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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   31755 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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And yet, I find myself living in an apartment in a city, surrounded by black and brown people, not far from a bunch of Korean and Japanese law firms and restaurants, and with a largely LGBT friend group, and I'm generally pretty happy with my life, and I feel safe and good about where I live most of the time.

Yeah. Because you feel like one of them.

Try being in a place where you think you're one of them, and then you say something like "You know, calling Curtis Yarvin a Nazi seems kinda dumb because he's Jewish" or "Uh, this story about a rape on campus is probably totally made up" or "I don't think there's anything wrong with the "Hide yo' wives" meme' and having everyone turn on you. You'll realize you were living in a fool's paradise.

Of course, YOU wouldn't ever say anything that would trigger such a reaction, right?

I always felt like Scott Alexander's Kolmogorov Complicity and the Parable of Lightning was at least in part a guide for people with controversial beliefs to go along to get along. See also Leo Strauss, and his idea that great thinkers of the past were often esoteric and hid their actual ideas for only the smartest to find and deal with.

I think our relatively free and open era has spoiled a lot of us. We chafe against any limits on our abilities to say whatever we want and not have the people around us react with social opprobrium. And yet, Plato, writing one generation after Socrates was executed for his open practice of philosophy, is supposed to have said in his seventh letter, 'I have never written down my true beliefs.'

I definitely have beliefs that would make me a pariah in some of the social circles I move around in. Who doesn't? But I am polite and politick enough to not make a big deal out of these beliefs in the circumstances where it could go bad for me.

Don't get me wrong, there's value in being a Socrates or a Helvidius Priscus, and being willing to die for your beliefs, while speaking truth to power. But there is also value in being a Plato or (as Strauss sees them) a Maimonides or a Machiavelli, and hiding your true views from all except a vanishingly small number of highly discerning readers. Luckily, the internet is still anonymous enough that I think we get a great compromise: able to be open about our beliefs in places like the Motte, and able to be Straussians/take the Kolmogorov option everywhere else in our lives.

I always felt like Scott Alexander's Kolmogorov Complicity and the Parable of Lightning was at least in part a guide for people with controversial beliefs to go along to get along.

[...]

I definitely have beliefs that would make me a pariah in some of the social circles I move around in. Who doesn't? But I am polite and politick enough to not make a big deal out of these beliefs in the circumstances where it could go bad for me.

You now find yourself advising people to act like they live in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, and implicitly criticizing those who do not.

Has there ever been a human society where there weren't taboos or ideas that were considered dangerous and wrong? Even relatively open societies have lines you're not supposed to cross.

I think there's a good chance that Classical Liberalism is dead in America. I had a little hope that the right might try to revive it, but Trump 2 has clearly not brought anything like a bedrock of Classical Liberalism back to our politics. If we're going to have to suffer under the rule of identity politics from the Right or the Left anyways, might as well start quietly building the foundations for a better society like Kolmogorov, and not worry about what we can't control.

Of course, this is all acting with some assumption that something like a normal human society exists in a few decades, and I don't rule out the possibility that AI may prove to be a total game changer in numerous hard to predict directions.

Has there ever been a human society where there weren't taboos or ideas that were considered dangerous and wrong? Even relatively open societies have lines you're not supposed to cross.

I'm just going to ignore this smokescreen, and again point out that you are not only comparing the social circles you are in with Stalinist Russia, but blaming anyone who doesn't keep silent for not getting along.

I've also implicitly compared them to Lovecraftian horrors and hive-minded vampires in this same thread. I'm not sure why you're hammering this point. It isn't a gotcha, it is built into what I am saying.

And I wouldn't say "blame" is the correct word here. I said it is noble to be Socrates or Helvidius Priscus and die for your beliefs. That isn't blame. I just personally think that there is more wisdom in being Plato or Maimonides. People are allowed to disagree with me, and turn themselves into Socrates or Helvidius Priscus.

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