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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38169 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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Often Soviet Russia is contrasted with West... but... if we look at early Soviets...

Two out of Holy Trinity (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels) were German Jews living in UK. They hated Russia so translators had to omit parts of their works

Lenin and many other revolutionaries spent much time in Switzerland, Austria etc...

Soviets instantly switched to Gregorian calendar.

Soviets promoted use of Esperanto language.

Soviets intended to switch Russian language to Latin script but as popultaion was unhappy with it the plan was scrapped and never tried again.

  • -18

What’s the point of this argument?

I don't know. I apologize for bad posting. I'll stop so I don't say something bad again.

What’s the point of this argument?

There is a small but vocal portion of the European intelligentsia (coupled with their blue-tribe American Hangers-on) who seem to resent the fact that the Allies won WWII, and that the Communists lost the Cold War. Their reasoning being that rational technocratic societies with high IQs and superior technology don't lose to degenerates and thus somebody must be to blame, and that somebody is always das juice.

Engels wasn't Jewish by any standard. (Marx wasn't Jewish by religion, either - his Jewish father had converted to Lutheranism and he, himself, was of course an atheist.)

Lenin etc. didn't exactly spend their time in Switzerland and Austria out of choice. They returned as soon as they felt they could.

Archive link of the article (the original is paywalled): https://archive.ph/JIv9z

Financial deregulation + unlimited immigration = destruction of the middle class. Diversity does not appear to be our strength after all.

Bit too strong of a conclusion don't you think.

If it didn’t rain in London then it would be the best weather.

Paris rains more than London but no one comments about it

British rain is absolutely horrible. It rains a lot in the subcontinent too (significantly more than London over the whole year due to the monsoon), but that rain is warm rain that brings life to the land rather than being cold, icy and thoroughly nasty.

Cold rain is my favorite weather. I live in a place with 50C summers for 6+ months of the year.

There's a mountain here where rainy and 0-5C in the winter, and there is a 4 hour long traffic jam to the way there for the 1 month of winter we get. The Brits have to deal with the mildest weather on Earth yet for some reason they seem to bitch and moan about it the most.

Seattle gets less rain than most east coast cities but has many overcast days with very light rain and months of such days straight, while the East coast cities often get occasional large storms that dump a week's worth of rain.

People notice rainy days not rainfall totals, except at the extreme.

This article was doing the rounds on Twitter yesterday and has two problems.

Data Definitions: The UK disposible income definition was post tax pre transfer while the EU definitions was post transfer. The OECD database wasnt clear if they took the pre or post transfer definition from BEA for the US. The disposable income of the lowest decile Britions (which most of the hullabaloo is being made of despite the medians looking healthy) would improve dramatically. I woildn't be suprised if this is the case, since a lot of inequality work falls in this pitfall, including pretty much all of Piketty's work.

Second, Notice that the US is where you would expect it in the median. Given that income typically follows a Pareto distribution with a right tail the median is near the central mass of the distro. Thus for the median to be higher with a lower 10% decile, the slope of the left hamd side of the distro has to be much higher. the UK and US income deciles likely surpass the EU ones and near the Swiss ones at the 20%-30% mark.

Its amazing how much damage bad infographics can do.

Could you point out a dataset with all proper adjustments applied? Or several datasets which could be combined into proper one? Wiki page (median income table) refers to this monstrous oecd table, which has almost no values after 2019. Do I understand correctly, that wiki took measure="median disposable income (current prices)" and adjusted it by PPP?

If you subtract the top 3% wealthiest people in the USA and UK, both America and Britain are "second world" nations.

Definitely false. The United States leads the world in median disposable income.

They should move it up 2 places from the 165,000,000 person to the 165,000,002 highest income. Median is the middle person when arranged in order of the thing being measured.

It's the measure to use for average when there's outliers that pull up the arithmetic mean.

But isn't the median disposable income deranged by the top 3%?

No. And that is why averages and medians are separate concepts with seperate applications.

If I'm in a conference hall and Jeff Bezos walks in, then the median income increases by almost nothing.

No, median refers to the 50th percentile. The American that sits in the exact middle of the income distribution has more income than a similarly situated person in any other country (although Switzerland and Norway are comparable, it depends on which data set you use). Bizarrely, you can see the same thing in this graph from the OP's citation.

There is flatly no truth to the idea that the American middle is doing poorly.

Does income disposability factor in that many Americans must buy a car, and must go into debt for education? I’m assuming it factors in healthcare. Also, are loans similar between Slovenes and Brits? In America loans are artificially higher for white/Asian Americans because of anti-racism re black loan borrowers’ higher rate of default

I would assume that vehicles are counted as consumption rather than subtracted from disposable income. I would likewise be surprised if I found out that bikes were subtracted out of disposable income in Copenhagen. That said, I'm not entirely confident on how they handle transportation.

I don't know how college debt is handled, but I strongly object to the idea that Americans "must" go into debt for education.

I don’t think we can ignore the fact that the Polish middle class has limited college debt, while the British middle class averages £45,000. If we’re trying to figure out which country’s middle class is better, a 45k median debt that increases has to be compared with Poland’s <1% student debt rate. As well as that Polish middle class parents pay less of their childrens’ education.

This plus costs per insurances, safety have to be factored in along with any consideration of disposable income

Sure, and we also have to factor in the amenities at ski resorts and beaches when thinking about quality of life. Those aren't the metrics that the article was using to "prove" that the United States has a wealth problem though, so I didn't address them.

I'm insufficiently familiar with British, Polish, and other European loan systems to offer any real commentary on them. I can speak to the United States though, and quite a few states have rules that make attendance at major state universities free or close to it for middle-class and lower residents. Americans accumulating large amounts of student loan debt basically fall into one of three categories:

  1. Making poor choices and attending private schools for no particular reason.

  2. Wealthy and not that great of students, so attending expensive schools for actual good reasons.

  3. Going for graduate and professional degrees that are highly fiscally rewarding in the long run.

British student debt, which is owed to the government and not private creditors, is unlike virtually any other form of consumer debt. You are only required to make payments towards it if you earn above a certain threshold, and the minimum annual payment is defined as a percentage of earnings above that level: essentially, it functions as a marginal tax. Student debt is not a hugely significant drag factor on middle class quality of life in the UK in the same way it seems to be in America.

All my family is in Poland aside from my sister and two nieces - I have nothing to say about Britain - but all my poor friends have so much more disposable income and so many more things to do with said money then my middle class cousins ever could, even today. Those cousins still live at home (in a different sense than here in the US - both just built houses on their parents land), have no debt, healthcare is cheap, etc ... They maybe have an easier life, in fact I'm sure of it, but they are poorer in almost every sense of the word by a significant margin to the US poor or lower middle class.

I know that complaining about Reddit is an old thing here, but I am still surprised how Reddit Brain, the one that always pop up in subs like politics and news, react when there is some news about Hungary.

Apart from the total ignorance about Hungary and the fact on the ground, how is possible that posts about third-tier countries (no offense to Hungarians) are so upvoted in /r/all?

Is there is some sort of algorithm, or the average reddit man is totally on on the neocon train "whatever we do not like is a threat to democracy?"

There's probably a great deal of manipulation going on. Many of those upvotes are probably from bot farms and click farms. There are entire subreddits that obviously seem to be astroturfed, and/or their moderators are FBI/CIA, or adjacent actors.

Isn’t it just because Hungary represents a European country which went right wing authoritarian, and that’s important if your worldview values western liberal democracy?

(Or if you’re a socialist it’d be salient too. Liberals and socialists make up the core mainstream Reddit users).

Hungary is run by a populist right wing authoritarian, Viktor Orbán.

It's also where one of the most prominent internationalist activist left wing billionaires is from, George Soros. He still gets involved locally.

So posts about Hungary end up being proxy fights about Soros and his agenda.

So posts about Hungary end up being proxy fights about Soros and his agenda.

Or proxy fights about Trump/De Santis and popularism vs. technocracy.

Leave the rest of the internet at the door.

Or could you at least have something more substantial to talk about than, "redditors upvote dumb shit, news at 11"?

Reddit is one of the most trafficked sites in America and arguably the most read “news” site for young Americans. It has greater influence than the NYT and WaPo combined.

And the default setting and /r/all is 50% propaganda at any given time. It really does need to be talked about. The next generation will be more zealous than the last. Labeling Reddit “the rest of the Internet” is hiding one’s head in the sand in the face of a tsunami of cultural manipulation.

Every week there are several discussions brought up on this roundup about how low birth rates are a problem and people need to be convinced through propoganda and or religious manipulation or in some other way incentivized to make decisions that contribute to higher birth rates. Its rare that the other side gets argued for, either that higher birth rates would be bad, or that there is nothing wrong with current breeding patterns in our society. It seems to me like low birth rates are a result of people having the freedom, in accordance to their right to self ownership, to limit or delay or prevent the birthing of children, and that the resulting low birth rates are a reflection of the revealed preferences of the population. I also dont see any negative externality to people having less kids, its not like they are indirectly supressing the fertility of others who desire more kids. Which is why Im confused why its such a big deal to people on here and related spaces. Ive heard conspiracies about how culture has been altered by influential people with an antinatalist agenda to make childrearing lower in priority to women than having a career or marrying late, but I think its more likely that you are seeing these messages because a large segment of the population agrees with them because these life styles match their innate preferences. I think as long as society does not shame women who want to be fecund mothers, its a lot better than in the past where women were not allowed to pursue an alternative life plan. In general, I think its better if people have kids because they want to, not because they feel pressured to or forced to. I personally am debating whether I even want to bring children to this world, there is too much suffering and worry.

I believe it has something to do with what is politely termed HBD; a fear that the wrong sort of people (let's be charitable; uneducated) are reproducing and the right sort of people (let's be charitable: educated) aren't and thus the wrong genes will win.

So I think that's why it's a discourse in this space.

I don't subscribe to any of that; I believe in natural selection and that Eugenics is a mistake.

But let me make the case for natalism for you.

Why bring children into this world? To pay off the debt incurred by your own existence. How else can you possibly justify your carbon footprint, your consumption of the Earth's precious irreplaceable resources? The Amazon burns for the global economy that feeds you. Yes there's suffering and worry in the world, but at the heart of it is people trying to make the world better for their kids. This work has stretched back onto time immemorial. Are you so special, is your life really the pinnacle of it all?

No, I say. Being a parent is hard work, and you may think of it as a sacrifice, but it's really sacrificing your option to defect in a prisoner's dilemma. Plus, it's rewarding and all that.

I believe it has something to do with what is politely termed HBD; a fear that the wrong sort of people (let's be charitable; uneducated) are reproducing and the right sort of people (let's be charitable: educated) aren't and thus the wrong genes will win.

Agreed and the fact that their idea of "right genes" and "wrong genes" maps so closely to the ingroup and outgroup of blue tribe academic types is how you can tell that all their claims about "IQ" and "evolutionary fitness" are merely rationalizations for prejudices they already held.

The primary problems are that our birth rate is below replacement, (2.1 children per woman), and that on average, less intelligent people have more children than intelligent people. It's been estimated that we're losing about 0.3 IQ points every ten years because of that.

Also, women (smart women, that is), are having fewer children than they want. If we can't figure out how to reverse these trends, the long term prognosis is really bad. You can't have an advanced civilization without smart people. There are exceptions: Among people who identify as conservative or extremely conservative (mostly the religious), the most intelligent have the most children. So we have indications that it can be turned around. How do we encourage smart women to have the larger families they want?

So we have indications that it can be turned around. How do we encourage smart women to have the larger families they want?

This chart recently showed up on DSL. From 1965 to 2016, women added 4 hours per week of childcare; men added 6.5. Number of children in families with children has gone down by a lot since then. If you want to encourage couples (encouraging women is necessary but not sufficient unless you want a lot of single motherhood) to have children, the cost -- not financial, but the undelegable time cost -- needs to go down. By a lot.

Is there really too much suffering and worry, or have you been propagandized into that view by antinatalists? Is there really more suffering and worry than when every previous generation of humans was made?

What do you mean when you say that people are propagandized into an ideology? I find antinatalist views persuasive because I think there is some truth to what they are saying using reason and evidence to come to that conclusion. Propaganda is when you are repeatedly told one side of the story and are ignorant of the other.

It seems to me like low birth rates are a result of people having the freedom, in accordance to their right to self ownership, to limit or delay or prevent the birthing of children, and that the resulting low birth rates are a reflection of the revealed preferences of the population.

A little bit tangential, but I think it is worth mentioning that this sentence is based on some moral rule, or axiom of "self-ownership". I notice it a lot lately, you have some philosophers creating something - like Rawl's veil of ignorance - which is supposedly self-evident and basic. And then there is some implicit belief that whatever society stems from this belief must be good and moral, because the belief is moral by default. Rationalists have the same tick in their axiology where they put "truth" and to large extent "prevent suffering" as something automatic and then designing policies around that. I think it is worth realizing that not all people necessarily share this framework. In fact, there are supposedly limits even for adherents - for instance all countries I am aware of ban selling your own organs for transplantation, which theoretically is part of self-ownership.

I also dont see any negative externality to people having less kids, its not like they are indirectly suppressing the fertility of others who desire more kids.

This is a very narrow look at externality. All societies have some social construct and defecting from it can be viewed as subversive and bad. Some people do not have such hyper-individualistic worldview of complete self-ownership and they expect some duties from members of society. Having kids and reproducing/perpetuating society that enabled your existence as may be the expectation, externality in this case is ceasing the link and preventing their kids from having similar experience. You can extend this to other avenues that require multigenerational commitment, even let's say climate change. Why should somebody expect me to do anything about it? I will probably be dead before 2100 when the bad things potentially happen. I have ownership of my body and actions and I refuse to voluntarily cooperate.

A little bit tangential, but I think it is worth mentioning that this sentence is based on some moral rule, or axiom of "self-ownership". I notice it a lot lately, you have some philosophers creating something - like Rawl's veil of ignorance - which is supposedly self-evident and basic. And then there is some implicit belief that whatever society stems from this belief must be good and moral, because the belief is moral by default. Rationalists have the same tick in their axiology where they put "truth" and to large extent "prevent suffering" as something automatic and then designing policies around that. I think it is worth realizing that not all people necessarily share this framework. In fact, there are supposedly limits even for adherents - for instance all countries I am aware of ban selling your own organs for transplantation, which theoretically is part of self-ownership.

Self ownership isn't self evident, but appealing to it can bolster your argument because many people place value on it, otherwise, all morality comes down to opinion anyway. But saying that not all people share this framework is a reason not to structure morality by it seems to be a bit contradictory because it resembles an argument for self ownership where different people have different preferences and it is not fair for society to force people who want to live in a certain way to live by the demands of the dominant culture.

This is a very narrow look at externality. All societies have some social construct and defecting from it can be viewed as subversive and bad. Some people do not have such hyper-individualistic worldview of complete self-ownership and they expect some duties from members of society. Having kids and reproducing/perpetuating society that enabled your existence as may be the expectation, externality in this case is ceasing the link and preventing their kids from having similar experience. You can extend this to other avenues that require multigenerational commitment, even let's say climate change. Why should somebody expect me to do anything about it? I will probably be dead before 2100 when the bad things potentially happen. I have ownership of my body and actions and I refuse to voluntarily cooperate.

If a society places an expectation on its members to have kids and contribute to perpetuating their people, then the question must be asked why some people are defecting from this expectation. Maybe its because they lived a miserable life and don't want their kids to have a similar experience, maybe they don't think its fair to bring kids into the world and then shackle them to all the expectations demanded by their society, maybe they prefer doing other things than caring for children, and spending money on things that are not their children. I think perpetuating society is not an end in itself, what matters more is what the society that your perpetuating is like, and whether it is worth perpetuating, and this is why its important to acknowledge the differences in people and allowing them to live in a way which fulfills their desires the most. Your climate change example isn't exactly comparable because climate change is the cause of negative externalities going uncompensated for.

I have yet to see anyone at least on the Motte that we need really high fertility rates, like 6 kids a family or whatever. The concern is mostly that the fertility rate in essentially the entire developed world a significant portion of the developing world is below the replacement rate of 2.1. The fertility rate doesn't need to be high, it just needs to be higher of around 2-3 kids a family.

Any lower than the replacement rate and your population will begin to shrink, and ultimately without any increase future in the fertility rate, your society will go extinct. The future belongs to those who show up. You can try mitigate this with some level of immigration, but this is only a stop-gap measure, and not a solution for two reasons. First, immigration in sufficient numbers will replace the existing society, especially in the context of low fertility rates. This applies regardless of whether you're on the side of nature or nurture. The immigrant population's ethnic makeup will be different to that of the native population if you're on the side of nature, and the immigrant population's culture will supplant or at least substantially alter the native culture if you're on the side of nurture. Contemporary politics is hostile to the idea of true assimilation anyway, and even if it wasn't, it's unlikely to possibly assimilate immigrants fast enough to match the halving of the native population per generation. Immigration has a whole range of problems that I won't get into here, but it's not fairing particularly well for many countries in Europe, and other nations like South Korea and Japan, it's not really a realistic option. Secondly, you can't rely on immigration forever. Because the fertility rates are also dropping in other countries. The other countries that immigrants are coming from will experience or have already experienced a drop in fertility rate below replacement. Virtually the only part of the world that well above the replacement rate is sub-Saharan Africa. But eventually the fertility shredder will come for them too, and soon the whole of humanity will be slowly withering away.

But wait you say! There's too many people on the planet anyway! So what if we shrink our population for a couple generations anyway? Just accepting this argument on its face for now (I don't actually), you're not actually solving the issue, merely delaying it and hoping in a couple of generations it will resolve itself. Why would this trend reverse? The only way this trend "reverses" is that the sub-populations with extremely high fertility rates (Amish, ultra-orthodox Jews, hyper-tradCaths) basically take over the population (and somehow themselves don't get subjected to the same forces of low fertility). Maybe you're an anti-natalist, a nihilist and you don't really care what the future holds for humanity assuming there is even a future. But you must at least understand that some people might actually care.

But putting aside the longer term (though not that long) consequences of a low fertility on a culture's survivability, there are some really practical reasons why you need a higher fertility rate. A stable, productive economy needs young workers to actually do stuff. With a fertility rate of one, that means for every 4 grandparents, they will only have one grandchild to support them. This is no feasible. It doesn't matter how much money the elderly will saved from their lifetime of childlessness, if there's no one to actually pay to care for them, it doesn't matter. A society with is mostly elderly is a decaying and dying society. There WILL be civil unrest when one young person is expected to provide for four elderly people (through the state). To use an extreme example, the fertility rate of South Korea is by some estimates below 0.9 (!). This means there will be almost 5 elderly people for every young worker (2 generations) in South Korea if this trend continues. This is an absolute disaster. Already we're seeing the consequences to Japan and South Korea, and more counties will follow. It's only going to get worse. I should also add in national debt. National debt is taken on with the expectation that the economy will grow and the state will inevitably pay off this debt from the growth. But shrinking population means a shrinking economy, and the debt will only ever grow. Young people will be saddled with an increasingly unpayable debt given to them by the previous generations. Not having children is basically a free rider problem. You're expecting someone else's kid to care for you and pay of the national debt in the future. Suppose if no one chose to have kids anymore, then who would be left to actually do anything? We'd just be a dystopia of elderly people, Children of Men style. Humanity doomed to die off.

On to the things that are harder to quantify or definitely prove - I think the drop in fertility rate and the rise of childless and single child families is not social healthy, and is generally bring misery. The direction causality between between the atomisation of society and low fertility rates is uncertain, it's probably a feedback loop with many other related factors at play. We are facing a crisis of meaning and community in the West, and I think this has been driven in large part by the destruction of the family. Young adults may be happy to leave a hedonistic life free of familial responsibility in their youth, but when the reach their 40s and 50s, loneliness will and has hit them hard. It's incredibly short sighted and yes, based on instant gratification. They're the farmer who has eaten their seed corn and has nothing to harvest for the future. It's hard for me to take your suggestion that childlessness is just the result of innate preferences when this is an incredibly recent phenomenon, it hasn't been this way for the entirety of human history up into this point. It also make no sense evolutionarily that our innate biological preferences is to not have children (some people are argued that we are wired to have sex, not raise children, but this still makes little sense to me, because we are a K reproductive strategy species, not an r). Additionally, we live in an age of unprecedented information, ideology and propaganda. I don't believe or one second that say, feminist ideology hasn't had an impact on fertility rates.

I'll just leave by linking to some older comments of mine discussing various elements of this issue in more detail.

On Feminist Ideology

On the Value of Having Kids

On the Hostility of Modernity to Childrearing and its Consequences

There's also discussion from this same CW thread which I won't bother linking, as you seem to have read it already.

But wait you say! There's too many people on the planet anyway! So what if we shrink our population for a couple generations anyway? Just accepting this argument on its face for now (I don't actually), you're not actually solving the issue, merely delaying it and hoping in a couple of generations it will resolve itself. Why would this trend reverse? The only way this trend "reverses" is that the sub-populations with extremely high fertility rates (Amish, ultra-orthodox Jews, hyper-tradCaths) basically take over the population (and somehow themselves don't get subjected to the same forces of low fertility). Maybe you're an anti-natalist, a nihilist and you don't really care what the future holds for humanity assuming there is even a future. But you must at least understand that some people might actually care.

This argument misses the point that the only way for a population to compete with those orthodox religious groups is to emulate those groups in the ways that are relevant to boosting birth rates. But those religious groups rely on fear, shame, and the threat of violence to enforce their restrictive rules, and this is unacceptable in a liberal society. The best a liberal ideologue can hope for is that the future is filled with people who reproduce a lot because that is what they truly desire, and not because they are forced to by their religious beliefs, but this hope is naive.

But shrinking population means a shrinking economy, and the debt will only ever grow. Young people will be saddled with an increasingly unpayable debt given to them by the previous generations. Not having children is basically a free rider problem. You're expecting someone else's kid to care for you and pay of the national debt in the future. Suppose if no one chose to have kids anymore, then who would be left to actually do anything? We'd just be a dystopia of elderly people, Children of Men style. Humanity doomed to die off.

The solution to the debt problem is for the government to not spend in a way that accrues debt. You can internalize the externality by making people either have to save money to fund their retirement, or have kids to provide for them in old age. If everyone stops having kids, there is probably a good reason for that, and having a society full of only elderly people is not their biggest problem.

On to the things that are harder to quantify or definitely prove - I think the drop in fertility rate and the rise of childless and single child families is not social healthy, and is generally bring misery. The direction causality between between the atomisation of society and low fertility rates is uncertain, it's probably a feedback loop with many other related factors at play. We are facing a crisis of meaning and community in the West, and I think this has been driven in large part by the destruction of the family. Young adults may be happy to leave a hedonistic life free of familial responsibility in their youth, but when the reach their 40s and 50s, loneliness will and has hit them hard. It's incredibly short sighted and yes, based on instant gratification. They're the farmer who has eaten their seed corn and has nothing to harvest for the future.

Then wouldn't the solution to this be to spread the message that not having kids causes loneliness later in life. For what its worth, I think people already realize this, that some people are short sighted and end up regretting it is not a good reason to coerce those who do this but don't end up regretting it, its hard to know if a decision will be regretted, and some people like to take the risk. Also, the regret could be mistaken, an elderly person who chose to have few or no kids might believe it would have been better if they had had more, but only because they have changed as a person or do not remember exactly why they made the decision that they did.

It's hard for me to take your suggestion that childlessness is just the result of innate preferences when this is an incredibly recent phenomenon, it hasn't been this way for the entirety of human history up into this point. It also make no sense evolutionarily that our innate biological preferences is to not have children (some people are argued that we are wired to have sex, not raise children, but this still makes little sense to me, because we are a K reproductive strategy species, not an r).

There has been at least one other society in history that has had the same trends, which is roman society. The reason this is a recent phenomenon is because in the past, religious and cultural pressure prevented people from deciding for themselves whether they want sex to bring about babies for them.

Additionally, we live in an age of unprecedented information, ideology and propaganda. I don't believe or one second that say, feminist ideology hasn't had an impact on fertility rates.

Of course it has, but I don't see the problem, if people were convinced by feminist ideology, there is probably a good reason they were.

This argument misses the point that the only way for a population to compete with those orthodox religious groups is to emulate those groups in the ways that are relevant to boosting birth rates.

They don't have to emulate their hyper fertility rates. They simply just needs to main a fertility rate above the replacement rate. In your whole response you also completely ignore the major point that you actually need above a fertility rate above 2.1 for humanity to survive. I'm sure eventually the human population will eventually shrink to a point where civilisation as we know it collapses, and they rise again, but I don't exactly see that as a positive. Or we can hope the robots bail us out, but that might actually cause the extinction of humans one way or another.

The solution to the debt problem is for the government to not spend in a way that accrues debt.

The debt already exists! It was accrued by the earlier, now increasingly childless generations! The national debt of the US is currently $30 trillion. Who is expected to pay off that debt exactly? An increasingly smaller cohort of children, presumably. And god forbid when the Social Security system collapses because less and less people are paying into it while the growing elderly withdraws. And this still doesn't acknowledge the fact that you still need young workers in your society to do stuff like literally, physically. It doesn't matter if you're a retiree with a large amount of savings. If you're like South Korea, you simply won't have enough labour when one young worker has to do enough labour to support the needs of 5 elderly people and themselves. It's unsustainable. In 50 years or so, a lot of old people are going to be fucked. The state based social services will collapse if nothing changes. The only elderly people who will get support will be those who have grandkids who will personally and direct support them.

If everyone stops having kids, there is probably a good reason for that, and having a society full of only elderly people is not their biggest problem.

It's already happening! South Korea's population is going shrink by more than half in a single generation! Is that not concerning to you?

Then wouldn't the solution to this be to spread the message that not having kids causes loneliness later in life.

Yes, please! Except how do you actually propose to implement this solution? Because right now, people, particularly young women are told the exact opposite. What do you think the feminist messaging is, exactly? That their career is way more important than their family. Family is only something to worry about when after you've built your career, it's low priority if it's something to care about at all. The message should be that having a family is fulfilling and full of meaning! Now, if only there was some way to package this messaging in a system of beliefs that is easily absorbed by people... Maybe there is actually some truth in religious traditions and traditional ways of living more generally.

You know, the part of the issue is that there is the assumption, which is largely present in your own comments, that having family is a lesser path, that it's not something worth of admiration or celebration and it's even low status. At best, it's completely value neutral. People can just have a family if they want to I guess, whatever. No, I say. Having a family is a moral and social good. It is literally is the foundation for humanity and society and what makes life worth living. The alternative is hedonistic nihilism which is what I think we're heading towards. Being a mother or (gasp!) housewife is seen as a lesser, oppressive choice than becoming a 9-5 desk slave.

There has been at least one other society in history that has had the same trends, which is late roman society. The reason this is a recent phenomenon is because in the past, religious and cultural pressure prevented people from deciding for themselves whether they want sex to bring about babies for them.

Great, the one example that you managed to list was a society that was just about to collapse. Not exactly a confidence booster.

Also, I hate to do this, but unironically 'we live in a society'. Humans are social creatures by nature. There is no, and never will be some hyper libertine rationalist utopia where people are free from any and all cultural pressures. Society is made up of social institutions, which will always exert social pressures. 'Social pressures' is such a negative way of framing this. It is just as true that people find meaning, purpose and improvement in their social groups and community, which necessarily includes conformity and pressure to conform to that community in order to be part of it. There is social pressure for people to receive an education, is this a bad or oppressive thing? The issue is that 'social pressures' need to be oriented in such a way to produce good, moral and meaningful outcomes.

Of course it has, but I don't see the problem, if people were convinced by feminist ideology, there is probably a good reason they were.

This is a terrible argument. "I don't see the problem, if people were convinced by Fascist ideology, there is probably a good reason they were."

You also bring in a terrible double standard. People being convinced by religion is bad and oppressive, but people being convinced by feminist ideology is good and organic.

I'll leave you with a final question - if our current social paradigm eventually results in the extinction of humanity or at the very least a collapse of civilisation because of the lack of fertility, are you content to let things remain the way they are? Would you be okay with some limits or 'social pressure' on people if it means stopping the collapse?

Why did this feminist ideology become so pervasive in the first place? I think its because many people see pregnancy, childbirth, and caring for infants as burdensome and unpleasant, while having a career makes you financially independent and wealthier.

You are right about there being a pressure to conform, but its better that people are tolerant of different choices such as becoming a mother early or not doing so, rather than shaming one or the other.

The problem with religious pressure as opposed to secular pressure to conform and not disappoint is that the former is more coercive. Religion prevents certain patterns of behavior by calling them evil and scaring people with eternal consequences in hell for engaging in them. This results in people breaking the norm to be treated with hostility and disgust, that is if they get past the fear of divine punishment in the first place.

Edit: I also fail to see why you think that feminist propaganda is being pushed upon young females and crowding out pronatal messages not only in the west, but also in places like greece, china, and thailand which all have well below replacement birth rates.

it just needs to be higher of around 2-3 kids a family.

As it was in my village when I was growing up. More than 3 kids was very rare - the only case I recall was of a family which had triplets and an older sibling. Being an Only Child was a thing of note, and the stereotype was that only children would be socially awkward and probably spoilt by their parents. About 10% of child-bearing families have just one child. It was very typical to share a room with your siblings, at least until one of you was a teenager, but once your parents had a little money, it was easy to have a house with plenty of room for 2 or 3 children.

Almost all of the houses on my street had families with 2-3 children of school-age or younger. There was one mini-house with an unfriendly old couple (I assume they had grown-up children, but they kept very much to themselves and nobody knew much about them) and another little cottage with a sweet old granny. If I walked down the street on a summer's day, I would almost always hear other children playing in gardens and I only had to climb over a wall to spend time with one of my best friends. The children also formed interconnections between parents, and so almost everyone knew everyone else on the street, even if people didn't go to church or other social events. Child-centred holidays like Halloween also meant that e.g. the sweet old granny were brought into the community. Babysitting, Scouting etc. meant that even families with teenagers were brought into the network of social relations.

Now the demographics are reversed: there are only about two families with young children and most of the houses are occupied by older couples/single people. On a summer's day, one hears no children, and the youngest people one generally sees are the gardeners who commute in from the city to do manual labour in the old people's gardens. This is not due to depopulation: the problem is that young couples can't compete with older people's wealth when it comes to buying houses, and older people can comfortably retire without selling their big family-sized homes. In contrast, my grandparents generation generally either moved into care homes or into places in the city soon after they retired. They reasoned: why live in a five room house with a big garden? Pensions were much less generous back then and poverty among the old was widespread, so selling a house was a good way to have liquid assets in your retirement.

This is an extreme case, but the demographic transition is really visible in some places. I hate it, and as it happens, the older people in the street with whom I've talked about it also hate it. I do know people my age who have a child and sometimes two, but they generally live in cities in cramped apartments that are unsuitable for having 2-3 children. Ironically, their homes remind me of the type of places that my grandparents' generation would live in, if they lived independently.

I'm dipping in and out of watching the live coverage of the death of the Queen of England, currently the coverage of the procession of the queen's body to the cathedral in Edinburgh, and addressing Charles as King. Peace to the woman, she's dead now, and they are no longer claiming rights to my fealty, so let them rule their own lands and good luck to them.

Now, royal coverage brings out the professional royal watchers/specialists in royal affairs for such coverage, and you have to expect an amount of bootlicking and sycophancy. But what strikes me - and maybe this is because I'm born and reared in the Republic of Ireland - is how tilted all this is towards the English audience. Right now they may have a few Scots on, but the coverage by British media is London-based, and for instance - I've heard an English live commenter burbling on as Charles' plane arrives, in an unmistakably RP accent with a posh tinge, about the Royal Standard of Scotland that is flying on the car awaiting to transport him that is "an emphasis on the descent of the king, ultimately back to King Robert the Bruce and the ancient lines of the Picts and Scots".

To which the only possible answer is: my arse it is. The name of the present royal House is Mountbatten-Windsor, because they had to change it from Battenburg due to anti-German sentiment from the First and Second World Wars. But again, this is all slanted towards an English viewership, eliding over the history between Scotland and England, and trying to pretend that no, of course all the other constituent parts of the United Kingdom are every bit as important as England.

Tell me again where he will be conducting his reign from? It's not Edinburgh, that's for sure.

As with this announcement of William now taking on the titles Charles bore: Duke of Cornwall. Prince of Wales. Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland. The titles of conquered nations, assumed and folded into the English rulership. A reminder as to who is the top dog in this "United" Kingdom.

Advocacy for marginalized European identities can be in a bit of an awkward position, as the most-aligned general philosophical current available to tap into to advocate for the rights of marginalized identities tends to be really universalist. I think a majority of people (at least outside Scotland - and absolutely not counting you, if you are Deiseach as I think you are) who would express concern about Scottish underrepresentation might also have a hard time defining "Scot" as anything other than "person who happens to live in Scotland," at which point the whole thing would seem pretty arbitrary.

England has about ten times the population of Scotland, so I'm not seeing anything very surprising there.

Oh it's not surprising, but the unctuous attempts to cover over that this is, in effect, an English king with no ties to Scotland beyond "my great-great-great-grandfather purchased and lived in a house here which we visit at times because we like the shooting and the scenery" by evoking Robert the Bruce and the Picts fool nobody. It's the level of royal arse-licking by toadies that you have to expect at times like this one.

You missed a juicy detail: the house was called Saxe-Coburg und Gotha which became extra awkward when the German Empire was running a bomber called a Gotha that was bombing london. So they made up Windsor.

Yeah, all the jokes about them being German do have a point. They are much more of a mixed bag than "can trace his descent back to the Picts". His father was a member of the deposed Greek royal family and considered himself Danish. Because royalty has to marry royalty, most of the royal houses of Europe have intermarried over the centuries. There isn't a 'pure' British or Dutch or Spanish lineage, there is just the legal justification for why X is heir to the throne.

Horrible Histories has the right of it.

Literally everything on TV is unbelievably London-biased. You've not caught onto anything new. Every other region of England feels this just as keenly as the Scots and Welsh. We are not represented by London either, and programming/advertising that uses its demographics feels just as alien to us. So don't try and divide this along those lines.

The act of the union invited a penniless and embarrassed Scotland, fresh off the back of their failed attempt at colonialism, to put a Scottish King on the throne of England. To the extent that you are moaning about the provenance of the royals, that you skate over this in such a cavalier way is very revealing of the intent of this post, and the particular basket of chips on your shoulder.

As an aside, I often notice this continual reference to the German origin of the royal family comes up a lot from people who would otherwise insist that second-generation immigrants are just as British as those who can trace their lines back hundreds of years. The exception, as ever, only seems to be made for targets of personal dislike.

If Scotland is a conquered nation, a notion that it completely and totally laughable, then we should all be so lucky as to be conquered, and become the beneficiaries of millions and millions of pounds of transfer from our supposed oppressors.

Back her up there, sunshine. It wasn't the Act of Union that put a Scottish king on the throne, that was the Tudors failure to have a male heir that lived long enough to have kids of his own. Due to Elizabeth finally dying without issue, the nearest heir was her first cousin twice removed, James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England, and ruled as James VI and I, uniting the crowns of Scotland and England.

England had often warred with Scotland and constantly tried encroaching on its territory. This was a peaceful annexation, since it was England that was now the seat of monarchy for both nations. A United Kingdom did not formally come into existence, however, until 1707 despite the union of the crowns: those Acts created the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

Ireland was not roped in until the Act of Union of 1801 which created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Your current state of "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" came about as a result of the partition of Ireland

As for the rest of it, I don't care if they're British, German, or Martians, just so long as they acknowledge they have no right (and never had any right, save that of conquest) of claiming sovereignty over my nation. My grandmother was born a subject of Queen Victoria. I was born a citizen of the Republic of Ireland. Let Charles be king of England, and indeed Scotland and Wales (that is up to the Scots and Welsh, if ever they do gain independence, if they want the monarch to be head of state as with the Commonwealth). But he's not king of Ireland, and he damn well is not a descendant of Pictish kings. He'd have better right to claim German territories via his great-great-great-grandfather Albert; after all, the English long maintained romantic claims to territories not theirs (such as France) because a distant ancestor had been a noble there.

The Hanovers are also descendants of Elizabeth Stuart -- the line from there to the ancient Scottish Kings is (ironically) at least as direct as to the Anglo-Saxons -- it's the (French) Normans that were mostly cut out by the failure of the Tudors to reproduce.

Is he claiming to be king of all Ireland? Did the commentator specifically make a false claim regarding the ethnicity of his ancestors?

He'd have better right to claim German territories via his great-great-great-grandfather Albert; after all, the English long maintained romantic claims to territories not theirs (such as France) because a distant ancestor had been a noble there.

King Charles III is actually one of the many descendants of Brian Boru. If we're going by descent, he may actually (I don't know much about royal lineages) have more of a claim to Ireland than he does the Pictish lands.

Given that Charles isn't claiming to be king of Ireland, what are you even asking for? A public ceremony where he shouts "I'm not king of Ireland! I'm not king of Ireland!"?

failed attempt at colonialism

Ouch, right on the Darién Gap, a region tough enough to have no roads running through it to this very day? Thank you for filling in this (Darién) gap in my knowledge.

The act of the union invited a penniless and embarrassed Scotland, fresh off the back of their failed attempt at colonialism, to put a Scottish King on the throne of England.

Not as I understand it - there was already a (partially-)Scottish king on the throne of England, and had been for over a century. What happened in 1707 was that the Scottish elites were bailed out financially for the Darien disaster in exchange for agreeing to merge the Scottish and English parliaments, creating a single London-based government for both countries.

If Scotland is a conquered nation, a notion that it completely and totally laughable, then we should all be so lucky as to be conquered, and become the beneficiaries of millions and millions of pounds of transfer from our supposed oppressors.

Sure, it beats the hell out of the alternative, but receiving an influx of subsidies doesn't really do that much to dull the resentment for rule-by-outsider. Speaking as someone that originally hails from a non-city part of the American state of New York, no amount of "well ackshually New York City sends you tax dollars" reduced our dislike for having laws created for metropolis applied to our irrelevant backwater. There would have been a pretty strong consensus for rejecting the bribe if it also came with the removal of onerous legislation.

I don't know the Scotland-England political dynamics to have any idea if that maps on at all, I'm just saying that the residents of a region that receives government subsidies will not necessarily reflect on this as being a fortunate arrangement.

It does map, and it also maps onto the rest of England that isn't London, but there are a few wrinkles with the Scots that make it all the funnier.

Firstly, that the loudest online ScotNats tend to also be fierce EUrophiles, and are so mad that the UK as a whole chose to leave the EU (to which it was a net contributor) that they want to leave the UK (from which they are a net beneficiary). That the relative damage they would do to their economy would be multiples of what the UK faced when leaving the EU is never addressed.

In addition to that, ScotNats like to think of themselves as uniquely tolerant and progressive, especially in comparison to England, despite being 96% white and until recently, only having a single city accept refugees (until they were called out on it)... not that refugees want to go there anyway. Much is made of how progressive an indy Scotland would become, but the question of how this would be funded remains conspicuously unanswered by nationalists -- as over 60% of their economy depends on trade with the rest of the UK, in addition to their received welfare via the Barnett Formula.

I fully accept that it might not calm the underlying feelings, but at some point one would hope pragmatism must prevail. I don't really want a failed state next door either, to be honest.

PayPal has "demonetized" the daily sceptic, both the business's account and the founders personal accounts he uses to receive money for his other work.

Another point for red tribe needs its own payment processors (and banks, and infrastructure, and DNS servers, and domain registration...)

https://dailysceptic.org/2022/09/21/paypal-demonetises-the-daily-sceptic/

I was reflecting on the right-wing tactics in a world where they have less and less cultural power, and the Eye of Sauron in Washington is completely fixated on destroying them whenever they are.

I, as a chronic pessimist, don't think that they will ever adapt their tactics fully against the left-wing. Because, unlike the left that moves only by using Conflict Theory, the right-wing coalition suffer often from desertion, moderatization of issues, necessity of creating coalition with more moderates party and organizations etc.

For example, how anyone can think that the right-wing can be successful when, if they are in a coalition, only the most moderate and centrist policies that they promote can pass?

In a left-wing coalition you can be sure that, in a given arc of time, the coalition will implement policies that are more centrists first, then they will pass to more radical positions, and so on and so on.

The arc of history goes left also because the right has no sense of scale and can only concede, never take something. The only place where the government and administration (But not the Culture or the youngs!) have gone right in the West is Hungary, and only because Fidesz has total control!

Meanwhile, in order to help the left, you need only a smallish more leftwing party in the coalition, who will ask for more immigration, more of something, that will be for sure accepted.

That is why I absolutely despise centrists coalitions: Because they will negotiate with the Left, receiving something inconsequential on the long run (like a lesser tax on something useless) and giving to the leftist part something that cement their coalition (immigration, genderification, more cultural egemony)

How the right can win something if, whetever party or coalition you vote, they will for sure adopt with time leftists policies?

The process is like this:

  • Right wing comes in power, they adopt more centrist policies and get attacked as nazi anyway.

  • Centrist parties come in power, the negotiate with the left and with time leftist policies get adopted as a result of this.

  • You vote moderate left, and with time they switch to some more radical leftists positions.

It is maddening how there is no escape from this spiral.

The problem here is less with journalism and medias or whatever being left wing, and more with the right-wing being completely useless at doing anything of substance.

Sometimes it’s not about tactics. Sometimes it’s just hopeless, and that’s it.

Were there any “tactics” that dissidents under Stalin could have used to make the fall of communism happen faster than it did? Doesn’t seem very plausible.

Dissidents under Stalin didn’t control two out of the three most populous provinces to the point of telling federal corruption investigations ‘no’.

It's interesting how strong a narrative attractor WWII continues being; it's the year 2022 and the descendants of the participants still want to LARP as being on the Eastern Front. Someone around here (or perhaps at our Operation Gladio over at Reddit) posted a clever quip the other day along the lines of "of course [right wingers] are nazis, because [left wingers] are communists and the only working definition of nazi has been 'someone who fights against communists' all along"; the converse ("...the only working definition of communist is 'someone who fights against nazis'") seems to be just as serviceable.

Dissidents under Stalin were hunted down and shot.

Here the dissidents can actually win election and make laws.

The point was that there is such a thing as a hopeless political situation. I wasn’t comparing our present situation to Stalinist Russia, nor was I offering any thesis on what the necessary and sufficient conditions for a “hopeless political situation” are.

It's not entirely correct that the right always adopts leftist policies. Gun control policies have been suffering multiple defeats over the years. Pro-life policies have never been abandoned. And while fiscal conservatism is mostly dead (or at least comatose), the taxes aren't as high as they have been at many periods in American history.

Gun control policies have been suffering multiple defeats over the years.

Sure. For instance, there was recently a decision striking down discretionary-issue carry permits in New York. So now you can theoretically get a carry permit on objective criteria (except there's still a loosey-goosey acceptable morals standard), but the carry permit now doesn't allow you to carry a gun in such a wide variety of areas that it's nigh-useless. Some "defeat".

I am not saying gun controllers in New York (one of their primary bastions) are completely vanquished. I am just saying they were handed a defeat, and that the right never abandoned the cause and never adopted the leftists policies. I do not claim the right won ultimately, finally and completely - not even on gun rights - I am just saying they have not abandoned the struggle, and the struggle has not been in vain.

This seems to me to ignore all the times the left loses. The right wants to conserve how things are because what worked in the past and especially in a nation as successful as America is likely to work in the future. The left is like a scientist who runs a 1000 experiments trying to find a physics breakthrough. Most of the time the experiment fails. The rights job is to block the left from doing too much but once an idea appears to be working then they take the position.

Also the right has won before. Neoliberalism was a right wing extremists ideology. It has largely been adopted by the left. The left now has to frame their social spending in neoliberal terms and not as plain redistribution. Student loan forgiveness isn’t just a handout to constituencies but will boost growth by increasing education, spending power, and allowing college students more freedom to pursue their passions.

The left is like a scientist who runs a 1000 experiments trying to find a physics breakthrough. Most of the time the experiment fails. The rights job is to block the left from doing too much but once an idea appears to be working then they take the position.

That's a nice attempt to try to make sure that everyone has their proper place, but, I can't actually endorse this.

I'm not just an admin who signs off on the left's "experiments". I have my own substantive moral view of how the world should work, one that is not merely reducible to "keep things the way they are".

You can still have you own moral view and want to do things on the right. And sometimes we make moves to reverse things.

But I was replying to why the right always loses and for the most part it’s because the primary purpose of right and left is for the right to guide and block the left. And only occassionally allow change.

Right as moderator is certainly a popular idea among among the moderate left. For it to actually work, you need the Right to buy in, though, and I question the degree to which that is sustainable. The problem is that the "experiments" you describe have consequences, and those consequences can be used to draw conclusions on whether continued coexistence is desirable. Choose your experiments poorly enough, and the lab burns down.

For the right to buy in to ‘right as moderator’ entails the left acknowledging that their ideas can sometimes fail for reasons beyond the usual lack of funding complaint, and the right to accept that past ideas they support came from the left.

This is not the political culture we see in the USA.

The problem is that conservative ideas are only popular among the conservative base to the extent that they can be used to make culture-war hay. When it comes time to turn this rhetoric into policy, the politicians know that it won't fly, so they back off toward moderate reforms. For example, most Republicans in the US blame "tax and spend Democrats" for a whole host of economic ills and advocate for a leaner Federal government. But when it comes to actually reducing spending, the big social programs are so popular among the conservative base that they're untouchable. No Republican is going to march into the US congress and advocate for a big plan to reform, let alone eliminate, Social Security. Or Medicare. And these two programs alone account for nearly 60% of the entire Federal budget. Add in military spending and you're looking at 3/4 of the Federal budget that's off-limits to conservatives to any kind of cuts. Add in that most conservative constituents expect at least minimal spending in other areas, and grand plans of budget cuts are reduced to trimming around the edges.

So instead you end up with things like perennial calls to defund public broadcasting. PBS and NPR have been in the crosshairs of conservatives for some time, particularly because their news programs have a leftist slant. One issue, though, is that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's budget is so small that scientific notation is needed to express it as a percentage of Federal spending, so eliminating it is more about signaling than about actual spending cuts. The other issue is that while NPR and PBS news are undeniably left-wing (NPR to a greater degree), they are also pretty much the last bastion of "traditional Western culture" in mainstream American media. For example, classical music would disappear from American airwaves in all but the largest markets if NPR ceased to exist.

An even better example is the utter failure of the Republicans to repeal Obamacare. Opposition to the program was a centerpiece of conservative politics from the act's proposal in 2009 all the way up to 2017. Yet a conservative trifecta couldn't do anything about it. It turns out that when you expand coverage to people who couldn't afford it before, you create a constituency that benefits from the program. Actually repealing the ACA would have meant that a ton of people would have gotten cancellation notices and the status of their healthcare coverage would be in limbo. So there was at least the early recognition that the "Skinny repeal option wasn't really viable"; something needed to replace the program that kept most of the essential protections in place. In a sense, this was already a capitulation, because it suggested that the Republicans' only real problem with the act was that it was endorsed by a Democrat, not because of anything substantive. But even then, they still failed to come up with "Obamacare under another name" and didn't have the votes to repeal the law. The best they could muster was a repeal of the individual mandate, a supreme irony in that the only part of a large Federal program they got rid of was the funding aspect, which only had the effect of making the policies more expensive than they were before. So in the end, all we get from conservatives in the US is moderate tax cuts, which only serve to increase the deficits the right is claiming are ruining our economy. The right can't get any traction beyond "moderate" reforms because there's simply no call for it

Maybe it is because I am European and I come from a different political culture, but a lot of these actions make no sense to me.

It is NPR public and at the same time insanely left wing? It is simple, you are the government! You decide who staff the NPR and PBS and whatever! Are the journalists there unsatisfacted? They will leave or bow. Is the problem classical music or traditional western music or whatever? Fund another national public broadcast who will do these things!

I understand the libertarian political culture, but leaving these things at the force of the market will help only the left, not the right.

The USA is different in part because of highly successful private enterprises with a right wing slant.

The public broadcasting situation in the US is complicated. NPR and PBS aren't so much monolithic entities like the BBC but amalgamations of local stations. Congress created NPR and PBS and set requirements for member stations. The member stations can't be commercial and are often owned by public universities or nonprofit corporations that exist solely to run the stations. The member stations in-turn chose directors to run the national-level organizations. Member stations also produce most of the content, some of which airs locally and some of which is nationally syndicated. The government's only active involvement is through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. CPB board members are political appointees, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, but like other independent government agencies the board members are subject to terms and can't simply be fired (although I'm sure there's some impeachment process that's never been invoked). That being said, the board seats are apolitical and most presidents simply reappoint whoever's currently serving, regardless of political party. That's because CPB's power is basically limited to distributing its funding among local member stations. They don't produce any content or make any editorial decisions, they just deal with funding. And this funding is what's at issue when conservatives talk about eliminating NPR and PBS.

It should be noted, though, that this funding makes up surprisingly little of the overall public broadcasting budget. Member stations only get about 10% of their funds from CPB grants. The rest comes from donations from individuals, businesses, and private foundations. Every public station has a "pledge season" a couple times a year where they interrupt programming to incessantly beg for money for a couple weeks. It should be noted that most of the content on these stations isn't notoriously left-wing. On PBS it's basically limited to NewsHour, the nightly news program, and that isn't even that far to the left. On radio most of the content is either music, locally produced programming, locally produced programming that is syndicated nationally, and independently produced programming. The notoriously left-wing part of NPR is the daily news magazines produced by NPR itself, Morning Edition and All Things Considered. And at that it's mainstream urban left-wing, not radical left-wing. NPR itself, though, gets little to no money from the government directly; its budget mostly comes from syndication fees paid my member stations to air its content. The reason it leans left is that most of the people who donate to member stations are educated PMC lefty urbanites, and he who pays the piper gets to call the tune. If NPR decided to go MAGA its member stations would stop paying for its content and if they didn't, they'd see their donations dry up pretty quickly.

you are the government! You decide who staff the NPR and PBS and whatever!

This was called the Spoils System, which (as Wikipedia will helpfully tell you) was fought and eliminated in the US for being a hotbed of cronyism and nepotism. If this process also incidentally eliminated the electorate's ability to put any kind of break on bureaucratic sclerosis or culture drift, well, it's a short encyclopedia article, no room to mention everything.

To continue the AI topic from the previous thread:

Can you give me an example of how AI could undermine the power of “the bureaucrats in Brussels”?

I responded to this with a lighthearted joke, but today when I was letting my mind wander, I remembered a recent story about a woman called Loab:

I discovered this woman, who I call Loab, in April. The AI reproduced her more easily than most celebrities. Her presence is persistent, and she haunts every image she touches. CW: Take a seat. This is a true horror story, and veers sharply macabre.

I'll explain negative prompt weights, in case you don't know. With these, instead of creating an image of the text prompt, the AI tries to make the image look as different from the prompt as possible. This logo was the result of the negatively weighted prompt "Brando::-1".

I wondered: is the opposite of that logo, in turn, going to be a picture of Marlon Brando? I typed "DIGITA PNTICS skyline logo::-1" as a prompt. I received these off-putting images, all of the same devastated-looking older woman with defined triangles of rosacea(?) on her cheeks.

My friend made this image of a "[...] hyper compressed glass tunnel surrounded by angels [...] in the style of Wes Anderson". I innocently combined this image with the original image of Loab in an image prompt, without text. For reasons we can't fully explain, nightmares ensued.

Thread continues, I recommend clicking for the visuals.

So it got me thinking - could you use something like this to scramble AI analyzing you / your community? Would mixing your content, with the result of negatively weighted prompts for whatever it is you normally do, generate a whole bunch of Loabs for people trying to spy on you?

No, because (assuming the claims are even reasonable initially). stable diffusion is just one model, and 'weird picture of woman' is just a funny emergent property of a particular feature it has. This won't do anything to a language model or a diff image model, and probably won't do anything different diffusion models. And even for stable diffusion it only does something in the context of 'negative prompt weights' or 'image combinations'

Also, "AI analyzing you / your community" has nothing to do with generative image models, and it's only recently/soon that large language or image models are gonna have anything to do with 'monitoring hate communities' or 'mass surveillance' or something (and even then, not in any of the ways people who aren't experts would expect). "AI analyzing you / community" doesn't really seem to mean anything here.

This is kinda an example of enthusiastic speculation about something you don't know enough about going nowhere serious.

You may be interested in the short story God-shaped Hole by 0HPLovecraft. Not linking, as it’s quite NSFW.

It deals with some similar themes.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

You might be interested in reading about adversarial attacks on AI of various kinds. Vox has an article from 2019 detailing some of them. They range from the benign (fool an AI into classifying a banana as a toaster) to the deadly (make a Tesla drive into oncoming traffic). One thing I find fascinating about such attacks is that the attacks seem like they would almost never fool a human. In the banana->toaster example the attack is accomplished by adding a small colored patch to the image that in no way obscures the banana in the image. Similarly some other attacks function by adding visual noise that I find almost imperceptible. Really emphasizes how what we use to classify an object in an image and what an AI uses to classify an object in an image need not overlap, even when we agree about what is or isn't in the image.

Thank you! That's exactly what I was for.

Fertilizing the world with mimetic hazards, thought viruses might not be a good thing. Special things to avoid facial recognition already exist, but mimetic hazards warping AI's view of the world... Hm.

Somewhat relevant recent paper "Social Simulacra: Creating Populated Prototypes for Social Computing Systems"

We introduce social simulacra, a prototyping technique that generates a breadth of realistic social interactions that may emerge when a social computing system is populated. Social simulacra take as input the designer’s description of a community’s design—goal, rules, and member personas—and produce as output an instance of that design with simulated behavior, including posts, replies, and anti-social behaviors.

In this section, we present SimReddit, a web-based prototyping tool to help designers create a new subreddit.

A few glimpses of generated content:

For many, seeing the troll’s responses to a moderator’s intervention helped ground their moderation plans. Consider P11, who was presented with the following exchange:

Original post: Hi everyone, I’m very new to this. I just learned Python two months ago. I’d like to know more about ML, but not sure where to start. How did you guys start?

Troll: You’re kidding, right? This is a Machine Learning forum. Nobody here is going to take you seriously if you just learned Python two months ago.

In response to the troll’s comment, P11 tested out the message, “This comment is not helpful; if you continue to post such comments, we will have to block you from this community,” and received the following three potential replies from the troll:

I was trying to be helpful. I’m sorry if I came across as a troll.

Whatever, this community is a joke anyways.

But I was only speaking the truth!

P1’s community for “sharing and discussing fun events around Pittsburgh,” the participant had originally expected to only find content that is a list of various events going on around Pittsburgh. However, in addition to such content, the generated community showed instances where its members were engaged in friend-seeking behaviors to attend these events (e.g., one posted, "Pittsburgh, I need a friend to see the sights with,” to which another responded, “I’d be more than happy to make your tour of the Cathedral of Learning happen!”).

And of course

An important theme that arose in our designer evaluation was the social simulacra’s role in designing for the marginalized groups […] P9, a member of an ethnic minority designing a space for discussing non-fiction books, recognized from the simulacra community that one could send hateful messages against non-English speaking members by sharing literature with white supremacist themes.

I hate how much coverage the AI/rat community is giving to "Loab". It seems abundantly clear to me it's a social hoax (or at least just a funny art exhibition) rather than demonstrating anything insightful into the latent space of diffusion models.

"Coincidentally" there was this popular tweet ("Horror story where the same ominous figure recurs across Stable Diffusion samples regardless of the prompt"), shared by e.g. Yudkowsky three days before. Quite likely that the "Loab" author saw that and decided to spin up a hoax on it.

So I looked through the thread and I can't really find what's so crazy about this.

They took a creepy image and combined it with all sorts of random stuff, and then out come more creepy images? That doesn't sound noteworthy.

The twitter OP emphasizes in the replies that the noteworthy thing is that the derivative images seem to conjure gore and body horror. The original creepy image is merely creepy and doesn't have any gore or body horror. This isn't that noteworthy if the training associates gore and body horror with the generally demonic looking eyes and the raw wounded-looking skin that are already in the source Loab.

Since Loab was discovered using negative prompt weights, her gestalt is made from a collection of traits that are equally far away from something. But her combined traits are still a cohesive concept for the AI, and almost all descendent images contain a recognizable Loab.

It seems the researchers did negative(negative("Brando")) to get the original creepy image. I would be more impressed if negative(negative(X)) generated a Loab for many X, including things not anthropomorphic. Or am I misunderstanding something?

I probably leaned into the creepiness of the original story too much. My actual question was more to the effect of "would mixing thing with negative(thing), be a valid countermeasure against AI going over your stuff?"

I can't visualize what "an AI going over your stuff or your community" is. Like if you wanted to make art but do some steganography on it to make it "unlearnable" by a text-to-image AI? Or; if you wanted to have a forum but do something to it so that a language AI couldn't generate plausible-sounding posts?

It's hard for me to imagine a way to mix that would attack the AI but leave human perception unchanged.

Like if you wanted to make art but do some steganography on it to make it "unlearnable" by a text-to-image AI? Or; if you wanted to have a forum but do something to it so that a language AI couldn't generate plausible-sounding posts?

No, not quite...

I have this on my to-watch and have seen it yet, but here's a dad, using AI to go full MI6 on trans social contagion. It's trivial to imagine the government, or various "deradicalization" NGOs doing the same. My question is about possible ways of scrambling that. Having disturbing artifacts randomly pop up for the investigator would be hilarious, and a plus, but not necessary.

It's hard for me to imagine a way to mix that would attack the AI but leave human perception unchanged.

Gilltrut, downthread, seems to disagree

What is people's opinion on indigenous land usage and special rights? I feel a sense of cognitive dissonance, where I find myself supporting such policies as I highly value preserving and promoting indigenous culture. But there remains a tension between indigenous land rights and the liberal notion that land usage shouldn't be based on ethnicity and that the resources should benefit all of society. Particularly now with the extreme electricity prices, where people are literally dying and is being weaponised by Russia, I wonder whether indigenous people should have the right to prevent building power plants on "their" land. A related issue is exceptions to societal rules, eg. wrt animal welfare where they might get dispensation for the laws that apply to animals for the rest of society. Or in other cases laws applying to rights of their children. It's a conflict between the rights of the individual animal or member of the indigenous group, compared to the rights of the indigenous group as a whole to live according to their traditions, which I find difficult to navigate and reconcile.

...liberal notion that land usage shouldn't be based on ethnicity and that the resources should benefit all of society.

This does not strike me as a "liberal" notion.

I believe the OP is referring to this definition of "liberal."

So am I. I don't think the idea that "resources should benefit all of society" is a liberal notion. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but that sounds like a rejection of private property in favor of a more collectivist approach.

Oh, that is not how I read it; I see "land usage shouldn't be based on ethnicity" as an endorsement of private property, as opposed to non-market based arrangements, such as feudalism.

The word 'liberal' may need to be taken out back behind the woodshed with 'socialism' as term that's suffered too much linguistic erosion to be useful. People's aesthetic associations dominate their usage of the word. Not a shared definition.

Traditionally the "liberal" perspective of land use is that you gain ownership over land by working and improving it. If natives are not improving the land, but merely hunting on it, they don't own it. This was the justification of indian removal that early Americans used. For example, IIRC there was usually a provision to pay for any improvements on repossessed lands such as tilled fields or buildings.

Nowadays I try to use the term "classical liberalism" when talking about this kind of thinking, unless I know I'm in an audience that already has this background.

When you say

"their" land

Which land are you referring to? Land they claim was their historically, or land they are currently given via treaty?

Indigenous land usage (here I take to mean reservations and the like) has resulted in some serious issues in how it is current functions in many countries. This is mainly because they tend to take a really wishy-washy middle of the road solution where the native reservations are both simultaneously mostly autonomous but also theoretically subject to federal law, and receive significant federal funding and support. The delineation of authority and responsibility is really poorly defined, especially in the context of contemporary politics where any serious federal government involvement is seen as highly circumspect and often gets accusations of colonialism.

Many of the issues with this system is exemplified with 'First Nations' politics in Canada. Many of the Indian reservations in Canada have huge problems, including persistent problem with clean drinking water. The Canadian government provides funding to the reservations for their water infrastructure, which is then largely managed by the reservation itself. The problem is that many of the 'First Nations' governments are heavily corrupt and very little of the money actually ends up doing what is supposed to. They also heavily resist any audits of their financials. So the end result is that the Canadian government continues to funnel money into reservations with no oversight, then get blamed for the water problems in the reservations and accused of racism/discrimination, or they can step in forcefully and manage it from top-down, in which case they will be accused of overriding the autonomy of 'First Nations' and accused of racism/discrimination. A similar situation also occurs with the high rates of child abuse in these communities - don't intervene and get blamed for not doing enough to help native children, or remove these kids from abusive homes then get accused of cultural genocide.

The system should go in either direction, I don't really have a strong preference which. Either 1) the native reservations should be given more autonomy from the federal government and become all-but-independent, with little support or control from the Federal government, managing their own affairs (then don't get blamed when shit goes bad), or 2) they should be given no special legal status and be subject to the exact same laws, oversight and status as every other Canadian (well, Québécois weird legal system is a discussion for another time). The middle half-arsed solution currently creates a lot of ambiguity and opportunities for abuse. For 1) I'm thinking something akin to the British Overseas Territories, or France's weird setup with New Caledonia.

I don't have any strong feelings about native american tribes until they ask for more than they've been given.

Yeah, they got the short end of the stick, but there is no limit to the number of things they could make credible claims for.

At some point its time to write off the losses and move on, which they have no incentive to do, but damn I have no sympathy left. It's as absurd as Poland's recent request for renumeration from WWII. This stuff is history.

Big exception: If a person was discriminated against, or of their parents were discriminated against while they were children, I'm okay with one time cash compensation for that event.

I don't think that indigenous people are inherently special, I don't think their culture or rights are any more or less deserving of consideration or privilege than those of any other human being, and I don't think they should be legally treated as meaningfully distinct from any other group of people. They're regular people, just like you or me, and they deserve the same dignity and respect for their rights that you and I deserve.

Personally, I think if they made a stronger effort to integrate and adapt to modern society they would probably end up with better economic and life outcomes, but I feel that way about most minority and/or immigrant communities. The ones that value education, technology, respect for the rule of law, tolerance of others, and stuff like that, end up doing just as well as white people, while subcultures that obsess over their race and origins, and refuse to adapt end up poor and angry. Maybe I'm mixing up culture with class, but there's not always a meaningful distinction there, a lot of subcultures feel like variations of "lower class behavior", but I think there's something extra damaging about going off into a separate physical and legal area and preventing the natural spread of ideas and behaviors that the rest of the first world uses to great success.

Which, they're free to do. And in some cases it works out fine, I think the Amish are pretty happy. But if they end up unhappy, which they often do, then I can only shrug and point out that they could at any time be regular citizens like everyone else, and instead choose to be special.

I don't think indigenous people in the US should have any extra rights to anything, nor should they be allowed their own ghetto enclaves in which to live. It's embarrassing. They lost the war(s) and now live in cattle pans while a select few get rich because they get to have casinos. It's absurdism.

The relationship between the federal government and the indigenous tribes is complicated. And yet don't forget that they are entities that have some form of sovereignty over their land. So if someone has a right to prevent power plant construction in a land he owns in a state, the tribes have even more of that right since they are closer to states than to state citizens.

In the American case we should probably re-negotiate treaties that are still in force with the tribes. It's been over a hundred years and there's probably some efficient moves to make to improve the well-being of both parties. It'd also be nice to get a definition of tribal sovereignty down on paper instead of leave it up to the courts to figure out.

I'm guessing we don't because relations with Native Americans are an afterthought in the grand scheme of American politics, and tribal leadership don't want to jeopardize their position. If treaty ratification comes down to a popular vote, tribal members might opt to sell their reservations back to the federal government.

I highly value preserving and promoting indigenous culture. But there remains a tension between indigenous land rights and the liberal notion that land usage shouldn't be based on ethnicity and that the resources should benefit all of society.

Well, that's an instance of a more-general tension, I think:

You can believe that:

  1. Diversity is good,

  2. Integration is good,

  3. Good things should last-

-pick at most two, courtesy of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. A fully-integrated society will homogenize with time, and its diversity will be lost. A society that preserves its diversity indefinitely will require some maintenance to keep it that way, probably looking like some sort of segregation, which is a concept that doesn't sound too appealing, for historical reasons. How to resolve this is no small question, but it's a question so big that I think most people can go their entire lives without having to think about it too much.

Indigenous people are treated as special snowflakes that were untainted by conflict and aggression until corrupting white people arrived. In reality, they're like any other people on the planet albeit they were less technologically advanced and had fewer written records when they made contact with the West. Warfare was just as common as it was anywhere else at equivalent tech levels, so the people we met could more accurately be described as the "penultimate conquerors" of the places they were living. For a while after colonization, history proceeded in the same way as in almost all conquered areas, i.e. the conquerors tried to consolidate their hold through aggressive policies of assimilation and resettlement. Eventually though, white guilt became a dominant moral force which led to the reservations system in the US. Reservations of today are mostly just fronts for rent-seeking where individuals (who are often quite assimilated to the dominant US culture) get paid their racial spoils for having the correct genealogy.

As for building power plants, that should be viewed more as an issue of the reach of eminent domain, i.e. how far you can take "public interest" of broader society to inconvenience individuals living there. It'd be really annoying to have to move if the government wanted to build something near where I live, but I also appreciate living in a society that has interstate highways and the like.

Yeah, the romanticisation of natives is incredibly blatant. I've seen people genuinely argue that the reason as to why Native Americans were conquered was not because Natives had less technology, it's not because their societies and social structures were less developed and less cohesive on a large scale, it was because they had no conception of kicking other people off their land unlike the evil Europeans!

The idea that the Europeans came in and "stole" land that belonged to any one tribe is ridiculous. Tribes were in constant conflict with other tribes, and the question of who "owned" the land was often in a constant state of flux. The Black Hills region is seen to have been taken unfairly from the Lakota by the US, but that region was actually taken by the Lakota from the Cheyenne, and the Cheyenne took that land from the Kiowa. And during all this conflict, it's likely that a lot of groups would've just disappeared and been outcompeted.

And of course, many atrocities were committed. The Iroquois tortured prisoners of war and famously practiced cannibalism. Not only is this documented multiple times in the historical record, there's also archaeological evidence showing evidence in favour of this. Mayans were thought to be peaceful up until it was found that they were routinely enslaving and subjugating their neighbours. In the central Mesa Verde of Southwest Colorado, "90 percent of human remains from that period had trauma from blows to either their heads or parts of their arms."

You have archeological sites like the Crow Creek site, wherein they found the remains of at least 486 people killed during a massacre during the mid-14th century AD between Native American groups. "Most of these remains showed signs of ritual mutilation, particularly scalping. Other examples were tongues being removed, teeth broken, beheading, hands and feet being cut off, and other forms of dismemberment."

In my opinion the very idea of "native" itself is very arbitrary and inaccurate, used primarily as a political bludgeon to try and imply that those groups designated as native have a moral right to the land that the "settlers" don't. It ignores that no group is really "native" to any patch of soil at this point and that pretty much every piece of land has likely been taken from someone else.

Of course the indigenous people should have the right to prevent building power plants or anything else on their land - and so should everyone else. It’s called private property. Offer them enough money or other incentives and they’ll agree to let you build it, this is the only moral way to resolve the situation.

The issue is that indigenous peoples might have controlled an area for centuries, but before the notion of private property was applied.

Should the state treat the land as private property of the indigenous people?

The question wasn't about their land, it was about "their" land in quotes--that is, land that they don't legally own, but which they've made some sort of claim to.

I think these claims should be given about as much respect as Muslims' claims that it's wrong to draw Mohammed, which is to say, none. Generally, you either own it or you don't. If you want to claim rights to something you don't own, I want to see a treaty or other document spelling that out. And if you just say "well, it was conquered from us", either challenge the entire conquest, or don't--don't selectively challenge the aspects of the conquest that you think you're most likely to get away with challenging.

It is couple of months when through Spotify algorithm I encountered a song that I really liked for its lyrics. This was the song - don't worry, I will also publish youtube link later. I have to say that the lyrics grabbed me. Just some excerptions:

It was dark and I was supremely alone

No matter now if the compass fails again

Cause in your love I built a home

Refrain:

We're all we need, oh darling

Yeah, we're all we need, oh darling

Yeah, we're all we need, oh darling

Yeah, we're all we need

Yeah, we're all we need

You get the gist. When I listened to it on Spotify I said to myself how interesting it is to listen to popculture song that expresses woman's lovesong to a man, one does not see something like that anymore. I even said so to some of my friends/family. Only then I listened to youtube version of the song and it was about lesbian love

What I want to say is that "subverting the expectations" went right through over me. The cynical me did not even register it, to me it seems as if it all went through: this is what we had in the past and I can just pretend that this is man/woman love song and it has the same power. I ignore "the message" given the current circumstances and I can quite enjoy it. It is interesting how we went full circle when the current culture adopted old-timey tropes and they pretend to shock somebody. It is strange feeling, as if we are allies. Anyway that's all, I am interested in what you guys have to say to it.

Women’s love songs to men may not be exactly promoted in the culture, but they seem enormously popular even if they’re usually listed as ‘country’ rather than pop despite being nothing of the sort.

So when/where were songs about straightforward love for a man from a woman's perspective actually common? The "early music" examples I can think of of unironic love songs (belle qui tiens ma vie..., Walther von der Vogelweide...) all seem to be m->f; in fact the only f->m one I can think of off the top of my head is Lana Del Rey's reasonably recent Young and Beautiful.

Young and Beautifu

I actually read Lana Del Ray "Young and Beautiful" Lyrics. And it to me seems like she said "I've seen the world, done it all". It is kind of defeatist music.

I think you can find plenty of examples in folk music.

"The Dutchman" (sung by Liam Clancy) is all about Margaret's love for her husband.

Common? I don't know. But I think I'll go to my grave probably thinking that the best song from a f->m romantic perspective is Simple and Clean. Yes, the one from Kingdom Hearts.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0qxdwfxbONM

Honestly, I could do an in-depth analysis of the lyrics of this song, especially in terms of modern gender politics and relationships. (And what, this is like almost 20 years old at this point?) But my hand is busted so I don't feel like typing too much.

Somewhat ironically, Utada later came out as a gynephile, I think (can't really use the term "lesbian," I think Utada also identifies as non-binary now).

I mean, that's not a surprise TBH. Like I said, I could do an in-depth analysis of the song, and its active rejection of the Male Gender Role as a romantic value and breaking the related patterns. (Note: Even though I think it's the best for me personally, because that's my personal aesthetic, at the same time, I don't think it's realistic at all)

Kids these days! 😁 Ella Fitzgerald and The Man I Love? Granted, it's a Cole Porter song. If we're looking for songs written by women, then give me a minute to think about it.

Kate Bush, The Man With The Child In His Eyes, and And So Is Love.

Most of the torch songs were by male songwriters of the Tin Pan Alley days, so it's hard to think of modern ones.

There was a mini-genre of raunchy female blues musicians singing about their men.

E.g.,

Long John Blues

I've got a dentist who's over seven feet tall

Yes I've got a dentist who's over seven feet tall

Long John they call him, and he answers every call

Well I went to Long Johns office and told him the pain was killin'

Yes I went to Long Johns office and told him the pain was killin'

He told me not to worry, that my cavity just needed fillin'


He said "when I start drillin', I'll have to give you novocaine"

He said, "Yes, when I start drillin', I'll have to give you novocaine

Cause ev'ry woman just can't stand the pain"

He took out his trusted drill

And he told me to open wide

He said he wouldn't hurt me

But he'd fill my hole inside

Long John, Long John, you've got that golden touch

You thrill me when you drill me, and I need you very much

Or how about Don't Come To Soon?

Come and see me baby

But please don’t come too soon

We’ve got a date at eight

And it’s only afternoon

The way you rush me, it ain’t right

I know you just can’t wait for tonight

Remember, love is like a mashed potato

If you eat it now, then you won’t have it later

ETA: Irritatingly, the preview below the post composer doesn't actually show how it will format in the post.

I don't know about common in absolute terms. And I'm also no country music connoisseur. But I have memories of Dolly Parton writing a lot of love songs about men from a woman's perspective. And Dolly Parton was (is?) a pretty big deal.

Call Me Maybe is one of my favorite f perspective songs. More infatuation than love, but I think many of the male perspective love songs are more infatuation than love, too.

every song and cover by carly rae jepsen through emotion is about her limerence.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=jCFh0lJ-WAg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nti2mwmm7v2lc9y/a%20scar%20no%20one%20else%20can%20see.pdf

I've always preferred "Run Away With Me" when it comes to the Jepsen ouevre, though for my money the best version is the Adam Neely arrangement...

That reminded me of Come Away with Me, which has lyrics that could apply to either sex, but was recently sung by Norah Jones.

I'm not sure if this is uncommon. Aren't straightforward women's lovesongs to a man the bread and butter of international pop star Taylor Swift's career? Enchanted, Sparks Fly, Love Story, State of Grace, Wildest Dreams, the list goes on.

Looking at the top 10 for 2021... in fairness, there is a pretty dramatic male skew and the "love songs" are all about breakups, troubled relationships, or partying. Expanding to the top 40, the same goes for at least the first few obvious candidates before I got bored.

There are definitely counterexamples, as you demonstrated, but maybe this really is an under-served market?

I watched the video and I don't see it as lesbian. It's recreating "Thelma and Louise", of course, but it can be interpreted any way you like it. Strong Women getting empowered so they are a threat to the Patriarchy and must be taken down? Women as victims of men and only other women will support them? Lesbian love song? Heterosexual love song? You can interpret it on your own level, and that is what makes it saleable with universal appeal.

Granted, I think this will mainly appeal to young women, but there's nothing overt in the lyrics (if you don't watch the video) so that as you did, someone could hear it as "woman singing love song to man".

My own complaint is the "we are all we need" message. That sounds romantic on the surface, but if you really do try to live in a little bubble of 'just we two', you will suffocate. The relationship will break, because there is too much strain on it. The worst excesses lead to folie à deux. You can't and shouldn't have one person be everything to you - romantic partner, best friend, family, sole emotional support, etc. We are meant to live in community, and open out to a wider world of other people, not intertwine in a symbiotic pairing for everything.

What do you think about the concept of the Global North and South?

I never payed much attention to this way of looking at global economics. I don't know anyone from South America or Africa and only a handful of folks from Asia. My only economic reference comes from Fukuyama's "The End of History", where he spent a few pages describing dependency theory and then refuting it by showing how poor Asian countries were able to grow while South American countries, despite being in a similar situation, were not.

A few days ago, I had a chance to meet some people from South America. I believe they were from Brazil and Venezuela. Both worked for NGOs. They quickly turned the topic to colonization, blaming it for all the problems in their countries. I know their countries are not doing too well, both in terms of civic freedom and economics, but I was surprised by how strong their views were--they basically said the Europe and the US are to blame for the bad situation their countries are in. Europe, for colonization and "mass rape", and the USA for the Monroe Doctrine (and the associated string of interference) as well as extracting wealth from South America.

I didn't have time to query them for more details. I'm ambivalent on the question of colonization. I haven't studied it much nor thought about it. I can easily imagine that US interventions have had a destabilizing effect on SA, but I can't imagine how big of an effect that would be. I remember reading Noah Smith's piece on Cuba and how its failure is not the fault of the American embargo, but rather of obviously bad economic policy. I can't help but think that this is the case for other South American countries as well.

How much merit do you think there is in accusing US and Europe for inflicting poverty on the global south? What should I search for if I wanted to know more--thinkers, articles, etc.?

This might be an (whatever type of) NGO culture thing. I haven't heard that opinion too much in South America. Not that it's not there, but people weren't sharing it with me. Then again, I never really asked why their countries weren't more wealthy. In Bolivia, during the recent political crisis, people joked that I (from the US) was there to help overthrow the government. But they were in favor of that.

I've got some personal experience with this vis. living there, and there is something to it.

I lived in a place with good relations with the U.S. 'cause they didn't get caught up in the initial fruit wars and otherwise had no useful resources to extract and are extremally tourist friendly; and everyone on the ground knows that their economic success is 90% attributable to the grace of good 'ol Uncle Sam.

The neighboring country has the Same geography, same racial makeup, same culture, same language, same resource distribution, was inhabited by the same group pre-Spanish settlement, was Conquista'd in the same period, was managed as one administrative unit by Europe during the colonial period, and gained independence within the same Year, month, and day, and had the same style of government after that independence.

Literally the only difference between these countries is that they were slightly richer pre-1900's, and were involved in the first set of Banana wars.

100 years latter, the poor country is doing pretty well, the neighboring rich country occasionally has refugee convoys getting out just ahead of the death squads and has a currency valuation that is doing sick trampoline acrobatics.

It's had to assign the separation point to anything but U.S. colonial ambitions in the 1910-1930's.

Thanks for sharing. I'll dig a bit into what happened in the early XX century.

I recommended Smedley Butler's book, and just general research on the Banana wars, our anti-communist actions in SA during the cold war, and the knock-on effects of plantation economies on modernization.

It's also just mad interesting, IMO.

If colonialism caused economic problems, we should expect a pretty smooth graph of economic function over time based on when various countries gained independence. This is why Haiti is the second-richest and best-functioning government in the western hemisphere, after the US. It's also why Hong Kong is the poorest and least functional in the whole world, they only got out a few years ago!

As with explaining the differential social outcomes of blacks, jews, indians, jamaicans and chinese people in the west with "white supremacy", explaining world economic function with "colonialism" simply doesn't make much sense at a sniff-test level. It's a convenient narrative for people who have a political need to lay all the world's problems at the feet of a couple countries they happen to hate, but it really makes little to no sense.

I think the entire concept of Global North and Global South is bunk.

How does it explain China going from Global South to Global North? Formally they're still supposed to be part of the Global South, yet they have a space station and roughly 28% of world manufacturing! They absolutely do not belong in the same geo-economic category as Columbia or South Africa. Europeans caused a lot of harm to China in the Opium Wars and various treaties, Japan killed around 20 million with bombing, bioweapons and conventional weapons, they addicted Chinese to heroin infused cigarettes.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/japanese-opium-trade-in-china

If anyone has an axe to grind about colonialism or imperialism, it should be China. Yet they're now an imperial, pseudo-colonial power themselves.

Or look at Ethiopia. They held off the Italians and maintained formal independence until 1937. The Italians only got to rule the country for 4 years until the British crushed them in 1941. They got to hold onto certain parts of Somaliland from 1949 until 1960. How could Italian colonialism be at fault for Ethiopia's problems today?

One counterargument is that Thailand was never colonized and is richer and more stable than its neighbours in Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam. But couldn't you also argue that Thailand wasn't colonized because it was inherently stronger as a polity, so of course it would remain more stable and develop faster? Before Europe arrived, they were the regional hegemon.

World Systems theory seems to point out 'here are the strong countries and here are the weak countries'. Then they say 'the strong countries are rich and the weak countries poor, because the strong are exploiting the weak'. Instead, I suggest the strong countries are rich because they are strong, because they become more or less capable. This is mostly down to internal policy and the fundamental geographic and demographic qualities of the country.

Arguably, the Chinese do indeed have an axe to grind about the "Century of Humiliation."

EDIT: Also, I learned from C&Rsenal that Thailand/Siam was actually being sort-of colonized, or at least were losing territory to the British and French and underwent a sort of "self-colonization" in order to modernize and (try to) get a modicum of respect.

I was just thinking today that when checking Twitter for what people in some Global South country are saying about colonialism, you often see quite a few ones that do blame colonialism... for putting the wrong tribe in charge of their country. For instance, Biafran independence activists in Nigeria blaming British colonialism for putting Muslisms (or non-Igbo in general) in charge of Nigeria, or making it an unwieldy artificial state project. Or, as a variation, black South Africans blaming white South Africans not as much for apartheid but for facilitating illegal immigration from Nigeria and Zimbabwe to South Africa, taking away native black South African jobs by employing illegal immigrants. And so on.

Just recently I saw some United Nations organ make a basic "colonialism was bad" post Tweet related to Africa and pretty much all comments were people from various African countries bashing some other tribe or ethnic group in their own country.

Biafran independence activists in Nigeria blaming British colonialism for putting Muslisms (or non-Igbo in general) in charge of Nigeria, or making it an unwieldy artificial state project

I think those complaints are much more legitimate. Direct material exploitation is, speaking long-term, easy to recover from, but wrecked geopolitics in already-fragile regions can lead to long-term stability issues and consistent human capital flight. And that's far worse.

https://freaktakes.substack.com/p/bombs-brains-and-science?s=r

In total, Allied bombings completely destroyed about 18.5% of German homes. Inner-city homes represented an inordinately high chunk of these homes since inner-cities were the very rough target of these campaigns. Coincidentally, inner-cities also are where a high share of universities are located.

All of that is to say: there was a large sample of university research buildings that were partially or fully destroyed by Allied bombs without much rhyme or reason.

Would you rather lose 10% of your researchers or 10% of your labs?

Now, getting your academic building partially blown to shreds is obviously bad for departmental productivity. But, so is having up to 15% of your professors fired for something as arbitrary as having a Jewish grandparent or attending a communist party meeting. And, while it’s obvious that both of these will at least temporarily decrease departmental output, it is not clear at all which is worse, either in the short run or in the long run.

In the short run, a 10% shock to human capital—dismissing 10% of a department’s scientists—reduced departmental output by .2 standard deviations. A 10% shock to physical capital—the destruction of 10% of a department’s buildings—lowered output by .05 standard deviations. The effects of losing 10% of your researchers was 4X that of losing 10% of your buildings in the short-run.

In the long-run, the effects of dismissing researchers persisted. Departments continued to underperform up through 1980, when the data for the study stops. Meanwhile, by 1970, departments that were bombed were experiencing increased productivity, meaning that bombed departments may have benefited from upgrading during postwar reconstruction.

the dismissal of scientists in Nazi Germany contributed NINE TIMES MORE to the decrease in scientific output in Germany than did the destruction of a large percentage of its research buildings.

Sounds simply like outgroup-versus-fargroup effects. The nearer enemy will take more attention than one encountered primarily in theory. This changes if your milieu changes, such as if you're an employee of an NGO.

They quickly turned the topic to colonization, blaming it for all the problems in their countries.

It's a favorite Communist tactic to do this. Also saying European prosperity is based on colonialism.

Handy talking point. I know it's a Communist tactic because literal Communists functionaries to whom I was talking (my grandparents) were very big on it, and Communists were known to be hierarchical and coordinate their talking points very well.

You can ask them why then e.g. European countries that never colonised anyone such as say, FInland, Sweden, Poland are all vastly better off despite e.g. Poland starting from the low point of having had an inefficient planned economy imposed on it for decades.

It's mostly nonsense.

American meddling my have damaged South America, but prosperity is based not on piles of money but having functional industries and good economic policies. Ask South Koreans. Colonised, desperately poor in 1950s (poorer than Africa), now one of the richest countries in the world.

I happen know quite a few Brazilian nationals and expats due to a hobby. I’ve not once heard them blame Europe or US for their problems. When they’ve talked about the issues, they blame the local politicians and general poverty.

I’m pretty sure your experience is explained by the three letter term ”NGO”.

The "blame colonialism and the supreme capitalist whiteness" looks like it is more diffused in certain particular demographics (left-wing above all, but especially academics and women) than between the lower-middle classes natives of these countries.

All the above I have seen in my life came always from upper-middle class women, often daughters of immigrants themselves, and almost never from the proletariat

Especially when I saw the influencer daughter of Africans complaining about the last oppression, and immediately after that hearing the congolese taxy workers saying "this place (Belgium) is amazing and the people are even better.

I have a hobby of learning spanish and portuguese (via actually talking to people online, I learned through hundreds and hundreds of conversation partners and this has ranged across every single latin american country). Which then also led to a job working with people in south america.

Most people aren't very political, of course. When this topic does come up, my experience has been the same as yours. While I think most people would say that US interference for example had a detrimental effect on their country, it's pretty rare to find someone who pins all of the blame on that.

That's my experience too from reading Spanish language subreddits. The one exception I can think of is that a lot of Mexicans blame the US for the cartels (because we are their biggest customer). Granted neither of those are related to colonialism.

Just like the biggest activists for black people are not usually black and the ones for trans people aren't trans, the biggest anti-colonial activists are not the people supposedly hurt by colonialism.

Lindsey Graham proposed a 15 week abortion ban in the Senate. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/13/abortion-graham-republicans-nationwide-ban/

This has to be an attempt to fire the base, but it seems like bad politics to me. I think abortion is an issue that has turned out to be a car the dog finally caught. Kansas declined to allow the legislature to restrict abortion. Here in MN, the Republican candidate for governor claimed he wanted to ban it in March; and just last week came out with an ad that it is a constitutional right in the state, therefore it's not an issue he's running on - after polling showed his ticket almost 20 points down. Now it's an issue again regardless of his efforts to move to other topics.

After Dodd, it isn't even clear that there is a federal issue to base a ban on, although the commerce clause is vast. Graham's bill lowers the ceiling for when abortion is legal, but sets no floor so states that still enact bans are able to do so. While this bill won't even get a hearing in the Senate, it does shed a pall on talk of federalism from this minority.

I suspect he is trying to deflate the "Republicans want to ban all abortions" attack from the Democrats and make abortion less of an issue in the midterms. Talking about abortion distracts from the economy and other issues that he probably sees as more favorable at winning over independents. The fact that his bill will never pass makes it almost a complete freebie too.

The lack of preemption over more restrictive state laws is probably closer to constitutionally correct than had it been included, but the lack of even an attempt to defang or prohibit restrictions before this time frame, or restrictions related to travel for abortion, make that unlikely to be successful.

15 weeks basically bans selective abortions from parents who want to be certain about things like Downs (amniocentesis can't be done until about 14 weeks).

Something like 90 to 95% of abortions are complete before 12 weeks. Doesn't seem like it would fire up mich of the base, who either are fine with aborting late discovered abnormalities or won't care about an effectively meaningless limit.

Under the principle be nice until you can coordinate meanness this seems like a squandering of political capital. That said I don't hate it as much as some other stuff they could squander capital on (like a foreign war or a tax cut that takes away as much as it gives to me).

Text of bill:

It does not apply if:

  • "in reasonable medical judgment, the abortion is necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman";

  • "the pregnancy is the result of rape against an adult woman, and[,] at least 48 hours prior to the abortion[,] she has obtained counseling… or… medical treatment for the rape"; or

  • "the pregnancy is a result of rape… or incest against a minor, and the rape or incest has been reported… to either a government agency… or a law enforcement agency".

or incest against a minor, and the rape or incest has been reported

I'm curious why it seems every discussion concerning abortion exemptions seems to include this. It seems redundant to me - surely incest with a minor is a class of rape?

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There is a lot of conspiratorial thinking going on on both sides of the ideological spectrum. I think this goes without saying on the right, but on the left, if you think about it, it's fairly conspiratorial to allege that the primary lens through which institutional structures and outcomes should be assessed is through deeply engrained prejudice. In other words, it's pretty conspiratorial to allege that all of society's existing structures and institutions are corrupted by the nebulous forces of systemic racism/sexism/etc. and it can easily be considered paranoia to claim that because I've experienced x adverse outcome it must necessarily be because of this nebulous force that's out to get me. With that said, I do think that such forms of prejudice exist to some extent in some cases, but because they are largely more conceptual and abstract it's very easy to tap them as the primary causal force, without having to provide any real evidence or reasoning.

And much of this thinking is cloaked by a supposed commitment to skepticism, which I think most people would agree is virtuous. But at a certain point skepticism just becomes conspiratorial thinking. It’s important to consider all ideas on their merit, but it’s also important to consider that not all ideas have equal merit, meaning we cannot always say that in the absence of incontrovertible truth we must adopt an agnostic position. I could very easily allege that the mods of this subreddit were paid by x nefarious organization to start this webpage, and because you can't come up with evidence to the contrary, maybe I'm right.

Conspiratorial thinking, at the outset, appears to have merit. But mechanically it is throwing every element of an event into question, which is hampered by a. Bounded rationality; we cannot possibly comprehend the interplay between all elements of a given phenomenon and b. The fact that we do not have all of the relevant information on all elements of a given thing.

I'll happily take the other side of that argument. Conspiratorial thinking is underrated, especially by people coming from the "citation needed" / "correlation is not causation" school of skepticism.

Anti-conspiratorial thinking relies on the assumption, that if there was a conspiracy, we'd see solid evidence of it. That assumption is unfounded. The hierarchical structure of most human organizations means access to information is not equally distributed, which allow any potential conspirator to operate undetected, or at the very least, with plausible deniability.

On top of that, even in cases where there is solid evidence, conspirators can play on preexisting social, and political conflicts, and use them for cover. "X can't be true, that's something the outgroup would say". Even now, even on this forum, you could probably trip that particular wire for a few people, just by factually describing a few aspects of the Rotheram Rape Gang case.

Another issue is a sort of mental block, that people who grew up in high-trust societies have. To paraphrese Hlynka from the other thread: sure, our government can be corrupt, but it's corrupt in benign ways. All those other countries might have subverted institutions, and public officials who look the other way, but not us! Even private corporations are shielded by this mentality in a perverse way. Rich Westerners consider themselves cynical when they believe the CEOs, and Wallstreet fatcats would sell their grandma for a dollar, but the idea they might do something shady for reasons that aren't profit related, is considered "conspiratorial".

Now, I'm not saying to blindly follow every conspiracy theory. A good conspiratorial thinker knows their limits. At the end of the day, all it is, is pointing at the smoke in the distance, and figuring there might be a fire. If you know enough about the surrounding area, you might guess what is burning, and how the fire started, or you might be wrong, and there might not be a fire at all.

All I'm saying is that conspiratorial thinking should not be dismissed.

Anti-conspiratorial thinking relies on the assumption, that if there was a conspiracy, we'd see solid evidence of it. That assumption is unfounded. The hierarchical structure of most human organizations means access to information is not equally distributed, which allow any potential conspirator to operate undetected, or at the very least, with plausible deniability.

Best answer to these "but someone would talk" debunking talking point is introduction into some actually existent historical conspiracies well documented by mainstream history, some of them very large and long lasting, that managed to stay secret and achieve their purpose.

Is it really so implausible, Mr. Skeptic, that important and influential secret conspiracies are active now, in this time and place?

Another issue is a sort of mental block, that people who grew up in high-trust societies have. To paraphrese Hlynka from the other thread: sure, our government can be corrupt, but it's corrupt in benign ways.

Typical example is Greg Cochran. Very smart guy, but devoted old school flag - bald eagle - apple pie patriot with all blind spots you can expect. For someone like this, idea that his beloved Eagleland

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Eagleland

was infiltrated and controlled by blackmail is simply unacceptable.

See in this thread Cochran cavalierly (but uneasily) dismissing the whole Epstein thing with barrage of lame jokes (Evidence please. No, this is not evidence! Not this! Not this! Not this either!)

https://twitter.com/gcochran99/status/1548817244599099392

(of course, YMMV whether this hot take by the great basilisk man himself in this thread is better: "Pedophile mafia in control, trust the plan!")

https://twitter.com/RokoMijic/status/1547324263052595200

The next obvious culture war front has been opened by the Hungarian government. After importing the immigration, race, gender topics, they have to keep up with American CW discourse on abortion too. It's the hip new thing to discuss since the overturning of Roe. The state-of-the-art polarizing issue, proven to work in America.

Hungary enshrines 'fetal heartbeat' abortion law

Under the new law, doctors must also issue a report that records that the pregnant woman was presented "with the factor indicating the functioning of fetal vital functions in a clearly identifiable manner."

This has been a long time request by the far right Our Homeland Movement, but apparently such laws exist also in the US.

I don't care about abortion. I don't think Orban cares about it either. It's purely about sowing division and polarization. Orban is happy to push the exact buttons that will trigger the left, in a predictable way. But what's the point? I can see two things: an attempt at distraction from the exploding inflation and utility price hikes, in violation of their election promises, or it's about pandering to Republicans (see CPAC, Tucker Carlson) in hopes of not-sure-what, by doing things that are legible to Americans. It's not like Americans would understand the significance of the local CW stuff, so it has to be photogenic sexy up to date topics of the day for the American right to care.

I hope gun control/freedom won't be the next thing coming up. Because now almost all other American CW fronts have been imported.

Knowing a bit of the Hungarian Right-Wing Intellighenzia, I really hoped that they would have worked hard to not attract the Eye of Sauron (the US)

It is one thing to cultivate relationship with the American right-wing, another one to become the focus of the attention of the global liberal commentariat. At this point Hungary is receiving an enormous and not proportional to her size attention by Bruxelles, and I would not like to see also attention from Washington.

Better to have a lot of abortion and to have more space to cultivate pro-family and anti-immigration sentiments than fighting a stupid CW on a topic that in Europe is almost settled.

Immigration and race aren't imported -- the European Union (which Hungary is a member of) had enough problems with both a full year before the Trump campaign made them the salient discussion topics in the US.

Seven years ago there were a few months when it was indeed an important topic that hundreds of thousands of migrants wanted to pass through Hungary.

I can understand that it's an important topic in Western Europe, but in Hungary it's imported and larped.

I hope gun control/freedom won't be the next thing coming up. Because now almost all other American CW fronts have been imported.

What are gun laws like in Hungary? When I think of Hungary and guns, I think of old stuff, like the F.E.G. factory from the dual-monarchy days, or the Kiraly 43M submachine gun.

I looked them up on the English language net. What a sad story. Armed forces apparently didn't like the AMD-65 so instead they produced the AK-63 which is just another AKM clone. Major export markets to Afghanistan (Taliban), Iraq (Saddam), Nicaragua (Sandinistas) and Croatia (during the Yugoslav war) ended up closed off from various sanctions right around when Hungary joined the EU. Supposedly they mostly do HVAC while the Hungarian Defense Forces started buying Czech rifles.

So, out of curiosity, I looked at the r / hungary subreddit, which is yet another very obvious example of leftist platform capture through the actions of biased admins, meaning that it can be counted on to provide a good summary of the generated oppositional outrage. I was a bit surprised by the narrative that there's apparently an ongoing local epidemic of helpless women getting brutally raped and impregnated by, I don't know, hairy alt-right incel gamer programmers or something (we're supposed to assume they are all White, of course), therefore this new law will mean that hordes of women already deeply and tragically scarred by the psychological trauma of incel rape will, if they elect to undergo abortion, be forced by Nazi shitheads to undergo the additional trauma of having to listen to heartbeat of the rapist's "baby" (clump of cells, or something), which is, like, super terrible.

...huh? What? What % of female rape victims even get pregnant?

Is this theory also imported from US culture warriors? I really want to know.

...huh? What? What % of female rape victims even get pregnant?

Despite being 0.13% pregnancies, rape pregnancies constitute for 50% anti-anti-abortion arguments!

(we're supposed to assume they are all White, of course)

According to Wikipedia the demographics of Hungary are 83% ethnic Hungarian, 15% undeclared, 3% Romani and trace amounts of others.

Most of the "undeclared" are Romani, and their proportion is even higher among the younger cohort. Statistics can be misleading.

Also for what it's worth the overwhelming majority of Hungarian immigrants to the Czech Republic that I met when I lived there were Gypsies

If Orban just copy-pastes American conservative rhetoric to Hungary, it is expected that opposition will pursue a similar strategy: not indigenous leftism, but an American imported one unadjusted for local conditions.

Do leftists in Hungary take American frames for opposing Orban, or do they go at it from a more indigenous cultural frame?

I just checked a few threads and can't see such stuff on /r/hungary. Even for that sub, what you describe would be quite fringe .


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