Greta flotilla drone attack
  • Trump Epstein birthday card

Is that it? Was there some more israel/gaza stuff? Trump admin actions? Some other twitter culturewar flareup that seemed to matter?

Enough happenings in one week for Billy Joel to make a new "We Didn't Start The Fire"

The Trump-Epstein birthday card and the bombing of Qatar may be linked. It’s not anyone in America leaking this stuff as otherwise it would have been published 2016-2024. I think it’s Israel showing its guns, reminding the President that they’re in control and that there’s much worse than can be released if he doesn’t go along with their decisions in the Middle East. The birthday card makes clear that Trump’s relationship with Epstein involved underaged girls, and of course any such relationship was recorded by Epstein, and it’s most probable he was a Mossad or Israeli Military Intelligence asset.

The birthday card makes clear that Trump’s relationship with Epstein involved underaged girls, and of course any such relationship was recorded by Epstein, and it’s most probable he was a Mossad or Israeli Military Intelligence asset.

Can you explain how ?

Was there some more israel/gaza stuff?

There was one other Israel-Gaza story I cooked up a post for partly motivated by accusations of boredom. The doldrums turned out to be false, so everyone is spared of it. For now.

Mars rock

Great catch. Holy shit what a week.

Oh, right, apparently the best evidence yet found of life on Mars, per NASA. No actual confirmation for another few years probably, but still, that's something.

Holy shit, didn't even know Israel bombed Qatar. That seems like a terrible overstep by the leadership, as Qatar was kind of friendly to Israel before and in the US pocket.

Based off the response it seems likely it was done with their permission they just had to pretend to be mad about it.

Nepali zoomer revolution, burning down parliament and beating ministers, Discord election

Please tell us more.

The Nepali election was held on Discord. What's abnormal about that? :D

Blew my mind recently to learn that Nepalese monarchy was ended by a mass shooting in 2001, by the 29-year-old crown prince, culminating in his own suicide. Assuming that you trust the official account, of course; it is pretty poorly documented. But it's just so weird. It's like if instead of marrying Kate, Prince William snapped and shot up Buckingham Palace, a short time after Columbine, and that was just where history recorded the British crown ending.

Meta: feature request

Is there a quick and easy way to type an em-dash here? If there isn't, might I suggest implementing Google Docs' solution, wherein two consecutive hyphens will produce an em-dash?

Alt + 0151 will produce an em dash in whatever program you're using. Alt + 0150 will produce an en dash if you're brave enough to use it.

Note that these "alt codes" work only with a numpad, not with the row of number keys at the top of your keyboard. (Many people who never use the numpad are willing to pay extra money to save desk space with a "tenkeyless" keyboard that has no numpad.)

It just looks wrong, like an amputee.

If you don't have a proper keyboard with all of the buttons then you shouldn't be allowed to use all of the available symbols.

I worked for an inventory service in college and we used machines that were nothing but a numerical keypad with a one-line LCD display, and asa result I'm one of the few people whose typing is mediocre but can scream on the keypad—I use it almost every time I need to put a number in, even if I'm typing something. So I couldn't imagine having a keyboard without one. To be fair, some laptops don't, which incidentally included the ones the supervisor used to download the data and run the reports, so they carried a usb keypad with them to make manual entry easier.

Do you have trouble with the difference in orientation between phone (one in top row) and keyboard (one in bottom row) keypads?

Markdown supports HTML named character references. "& mdash;" without the space becomes "—".

Thanks for the tip.

So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up Kirilenko and Korshunova's What is Personality, from the USSR's Progress Publishers. It's a somewhat dizzying but fascinating application of dialectical materialism to individuals.

About to start Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, having previously enjoyed adored his novel Never Let Me Go.

In between reading full-length books I've been reading some of the Father Brown stories. So far I've read "The Blue Cross", "The Secret Garden" and "The Queer Feet". They're okay.

I think Remains of the Day is even better. One of my top 3 or 4 novels.

Dinner At Deviant's Palace, by Tim Powers. Haven't read this one since I was a kid, and it's interesting to revisit it with adult eyes and understanding.

A Greater Britain:

  • Historically: In 1924, Oswald Mosley was a member of the Labour Party, and stood for reelection to the House of Commons, but lost by a hair's breadth (0.28 percent). In 1926, he returned to Parliament. In 1929, he was made a minister without portfolio, but was not able to get any of his radical policies implemented because the prime minister and the chancellor of the exchequer disagreed with them. In 1930, he resigned his cabinet post in disgust, and submitted to the Labour Party Conference a policy memorandum that was defeated by a relatively narrow margin (8.9 percent). In 1931, he left Labour and founded the fascist New Party.

  • In this alternate-history book: He wins the 1924 election, and is able to build up more support within the Labour Party. In 1931 his policy memorandum is defeated by an even narrower margin (3.2 percent), and he sticks with Labour rather than turning fascist.

Shadow of Montreux: Historically, Mussolini declared that fascism was "no export article", and the various fascist movements of Europe developed largely independent of one another. In this alternate-history book, in 1929 he changes his mind and organizes a Fascist International, akin to the USSR's Communist International (Comintern).

I had no idea Mosley used to be a member of Labour, that's wild.

I’m am just about 85% finished with A True History of the Conquest of New Spain. A fantastic first hand account by one of Cortez’ men, a book I was shocked I’d never heard of. I can give a bit of a review in a day or two when finished if anyone is interested, but for now I’ll just say I recommend it highly. Even in translation from 1850 it is extremely easy to read, fast paced and exciting.

Are there any legitimate gaming communities that are angry specifically about gamers and gamer culture being blamed for the Kirk shooting?

Utah Governor Spencer Cox on what radicalized the shooter - "Clearly there was a lot of gaming going on"

It feels to me like gaming qua gaming is completely absent from the modern culture war. Is this a real effect or an artifact of the fact that I don't play a lot of games anymore?

Think there are a few things to think about here:

  1. This is probably an area where international perspectives differ a lot. As I recall, Germany and Australia were the biggest proponents of the anti game side with numerous restrictive laws. I don't see any politicians for me in the UK or in the US talking about games that way, but perhaps there are holdouts elsewhere?

  2. For those nations that don't have any opposition, I think gamergate played a big role. In the past, the anti game side was largely right wing Christians, assorted boomers, and general cranks, while gamers themselves were mostly (perceived to be) young left wingers. As gamergate screwed up this traditional alignment, there's now little political benefit to being anti: you'll be hitting your own base as much as the enemy.

  3. But surely the biggest thing is that games are too big, too popular. Gamers grew up, and most of the working population have probably played games or continue to play them. Even in the "hot coffee" GTA days the anti side wasnt that popular, but now?

You still see some of the old guard of gun control debates try it at times, both from the right (and 'right') and the left. SAF and NAGR done a decent job at slapping it out of their spokesmen, but the NRA still has some old guard that leap to it. Been more common with the post-Remington lawsuits, but generally not in ways intended for public consumption (or even to reach a jury).

EDIT... and that apparently includes the governor of Utah.

I remember when "video games are a public health crisis causing depraved Columbine-style violence and need to be regulated with harsh censorship policies" was a serious and common political belief close to implementing itself in the halls of power. By now this belief has been either thankfully abandoned or cooled down to the apolitical not-being-acted-upon groundwater level. It only seems to be brought up these days to lazily deflect from gun control proposals, and I say that as someone staunchly opposed to gun control myself; I just think it's foolish to rob the first amendment to pay for the second.

Come to think of it, over my lifetime I think I've seen the social roles of the beliefs "video games cause violence" and "vaccines cause autism" invert.

Who will replace us?

History is the story of societies being replaced by more competitive societies. The Sumerians were replaced by Semites and the Beaker people by Indo-Europeans. The Diadochoi states' apartheid societies were replaced by Rome's more assimilative state. Roman paganism was replaced by Christianity. Feudalism was replaced by absolutism, which was replaced by republicanism. What is best for society is often not best for the individuals within it, molochian competition is like that. Stalin built a superpower but he paid the price in destruction of Russian lives- but he turned a backwards society one generation removed from functional chattel slavery into a superpower that dominated half the world. The Roman Empire solved the stability problems of the late republic- at a cost that contemporary sources note, but don't let us check.

Who will replace today's liberalism? Christian communities are still hanging on, of course. But their numbers are dwarfed by blacks and Muslims, and despite their paltry human capital Quantity has a Quality all its own. And of course there's AI(I expect AI to never figure out how to do maintenance on its own datacenters). East Asian societies have low fertility now, but their collectivism might give them a leg up in the future- would Koreans or Chinese accept whatever measures to raise the fertility rate, unacceptable in Europe and the Anglosphere? Or will it be a crude, bombastic secular conservatism- popcountry style?

Some people might say that the uncomfortable truth is that women's liberation is incompatible with above-replacement fertility, but I think the problem is broader: personal liberation in general is incompatible with natural above-replacement fertility.

And you can't really use economics to overcome this. Like in that story in Freakonomics about an Israeli daycare, once money enters the equation, duty leaves it forever. Stimuli and fines simply say: "you don't have to have children, if you can afford it". You need a society which treats having children as a sacred duty to the community, where it's unthinkable to go against its will.

Or, conversely, the first society that industrializes childbearing and childrearing will win. Via artificial wombs, as there aren't enough women that are willing to go through regular childbearing many times that you can make this into a full-time job: if the natural replacement rate is 1.2, then we need 1x more child per woman to offset this, or one woman in nine turned into a breeder and having 10.2 children instead of the usual 1.2. I don't think even the most collectivist society is totalitarian enough to achieve this.

I had a shower thought driven by recent events: is the N-word a slur?

-It has a tremendous amount of historical context, but has been grossly separated from that. -Hearing it can be a call to violent action. -Some identify with it, some don't. Who it's used on often doesn't match and it generates considerable offense.

I'm of course referring to Nazi.

I wonder if introducing a taboo here is part of whatever would be required to drop the temperature.

I think it's still connected enough that it does not count. In my opinion, part of what makes a slur a slur is that it's a version a label that carries unnecessary negative connotation when one could just as easily use a label without that connotation.

"Whore" is a slur while "prostitute" or is mostly not, because whore is used very frequently in a derogatory way, especially against non-prostitutes in an attempt to tarnish them with the shame of the occupation. "Lady of the night" is definitely not a slur despite referring to the same label, because it's deliberately euphemistic and trying not to convey negative connotations.

The actual N word is a slur because it's generally used to refer to lower class or misbehaving black people, while "black people" is not a slur because it's just referring to the group of people with no negative connotations besides those that a racist listener might already have in their mind.

Importantly, these are slurs whether you use them against the correct categories of people or not. If you call a prostitute a "whore" it's still a slur, even if the label is true. They're likely to be offended, because it's not merely that you're accurately labeling what they are, but that you're deliberately choosing a derogatory way to do so. You are labeling them AND judging them poorly. Calling someone the N word is a slur no matter what race they actually are, because you're either labeling them as a black person in a derogatory way, or you are implying they have the same negative traits that you think black people have.

Nazi can be used in a slur-like way, but as actual Nazis exist and there is no other way to refer to them, it's just a label. It does have negative connotation, but broadly those negative traits are inherent to actually Nazism. A real Nazi will not be offended when you call them a Nazi, because they are not ashamed of it: they think they are right. The offense comes primarily from normal people who hate Nazis just as much as everyone else being unfairly accused of being the thing that they hate. It's a false accusation. Just like "rapist" or "murderer" is not a slur, and yet do carry negative connotation. If you publicly accuse me of being one I will be offended. Not because I disagree with the negative connotation or think you're being rude to rapists and murderers, but because that is not what I am and I don't want to be tarnished with sins I did not commit.

I saw a meme yesterday that was along the lines of "They have called you racist many times, but never called you wrong"

Anyway my gripe with being called a Nazi is that the people that use that word barely know what Nazi means. And usually those are people that claim to have intellectual or moral superiority. Or they know and play stupid when using it improperly - which is even worse.

Slurs are best modeled as verbal acts signaling that 1) I'm the kind of person who regards you that way 2) I'm allowed to feel that way and you don't have the power to stop me.

In that context, Nazi pretty well fits, in that calling someone a Nazi is a verbal act indicating that I don't have the power to stop you from calling me that.

What kind of activity or day truly relaxes you?

For me it's sitting down with a good old entertaining fantasy novel. Taking lots of hot baths helps too.

Knitting with an audiobook or podcast on.

Going for a run of at least 5km, strength training in the gym.

Cycling easy (running easy never really relaxes me), walking in a forest, reading a good fantasy novel.

Type II fun. Burning through 30 hard bouldering problems, rolling hard in BJJ against a slightly better opponent, going for a brisk walk for 26.2 miles, rowing a hard 5k.

It's after times like that I am truly relaxed.

In addition to what you said I find monotonous physical activities relaxing, like hand-mowing the lawn or chopping wood. The activity itself makes me mentally unwind and the physical excertion makes be relax physically afterwards.

Also Sauna.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats