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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   26593 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

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A funnier and more realistic movie would be about two gay teen boys pulling the same stunt. But depicting gay men as being as horny as straight ones, and not possesing a gaydar with 0% false positive rate, is considered by the present zeitgeist to be immoral.

Did I miss a comment somewhere, or is that article about removing a scene of two gay men forceably abducting a teenager,? That, ah, seems a bit more than horny gay guys mistaking straight guy for gay. I think the child abduction and presumed rape is the immoral part?

Apologies if I missed some comment somewhere that zooms out to what you said instead.

Where have all the teen comedies gone? Twenty years ago, it seemed like there were at least several of these every summer to capitalise on the general debauchery and sexual exploits of modern day teenagers, but I can't remember a memorable teen movie in the last few years.

The world has become too lousy in those 20 years.

Twenty years ago, it seemed like there were at least several of these every summer to capitalise on the general debauchery and sexual exploits of modern day teenagers, but I can't remember a memorable teen movie in the last few years.

Thank fucking god. Sitting down in the theater to enjoy the latest film and then having my senses assaulted by a trailer blaring society's sexual expectations at me made me want to turn into the Joker. Hey, remember all your crazy sexual hijinks in high school? Remember how awkward your first time was? See, it's funny because these are universal human experiences. I mean, can you imagine someone who's never had sex? Look at how horny these teenagers are. How would that even be possible?

I find your comment confusing. You disliked sexy teenage movies because you were a teenager not having sex?

Yes.

Well, I suppose I might not have liked them anyways, but I doubt I would have the same seething resentment. Cinema is specifically designed to elicit an emotional response, and it can be shockingly effective, even in ways the creators never intended.

Where have all the teen comedies gone? Twenty years ago, it seemed like there were at least several of these every summer to capitalise on the general debauchery and sexual exploits of modern day teenagers, but I can't remember a memorable teen movie in the last few years.

As I read this I thought you were going to go with "because social-justice sensibilities consider them Problematic and are influential among the people and companies that make movies". (The other big potential contributor would be the idea I've seen that comedies are declining because they struggle to justify getting people to come to the theater instead of streaming.)

Nearly all gay films deal with the uncomfortableness and trauma of coming out, but what makes this film unique is that the two main characters are simply gay without further explanation. That alone makes it worth watching in my opinion.

...which makes your actual followup puzzling to me. If that is the reason then of course one of the few teen comedies that makes it to release will be one that immunizes itself by trumpeting social-justice credentials as loudly as possible!

One of the funniest and most absurd movies I've ever seen, its premise revolves around two lesbian high school friends setting up their own "fight club" to ostensibly offer self-defence lessons to girls, when in fact they just want to get laid. If that doesn't entice you, the self defence teacher is none other than Marshawn Lynch.

I apologize for the snark, but when you open with this and you give the most importance to the identity of the characters rather than even so much as including a memorable scene, I am rather inclined to doubt that there is a part more memorable than starring lesbians.

Is there any comedy that you’d try to recommend by describing a memorable scene? I find explaining a joke never comes across well.

It’s possible to reference a scene without agonizingly explaining the joke. For example, “I never expected to enjoy a movie where Ben Stiller masturbating is not one, but two plot points.” I assume this is what OP was going for, letting the reader imagine Marshawn Lynch coaching lesbian wrestling.

All that aside, yeah, the movie probably isn’t great. Most aren’t, and that’s before narrowing the field to horny teen comedies. But this is the CW thread, so we might as well get some mileage out of it.

If I tried to describe Weird Science - nerdy boys make magical female to get laid/have fun- it would involve just as demographic information in the summary as the one OP gave. And it would be just as relevant - the comedy is coming from the very fact that they are heterosexual and are trying to sate those drives.

Obviously, since lesbians are a minority, you'd have to make it more explicit but it's pretty similar.

says Seligman, who uses she/they pronouns.

What the fuck does this even mean? I saw it again not long ago, initially thinking nothing of it. Then something in the grammar nazi part of my brain, mostly vestigial at this point, started yelling at me.

"She/they? That's the same fucking tense!"

Seriously. He/him, she/her, even they/them makes a certain sense. Even she/them would sort of make at least grammatical sense, even if it fails on rational sense. Not like that matters anymore anyways. But what the fuck am I supposed to make of she/they? Flip a coin? Pray to Slaanesh who's time comes closer daily for divine guidance? Just accept that my fate is sealed any time I attempt to address or reference this person, and accept my fate as would a peasant in an avalanche?

I'm just so very, very tired at this point.

Grammar nitpick: you mean that they’re the same case, not tense. Tense is associated with verbs and tells you what time an action took place. Case is associated with pronouns or nouns and tells you the word’s relation to the action (e.g. was it performing the action? Receiving it? Benefitted by it?).

Well, I did say my grammar nazi gland was mostly vestigial. So noted, maybe I'll appear less ignorant next time it comes up.

I think 'she/they' is short for 'she/her or they/them'.

He/they user here, it just means either pronoun set is fine. "She/they" is just shorthand for "She/her/hers or they/them/theirs", usually in the sense of "She/her/hers or they/them/theirs, dealer's choice."

If they're anything like me, it's probably because they honestly consider themself nonbinary but they aren't visually readable as gender-nonconforming, have a deferential/non-confrontational habit, don't find absolute pronoun correctness a particularly critical part of life, and/or are averse to policing other peoples' language on principle.

That said, there also do exist a (probably small, but memorable) set of people who will see "She/they" in a bio and do their damnedest to rotate between the two mid-sentence like "She felt their day was going exactly as she hoped it would when they walked out of her door" which is absolutely alien to me and I cannot fathom wanting that or wanting to participate in that. I have to wonder whether that's actually what anyone is truly asking for or if it's just misinterpretation all the way down and nobody in-ranks wants to ask or clarify.

Even when people ask for "any pronouns" (which ... I have a personal and probably irrational aversion to) I always assume what they mean is "pick one set, whichever, and then use that one" not "all text and speech referring to me must be indecipherable".

I do think most people who do it just use "She/they" or "He/they" to mean "Use whichever of these causes the least friction for you, neither one bothers me."

It at least definitely never means "She walked they dog in she front yard."

I have no personal animos in this regard, I generally like and get on with people and try to be polite and accommodating, but I just don't get the pronoun thing, nor non-binary identity for that matter.

No-one has to identify with their sex (it is a mere fact) -your expression is entirely up to you, but getting me to do something to support your identity misses the point of what society is. I disagree entirely with the belief system that undergirds non-binary identity and resent even your compromise position of people not having to use certain words to describe you. I don't want the layer that this sits at to be important in my engagements with people - I don't want any baggage around identity to sit between our person to person engagement. You deciding on a special layer feels like a power-play to me, that you have the upper hand. And it denies the primacy of scientific facts, which don't require social proof. Sex labels are actually more freeing than locking into a particular gender identity. If this is what your non-binary identity means, not being locked into any particular style, presentation, then you still don't need the label. Just be it.

What would the world be like if everyone insisted on being referred to in a certain way, how cumbersome - none of us are deserving of that kind of special treatment.

Now language can change and certain languages have honorifics etc. You can make a case that gendered languages could bake in certain cultural assumptions. But English is not particularly gendered and male/female need not have any assumptions baked into them.

Sorry this has turned into a kind of rant/scold but I never get to say this in the open, which I think is the great bit about anonymous posts. In a workplace I would be forced to accommodate you and you wouldn't know how I felt about it.

I'm sorry in advance that I don't have anything more interesting to respond with here, but I just wanted to say this is a good reply and I'm glad you replied. I actually think most of your intuitions here are basically directionally correct and I share a lot of your frustrations at a lot of the current conventions surrounding gender identity. As you say, much of it is, at best, not useful for human connection, and at worst, detrimental to it. Maybe I'll write more deeply on it here someday.

Great, Id be keen to hear one day- some of my comments probably could be a bit more nuanced. I mean there is a gender layer between sex, culture and psychology - I wouldn't reduce it away entirely from the inter-personal space but the underlying framework around it we have currently I find limiting.

Well given the total success of Bros, I'm sure this will also be a success.

But being more serious, I think your endorsement of this movie is indicative of the whole problem of Hollywood and its inability to understand why a certain genre is even worth watching. For the teen comedy. The hot girls is the whole point of the movie. Also the misogynistic-leaning humor. I have to assume this one has very little of either based on the posters and marketing materials. I'm sure you thought it was funny, but I doubt the box office will agree. Lesbians as a trope are titillating to a male audience when they are particularly attractive and more bisexual than lesbian. A full on lesbian comedy will probably not be the latter for most people at all. Modern Hollywood is just too stilted to properly demean its lesbians for being bad people (a key component of the teen comedy).

Why would Marshawn Lynch, famous for being one of the most uncharismatic people in the intentionally boring NFL be a selling point?

I don't get the weird nostalgia for 90s sex comedies at all. The pinnacle of the genre was a dude sticking his dick in an apple pie.

They were shit. Let them rot.

Well, there are sex comedies, and there are teen comedies. There is a lot of overlap, but I'd consider them distinct categories all the same. But I guess the focus is still on raunchy teen comedies.

I mean, their appeal for teens is obvious. Well, at least it was obvious when I was a teen, more on that later. Finding a way to see them that doesn't involve having your overly open minded parents taking you is a coming of age task that may be more memorable than the film itself. And even if your mom, who considers herself more of your friend than a parent, is willing to drop you off at the movies to see American Pie, you hopefully had enough shame to not take her up on that.

Then again, with the proliferation of internet porn, twitch titty streamers, instagram thirst traps, etc, the libidinous motivations that go into seeing a raunchy teen comedy have more or less been diverted elsewhere. So maybe they should just be left to rot. Maybe their time was before 8 year olds could watch double fisting on the tablets their parents shut them up with.

No, they weren't shit, or at least not all of them. American Pie offers an interesting treatment of male friendship and the transition to adulthood. I don't want to take this too far, but in some ways, it's a really beautiful movie. (I don't deny the sequels were shameless cash-grabs).

I agree with other comments that the teen sex comedy genre was crushed by a combination of (1) competition from online porn and (2) changes to cultural mores (particularly surrounding sexual harassment and consent). Larger Hollywood consolidation trends aren't completely irrelevant, but I don't think they were the main driver.

[Edited for clarity]

I want to discuss the Pathfinder fanfic "in His strength, I will dare and dare and dare until I die". I'm going to start by copy-pasting the submission statement I gave it on /r/rational and then I will dive deeper into the culture war aspects of the work:

Iomedae can tell Lily how all these vegetables are picked and which are the best ones to pick. ...some of them are out of season. It is super weird that they're here. How did they do that, preservation magic? On vegetables?

Evelyn Steel: "I don't know a lot about the Costco supply chain but they might be from somewhere far away where they're in season? Transport is pretty cheap with container ships, like we saw in the video. Or they might be grown in a greenhouse - that's a big building with a glass roof that lets in the sun, but where you can keep it warmer inside than outside and sort of make the plants think it's the right time of year."

Iomedae: "That is very good. Say to the seasons, no! We stronger!"

So I was reading Eliezer Yudkowsky's Twitter feed, as one does, and suddenly I saw that he had retweeted a post about a glowfic. Now, I've never been able to get into glowfic before; I've bounced off planecrash more times than you can imagine. But the quotes seemed interesting enough that I decided to try taking a look anyway...

...and I was hooked. I binged it over several hours, and are currently refreshing the thread several times a day in hopes of catching the next update.

The basic premise is that a 15-year-old Paladin chick named Iomedae gets reverse-Isekai'd to Earth on her way to join her holy order as a novice. At first she falls-in with a group of illegal immigrant workers, but later comes to the attention of the authorities after stabbing a man who attempts to rape her. Unfortunately, while fifteen may be old enough to be considered an adult back in medieval fantasyland, here in twenty-first century America it means Iomedae is distinctly underage, so she gets assigned to veteran foster mother Evelyn Steel.

What follows is an absolutely glorious outside look at contemporary American society through the eyes of a teenage Paladin from a medieval fantasy setting. You get the good (21st century USA really is an absurdly rich place by both historical and international standards; praise God and Costco!), the bad (adolescents are legally treated as children despite being biological adults), and the ugly (the realities of what immigration enforcement actually entails). Toss in a generous helping of economics, ethical philosophy, effective altruism, and taking ideas seriously, and you have the makings of a rationalist classic.

Negatives? I don't like Lily. She was cute at first, but her speech impediment got old really fast. Eventually her posts started getting translated into standard English in footnotes, but even so I don't think she is pulling her weight as a character; I don't see how the story would be worse without her.

Finally, if you like this story, you may also enjoy "that I may be as bold in my beliefs"; an AU where Iomedae ends up in Sunnydale defending her immigrant worker friends from Buffyverse vampires with the help of Slayer Karen Teller.

Now, as I said, Iomedae is from medieval fantasyland, and her writer does a good job portraying her someone who has different values and ideas from a modern American. I particularly liked the way she reacted to the modern concept of rape:

Doctor: " - most cases of rape among students at school are cases of students who are already dating, and go somewhere private together on purpose but with different understandings of what will happen from there, or of a person getting so drunk or high they cannot meaningfully consent to sex and then someone choosing to have sex with them anyway, or of adults seeking out sex with people under the age of consent, which we call statutory rape."

Iomedae: "Okay I think the word rape not mean what I thinked it mean. What is the word for making someone have sex with you by being stronger than them or having a better knife."

Doctor: "...that is rape. It's just a very rare kind compared to all the other kinds I just described."

All the other things he described were just - situations in which obviously someone will have sex with you because you weren't trying to stop them. Which is pretty different from situations where people will have sex with you even if you are trying to stop them. But maybe if there are lots of people around who will go off with random teenage boys or get insensible with drink around them then most people do not try to go after people who'll forcefully object. Maybe in America you really pretty much only get raped if you are without papers or astoundingly reckless.

I found this extremely refreshing. The central example of rape is "woman was minding her own business when someone broke into her house and forced her". It is incredible how little of what gets called "rape" actually fits that category, and can be better described as "woman cruising for a dicking regrets the dicking come next morning". It is the worst argument in the world, enshrined into our legal code.

Or consider how she deals with the stifling secularism of progressive society:

Iomedae: "I - understand - you both have bad time with church. I am sorry that you did. I do not know enough to say more about it. And I have no guess if Jesus alive or no. But I think Christians good and cool. I believe you that my life easier if I pretend this. I no going pretend it."

Claudette Desjardins: "...Okay, fair, if all Christians were like you about it then churches would probably not suck."

Emily Bergeron: "I think probably a lot of Christians are lovely people who don't suck at all and don't want anyone to go to Hell? I mean, Evelyn's Christian. It's just, like, the obnoxious ones are louder." Shrug. "Also a lot of Christians, like, don't want their kids learning real science in school, or don't believe in modern medicine, whereas I feel like your god would be all in favor of technology and understanding the world better."

Iomedae: "Technology and Costco and space and understand the world very good and important and the job of all people. I believe you many Christians say or do bad things, but the ones I have knowed were good to me when they have very little to share, and my life was so much better with them, and things very bad for them now and it my fault, so I no going to - pretend I have no thing to do with them for life easier. And I think Jesus have right idea and I bet He does want me grow up be like Him, if He is real."

This is intensely upsetting. Why is this so upsetting. Probably because she does not have many allies, and she needs allies, and you have to make compromises to keep allies, but - she was not actually expecting 'denounce Jesus and the people who follow him' to be her new allies' first demand. She would not really have imagined that as in the range of demands allies made of each other; she hasn't asked anyone else to pray, or to pause before meals for her to pray, or even to allow her time in her day for it. She is trying to keep in mind that 'how to appease Americans' is valuable information even when the choice she makes is that it is not worth it to her to appease Americans, but it turns out it's still deeply unpleasant to navigate demands with that in mind.

I imagine more than one red triber has felt something similar upon going to college. But it goes further than that; Iomedae really believes in hell, the way she believes in the grocery store around the corner, and that is obviously going to have a huge effect on the way she lives her life.

And just so I don't get accused of only liking this story because it confirms all my biases, Iomedae also has words for modern immigration enforcement:

Iomedae: "I also angry it take years get papers. I think maybe I go different place where people can work without papers."

Well. This is really not going well, is it.

Evelyn Steel: "Iomedae, you're a clever girl and a determined girl and you know I can't stop you. I think you next year will be happier if you stay long enough to learn more about - what the places where they let you work without papers - are like. ...Actually, I should look this up, but I think there might not be very many places like that, just - places where the government isn't very good at government things and so they won't notice if someone is breaking the law."

Iomedae: "I pretty sure there many places where legal work without papers. That a evil America thing. No where else do that."

So, overall, I highly recommend this fic. It will make you think, and it will give you a great outside look at the assumptions we take for granted living in modernity. If you have never played Pathfinder, don't worry; neither have I. As long as you know about paladins and wizards from reading The Order of the Stick or similar you know everything you need to know to enjoy the narrative. Iomedae may have ascended to godhood in canon, but in this story that is just her awesome destiny.

Iomedae sounds like an idiot on the subject of immigration, because she's very clearly being an author-mouthpiece. Does she have an opinion on whether or not Cheliax, if they found a way to replicate her journey, should be able to start sending evangelists of Asmodeus over en masse? Or is the point that because she has access to at-will detect evil, she doesn't understand how when dealing with mere mortals, we can't just march her in front of every immigrant and have her decapitate the evil ones, and let the rest pass on through? I wonder what she'd think of a cabal of mortal wizards who started mass-binding souls in order to shove them into whatever Pathfinder's version of Mount Celestia is. Or the Worldwound, for that matter.

Actually, there are a bunch of things I'd want her to run into. In Pathfinder (and in almost every edition of D&D), humans are not sexual dimorphic in ability spread; men are taller and heavier than women in nearly every race, but this does not affect their attribute spread. So, does she have a low-level melee-combatant attribute spread or an actual teenage girl attribute spread? And how does she react to, in the first case, learning that compared to what she's used to, men and women might as well be half-orcs and halflings when it comes to their distributions of upper body strength? If we assume that she has Str 16 (since she's a legendary hero before level-up bonuses and, as a paladin, suffers from Multiple Attribute Dependency) and we use the rather generous PF carrying capacity table, she can lift 460 lbs off the ground, which (as I understand from a casual google) would smash the world record for people in the average teenage girl weight class.

It also sounds like the religion thing is nuanced at least, but I feel like that the world of Pathfinder is ontologically different enough that I don't see her views on religion mapping well enough to ours to have a strong opinion on Jesus as an actual historical figure or actual Outsider with a divine rank. Maybe he was a guy who rose from the dead; that happens more often than not if you die around powerful users of divine magic. Maybe he's a god or a demigod or a name given to another god; the world is aggresively syncretic and no god created the universe, nor actually defines it in any meaningful way; important things like Good and Evil predate the gods and will outlive them, and while gods, even Iomedae's own patron deity, might be deeply important to her, she should know that being a paladin demands that she follow Good first and her god's commandments second, if the two ever collide.

Honestly, I am a little melancholy about the fact that I'm deep enough to the weeds of Pathfinder to find the premise of this story really interesting, but that I also know just from the summary I was given that I'm going to be running heavily into places where the story either warps to progressive shibboleths and loses me as a result. Which is a shame, because I feel like a based author that was willing to respond to questions about America's policy on immigration and secularism by sending a paladin to a cartel-controlled town in Mexico or a fundamentalist-Islam-controlled stronghold in Afganistan would be really narratively interesting.

I also feel like there's a much more hilarious story about weird-ass Underdark radiation fucking up and dropping good ol' Drizzt Do'urden into our world as opposed to Icewind Dale, and have him have to undergo a whole lot of different learning experiences.

ETA: Fucking hell, didn't make it off the first page before getting pissed off again. You know what also doesn't exist in Pathfinder? Acquired immunity. People don't get resistant to filth fever by hanging around in a dungeon repeatedly, because pathogens are not germ-based in Iomeade's world. The correct response to "Let me give you a little bit of unclean taint to make you stronger and teach you to fight it off." is "Back the fuck off, spawn of Lamashtu and Apollyon, I know how potions that heal the sick work and that is not it, you lying bastard." There are also a lot fewer lethal diseases unless you use the optional rules to make diseases extra-lethal, and there's low-level divine magic to help with sick people, and if Iomeade has hit third level herself than she's entirely immune, and that should be part of her understanding of the world.

Part of rationalism is engaging with the world as it is, not as you've been told (or are being told) that it is. This would have been a perfect chance for Iomeade to have expressed a solid opinion and been given the chance to learn that this was not her world (and, as the other people dug deeper, to learn that she was not from their world), but there is no world in which being told about vaccines shouldn't map to one of the many plague cultists fucking with people. Hell, even if Iomeade had seen enough of this world to recognize that things were different here, this should still be a point in which she has opinions, beyond "Really? Cool!"

ETA: Fucking hell, didn't make it off the first page before getting pissed off again. You know what also doesn't exist in Pathfinder? Acquired immunity. People don't get resistant to filth fever by hanging around in a dungeon repeatedly, because pathogens are not germ-based in Iomeade's world. The correct response to "Let me give you a little bit of unclean taint to make you stronger and teach you to fight it off." is "Back the fuck off, spawn of Lamashtu and Apollyon, I know how potions that heal the sick work and that is not it, you lying bastard." There are also a lot fewer lethal diseases unless you use the optional rules to make diseases extra-lethal, and there's low-level divine magic to help with sick people, and if Iomeade has hit third level herself than she's entirely immune, and that should be part of her understanding of the world.

That was great! Now I kinda want to see you liveblog the whole thing.

You know what? Fuck it. No idea how long this will last, because I'm also doing something similar for Wheel of Time in meatspace at the moment and my hate-reading time is limited, but here we go: https://robertliguoriwritesstuff.wordpress.com/2023/09/05/well-i-guess-im-liveblogging-now/

Acquired immunity. People don't get resistant to filth fever by hanging around in a dungeon repeatedly, because pathogens are not germ-based in Iomeade's world

Vaccinations are actually a thing in Pathfinder so the real sin is that Iomadae would probably know the word itself. And given creating it needs a sample of the disease AND that Starfinder (which takes place in the future of the Pathfinder universe) has actual antibiotics in addition, it seems fair to say that germ theory does indeed work there. It is just there are also magic and direct miracles so vaccinations are less useful, when the local cleric can pray it away.

"A vaccine grants a creature immunity to a specific strain of disease of a level equal to or less than the vaccine's level, and a +2 item bonus on all saving throws against other strains of the same disease. For example, a vaccine could grant immunity to filth fever inflicted by otyughs but would only grant a +2 saving throw bonus against filth fever inflicted by a giant rat. Special: A vaccine is the same rarity as the disease it's designed to prevent, or as the creature who inflicts the disease if the disease itself doesn't list a rarity Craft Requirements: Creating a vaccine requires a sample of the disease in question."

Starfinder takes place in the same universe as Pathfinder (probably; history in Starfinder is weird), but several metaphysical things in Starfinder are different. (Also, you know, practical things.)

Regardless, in both systems, creatures do not have memory T cells; you make the same saving through the first time you get bit by a dire rat with filth fever as the thousandth time, even if it is the same rat biting you. The vaccine is also made with Starfinder hypertech, so I don't know that we can say that it works anything like the conventional term; it might just be some very-narrowly-tailored nanobots that do what a conventional immune system would do, if people had immune systems instead of Fort saves.

I actually checked the SRD, and I found exactly one reference to vaccines in first-party Pathfinder materials: the drug Gossamer Veil (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/afflictions/drugs/gossamer-veil/), which, amusingly, has the following description:

Cultists of Ghlaunder [a demon lord] and manipulators wander the streets of impoverished neighborhoods, administering this “vaccine” to prevent diseases common in squalid conditions, often with an admonition that it remains effective only as long as the recipient maintains faith in the priest’s deity.

Again, the world of Golarion has entirely different mechanics for disease, but more than that, it has entirely different social institutions, built around gods as observable and present as Elon Musk is in our world. "Why the fuck aren't your priests of Jesus healing the sick, as is normal and natural? What is wrong with them that they can't perform the simplest duty of a good cleric, and channel positive energy to help people?" should be her starting point. And because she is literally the alternate-life of a goddess, she should find alchemical ways of preventing disease sus as fuck, because in a world where you can go to any good cleric and get any conventionial disease cleared as long as you are not actually physically dead, not going to goodly clerics to get that care is sus as fuck, unless you're in a part of the world with unusually low access to goodly clerics?

And you know what people generally don't have the training, infrastructure, and general capacity to do in those parts of the world? Become paladins!

Now, I am just going off of the standard SRD and Archives of Nethys as a backup, so if there is a solid reference to vaccines in Pathfinder proper, I may be missing it, and if you know of one, I'd be happy to hear it. But regardless, even if they worked, they would not work as an extension of how people understand how disease works, because in Pathfinder, barring there being a specific Milkmaid background trait that gives a bonus to pox-related illness, you can't observe "Hey, milkmaids and other people who work with cows tend to get the lesser-in-lethality cowpox and tend to be more resistant to smallpox, I wonder why and if we can replicate this somehow." What there are are people who can fuck around with the wrecked space shit in Numeria and maybe get some stuff partially right, but much more likely, what you have are (as we, ironically enough, do have) demon-affiliated fuckers preying on people's hopes that there is a reliable way to handle disease other than divine magic. (Or, like, alchemists or other use-the-spell-mechanic fuckery.)

The vaccine rules I quoted are from the Archives for Pathfinder 2e here:

https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=773

My alchemist was crafting them in a campaign I am in which is how I knew there were rules for crafting vaccines. In order to take some pressure off the cleric if we were already immune to the disease we knew we were going to encounter.

Though they may have been invented post Iomadae's ascension, It seems probable natural immunity exists in some form in world but is just abstracted away ruleswise otherwise. As it isn't fun in game to track if your character should be immune to filth fever as he caught it 6 years ago when trudging through a sewer in Alkenstar and was bitten by a direrat or whatever.

Its also possible the varying dieties of disease alter them every so often to evade natural immunity. That might be my take as a DM. That diseases are viral or bacterial but they also have divine forces creating new variants. Golarion does have Anthrax, Dengue fever, cholera and bubonic plague, malaria and TB for example and they even talk about the lymphatic system so mundane diseases do seem to operate much as we would expect here and given the lymphatic systems purpose it would be odd if humans didn't have the same immune system and thus could get immunity to cow pox or something. Its just not an exciting part of the game system to talk about.

Ah, I haven't touched PF2E at all, so that explains it. I guess it will be really important to find out what actual rules the fic is operating under.

The vaccines look interesting, but also not at all like something that naturally would interact with an immune system; how would they work if the lesser ones only work for 24 hours? Maybe they're just releasing tiny alchemical homunculi into your bloodstream.

Re: diseases being updated, you could presumably slap a bunch of dire rats in an Antimagic Field to detect that and study the effect, which sounds interesting. If you want to run your setting that way, you might have an entire laundry list of effects the gods need to personally micromanage to keep the Prime Material from falling askew, and introduce some interesting effects when adventurers go off-grid themselves.

I don't think you can assume that lintemande's Golarion is identical to the Pathfinder version, although it is based on it.

Iomedae and Alfirin learn about vaccination in America and I think it is one of the technologies that they attempt to introduce to Golarion in a later thread in the series.

I don't know when the common understanding became that TTRPG rules are supposed to represent the in-world laws of physics, but that is not what they do and isn't in Pathfinder and never has been, going right back to OD&D. TTRPG rules are there to assist the DM in running the game, that's all. The rules for diseases are not necessarily reflective of what disease is actually like in the world and certainly don't exclude the possibility of things like acquired immunity.

Is germ theory true in Golarion? That's for the DM to decide if it ever comes up, not something to be gleaned from the rules.

Also, more importantly, the setting here is lintamande's fanfic Golarion, which differs in a few ways from the RPG setting.

Iomedae comes from a world where mass immigration and the state capacity to control it don't exist - of course she finds modern mores on it strange and horrible, it would be weird if she didn't.

In a game, the rules are reflective of the players' shared understanding of the game world, and when the rules fail to reflect that understanding, they are bad rules.

And obviously the GM can decide things. The GM can decide that Iomedae is a foxgirl in a kinky BDSM relationship with Asmodeus. But that is not reflected in either the rules or the setting documents, and people are quite right to complain that referring to someone who was called Iomeade and differed significantly, and in unannounced and weird ways from what was established.

And, while I'll probably do a whole bit on this later, Iomedae comes from a world where the nation she is from (the Taldoran Empire) actually did mass emigration in an explicitly colonialist way. And, of course, they had to deal with foreign invaders entering their lands as well. I can absolutely buy an Iomedae that sympathizes with the plight both of specific illegal immigrants and of their host nation, and wishes there was a way to both fulfill the law and grant security to the immigrants. But describing border security as evil are not the words of any paladin anywhere, much less the words of a paladin otherwise-fated to be a god of paladins that worships a Lawful-Neutral god of human civilization.

The author could have picked a generic paladin from an unspecified setting, or even a generic paladin from Golarion. They did not. They chose a paladin with a history and her own views. Obviously, the author and the readers have the right to tell me and everyone else "Fuck you, I'm doing it my way, and I'm also making Aroden trans, cope and seethe.", and equally-obviously, I have the right to tell the author that she's doing it wrong, as I have above and probably will again.

And hey, if you want to get into a detailed dive on the established lore of Golarion and its gods and claim that I'm misrepresenting Aroden, Iomeade, paladins, or the Taldoran Empire, please feel free. Hell, if anyone knows if there are PF2e adventure paths or lore books that ret-con any of these topics, I'd be genuinely interested to hear about them.

But describing border security as evil are not the words of any paladin anywhere, much less the words of a paladin otherwise-fated to be a god of paladins that worships a Lawful-Neutral god of human civilization.

Strictly she is a Paladin of Arazni, who is the herald of Aroden, but I think she might actually see immigration restrictions as evil on Earth for one reason, everyone there is human, and Aroden is essentially the god of human manifest destiny, and that humanity should be as one, she might feel that America as the most powerful nation should indeed be both spreading its influence in order to unite humanity and allowing any human who wishes to live there to do so. In otherwise she might well support America taking over Mexico AND prior to that allowing any Mexican who wants to live in the US to do so. She would probably feel differently about an orc nation for example. Remember at 15 she is just about to join the crusade against the undead hordes of the Whispering Tyrant, a nearly existential threat to human civilization itself. Making humanity strong by bringing as many people under one rule as possible is consistent with both the way Taldor spread and not having the kind of legal system where a human from outside Taldor who wants to live there is going to have many issues doing so.

Aroden is prophesied to (at the point this story is set at least) lead humanity into a golden age, united and strong. Paladins don't have to follow laws that they believe are not just or not good, if your god wants humanity united, any law that prevents humanity coalescing into a united group could well be seen as evil. From a certain point of view of course. America absorbing as much of humanity under its direct influence whether by conquest or immigration seems very much in line with Aroden.

"The Starfall Doctrine is a series of prophecies written in Azlanti that predicted that the god Aroden would return to Golarion in 4606 AR and lead the human race in a millennium of prosperity known as the Age of Glory. He was supposed to lead the world from Cheliax, which he would personally rule and which would also become the pre-eminent nation in the world"

That the human race should be united and not artificially fragmented into smaller nations is pretty on brand. Border security against orcs and undead Good, border security to prevent other humans swelling the ranks of your nation: Evil.

Iomedae's first experience of Earth was living with illegal immigrant migrant workers, very poor people who treated her well. After she has been discovered by the authorities and made a foster child there is an INS raid on the immigrants and, from what she is told, the result is the adults being sent out of the country and the children being seized. I don't think that makes sense in terms of INS policy, but it is what happens in the story or at least what Iomedae believes happens. Prior to that, all she knows about immigration enforcement is that there is some evil thing called "La Migra" which the people she is living with are afraid of.

Aroden is not trans but Alfirin, in a later thread, very briefly is, using Alter Self to make herself male for a few minutes. For why she does so you will have to read the threads.

According to Iomedae, in a later thread following from the one being discussed where she is back in Golarion, germ theory is true in Golarion. Her basis is having learned about it in America, but nothing in the story implies that she is wrong.

Iomedae sounds like an idiot on the subject of immigration

As others said, this fanfic sucks (this goofy mocking pidgin speak of our heroine alone kills it, author never bothered to look up INT requirements for paladin and DND rules for language learning), but in this case Iomedae sounds realistic.

Medieval person, whether noble or commoner, would see idea of "papers", would see situation where everyone, even the poorest peasant, should carry "papers" at all time and present them in order to travel, work, buy and sell as something from Book of Revelation.

Authentic medieval Iomedae would be horrified to find herself in the time of the Antichrist, but would be also overjoyed that Jesus is finally returning and she will meet him soon.

(well, later, when Iomedae learns about history and finds out that the Beast rules the world for centuries, the world gets more godless, depraved and evil every day for centuries and still there are no signs of Jesus' second coming, she would get really depressed and could begin to doubt her faith)

Of course, Pathfinder is extruded Mos Eisley Cantina style fantasy world as different as possible from actual medieval Europe.

No, I do not want to blame anyone for not wanting to play in realistic medieval setting. (Game Master: The water was refreshing. Your thirst was satiated. Now, roll for dysentery.)

And I want to blame even less modern fanfic writer for not wanting to present realistic medieval opinions on modern society, government, economy, religion, law, justice, war etc...

The world she comes from isn't medieval Europe, it is a world with multiple real gods and roughly medieval technology (plus magic) and standard of living. Iomedae's first contact with people in that world is with illegal immigrant migrant workers who take her in. They are Catholics, what they say about Jesus has some bits that are similar to the background of Aroden, the god she is a paladin of, and she incorrectly assumes they are the same. There is no reason to expect her to have the attitudes of someone from medieval Europe.

Iomedae is fluent in her own language. Her imperfect speech is due to the fact that, having learned Spanish with the migrant workers she is now learning English.

There is nothing wrong with discussing literature, but the discussion would be more interesting if people would read the story before confidently announcing what is wrong with it.

I haven't nor do I intend to read this fanfiction, nor have I played Pathfinder, and I don't know some of the terminology used here beyond a google search ("Isekai"). That said, I have problems. Someone from the Pathfinder universe (especially with spell training like a Paladin) would probably be familiar with food preservation magic since it exists, I also find it very personally offputting to shoehorn into a story about a child (admittedly one who considers herself an adult) about how actually most of the time when people get raped, they didn't actually get raped since nobody had a knife to threaten them. There are probably a dozen examples like this where her being from Pathfinder doesn't actually mesh with the story very well. Again, haven't read it, other than the excerpts here, but if there is nothing interesting between the comparison of her Medieval-ish world or her oath as a Paladin and our modern world, and it's just a generic medieval fish out of water tale, why is she a Paladin at all? Is it an in-joke between the Pathfinder player author? Does it mean anything?

I don't really think The Motte is the place for literary criticism, since it's a largely non-rational practice. But god, the writing here is just bad. Maybe if you're a direct person who likes it when characters spew forth punctuated idea after punctuated idea it's the right pace for you, but these paragraphs are a hard read. If you want worlds-colliding or a reflection of modernity fantasy fiction, there is lots of stuff you can find with enjoyable prose. Try /r/fantasy. I don't get the giddy appeal of having the author stand-in character give a "glorious" "refreshing" look at our modern age. I've seen dozens of posts here with better rundowns of how things operate and the problems and virtues with society. This strikes me as midwit-tier.

I don't really think The Motte is the place for literary criticism, since it's a largely non-rational practice. But god, the writing here is just bad. Maybe if you're a direct person who likes it when characters spew forth punctuated idea after punctuated idea it's the right pace for you, but these paragraphs are a hard read. If you want worlds-colliding or a reflection of modernity fantasy fiction, there is lots of stuff you can find with enjoyable prose. Try /r/fantasy.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I prefer it this way. It is similar to the hard science fiction style parodied in "Masters of the Metropolis", "If All Stories Were Written like Science Fiction Stories", and "In Ovens Baked", which I enjoy very much. Such stories are about ideas, so a writing style which focuses on the ideas works best.

Check out The Golden Oecumene. I think you'd love it.

I don't really think The Motte is the place for literary criticism, since it's a largely non-rational practice.

Disagree with this. I would like to see more literary criticism. Though not necessarily of Pathfinder fanfics.

This strikes me as midwit-tier.

I am not putting my modhat on for this, but it's borderline. You can say you don't like a post and you'd rather not see posts like this, but it's generally pretty poor form. Not every thread has to appeal to you, and this is pretty close to saying "This is stupid, why did you post this?" Which is not what we (the mods) want to see. Criticize the post, criticize the story, criticize the OP's analysis, that's all fine. Don't complain because he posted something you aren't interested in reading.

The things you're complaining about are... The central conflict of the story. Iomedae comes from a mediaevalish world, of course she has fucked-up ideas about consent, that's the whole point! If you don't like a writing style, fair enough, if you don't want to read something before you complain about it, fine, but come on.

I think this is sort of close to my central skepticism or complaint. Re the culture clash

  1. Is that established?
  2. Is it even true? It's bad history to think that all of it was "women are property, they can get raped freely, and can never say no to sex" many medieval societies were not like this, many accounts contradict it directly. It's a pedestrian trope and stereotype-laden contemporary impression.
  3. Insofar as it is established, what is the interesting idea that is demonstrated or invoked or compared between these societies? It doesn't read like someone from Pathfinder-world being dropped in a Costco, it sounds like someone who is as present-centric as any of us trying to critique the world we all know.
  4. The writing style is independent from the content. You could have something non-scientific or non-historical or frankly vapid, but which is still written well. This is written (as many others have pointed out) wooden, it's bad writing.

I - understand - you both have bad time with church. I am sorry that you did. I do not know enough to say more about it. And I have no guess if Jesus alive or no. But I think Christians good and cool. I believe you that my life easier if I pretend this. I no going pretend it

This doesn't strike me as someone from a different religious tradition understanding modern churches. It sounds like an inoffensive faux-empathic rambling. There are 6 separate ideas but each one is an orphan, they're not explained or developed. She just jumps from 3 different ideas about the church, and couched within that are TWO separate disclaimers, but they don't sound like a woman out of time learning about a new culture, it sounds like someone from today giving a "I don't want to contradict your lived experience" speech. That's what I mean by a bad author stand-in.

Your comments would have more to do with the story if you had read it. There is no suggestion that "women are property, they can get raped freely, and can never say no to sex." When someone tries to rape Iomedae (off stage, at the beginning) she stabs him with a sword then carries him to somewhere so he won't die — I think the church, since in her world priests have healing magic and she doesn't yet realize that she is in a different world where they don't. That is how she comes to the attention of the authorities.

I'm hesitant to engage with these year old necro comments and am skeptical of any productivity, but I read slightly more of this terrible fanfiction after the original comments and am more affirmed in my criticism.

Litigating the specific fact claims back and forth are kind of meaningless, obviously either of us can easily pull up sophistries based on one weak line, a misuse of a phrase, or technical issue etc. Others have also done that well and you can read it.

The reason I dislike it is because the dialogue is wooden, cliche-ridden, hackish, frequently offputting, and the characterization is inaccurate or implausible at different times.

Many are familiar with the tropes and discussions around the phrase "The Curtains are blue" speaking to over-analysis by literary critics [or their lower-functioning cousins, proponents of 'Media Literacy'] of minute and unimportant details, and there is also push back by those who think Blue Curtains complaint style discourse is thought terminating and glosses over real meaning. But in either case that's close to the level of intro literary review you would do in an literature class, you find symbolism, explain what it means, and then maybe relate it to the pacing or tone of the story or experiences of characters themselves, some will go further and map it to the social and historical circumstances of the author to learn about what it says about 1820s Spain or Russia for example, and that follows into Death of the Author discourse which has also become more popularized. A more advanced literary review will likely move past the symbols, and try to mesh out why and where they were used to specifically understand exactly what the author was trying to say when they picked them. [Most university undergraduates will never move to this stage and beyond]. You also have some people who evade this, and are more simulationist [to borrow Pathfinder terminology] and err more on the side of explaining what would likely happen in their interesting fiction, but not trying to tell you what this means for you, albeit still likely being colored by their personal beliefs or historical circumstances [Think Brandon Sanderson's worldbuilding]. Here's Tarkovksy on Symbolism:

Everybody asks me what things mean in my films. This is terrible! An artist doesn't have to answer for his meanings. I don't think so deeply about my work - I don't know what my symbols may represent. What matters to me is that they arouse feelings, any feelings you like, based on whatever your inner response might be. If you look for a meaning, you'll miss everything that happens. Thinking during a film interferes with your experience of it. Take a watch into pieces, it doesn't work. Similarly with a work of art, there's no way it can be analyzed without destroying it.

I apologize for that long sidebar of how I perceive the modern state of literary criticism. But amazingly the writing of this terrible piece sidesteps all levels of it entirely. The characters just speak cliched platitudes, never having any depth beyond the most cursory, nor any satisfying growth or understanding of eachother. A modern person encountering someone from middle-earth or wherever would have more preconceived notions because of our media tradition, similarly if Superman was real, people would have an easier time digesting it since we have 100 years of Superman media, as opposed to if we had none at all. The prose makes Ayn Rand look like Shakespeare. It is barely half a degree better than something like

#1: I prefer social democracy because more people can get what they want

#2: But they might want bad things. That would be bad

#1: I don't think so

the bad (adolescents are legally treated as children despite being biological adults)

My visceral reaction to that is "This is a fantasy by somebody who wants to fuck fifteen year olds" and that makes me bounce right off. Probably I'm jaundiced from our friend of former times with the rants about how children are enslaved (and the fiction about raping fourteen year olds to force them pregnant because men should be leaders and women should be barefoot and pregnant or something).

Eh... yes, there is a certain type of person (like our former friend) who really likes talking about how back in Ye Olden Days, 13 was prime childbearing age for FEEEmales. (Which actually isn't true because girls used to reach physical maturity later than is common today, and 13-year-olds getting knocked up was one reason for the high childbirth mortality rate.) ) Otoh, it really is a historical reality (which few modern fantasies, including RPGs, honestly engage with) that "teenagers" used to be basically young adults lacking only experience, and were treated as such.

How it is executed in a given story probably tells you where the author is coming from.

Lacking experience is a pretty big lacking. I would add lacking experience AND JUDGEMENT, though (see anyone that takes on 6 figures of debt for an art history degree). The real question is was it easier for a 16 year old to be an adult in previous centuries because mostly you were able to learn all the things growing up in your village that you needed to know as an adult then? Is it only modern complex society that requires more time to learn enough to not fuck up?

I think you can learn all the things required to actually do a farmer-equivalent job in modern society by 16 - if you don't spend 12 years on general education. The problem is that even if it was allowed, you'd be essentially second class. What kind of parent wants that for their children?

My visceral reaction to that is "This is a fantasy by somebody who wants to fuck fifteen year olds" and that makes me bounce right off.

I... can honestly promise you that it's not like that? At all. Iomedae is very adamant that no man lie with her because she doesn't want to be a mother, and, unlike a surprising number of moderns, she understands the link between sex and babies:

Aroden might renounce her and if that happens she will have to pursue different life plans but it's still very hard to imagine them involving children. She argued it endlessly with her mother, when she was a child.

"If I'd gone off to be a holy warrior," her mother had said, "none of you would exist, and instead I raised three noble and good sons who will serve Aroden, and that's three times the effect any man can have, no matter how great. If you are unusually suited to His service, so will your sons be; character breeds true."

"If Aroden foresees that will be better I guess He won't pick me," says Iomedae, though of course if that were all there were to it she would be indifferent and she isn't.

The fundamental thing is that she does not want a child. It is wronging a child if her mother goes off to die on a cross or invade the Abyss. Having a child feels something like a promise not to do that, and that isn't a promise she could ever really imagine it would be worth making.

You are wildly wrong, not surprising since you are commenting on a work you have not read and are reading stuff into it from your own imagination. When someone tries to rape Iomedae, at the beginning of the story, she stabs him with a sword. That is how she comes to the attention of the authorities.

you are commenting on a work you have not read

And extremely unlikely to read, so no loss to the world if I don't read it. I've never got exactly what glowfic is intended to be, and if I want didactic moralism wrapped up in a story, I can always go dig up Sandford and Merton.

Besides, I've lost what tolerance I had for Dialect fic, and pages of Iomedae spouting what could be perceived as Slanty-Eyed Broke Engrish no me thing Evil America Thing Do.

Content aside, this is awful awful writing and, as I've heard this held up as an example of good rat-adj fanfic, it really speaks volumes negatively.

There's no accounting for taste and all, but this, much like the few lines I stomached of HPMOR, really shows that aesthetics and poetry can't be tossed out just because you're spewing 'points'.

I found this extremely refreshing. The central example of rape is "woman was minding her own business when someone broke into her house and forced her". It is incredible how little of what gets called "rape" actually fits that category, and can be better described as "woman cruising for a dicking regrets the dicking come next morning". It is the worst argument in the world, enshrined into our legal code.

I find this a deeply icky way to generalize date rape involving intoxicants or sex with young teenagers.

It is indeed very good, but if you have not read the next two threads you should. People who would like a different, but equally positive, view will find it in my most recent substack post:https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/the-web-of-story

Defunding My Mistake

Confessions of an ex-ACAB

Until about five years ago, I unironically parroted the slogan All Cops Are Bastards (ACAB) and earnestly advocated to abolish the police and prison system. I had faint inklings I might be wrong about this a long time ago, but it took a while to come to terms with its disavowal. What follows is intended to be not just a detailed account of what I used to believe but most pertinently, why. Despite being super egotistical, for whatever reason I do not experience an aversion to openly admitting mistakes I've made, and I find it very difficult to understand why others do. I've said many times before that nothing engenders someone's credibility more than when they admit error, so you definitely have my permission to view this kind of confession as a self-serving exercise (it is). Beyond my own penitence, I find it very helpful when folks engage in introspective, epistemological self-scrutiny, and I hope others are inspired to do the same.

How Did I Get There?

For decades now, I've consistently held plain vanilla libertarian policy preferences, with the only major distinction being that I've aligned myself more with the anarchists. Whereas some were content with pushing the "amount of government" lever to "little", I wanted to kick it all the way to "zero". There are many reasons I was and remain drawn to anarchist libertarianism, and chief among them was the attractively simple notion that violence is immoral and that government is violence. The problem with moral frameworks is that they can be quite infectious. To pick on one example for demonstration's sake, I notice that for many animal welfare advocates a vegan diet is heralded not just as the ideal moral choice, but also as the healthiest for humans, the least polluting, the cheapest financially, the best for soil conservation, the most water-efficient, the least labor-exploitative, et cetera & so forth. There's a risk that if you become dogmatically attached to a principled position, you're liable to be less scrutinizing when reflexively folding in other justifications. I suspect that happened to me with prisons, for example, where because I felt immediate revulsion at the thought of the state forcing someone into a cage, I was unwilling to entertain the possibility it could be justified. Ceding the ground on this particular brick was too threatening to the anarchism edifice I was so fond of.

Obviously if you advocate getting rid of the government, people naturally want to know what will replace it. Some concerns were trivial to respond to (I'm not sad about the DEA not existing anymore because drugs shouldn't be illegal to begin with), but other questions I found annoying because I admittedly had no good answer, such as what to do with criminals if the police didn't exist. I tried to find these answers. Anarchism as an umbrella ideology leans heavily to the far left and has a history of serious disagreements with fellow-travelers in Marxism. Despite that feud, anarchist thought absorbed by proxy Marxist "material conditions" critiques that blame the existence of crime on capitalism's inequalities --- a claim that continues to be widely circulated today, despite how flagrantly dumb it is. As someone who was and continues to be solidly in favor of free market economics, these critiques were like parsing an inscrutable foreign language.[1] I was in college around my most ideologically formative time and a voracious reader, but I churned through the relevant literature and found nothing convincing. Instead of noting that as a blaring red flag, I maintained the grip I had on my preferred conclusion and delegated the hard work of actually defending it to someone else. I specifically recall how Angela Davis's 2003 book Are Prisons Obsolete? (written by a famous professor! woah!) had just come out and the praise it was getting from my lefty friends. If this synopsis of the book is in any way accurate, Davis's arguments are so undercooked that it should come with a health warning. The fact that I never read the book all the following years could have been intentional, because it allowed me a convenient escape hatch: whenever pressed, I could just hide behind Davis and other purportedly super prestigious intellectuals as my security detail. Back then, I carried the incredibly naive assumption that any position held by prestigious academics couldn't be completely baseless...right?

Also pertinent is exploring why I felt so attached to something I knew I couldn't logically defend, and the simple explanation is that it was cool. Being a libertarian can be super socially isolating, especially if you live only in places overwhelmingly surrounded by leftists like I do. I navigated the social scene by prioritizing shared political values --- let's not discuss how I don't support the minimum wage, focus instead on how much I hate the police and on how much I love punk rock. That worked really well. Putting "ACAB" on my Tinder profile was an effective signaling move that dramatically improved my chances of matching with the tattooed and pierced cuties I was chasing. Announcing at a party that you are so radical that you're willing to eliminate prisons is an effective showmanship maneuver that few others have the stomach to challenge. There was plenty of social cachet motivating me to ignore niggling doubts.

How Did I Leave?

Whatever the outward facade, my position was crumbling behind it. Almost seven years ago I started working as a public defender and was inundated with hundreds of hours of police encounter footage that were completely uneventful; if anyone, it was usually my client who acted like an idiot. I've seen bodycam footage that starts with officers dropping their lunch in the precinct breakroom in order to full-on sprint toward a "shots fired" dispatch call. I've seen dipshits like the woman who attempted to flee a traffic stop while the trooper was desperately reaching for the ignition with his legs dangling out of the open car door. Despite this, the trooper treated her with impeccable professionalism once the situation was stabilized. At least about five years ago, I found myself in a conversation with a very normie liberal lawyer on the question of police/prison abolition. It was one of the first times I encountered serious pushback and I quickly realized just how woefully under-equipped I was. I distinctly remember how unpleasant the feeling was --- not from the fear of being wrong about something, but rather the fear of being found out.

There were instances where I pulled bullshit what-I-really-mean defenses of ACAB and tried to pontificate about how it's less about whether individual officers are per se "bastards", but rather how the institutional role is blah blah blah. I played similarly squirmy motte-and-bailey games with the abolition topic when I was confronted with undeniable rebuttals. I found an example from almost 10 years ago of one of my most common responses, where I'd highlight some police scandal (e.g., cops seizing more stuff through civil forfeiture than is stolen from people by burglars) and accompany it with the eminently lukewarm "on net, society might be better off without police". The argument is as abstract as it is unconvincing; soaring at an altitude too high for effective critique yet also too remote for anyone to care. Tellingly, I wouldn't and couldn't address the more pressing questions of how to deal with more serious crimes.

It was bizarre watching the discourse unfold during the 2020 BLM riots/protests. Almost overnight, the normie liberal demographic that previously was willing to push back on my inanity was now hoarse from screaming for police abolition. My younger self would've been thrilled watching the populace fully adopt radical anarchist sloganeering, but my actual self was aghast. I couldn't believe these people were speaking literally (yep!) or whether they somehow discovered the elusive magic elixir that transformed police abolition into a viable policy proposal (nope!). I'm someone who was and remains a full supporter of BLM's policy proposals, and I even defended burning down a police precinct building in Minneapolis for fuck's sake, and yet I didn't join the defund chorus.

Still, there's a noticeable bend to some of my writing from that time where I consciously mirrored some of the language du jour --- such as making a bog standard argument against mass incarceration while aping abolition language, or responding to a DTP conversation by discussing police overcompensation. I haven't changed my mind about anything I wrote there, but nevertheless it's fair to accuse me of indirectly "sanewashing" the DTP issue. I took my boring, wonky arguments and adorned them with the faintest slogan perfume. This let me carry my hobbyhorses on the attention wave, but it also contributed to rehabilitating (however slightly) the totally crazy slogan position.

Now What?

I know it sounds crazy, but I think effective law enforcement is a vital component of any well-functioning society. Tons of cops are perfectly decent people who try to do the best they can at a difficult and unenviable job. There are bad people out there who can be prevented from doing bad things only when they are physically restrained with chains and metal bars. Unless we develop some revolutionary new technology or fundamentally modify the nature of man, this is the reality we're stuck with. I still firmly believe there are loads of improvements we can make to the policing and incarceration we have, but abolishing it all is a delusional idea untethered from reality. Radical stance, I know.

Regarding the anarchist responses to the topic, the only coherent proposals I've ever encountered are from David Friedman and others on the anarcho-capitalist side (a variant thoroughly detested by left-wing anarchist thinkers who think it's an affront even to consider it "real" anarchism). Friedman's response is essentially a cyberpunk future with competing private companies offering insurance, security, and arbitration in one package. Friedman's proposal is unusually thoughtful and coherent (the bar is low) and yet still remains largely a thought exercise reliant on some generous game theory assumptions. Who knows if it will or can ever work.

In terms of lessons learned, I should first note that introspection of this kind, spanning across such a long time period, will have significant blind spots and would be particularly prone to flattering revisionism. The most obvious mistake I made was in burying those unnerving moments of doubt. Instead of running toward the fire to put it out, I did my best to tell myself there was no fire. I had already arrived at a conclusion in my mind and worked backward to find its support, and I suppressed how little I could actually find. Whether intentionally or not, I fabricated comforting explanations for why my position was right even though I couldn't directly defend it, often citing evidence that was more aspiration than reality. My ideological isolation kept me safe from almost all pushback anyways. And magnifying all of this were the social dynamics that rewarded me for keeping the horse blinders on.

I'm likely overlooking other factors of course, and there's the ever-present, gnawing worry that haunts me, whispering that I might be fundamentally mistaken about something else. Maybe I am, but hopefully I'll be better equipped to unearth it.

[1] This isn't really on point or even about crime, but to give just one example of the "vibe" I encountered from left-wing anarchists, Voltairine de Cleyre in one of her essays makes a very Kulak-esque argument about how to best guarantee freedom of speech:

Anarchism says, Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license"; and they will define and define freedom out of existence. Let the guarantee of free speech be in every man's determination to use it, and we shall have no need of paper declarations.

A good essay. I was never as cool and radical as you, but I did use to be very liberal - I never counted myself an "SJW" but I mostly agreed with them, just thought they were kind of extreme. Eventually I realized that in recognizing they were "extreme," I was actually recognizing that their arguments were disingenuous and incoherent and made in bad faith, and that the frequent conflicts I had with them despite being "on their side" were because, well, they were wrong, and I was interested in what is actually true and practical, and they were not.

On the subject of prison abolition and ACAB - I have mentioned to you before that I watch a lot of YouTube channels showing police bodycam footage, and also parole hearings. (I don't know why, I just find them interesting.) I realize these are mostly curated for what will look interesting on YouTube, but in all the police bodycam footage I have watched, it's almost entirely dysfunctional idiots behaving like criminals and children, often escalating routine traffic stops into full-on brawls with multiple cops having to hold them down. I have seen perps screaming, spitting, kicking, hurling abuse and screaming "I can't breathe!" and "You're traumatizing me!" and everything else they can think of, and 90% of the time, the cops are impeccably polite and professional and even kind to them despite having just been kicked and spit on. I'm sure the fact that they all know they have bodycams which people now file FOIAs to put on YouTube has something to do with that, but however it happened, I have really moved to Team Blue over the last couple of years. Sometimes you do see cops acting more aggressive and antagonistic than the situation calls for, when it's clear they are out of patience, but only rarely have I seen cops really behaving like "bastards" or taking down someone who didn't need to be taken down or using unnecessary force.

Between these clips, and the parole hearings I have also watched, it's clear to me we have a substantial population of outright dysfunctional people who are at best self-centered entitled narcissists, and at worst, sociopathic predators. These are not criminals who were created by capitalism and/or wealth inequality. Many, many of them have drug problems, but not all. Maybe a better, more just world would create fewer people like this, being raised in fewer dysfunctional environments, but I think we will always have some very bad people who will prey on anyone around them given a chance, and the only solution I have ever heard from the "restorative justice" crowd appears to be a sincere belief that a guy who sexually molested his six-year-old daughter and three other neighborhood children can be rehabilitated if put in a proper therapeutic environment with community support. (Would this "community support" include keeping him the fuck away from children, I hope? And if he decides he doesn't want to stay away from children, how will they enforce that?)

Freddie deBoer has written several articles about this. Despite being a Marxist who hates cops himself, he has pointed that those who want the Brock Turners and Derek Chauvins and Kyle Rittenhouses of the world locked up forever are frequently the same ones who claim to want to abolish the "carceral system," so... ¯_(ツ)_/¯?

Freddie deBoer has written several articles about this. Despite being a Marxist who hates cops himself

It's an interesting thing but many "Marxists" I run into online tend to loathe this stuff, despite (or because of) the Marxist trappings people throw on their anti-cop takes.

When they start on the "lumpen" they can sound worse than Republicans.

I realize these are mostly curated for what will look interesting on YouTube, but in all the police bodycam footage I have watched, it's almost entirely dysfunctional idiots behaving like criminals and children, often escalating routine traffic stops into full-on brawls with multiple cops having to hold them down.

It's good to be aware of the selection bias. Unlike a curated YouTube channel, my casework is ostensibly a random sample but even those cases had to be filtered through whether the police requested any charges, and further whether the prosecutor agreed with them. Despite these disclaimers, my impression of my own casework mirrors the impression you have from YouTube. We have tons of national statistics but those don't really capture qualitative data points like "was the perp a total dipshit?" unfortunately, so these slices are all we have.

  1. I would be curious if cops acting professional after someone does something stupid but is now a controlled environment is because they have seen so many normal people do something stupid but 99% of the time be functional adults. I know there is a psychological bias for when my outgroup does something bad it’s because they are evil but when myself/in-group does something bad it’s excusable from circumstances. Perhaps, a lot of cops have so much experience in these settings that they more easily adopt in-group bias.

  2. I clicked thru to one of your links and you made two points:

“5. Community Representation: recruit police officers who represent the demographic characteristics of their communities and use community feedback to inform policies.

  1. Training: invest in rigorous and sustained training and consider unconscious/implicit bias testing.”

Are these two things even mutually possible? I’ve seen data that more community members equals better policing but I’ve also see data that things like more education (easier to train etc) leads to better policing.

It’s just reminds me of killer king hospital where they tried to get “representatives” of the community working there but then a lot of bad care happened. Perhaps, policing isn’t as complicated as medicine.

https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/11/08/the-hospital-of-the-future-000572/

https://twitter.com/richardhanania/status/1679970523013615618?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

This just reminds me of a lot of things on the left that just feel unrealistic. I agree better training is good. And closer cultural connection between police and community are good. It sounds smart.

Now go build me a West Baltimore police department with a bunch of college grads capable of being trained up from members of the community. (Realize I’m adding college grad here sort of as a proxy for train ability but I believe there is research around that qualification and it should correlate with ability to train so wanted a measuring stick with data).

I agree with your recommendations on policy but executing it seems near impossible. I guess I’m becoming a brutal realists as I age.

Edit: the 1. Under the 5. Should be a 7 and when I type it shows a 7 not sure sure how to fix.

It’s just reminds me of killer king hospital where they tried to get “representatives” of the community working there but then a lot of bad care happened. Perhaps, policing isn’t as complicated as medicine.

I don't think how complicated it is matters as much as you're thinking here. I think the difference is subjectivity. The right way to police a community, fundamentally depends on the community. The point of policing is to have safe, happy communities. And if you don't, it doesn't matter how much objective criteria you've ticked off a list, you've failed. It's a very soft-skill heavy, squishy job. Or, as I've heard it said: "The most important thing for a police officer to know, is which laws not to enforce."

Medicine, on the other-hand, has a very obvious objective pass/fail standard. Did the patient live or die? This lends itself more readily toward standardization and academic knowledge. Biology works pretty similar within most bodies, and if it's not working that way, it's often the thing you're supposed to diagnose.

The point of policing is to have safe, happy communities.

What if the community is not safe or happy, and no known system of policing can make it so? Do we accept that the point is to make it as safe and happy as possible, understanding that it may not be very safe and happy in an absolute sense? Do we simply abandon the concept of policing, regardless of how much worse this makes things?

Do we accept that the point is to make it as safe and happy as possible, understanding that it may not be very safe and happy in an absolute sense?

This is a fair distinction, as there is no absolute safety or happiness. Utopia isn't coming, regardless of what the police do.

Yes, the point would be to make the community as safe and as happy as possible. And if the community as a whole doesn't feel that the police are doing that, then they've failed regardless of how many regulations they followed.

I don’t think any of that disagrees with my point.

Soft skills are academic to an extent. It’s one reason we teach the humanities so people can understand social situation almost in the third person to see how others are thinking. Some of this is sure just socialization. Training helps a cop understand which situations matter and which situations don’t. When a person is a threat and when a person is not a threat.

A lot of the underclass problem is that they don’t understand why people are doing things and that behave poorly when they are feeling cheated.

I don’t think any of that disagrees with my point.

My point was that you can't objectively say that policing failed without consulting the local community, unlike with healthcare. Which makes the comparison you were trying to make really squishy and not very useful.

I don’t know what squishy means sounds like inconvenient fact to me.

Most of the how to fix policing recommend things like more people from the community or atleast same race but also recommend things like more education. But it’s very tough to hire both qualities in the communities with the most policing issues.

I don’t know what squishy means sounds like inconvenient fact to me.

My meaning was that the comparison breaks down when any pressure is applied. My apologies for the shorthand, I was in a rush. I probably should have just held off. That one's my bad.

Most of the how to fix policing recommend things like more people from the community or atleast same race but also recommend things like more education. But it’s very tough to hire both qualities in the communities with the most policing issues.

How about devolving autonomy down to these local communities? It inherently deals with the first half. Worst case is that these areas end up being horribly dangerous and known as the place you don't go after dark, and the communities around them place extra police presence just across the boarder. That is to say, roughly the same situation as it is today. The best case is that the new cops that were raised in the community can actually make some sort of difference. Seems like mostly upside to me.

I don't buy the education side of this being a problem though. The average IQ in the areas we're talking about is what? 70-75? Because of the Flynn effect, that's roughly what the US as a whole was working with around 1900 or so, and the US, and each of its cities, managed to recruit plenty of competent police officers. Might have to back down from really abstract crimes and focus on the basics like property crime and violent crime, but my guess is that's what these communities need.

But it’s very tough to hire both qualities in the communities with the most policing issues.

If the requirements are mutually incompatible, it’s worth looking at if they’re both necessary, and at least ‘more education’ is probably a dumb recommendation.

I think the difference is subjectivity. The right way to police a community, fundamentally depends on the community. The point of policing is to have safe, happy communities. And if you don't, it doesn't matter how much objective criteria you've ticked off a list, you've failed.

Only if the entire outcome is due to policing, which seems absurd. But I think it's capturing the instinct: the same assumption is what leads to teachers being hammered for bad childhood outcomes (or treated as besieged miracle-workers - as if, if they merely had everything they wanted, all of the outcome would then be in their hands)

The reality is that policing is one tool to help improve community safety. It might succeed and not be recognized because other things are going on and drowning it out. It might succeed in relative terms (if it reduces more harm than it causes it's a net positive) and still not make the community feel safe. But that doesn't actually mean that their problem is cops.

The root of ACAB/police racism is a motte-and-bailey on just how much power this one side of government policy and this one set of employees has.

Only if the entire outcome is due to policing, which seems absurd.

I don't think that's necessarily true. I think to do policing properly, you need to have the trust of the local populace*, and failure to earn that represents a very real failure.

That's before we get into the optimal level of safety, which is probably not maximum safety. I did mention "as safe as possible" in a separate post, but I probably should have said "as safe as is practical". That level of safety, and which kinds of safety (e.g. the difference between unsafe worksites and muggings in the street) to prioritize aren't decisions that I, or the police, can make for a community. That's a decision that the community has to make for itself.

*Note: Does not apply if the police in question are controlled by a far away power center. That's better modeled as an occupation force, rather than a self-governing community.

It is no hidden fact that black communities hate the black cops, because generally they have an excuse to be the worst hardass they can be.

I am not particularly sure how you'd be able to get a cop that is a community member of the bad neighborhoods, while not paying them enough to not live there. Certainly not someone degreed.

You would have to require that they continue living in the bad neighborhoods as a condition of employment.

This sounds like it would make it very difficult to prevent those cops from transferring to neighboring whiteflightville, which is always hiring experienced police officers, probably pays better, and wants extra patrols along its border with ghettoburg.

Are these two things even mutually possible? I’ve seen data that more community members equals better policing but I’ve also see data that things like more education (easier to train etc) leads to better policing.

I realize now that BLM's "representation" platform might be more of an affirmative action program, which I wouldn't be in favor of. Community representation to me would be avoiding a situation where officers are commuting exclusively from a distant suburb and have no nexus to the neighborhoods they're patrolling. The ideal situation would be where cops and residents know each other by name and see each other as neighbors motivated towards a common goal.

But yes, I can see a potential tension between recruiting from a limited pool while making sure the applicants are of high enough quality. It depends what's worth prioritizing at the margins, perhaps it can be accomplished by residency requirements?

When I looked into joining the Fort Worth police department it mentioned requiring applicants live ‘within 30 minutes of a police station’. I’m sure that most police departments have some sort of requirement along this sort.

Honestly, in a lot of these crime- and dysfunction-ridden neighborhoods, the suburban cops who commute are among the few functional, decent, and caring human beings that a lot of these people will interact with on a regular basis. I think we absolutely should want to be hiring all the officers we can who want to police these neighborhoods, even if they don't want to live there. Hiring exclusively from those problematic neighborhoods is not only going to be recruiting from a narrower pool of recruits, but I highly suspect it will lead to more incidents like the Tyre Nichols killing in Memphis where you essentially have the same thugs from those streets, just in a police uniform.

This is a good response. You're describing with clarity some intractable difficulties with implementing a policy like this. I concede there is no obvious solution here.

Regarding the anarchist responses to the topic, the only coherent proposals I've ever encountered are from David Friedman and others on the anarcho-capitalist side (a variant thoroughly detested by left-wing anarchist thinkers who think it's an affront even to consider it "real" anarchism). Friedman's response is essentially a cyberpunk future with competing private companies offering insurance, security, and arbitration in one package. Friedman's proposal is unusually thoughtful and coherent (the bar is low) and yet still remains largely a thought exercise reliant on some generous game theory assumptions. Who knows if it will or can ever work.

Honestly, if I can get a community I trusted to go with me I’d consider moving to a society founded in Tierra incognita to try running off those principles.

And that seems like the crux of the matter- anarchocapitalism is, for groups of functional red tribers with community ties, probably not that bad and likely cheaper than a conventional government. For lumpenproles it’s almost certainly a terrible deal, and that’s almost exactly the opposite of what left wing anarchists want- which in practice is basically a society that benefits the lumpenproles at the expense of red tribers with community ties.

This also doesn’t seem like a society that runs off of David-Friedman-Esque principles in practice, either, except for the cartoonishly wealthy, so I doubt this is likely to be a paradise for the people who actually propose it either.

the attractively simple notion that violence is immoral and that government is violence.

It is a lovely idea, and if all humans were perfectly virtuous, we could try it. But there's a lot of us who don't give a damn about anything except ourselves and are happy to use violence against others to take their stuff. What do we do with these people? That's been a problem for about as long as humans have existed, and "put them in prison" is the solution we've come to most recently. It's certainly not a perfect solution, but "let them go about in society just so long as they attend a meeting once a week to have a finger wagged at them about being naughty" is not going to work, either. We've been so busy doing away with shame and then guilt that we forgot those emotions have a place; if you are ashamed of having behaved unworthily, you have an inducement to amend your ways. If you admit guilt about being in the wrong, you show you realise what you did was bad and that you can work to avoid doing the same in future.

"Hang them" was a solution that has gone out of fashion in our modern society, but it definitely had its merits. As is commonly commented on, there isn't much of a sliding scale - most people do nearly no crime and a small number do a huge amount of crime.

I'm anti-death penalty, because courts get it wrong sometimes and the occasional innocent person being executed is a price I'm not willing to pay. But I do sometimes wonder how different society would be if we just strung up the scumbags after their first couple of crimes.

From Foseti's "Review of 'The Better Angels of Our Nature' by Steven Pinker":

A while back, I linked to a story about a guy in my neighborhood who’s been arrested over 60 times for breaking into cars. A couple hundred years ago, this guy would have been killed for this sort of vandalism after he got caught the first time. Now, we feed him and shelter him for a while and then we let him back out to do this again. Pinker defines the new practice as a decline in violence – we don’t kill the guy anymore! Someone from a couple hundred years ago would be appalled that we let the guy continue destroying other peoples’ property without consequence. In the mind of those long dead, “violence” has in fact increased. Instead of a decline in violence, this practice seems to me like a decline in justice – nothing more or less.

As is commonly commented on, there isn't much of a sliding scale - most people do nearly no crime and a small number do a huge amount of crime.

Lots of people do lots of small and/or technical crimes. If you tried to implement "hang them", you'd have con men and pickpockets working the public executions of jaywalkers, speeders, and people who took home an office pencil.

Easy. Watch them.

I’m reminded of the sidebar content or /r/antiwork which was truly shocking when I first read it:

Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx’s wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists—except that I’m not kidding—I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry.

Such a society is incompatible with one that has things like housing, running water, electricity, heating, plumbing, medicine, any form of transportation or sufficient food to keep its population of 300 million from starving. It would also not have any computers or software so turn the dial back to the 40s before your trip to the Middle Ages. It would be incapable of trade to get any of these things. It would be incapable of producing even art, because that too takes a huge amount of work. Committing to the is plan is commitment to genocide in a Great Leap Forward sort of way.

Beyond genocide, and outright impossibility, it strikes me that the author had all the aspirations of a 13 year old. A world of frivolity is not a utopia. A world with no responsibility is a world devoid of purpose.

I remain unclear how anyone engages with this writing seriously.

Such a society is incompatible with one that has things like housing, running water, electricity, heating, plumbing, medicine, any form of transportation or sufficient food to keep its population of 300 million from starving. It would also not have any computers or software so turn the dial back to the 40s before your trip to the Middle Ages. It would be incapable of trade to get any of these things. It would be incapable of producing even art, because that too takes a huge amount of work. Committing to the is plan is commitment to genocide in a Great Leap Forward sort of way.

Right until we're fully automated, which isn't going to be that far in the future. Of course, these people are jumping the gun quite a bit.

We'll never be fully automated, the maintenance requirements on the robots will prevent it.

How far is "that far"? Have you ever worked in robotics or automation? Outside of tasks that are purely software I mean.

I think it’s a pretty normal thing really. Things like government are really easy to hate on simply because no one living today in a modern city has ever lived in the state of complete lack of government. As such, you see the state of the world where men have at least some fear of the government, of the police, or other authorities and simply assume that this is the state of nature. It’s not. Places that are really truly lawless end up being places full of gangs, thieves and tribal and clan warfare simply because that is the state of nature. Humans are quite capable of taking advantage of the people around them and thus you live in a state of distrust of anyone not in your group. I don’t think this is controversial, we are animals just like all the rest of them, and evolutionary history is such that it’s the law of survival of the fittest with red teeth and claws.

And likewise I think a lot of arguing about policing gets stuck in the same ruts. Most of us have never had to face what cops do, and have no idea what they’re talking about. They don’t know about the risks of hidden weapons, the drug users who don’t feel pain because of the drug, the need to prevent the person they’re arresting from getting their weapon. Cops can and have gone too far. I’m not saying that. But I’ve always found the demands of the activists to be silly. You cannot expect a criminal to submit to arrest because you asked him nicely, or assume that a person reaching for something isn’t reaching for a gun or other weapon.

Whatever the outward facade, my position was crumbling behind it. Almost seven years ago I started working as a public defender and was inundated with hundreds of hours of police encounter footage that were completely uneventful; if anyone, it was usually my client who acted like an idiot. I've seen bodycam footage that starts with officers dropping their lunch in the precinct breakroom in order to full-on sprint toward a "shots fired" dispatch call. I've seen dipshits like the woman who attempted to flee a traffic stop while the trooper was desperately reaching for the ignition with his legs dangling out of the open car door. Despite this, the trooper treated her with impeccable professionalism once the situation was stabilized.

I really think people like your former self who have a bit of a cop problem could really stand to do a few ride-alongs and watch a few dozen hours of police footage. As you say, it's really illuminating. American police are overwhelmingly incredibly well-trained, professional, and cordial, even when dealing with jaw-droppingly disrespectful citizens.

Indeed, it's always astonished me just how ill-informed and prejudiced so many otherwise intelligent people seem to be about police. I suspect it's for a few reasons:

  1. Ideological expedience. The Left is primed to hate police because of the race angle, and libertarians are primed to hate police because of a general distrust of state power. Both of these groups are very disproportionately likely to be in a position to influence public perceptions (e.g., academia, journalism, opinion magazines, blogs, etc.)
  2. The availability heuristic. People see the most egregious police abuses/mistakes and have no sense of how astronomically rare those events are. For every iffy police shooting that crosses your radar, tens of thousands of police interactions occur without any violence transpiring whatsoever. The occasional douchebag officer encounter makes the rounds on social media, but the vast majority of officer encounters that are professional and courteous - even in the face of obscenely disrespectful and obnoxious civilians - never get shared.
  3. Osmosis from the general anti-police zeitgeist. Even without ideological bias, it's easy to find oneself assuming that there's a problem if so many people seem to think there is.
  4. Lacking domain-specific knowledge. If you don't understand that police don't have quotas, or that civil asset forfeitures aren't as simple as police being bandits, or that qualified immunity only applies to civil lawsuits and doesn't permit police to engage in criminal acts without being prosecutable, or that police don't "investigate themselves" for wrongdoing, or that they do indeed get more training than hairstylists... well, then you simply don't know. And combined with some of the other numbered items on this list, it's easy for people to lazily round these things off to "yeah, I guess they are probably just rotten about this and that thing".
    • On a related note: most jobs aren't exposed to the public like policing is (and not heightened in exposure for reasons of #1 and #7). Programmers, lab analysts, manufacturers, logisticians, consultants, actuaries, etc., etc. aren't jobs people are in any position to notice or think about or care about. I suspect most people would have similar groan-worthy misunderstandings about most jobs if those jobs were similarly criticized by clueless (and/or dishonest) ideologically motivated actors and trotted out for viral outrage bait.
  5. The sort of people who hang out in the greater rationalist sphere or in highbrow publications probably know fewer police officers in their personal lives and so have few opportunities to ask basic questions, correct misunderstandings, or even just harbor a modicum of charity (especially given the class difference between them and police officers).
  6. Relying on faulty intuitions about how policing ought to be done, especially the use of force. Violence is actually not something most people understand very well. For example:
    • People don't seem to understand that the presence of a gun on an officer's hip completely changes the dynamic of a physical altercation between an officer and a citizen - the officer must interpret active resistance as ultimately a fight for the officer's gun. And the officer absolutely cannot afford to lose that fight, ever.
    • Your hands justifiably scare the shit out of a police officer, because your hands are what is going to kill him. Fishing around for something in your car or your pockets is a potentially life-threatening situation for the officer, and you're doing yourself no favors by raising his alarm like that.
    • An unarmed person does not mean a non-dangerous person. See bullet point #1 above. Also, cars are deadly weapons.
    • Tasers are not a substitute for shooting. Where deadly force is justified, a taser is never an appropriate tool (unless there are other officers providing lethal cover). They are simply not reliable enough.
    • The use of stern language and/or sudden violent physical control (e.g., grappling, tackling) is de-escalation. Failure to rapidly put a belligerent person into handcuffs only increases the likelihood that that that person will obtain a weapon or get into a vehicle and cause further harm to themselves, officers, or others.
    • There is no such thing a shooting someone's legs. First of all, leg shots are often fatal anyway because of the femoral artery. But more importantly, if a situation justifies deadly force, it is imperative to maximize likelihood of neutralizing the threat. That means rapidly putting shots center-mass until the threat ceases.
  7. It is just kinda seen as "cool" and "righteous" to try to notice and stand up to supposed abuses of power. There's no esteem to be had in being perceived as a bootlicker.

Anyway, it truly did make my day to hear that how you (and @Amadan) changed your minds about policing. There are few topics that makes me despair quite like the topic of policing when I see it come up in spaces like this.

I agree with most of your points and would particularly prioritize the availability heuristic. Police encounters are heavily lopsided where the vast majority of people can go through their lives and never have one (aside from maybe the occasional speeding ticket) while a small minority are frequent flyers. There's about 10 million arrests every year in the US, and even news savvy folks would probably be aware of a couple dozen.

I disagree with a lot in point #4. Cops still have quotas, though they get more creative about hiding it. Here's a recent example from this year from Maryland State Police who were expected to conduct at least 100 traffic stops a month. There's also an ongoing scandal in Connecticut State troopers creating thousands of fake traffic stops, although it's not clear if they were motivated by a quota or if they did it to pad out the race statistics of the people they stopped. I don't know what you meant by cops acting like bandits, but the Institute of Justice stays very busy litigating civil forfeiture cases, like this one from Detroit where the cops had a pattern of seizing people's personal cars and keeping it in legal limbo for months. It's true that QI only applies in the civil setting but there remains significant institutional biases against criminally prosecuting any police. You speak of police "investigating themselves" as if it's a myth but barring this trial exception in Washington state, that's how it works everywhere else as far as I'm aware.

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you wrote, but the examples you highlighted don't seem like the best way to make the case that the public has a skewed perspective on how policing is actually conducted (I point I actually agree with).

Part of me is tempted to respond to the individual complaints you cite (e.g., regarding quotas, apparently MSP expected 100 stops per month per trooper. That's 5 per shift. Let me ask you something: how do you think police supervisors should deal with a trooper who, upon review of his shift, has been sitting under an overpass all day making zero stops and playing Angry Birds on his phone?) But I hope you won't begrudge me for instead getting at what I think is the core of the disagreement. Let me explain.

In general, I've never been impressed by examples like what you're citing. Here we have an institution - police departments - who, unlike corporations, churches, NGOs, etc., are public-facing, held accountable by the public, and have a significant degree of open records. Along come actors (people working at leftist/libertarian publications) who are extremely ideologically and professionally motivated to find fault in this institution and its members, whether or not fault exists in general or in any given instance. And they have 18,000 police departments to sift through for ammunition, with all the evil and human failings that go along with the approximately million fallible people in those departments, and little to no motivation to identify innocent explanations or exculpatory context.

Given that background, don't you therefore agree that our baseline expectation should be that there will be virtually endless examples scattered throughout the year, for every year in perpetuity, of something that officers or departments are doing that's shady, abusive, corrupt, or (perhaps more often than not) merely cast in that light when framed a certain way, with certain information omitted, and with the author guiding the reader (who lacks domain-specific knowledge and context) to squint a certain way to see the optical illusion pop out? And, most importantly, would you not agree that the fact that there are perpetually frequent examples should mean virtually nothing for the layman who just wants a general impression of police as an institution or wants to know what to think of his home city's department and its officers?

To put it another way: Wouldn't it be astonishing if there weren't such frequent articles of alleged police misdeeds in these publications, given the trove available to reporters to sift through, the evil and imperfections inherent in any group of a million people, and given the reporters' ideological biases and the eagerness to click on those articles by their readers who share those biases?

Now, it would be very fair for you to point out in response to the above that my reasoning would seem to preclude ever finding widespread fault in any institution. I wouldn't take my reasoning that far, though. Let me use an analogy to help explain how I think about this.

Consider academia. As someone who's been in The Motte for years, I hope my memory is not mistaken when I identify you as someone who, like myself and many people on The Motte, believe that academia is ridden with systemic progressive bias. How do we know that academia is actually systemically biased towards progressives, and that it's not just a bunch of conservatives scouring the thousands of universities in the Western world for isolated examples of bias like I claim that Reason et al are doing with police departments? While there's no slam-dunk proof, I think one major difference comes down to just how blatant, widespread, all-encompassing, top-down, and officially sanctioned the examples are from the firehose we have to draw from. We can see the universities' curriculum, hiring/tenure process (e.g., DEI loyalty oaths), official policies, statements by leadership, actions by strongly adjacent institutions like major academic journals, political donation records, etc., and it all points in the same direction and has a very strong magnitude. If you were parachuted into a few random social science classes for a few hours, you could expect to be positively nauseated by the intensity of the leftist bias.

By contrast, if you watched a random few hours of body cam footage, it seems you agree that you would not be similarly steeped in a display of corruption, abuse, and other malfeasance. And if police misdeeds were higher up the chain than mere body cam footage could reveal, we should expect a putatively widespread problem to be in evidence in vast quantities of large departments, with extensive networks of mutual corruption at the top levels, not these frankly pennyante, chickenshit, and/or extremely isolated examples that Reason et al restock the shelves with every so often. But you know where we can find that? In Latin America and other corrupt countries in the present, and in American departments generations ago when organized crime was a much bigger deal. So we know what to look for. We know how rancid is smells when it's a problem. It's just not there anymore, thank goodness. (Of course, that's not to say that isolated examples of misdeeds shouldn't be remedied, and they usually absolutely are. It's just that those examples should be be given approximately zero weight to someone trying to form an understanding of what a given police officer or department is like.)

Much of the problem in academia has to do with things that people say, things that people are told not to say, and firings and hirings. These are inherently hard to hide from the public, so there's a lot of evidence that academia is doing them.

Other kinds of institutional problems are much easier to hide, so you should expect correspondingly less evidence.

And the anti-police sentiment you see here on themotte is a lot more nuanced than the political slogans on the news. It's more "the police have serious problems". Pretty much nobody here really thinks that all cops are bastards, regardless of how many do in the activist left.

Much of the problem in academia has to do with things that people say, things that people are told not to say, and firings and hirings. These are inherently hard to hide from the public, so there's a lot of evidence that academia is doing them.

Other kinds of institutional problems are much easier to hide, so you should expect correspondingly less evidence.

The police literally have body cameras! Much of their activity is also observed out in public, and their records are often public or released on request. It's hard to imagine an institution/occupation whose activities are harder to conceal than policing in the 21st Century.

And the anti-police sentiment you see here on themotte is a lot more nuanced than the political slogans on the news. It's more "the police have serious problems". Pretty much nobody here really thinks that all cops are bastards, regardless of how many do in the activist left.

I'm not claiming that the sentiment here on The Motte and in similar places is anything like the hysterical, lowest common denominator, activism-soaked ACAB stuff. My problem is that I think the more nuanced takes are egregiously false, too.

Going back to your original #4, if you had written something like:

Lacking domain-specific knowledge. If you don't understand that there are 18,000 police departments in this country, or how transparent they're required to be with their records, or how much rigorous training officers actually receive, and how ideologically motivated some journalists are to make hay of any single incident... well, then you simply don't know. And combined with some of the other numbered items on this list, it's easy for people to lazily round these things off to "yeah, I guess they are probably just rotten about this and that thing".

...I wouldn't have a problem with it. My interpretation of what you originally wrote (correct me if I was wrong) was to argue that people have a skewed perspective of how policing is actually conducted, and you did that by presenting various statements of fact as a way to demonstrate how ill-informed folks are (e.g. "police don't have quotas but the public thinks otherwise" presumably).

But as I pointed out, much of what you presented as evidence of the public's ignorance turns out to be actually grounded in reality. So it seems to me that what you're actually disputing is how much weight those examples should get, but that's a very different argument to make.

[Also, whether I think police quotas are an appropriate way of dealing with lazy cops is a completely separate discussion from whether or not police quotas even exist.]

e.g., regarding quotas, apparently MSP expected 100 stops per month per trooper. That's 5 per shift. Let me ask you something: how do you think police supervisors should deal with a trooper who, upon review of his shift, has been sitting under an overpass all day making zero stops and playing Angry Birds on his phone?

By disciplining him for not working during his shift, which has nothing to do with the number of stops and everything to do with him ditching work to play games on his phone.

You might object that measuring this is unreasonably hard and that measuring stops is a reasonable proxy to check for that. I disagree.

You can check electronic surveillance, which many police departments are already moving to for other reasons. Body cameras, car cameras, and car GPS systems are a lot more common and any one of these should make it trivial to check if a police officer is doing nothing all day.

If for whatever reason you don't think these tools are sufficient to identify police abandoning their jobs, there's another option that works for any job where workers have overlapping skill sets. You can switch up who does what work. Put the officer who think isn't working on a route where you know other officers regularly make many stops. Rotate a few officers who you know do good work to cover his route. If the pattern of few stops follows the officer who you're suspicious of, that's good evidence that he's not doing his job well enough.

There is no such thing a shooting someone's legs. First of all, leg shots are often fatal anyway because of the femoral artery. But more importantly, if a situation justifies deadly force, it is imperative to maximize likelihood of neutralizing the threat. That means rapidly putting shots center-mass until the threat ceases.

This one in particular infuriates me. I've spoken to so many otherwise intelligent people who seem to think "why didn't they just shoot him in the arm/leg?" is actually an effective or useful suggestion. I've tried to explain to them, very patiently, why this is nonsense, but it never seems to sink in.

I'm sure most of the people reading this already agree with me, but I'm going to reiterate it anyway:

  1. When a person is running (e.g. towards the police officer whose gun they are hoping to wrestle away from them), their arms and legs are moving rapidly. If they are running directly towards the police officer, the centre of their torso is effectively stationary relative to the police officer, and growing larger the closer they get. It is vastly easier to hit a large stationary target than a small moving one, even if you are an exceptional marksman. Firing and missing the target vastly increases the likelihood of accidentally hitting an innocent bystander.
  2. Even if the officer succeeds in hitting one of the limbs, the arms and legs are very narrow relative to the torso, which makes it far more likely that the round will penetrate all the way through, potentially hitting an innocent bystander (or ricocheting and hitting an innocent bystander).
  3. A sufficiently high crackhead or tweaker will shrug off a bullet wound to the arm or leg. To decisively put them down, there's no option other than centre mass.
  4. As you point out, even if the officer deliberately aims for the legs, the thighs are far larger than the calves, making it disproportionately likely that the officer will nick the femoral artery, in which case the target will likely die of exsanguination at the scene anyway.

For all of the above reasons, American police officers are trained to aim for the torso rather than the limbs in the unfortunate event that they determine gunfire is necessary. You might disagree with the priorities of the training, but you can hardly blame the officer himself for reverting to his training in the heat of the moment.

It’s TV and movies. Which I think is the truest statement you can make about the way most Americans understand worlds they have not personally entered. The TV or movies show things being a certain way, and unless the given American has significant experience or knowledge that teaches them otherwise, they assume it’s true.

And movies love to do leg shots because it’s dramatic. They’re not worried about the realistic problems with doing that. They care that it looks cool and therefore sells more tickets. Most movie and TV fights are generally fantasy based on looking good and not based on the method being realistic to the type of fights depicted.

The same could be said of almost anything. Ask any computer programmer about the ridiculous hacking scenes, doctors about medical shows, or scientists about any depiction of working scientists in their field, or what can and cannot be done. But because of the way most people live without interaction with those things outside of personal friends or high school, most people just assume the movies are accurate.

This is another reason why Terminator 2 is such a great movie. The T-800 abides by his directive not to kill any humans by shooting them in the legs instead, but then again you'd expect an advanced robot assassin to have that level of firearm precision.

that civil asset forfeitures aren't as simple as police being bandits

Civili asset forfeitures are hard enough to contest, and have few enough checks and balances, that they provide huge incentives for the police to become bandits, even though there can be legitimate civil forfeitures. Don't mistake "isn't written to be X" for "isn't in practice X", especially when incentives rear their heads.

or that qualified immunity only applies to civil lawsuits and doesn't permit police to engage in criminal acts without being prosecutable,

Prosecuting the police depends on prosecuting them by a system that is sympathetic to the police, leaving civil suits as the only way to get justice. If you can find prominent examples of qualified immunity abuse where the police actually received serious criminal punishment, I'd like to see them.

* Qualified immunity abuse: examples where most people would say "it's blatantly obvious that police aren't supposed to do that".

Relying on faulty intuitions about how policing ought to be done, especially the use of force. Violence is actually not something most people understand very well.

A lot of what you describe might reduce the danger to the police from guilty suspects, while increasing the danger to innocent suspects. It's not as if innocent people are trained in the proper ways to make themselves look non-dangerous to police.

A lot of what you describe might reduce the danger to the police from guilty suspects, while increasing the danger to innocent suspects.

I described in my comment one facet of American police training which is specifically designed to reduce the danger to innocent bystanders at the cost of increasing the danger to the person the police officer is targeting.

It's not as if innocent people are trained in the proper ways to make themselves look non-dangerous to police.

The cops and their apologists give out such advice all the time. Most of it is humiliating, because what makes you look non-dangerous to police is an abject display of submission. Some of it is actively dangerous legally because it involves answering their questions.

Most of it is humiliating, because what makes you look non-dangerous to police is an abject display of submission.

Can you elaborate on this? Generally, police just want you to:

  1. Keep your hands visible. Is keeping your hands casually at your sides humiliating?
  2. Don't, without being instructed, reach for anything or walk to an enclosed location (e.g., into your car or home, within which might be a weapon).
  3. I guess, uh, don't say that you're going to kill them? I don't know, I'm having trouble finding a #3, honestly.

Is standing/sitting there with your hands casually at your sides (or on your steering wheel) until the conclusion of the interaction so humiliating?

For the very small proportion of encounters with police that involve the officers' guns drawn, they may ask you to walk backwards and get down on your knees or get flat on the ground with your hands out to the sides. Do you consider that humiliating? This is done to minimize the subjects' ability to put up effective resistance. It's to decrease the likelihood that they have to fucking shoot you! I'm terribly sorry if you feel like you're playing the hokey-pokey for that brief moment that the vast majority of the population will never even encounter in their entire lifetime.

get down on your knees or get flat on the ground with your hands out to the sides. Do you consider that humiliating? This is done to minimize the subjects' ability to put up effective resistance. It's to decrease the likelihood that they have to fucking shoot you!

I never have been in such a situation, but I imagine that I would in fact find it quite humiliating to be forced to kneel or prostrate myself in front of my assailants. The fact that they are (presumably) insisting on it to assuage their own fears wouldn't really factor into my emotional reaction.

Personally I understand and appreciate the need for police to exist, they serve a valuable societal role and you get significant problems if you don't have them. But at the same time I side with a lot of the ACAB people because the police force where I live is shockingly, astonishingly corrupt - to the point that they actually awarded an "excellence in policing" medal to a famously corrupt cop who made the news later on because he murdered a young man in cold blood over a drug deal gone wrong. At the same time I've seen video recordings of a huge police officer bodyslamming an old woman to the ground, then trying to lie about how she "tripped" and pulled him down - and that same police officer coaching witnesses and committing serious offences in court (witness tampering). Another scandal that made the news recently was when the police released the private diary of a rape victim to hostile press in order to make sure that a politician friendly to them wasn't prosecuted. You're totally right when you say that the police force or something equivalent needs to exist, but I think that ACAB actually does apply, at least in my case (and I'm sure there are parts of the US where this is true as well). There's so much naked, visible corruption and abuse that I do actually consider all of the cops here bastards because they do nothing about the blatant criminality and corruption taking place right next to them. When your policing body says that incredibly corrupt cops who go on to become murderers are the kind of police officers worth recognising, rewarding (and hence emulating) then I don't have any problems making judgements about the people who stay in the role.

Where do you live?

I don't like getting too specific but I've already revealed that the answer is Australia. The police officer I mentioned is named Roger Rogerson, there's actually a netflix series about the murder.

I think that ACAB actually does apply, at least in my case (and I'm sure there are parts of the US where this is true as well)

all

parts of

The assertions "All Cops Are Bastards" and "Some Cops Are Bastards" are vastly different. I don't think there's a man alive who would dispute the latter. The claim that all cops are bastards in parts of the US (i.e. certain jurisdictions) by definition implies that there are some cops who are not bastards (or some jurisdictions not staffed entirely by bastards).

The assertions "All Cops Are Bastards" and "Some Cops Are Bastards" are vastly different.

Yes, evil bastard cops and good noble cops are very different. The bastard cops are doing their bastardly deeds, and the good cops look the other way and close ranks to defend their brothers at any cost. Such great difference.

Obviously you believe that All Cops are Bastards. I'm not even arguing that that's not the case. I'm arguing that what /u/FirmWeird is describing explicitly contradicts the assertion that All Cops are Bastards. If the assertion "all cops are bastards" is only true in parts of the US (as they said), that logically implies that there are parts of the US in which that assertion isn't true i.e. NACAB.

Yes, evil bastard cops and good noble cops are very different. The bastard cops are doing their bastardly deeds, and the good cops look the other way and close ranks to defend their brothers at any cost. Such great difference.

Why do you assume that the good cops are even aware of the corruption? It's not like the corrupt cops are telling the other cops about their misdeeds. And if an accusation of corruption appears, it's appropriate to give the accused the benefit of the doubt. If an accusation of inappropriate force comes to light, the appropriate response is usually "Look, I wasn't there. I'm not gonna Monday morning quarterback what he did based on hearsay. If the investigation reveals misconduct, then by all means he should be held accountable."

People seem to think corrupt cops are telling all their cop bros about the shit they're getting away with and they all snicker together about it or something. And they think that the non-abusive cops hide and protect the power-trippers (for reasons that are seemingly never specified by ACABers - somethingsomething brotherly solidarity?) Do they not realize how much harder it is for cops to do their job when a power-tripping asshole shows up at the scene? Cops hate those sorts of cops!

I could see isolated incidents in very small departments (e.g., tiny towns and counties) of things like this happening, but mostly because of the tight social and kin networks in places like that and the far more limited resources and oversight. But it's rarely those departments that ACABers express issue with; it's almost always the big city departments.

Why do you assume that the good cops are even aware of the corruption?

Because it's ubiquitous. In many cases they've literally seen it, because it was done in their presence. And yes, cops talk -- look at the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore, every cop in the department knew what a "rough ride" was and that it happened.

There might be isolated instances of small departments which don't have brutal cops, or only have one who keeps his mouth shut about it. But any sizable department has significant brutality and essentially all the cops know about it.

Because it's ubiquitous. In many cases they've literally seen it, because it was done in their presence. And yes, cops talk -- look at the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore, every cop in the department knew what a "rough ride" was and that it happened.

There might be isolated instances of small departments which don't have brutal cops, or only have one who keeps his mouth shut about it. But any sizable department has significant brutality and essentially all the cops know about it.

I strongly dispute that. I don't know a ton about the Freddie Gray incident or the Baltimore department, but my understanding is that neither state nor federal prosecutors allege what you have about Freddie Gray.

More importantly, while I think isolated examples of brutality like you're alleging do occur, given the tens of millions of annual police encounters, I would fully expect that even an America full of the most perfect police forces our fallible world could ever muster would nonetheless still present an endless number of examples of egregious misdeeds across the country.

The point is that it's not a systemic problem (I argue). The conduct of these abusive officers is not tolerated by their fellow officers and superiors (why would it be? It makes their job that much harder and opens them up to criminal/civil liability). Further, these abusive officers are are regularly fired, as well charged and convicted, with the obvious caveat that it's not always easy to pass the bar of guilty-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt (just look at non-cop criminals!)

However, I don't expect the vast gulf between our intuitions and experiences about this problem/nonproblem is going to be bridged within the limits of the intersection of our patience and free time in this already waning comment thread, I think you'll agree.

The point is that it's not a systemic problem (I argue). The conduct of these abusive officers is not tolerated by their fellow officers and superiors (why would it be? It makes their job that much harder and opens them up to criminal/civil liability). Further, these abusive officers are are regularly fired, as well charged and convicted, with the obvious caveat that it's not always easy to pass the bar of guilty-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt (just look at non-cop criminals!)

The point is exactly the opposite of this. Abusive officers do whatever they like. Everyone knows about it -- other cops who may not be so abusive themselves, defendants, defense lawyers, supervisors, prosecutors, even judges. But defendants aren't considered credible, and cops support each other unconditionally in the "blue wall of silence". Occasionally there's physical evidence and maybe a cop gets fired (and then later quietly re-instated with back pay when the union sues), but they nearly always get away with it.

It's not so much a systemic problem as it is an intrinsic problem. Any group of enforcers will develop an us against them mentality. They have to, enforcement isn't possible if the enforcers give their opponent's arguments the same weight as their allies. The corrupt ones don't have to brag about their excesses, they just have to deny them and ask the clean ones if they are really going to believe this meth-head/loser/nazi over them.

And even if the loser convinces one clean cop of his innocence it doesn't matter, because the whole department needs to be convinced. A department which is a mix of corrupt and clean no less - the corrupt will never believe him, so the department will always be weighted heavily against him. A clean cop who took a stand would just get fired, so they reason they should tolerate a small amount of corruption so they can help the greatest number of people.

This happens at every level of society, at every level of enforcement.

Why do you assume that the good cops are even aware of the corruption? It's not like the corrupt cops are telling the other cops about their misdeeds

If the good cops aren't aware of the naked criminality that is so publicly well-known that it is a major news story and there are entire netflix tv shows being made about it, they're bastards anyway because they are so manifestly incompetent and unfit for the duty they've taken on that they're effectively defrauding the government. A lot of this stuff is front-page news and despite the ugly conclusions this leads to about police bastardry, it is actually more insulting to assume that they're blind idiots who are unable to read newspapers or even listen to public news broadcasts. This stuff doesn't even have a figleaf to protect it - the head of a heavily politicised police department can just have footage of undeniable witness tampering posted to youtube and nothing happens. Sitting senators on government commissions into police misconduct can bring it up and nothing happens!

And they think that the non-abusive cops hide and protect the power-trippers (for reasons that are seemingly never specified by ACABers - somethingsomething brotherly solidarity?)

No, the reasons that get brought up are simple - professional retribution(how eager are you to report the person who decides whether or not you get promoted for being corrupt when there's a decent chance his boss is also on the take), the culture of policing(thin blue line, brotherly solidarity as you mentioned, etc) and mutual blackmail (you aren't going to report me for being on the take because I will then report you for being on the take).

I could see isolated incidents in very small departments (e.g., tiny towns and counties) of things like this happening, but mostly because of the tight social and kin networks in places like that and the far more limited resources and oversight. But it's rarely those departments that ACABers express issue with; it's almost always the big city departments.

Actually this happens in the larger state and federal departments here and that's where all of the stories I've been talking about have come from. Very small departments have, in my experience, been slightly better (my intuited explanation for this is that those ones tend to be more strongly tied to their local community).

My apologies for being unclear. I was speaking in terms of my local context - "cops" here meant exclusively the ones from my country, as my brain considered the local police force 'cops' and ones in America 'American cops'. I don't know enough about US policing to talk accurately about the subject given that I've never actually been to the place. Although with all that said, I absolutely disagree with a lot of defund the police rhetoric etc - I just think that there are serious problems with our current police force. I'd much prefer to have a complete and total lack of financial privacy for law enforcement agents (if they do not wish to make their finances public they can simply leave the force) than simply removing the police and not replacing them.

I think I understood you right the first time around, you think Australian cops are institutionally corrupt but don't know enough about the American situation to comment if it's the same there.

The word "all" is kind of interesting. Taken 100% literally, the slogan "all cops are bastards" means that literally every cop in the entire world is a bastard. But it could understandably be taken to mean "all cops [in this country] are bastards" or similar. I remember one instance seeing a person expressing some ACAB-esque sentiments on Facebook, and then having to hastily qualify that statement by assuring their friends that they were only referring to cops in the UK, not Ireland.

If I was going to steelman the ACAB claim, it would be something along the lines of "There is enough police corruption and malfeasance that it is not plausible that any individual cop would be unaware of it. Hence, all cops are aware of corruption and malfeasance but refuse to do anything about these problems. This means that even cops who are not themselves personally corrupt are tacitly endorsing and supporting those that are, and hence deserve disapprobation."

I appreciate the serious and thoughtful essay on the topic. My first impression was a fearful "oh no, is this one of those crappy converted libertarian essays". You might have seen the kind ... where the title and content of the essay amounts to "As a libertarian, I use to think poor people were evil and horrible, now as a liberal I see how wrong that idea is." I'm glad this was not that kind of essay.

I have to admit as a bit of an anarchist libertarian myself it challenges me more than most essays would. I am however of the anarcho-capitalist variety of libertarians, or as some anarchists would describe it "not an anarchist at all". (I started writing this right before I got to the section of the essay where you talk about anarcho-capitalists, so you beat me to the joke, but I'm keeping it in)

I did not have your starting position of ACAB. Though I was very suspicious of cops that would defend the "thin blue line" when corruption came into play. I had multiple personal stories from former cops of the insane corruption and shit that cops got away with. One that stuck with me was an economics professor at a local community college. He taught the class between his extended golfing sessions. Former New York Cop, with a very hefty pension. He explained he was doing the class mostly to have something to fill his time. I liked him, but jeez did he have some stories to tell. Pedophiles left on rooftops to either jump or freeze to death. He told the story in a way that gave plausible deniability that maybe other cops had been doing this, but there was also a degree of bragging and agreement with the practice that suggested he'd done it himself. There was also a story about a bomb investigator that got permanently put on desk duty when his wife and the man she was cheating with were blown up under mysterious circumstances that no one could figure out.

My starting position on cops was something like "probably mostly not bastards, but this is definitely a corrupt state institution, and there are better ways this could be run with the right incentives"

I'd stick by that as the correct position, even today. And it might not sound extreme, but I take it to the extreme. There are certain levels of "defund the police" that I'd agree to. And I'd like to defend that position without vague references to thought exercises. Or to leave you as unsatisfied as David Friedman.

What is the problem with policing today?

In short: Too many laws.

A police officer today probably has more knowledge of the legal system than was ever required of anyone in 19th century America. Maybe 19th century supreme court justices would have been required to have more knowledge.

We have seen in moderation on this forum and in many other circumstances there are two semi-valid approaches to law:

  1. Codify everything
  2. Say what vibes you want, and rely on people to get it right.

These two things exist on a spectrum. But it is hard to disagree that America has been trending towards the codification of everything. Both systems have their downsides, but the main downside of the "codify everything" approach is that humans aren't so good at applying it. They certainly can't remember everything that has been codified, but even if they do, they can't help but injecting their own opinions into things and turning it into a vibes based system.

Cops are sort of the first entry point into the legal system, so its the first and most obvious place where you see these problems crop up. Even if they get fixed by later parts of the justice system, they are still the most visible. The top of the funnel is always the widest, and cops are at the top of the funnel.

There are many other problems with too many laws. It decreases trust in law enforcement in general. It splits valuable resources. It creates avenues for criminals to exist outside the legal system. Etc.

What is the solution?

First, Reduce the scope of policing.

Second, Split up what they do into different professions.

Third, stop trying to legislate goodness into others.

Fourth, allow private citizens to do the work of police.

To me, these are options are both the realistic approach in the short term, and the only viable long term solution. Policing is a bundled good. Any police precinct has many relevant functions and duties, and police officers are supposed to be generally interchangeable between those duties. (so interchangeable that I know one police district required officers to serve a prison wardens for a year before being allowed to go out on patrol).

This is bad, and dumb. Every industry specializes over time. Police officers directing traffic or making stops to give people speeding tickets do not need a full set of training. Police officers that go and apprehend murder suspects might need full swat training. Clearing out homeless people, securing a mall/shopping center, or patrolling a dangerous neighborhood can all be very different jobs that require different mentalities. Some of the worst "police are terrible" stories come from what I see as mixups between these professions.

Also, just have less laws. Sorry all you sim city players out there hoping to control everyone's actions. You need to back off. The scope of policing needs to be philosophically limited. Murder, rape, kidnapping, theft, etc are all clearly valid reasons for some group to exist that can use deadly force to respond to these crimes. But things between consenting adults need to be off limits to the use of force. People tend to want to legislate how to be a good person. But being a good person is a never ending process, and there are always minor improvements you can make. Once we started embarking on this journey of "police should make people be better" we entered down a path of endless laws and regulations.

As an example of areas where we have reduced the scope of policing, I'd suggest looking at any side job cops ever get. Private security for facilities, private protection for rich individuals, security guards at gated neighborhoods, private investigators, bounty hunters, etc. These are all often more specialized security forces than police, and they can often provide better services than the police. (we should not be surprised that private businesses can provide better services than a semi-monopolistic government entity).

Finally, private citizens are sometimes capable and more motivated to accomplish the goals of a police force. An easy example is a home break in. Police might be there in five to ten minutes at best. If you are already there, you can respond much faster to the situation. Perhaps you should be allowed to shoot to defend yourself. This is true in some states, not in all, and not in many countries outside the US. A harder example: I also can't go to the homeless encampments near my neighborhood and take many actions. I am restricted to calling the police (who luckily did something about it recently). But as a homeowner and father of two. I had much more to lose from a confrontation with the homeless. Even if I could have easily brought superior firepower and safety. A full set of body armor ammo and weapons, and hiring two professional bodyguards for a few hours is ironically cheaper than fending off any murder changes for the crazy homeless person that might have suicided themselves against this extreme use of force. Police have a measure of protection from liability that makes them the only viable path for rich people to deal with problems that might require the use of force.

I might be able to continue this tomorrow, but I'm running out of steam. Police are a modern invention. We have survived most of history without them. I think they are mostly a result of modern legislation. Specifically, too many laws, nanny stating bullcrap, and restrictions on what private citizens are allowed to do.

I will push back slightly on the idea of private guards and the like. One of the benefits of having the police be a government agency is that they are bound by law. Constitutional rights are only in force when dealing with the government. Thus the government cannot impose censorship directly on social media. But since social media is privately owned it’s simply a matter of “convincing those companies to censor for the government,” at which point censorship has happened, but it’s legal even if the government is sending lists of topics to be censored. And if you’re doing “police type work” but are a prive group, i fear the same sort of dynamic at play. The NYPD has to read the Miranda warning, they have to abide Habeus Corpus, and must get search warrants. Joe’s private security force is not constrained in that way. Joe isn’t the government, so if he questioned you without a lawyer, it’s not illegal. If he keeps you in a cage for a month, he’s not in violation of HC which applies to the government. If he breaks into your house durning an arrest, he’s not bound to a search warrant, which, again is a protection from the government not private firms.

Police and government agents also have sovereign immunity, meaning they can't be individually sued for actions they carried out on behalf of the government, as long as they reasonably believed those actions were constitutional. It's a loophole big enough to drive a truck through.

The legal system has also found many ways to work around the "protections" of the constitution.

So the restrictions on cops are not that strong.

Meanwhile you have ignored the main restriction on private security: getting sued. Bounty hunters exist and you can see how they perform arrests on YouTube. Many of the restrictions that exist for police are there because they would be too powerful otherwise. Private security does not currently reach that level of power.

We have survived most of history without them

Well sort of, but not very well. Peel didn't create the Metropolitan Police just because he felt like it, law and order in the early 19th century and before was a disaster, precisely because so much of the burden was placed on private citizens to bring cases etc. and they weren't very good at it. Violent crime in inner London dropped by as much as 40% on the introduction of the Met, with smaller reductions for property crime.

We also survived most of history without modern medicine.

Regarding the anarchist responses to the topic, the only coherent proposals I've ever encountered are from David Friedman and others on the anarcho-capitalist side (a variant thoroughly detested by left-wing anarchist thinkers who think it's an affront even to consider it "real" anarchism). Friedman's response is essentially a cyberpunk future with competing private companies offering insurance, security, and arbitration in one package. Friedman's proposal is unusually thoughtful and coherent (the bar is low) and yet still remains largely a thought exercise reliant on some generous game theory assumptions. Who knows if it will or can ever work.

It worked for millenia in clan and tribal societies, all anarchism leads back to the good old Viking times.

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/winner-the-derek-chauvin-defund-challenge

Once Derek Chauvin has been found guilty in a court of law, he is sentenced to a term of community service of a length and type appropriate to the severity of his crime. (So in this case, a lot. Life?) That community service is overseen by agents of the court; I’m thinking more like lawyers or clerks, less like armed bailiffs. Those agents are not charged with forcing him to stick to the community service, but rather just observing whether he does so.

If he forfeits on his community service, as determined by the courts, then he will be considered an “outlaw” - meaning, specifically, someone not protected by the law. Anything done to him that would ordinarily constitute a crime no longer does. No police are necessary; if he refuses to serve his time helping his fellow man, then anybody with a chip on their shoulder can punish him for it. As long as he sticks to his sentence, he’s safe, with his life dedicated to helping others. And if anyone were to commit a crime against him while he was in that situation they would face the same fate he currently faces—an appropriate community service sentence enforced by the threat of being put outside of the protection of the law should he violate that sentence.

Now reinvent blood feud and wergeld, and utopia ensues.

While I disagree on the object level towards ACAB, I have some sympathy towards people who dismiss all cops as being bastards as I have a similar attitude towards all mainstream journalists. The rationale for that attitude is that even if one journalist, multiple journalists or even a majority of them, are hardworking and try hard to report the truth, as a group my observation is that they are unwilling to push back against the large contingent of liars and frauds in their profession, and when outsiders push against them the wagons circle and end up pointing in a predictable direction, leading me to believe there is a tacit endorsement of the bad aspects. I can easily imagine someone making a similar argument against the police, that they are unwilling to truly clean up their profession in the eyes of the public, that there is a culture of silence and an anti-snitch mentality within the profession. As with journalists, they are performing a duty to society that is sacred and requires the population's absolute confidence so they cannot afford in-group loyalty when it clashes with their duty.

I guess one distinction could be that one could argue that cops are not always aware of specific actionable, denounceable action by bad apples in their group. I don't think journalists can use that argument.

I can easily imagine someone making a similar argument against the police, that they are unwilling to truly clean up their profession in the eyes of the public, that there is a culture of silence and an anti-snitch mentality within the profession.

I actually more-or-less still hold this position, it's just that resorting to the slogan does a very poor job of conveying the specific concern and assumes that every officer is equally and uniformly responsible.

If this synopsis of the book is in any way accurate, Davis's arguments are so undercooked that it should come with a health warning.

I checked the book, and that Twitter thread's summary of the final chapter, "Abolitionist Alternatives", is completely accurate. Davis complains about people asking what should happen to honest-to-god violent criminals, and then goes on to waffle for 13 pages without actually answering it. Then the book ends.

The only point in that chapter where she gets concrete is when she mentions the idea of making all or most crimes into pure torts, to maintain deterrence without incarceration. Unfortunately she balks at asking the obvious next question: what if the criminal can't or won't pay the fine? What if, for example, the guy who committed an armed robbery has no worldly possessions except for $12 and some meth? The historical answers have usually been some mixture of slavery, outlawry, and/or exile, and I doubt she'd be too keen on any of them.

Not an effortpost, just a casual summary of a court case in which people may be interested:

  • Audrey Stone was a Southwest flight attendant, and also the president of the flight attendants' union. In her capacity as union president, she attended an pro-abortion protest and at that rally implicitly represented all the flight attendants at Southwest. Specifically, she carried signs with the Southwest logo on them, and the expenses of union members who attended the protest were paid for using union funds.

  • Charlene Carter was another Southwest flight attendant, who had left the union several years prior and was in active opposition to the union (including leading a recall campaign against Stone). She was opposed to abortion, and therefore was angered by Stone's implicit representation that all of Southwest's flight attendants were in favor of abortion. On Facebook, she sent to Stone various anti-abortion messages, including graphic videos of aborted fetuses.

  • Stone complained to Southwest, which fired Carter for "representing our company in a manner that is disparaging to Southwest Flight Attendants". An arbitrator confirmed that the firing was supported by "just cause" under the applicable collective-bargaining agreement.

  • Carter (1) sued the union for failing to properly represent her in the complaint process, (2) sued both the union and Southwest for retaliating against her due to her protected speech (both union-related and religion-related), and (3) sued both the union and Southwest for discriminating against her due to her religious beliefs. A jury agreed that all of these charges were valid, and awarded to her millions of dollars in damages. Due to federal law, the judge capped the damages at 600 k$ in compensatory and punitive damages, 150 k$ in backpay, and 60 k$ in pre-judgment interest.

  • On the basis of the jury verdict, Carter also asked for an injunction (1) reinstating her to her former position, (2) forbidding Southwest from violating its flight attendants' rights to religious speech and union-related speech in the future, and (3) requiring Southwest to inform all its flight attendants of item 2, including an explicit mention of Title VII (which protects religious speech). The judge granted the request. Southwest apparently asked for some parts of the ruling to be stayed pending appeal, but it did not ask for part 3 to be stayed.

  • Southwest then openly defied part 3 of the judge's ruling, and instead sent to all its flight attendants a message (1) stating that Southwest would continue to enforce its policies and (2) failing to mention Title VII. Accordingly, Carter moved that Southwest be held in contempt of court.

  • The judge investigated, and found that the memo circulated to the flight attendants was drafted by one of Southwest's in-house lawyers (Kevin Minchey), who obviously should know better than to willfully defy the judge in this manner.

  • Therefore the judge: (1) told Southwest to distribute a specific message verbatim, without edits, in order to comply with part 3 of the ruling; and (2), as sanction for this willful disobedience of the court's order, required three of Southwest's in-house lawyers (including Minchey), as representatives of Southwest itself, to undergo at least eight hours of religious-liberty training conducted by a representative of the Alliance Defending Freedom, since the lawyers obviously don't understand religious-liberty law properly.

Relevant court documents:

The Washington Post complains that "Southwest had a constitutional right to issue a memo expressing its disagreement with the jury verdict". The judge's response to this argument is: Speech can be compelled by the government as long as it is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. Making sure that Southwest's flight attendants are aware of their rights under Title VII is a compelling government interest, and the message that the judge is forcing Southwest to send is as narrowly tailored to that interest as possible. Also, the message ordered by the judge is significantly less objectionable than the longer notice (including an apology) that Carter originally asked the judge to force Southwest to send.

The Washington Post complains that "subjecting lawyers to training by an ideological advocacy group such as ADF", rather than "by accredited law schools", is "ludicrous". But the judge points out that ADF has won multiple Supreme Court cases on the topic of religious liberty in recent years, so it obviously is well-qualified to conduct a training session on that topic.

Interesting case. Now I disagree with unions (in most cases) and I believe you should be allowed to fire someone because they are a Christian and vice versa or because they have a skin color you don’t like.

But since there is a union involved I definitely think special protections should be involved. The flight attendant can’t bargain for herself and work in her chosen profession. It’s not a free market. It’s already at its core a coercive relationship where she’s forced to join the union.

Stones her union rep by government force. So she certainly should have to deal with the complaints of her constituency. Without knowing all the legalese here it feels like this was decided correctly.

But a core part of this to me comes from unions only existing because of government violence. Otherwise they wouldn’t exists.

There are a small amount of unions that would freely appear without government. Construction is one potential area as project may be short-lived and both sides of the transaction would prefer to work with an organization verifying worker quality.

The solution in a free market (works best when it’s a constant costs business like airlines and not firms with moats who can discriminate) would be for the wrong thinkers or wrong skin pigment bidding their labor cheaper than the right thinkers and the firm hiring the wrong thinkers makes more money.

But a core part of this to me comes from unions only existing because of government violence. Otherwise they wouldn’t exists.

...They can exist by private violence too, right? Like, a bunch of workers can band together and agree to break the legs of anyone who doesn't stand with them, right?

Sure. Fundamentally they require violence at some stage to exists. Mafia would be the example of an organization that used those practices.

They can exist by no violence at all. For most of the early 19th century in Britain, the direction of violence was unquestionably from government and mill-owner towards unionist.

It seems to me that such organization, sans violence, requires a fairly high level of social cohesion to tamp down on defectors. maybe in the early 19th century, the workers really were cohesive enough that social shaming or other "soft" enforcement mechanisms could get the job done. On the other hand, maybe the violence then was simply informal and illegible. Either way, we're not that cohesive any more, and unions have what seems to me to be a well-earned reputation for playing dirty.

Well unions can/could reduce 'defection' both by securing sufficient benefits for their members that joining becomes rational anyway. If a union reaches a critical mass of membership where an employer can't really do without it in the short to medium term, a union can negotiate better terms that a non-unionised employee doesn't have the bargaining power to secure and if a certain size negotiate closed shop agreements with employers in a fully voluntary manner. Unions had no special legal protections at least until 1871 (and even then that's debatable, some would put it further forward in 1906).

As with FCfromSSC above, so too here: unions can exist without violence. A bunch of employees can agree to bargain together and walk out together if they'd so enjoy. The US may or may not deal with this very well, but that's the US' problem, not an issue with people in general.

Then the airline would hirer different workers. Unions primarily only exists because the Gov gives them special rights. And if the employer violates those rights they sue and the government then uses violence at some stage of the dispute to enforce their ruling.

There are places where unions don't get these special rights, and where they exist just fine. What gives?

Example? I gave one potential instance where the union provides worker training/quality standards for short term work.

Where do unions exists as you say?

I am most familiar with Dutch law, and passably so with Irish and Swedish law on the subject. Dutch law forbids employers from firing people for unionising(1), but does not get enmeshed in any negotiating that goes down. Sweden's laws on the matter are similar. Ireland does the same. The Netherlands and Ireland additionally have their laws written in such a way that unionising can never be required of someone; it is strictly that employee's choice. I don't know why I'd be opposed to this status quo, and it seems to work just fine.

1: This is not a special right, as Dutch law prohibits people from being fired for political association (and a lot of other stuff) in general. This may or may not be a good thing, but the right to unionise isn't at all special.

I define that as a special rights.

It means the employer can not choose to hirer a cheaper worker. If you can’t fire then you can’t hire someone else either.

It basically violates free association. Unless the employer can fire the unionized employees for not accepting the wages they are offering.

Unless the employer can fire the unionized employees for not accepting the wages they are offering.

Yes, of course that's possible. The law forbids employers from firing people for joining unions. It does not compel employers to do anything else, and they are free to laugh unionised sorts out of their offices when they dislike the terms.

More comments

In my country for most unions at least joining is optional - I joined the union for retail workers when I was a retail worker, and in exchange for a small reduction in my paycheck (about the price of a single homecooked meal a month) I received access to a bunch of services provided by the union. I was happy to support it anyway because they'd also negotiated several really useful concessions and pay-raises. I haven't joined the union for my current industry because the last I checked it was captured by ethnic nepotists who believed that the best answer to falling wages and increased competition in the industry was to massively increase immigration of indian workers into the country.

I think the union was a net good - and companies could absolutely hire non-union workers, who were mostly travellers and students who took the job on a very temporary basis. Most workers just joined the union because it legitimately worked out to be a better deal for them, even beyond the additional negotiating power. I'm struggling to understand your opposition to unions here because the kind of organisation you're describing just doesn't have anything to do with the unions I've encountered in the real world.

Well American ones all promote things I think are awful.

From a broader point unions are bad for society but can be good for individual workers.

The best example in the US was when the big three automakers controlled the US market for cars before Japanese cars entered the market. Auto unions could negotiate hirer wages and since all 3 auto unions had to use auto union labor the automakers had the same costs which means they could all pass the higher autoworker wages on to everyone else.

You know who suffered? Every American who had to pay higher auto costs but didn’t work in a protected industry and couldn’t get similar wages. Everyone else losts.

A bunch of employees can agree to bargain together and walk out together if they'd so enjoy.

Sure, they can give up a vast majority of a union's powers and survive without government backing. Let's compare what a theoretical non-government-backed collection of employees could do relative to a union (under my local laws).

  • On inception, a collection of employees that got buy-in from 51% of the employees would consist of 51% of the employees. A union would consist of 100%. (Technically you have the ability to refuse membership, but you are forced to pay membership dues regardless.)

  • If the company doesn't like working with the employees (for whatever reason), it can fire them. If it doesn't like working with a union, it's stuck. Similarly, it can hire replacement workers if they stop showing up for work (It can also do that against unions now, but couldn't before 2008).

  • If the company shuts down its location, the employees get laid off. If the company shuts down a unionized location, then the union hold power over the vacant building and must be reinstated when someone else buys it.

Some type of unions being able to exist without government backing isn't much of an argument that the currently existing ones could. Heck, I'm not sure if your "bunch of employees [that] agree to bargain together" even deserves to be called a union.

I believe it, and I'm entirely open to believing that your local laws are poorly-written. Sliders' argument however is that this is intrinsic to unions, rather than poor lefislatoon, which is the source of my disagreement with him.

This feels like a reflection of Against Murderism.

My examples are central to the category (obviously, because they're mine) like UAW and CUPE, while yours are weird fringe groups that barely deserve to be in the same category. It's like arguing that taxation is theft, therefore theft is pro-social.

While I understand your point, in some sense taxation is the central example of theft.

How many people get robbed each year? How many get taxed?

How much money gets stolen? How much gets taxed?

Any examination of other forms of theft are basically looking at weird hobbyist fringe-thieves.

No! We're talking about a whole country here. By the time something grows to that size and can be observed for long enough of a time, they aren't 'weird fringe groups barely in the same category'. You can't just dismiss arguments because you happen to feel like they aren't similar enough. Some nations have X set of laws for unions, some nations have Y set of laws, you can look at them and figure out what works well. It may be that not all laws work for all people, that circumstances are different elsewhere, but then you'd have to argue that. Do so, rather than insist for no seeming reason at all that the Atlantic leads to a WILDLY different dimension where words stop having meaning.

I just read up on Dutch labor law, and one part stuck out at me:

[A collective bargaining agreement applies] if you are not a member of an employer’s organisation, but the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment has declared a CAO binding to your sector;

That's about as far as possible from "a bunch of employees can agree to bargain together". At least in North America you can shut down your entire business and build a new one from the ground up (on different ground, of course) to escape your union. Dutch labor law is firmly in the realm of "If you don't like it, build your own government" rather than true free association.

Given that baseline level of coercion, of course the entities-which-the-Dutch-call-Unions look completely different than North American Unions: All of their most important functions have been outsourced to other entities, not removed as I had thought.

The job of the union is to represent the rights of the workers when bargaining with employers. Unions have little to no business advocating for anything outside that. The airline, too, seems to have tacitly agreed that it was pro-abortion by letting the union rep use their logo.

I think we all know what would have happened if Ms. Carter had tried using the airline logo or union funds to go attend a pro-life rally. Now, did she harass Ms. Stone online? That's debatable. Certainly I think she had a right to complain that what the airline tacitly supported was not the views of the entirety of the workforce, and that there was no justification for coming down on one side rather than the other.

I agree since I believed she used the word despicable. Though sending pictures of fetuses could just be considered educational.

But a core part of this to me comes from unions only existing because of government violence. Otherwise they wouldn’t exists.

Apart, as someone else has pointed out, being kind of meaningless since corporations only exist because of government violence too, it's also rather unhistorical. During the initial phase of the emergence of unions in Britain they were banned under the Combination Act 1799 - an odd thing to do if unions only exist because of positive government action. They often persisted in spite of such legislation in the form of friendly societies and the like. Even today in most of the West unions have at least many restrictions on their behaviour as they do protections.

Corporations would exists without government violence. And historically there are examples of them happening like basically any long distance trade. Where a group of people wanting to share risks in the enterprise.

Trade might happen without government violence (though they would still be involved in protecting the property of those engaged in trade), but the corporation as it exists in modern America is absolutely the product of government intervention, especially in terms of creating the necessary legal infrastructure for things such as limited liability companies. In addition government intervention assists corporate activity via patents and trademarks, regulation of union activity and most of all creating the peaceable environment that allows their private property 'rights' to have any meaning at all.

Why couldn’t limited liability corporations exists without government?

If I buy consumer product from “Y” there is a risks the product fails and I get hurt etc. But I could still see public disclosures on their equity risks and see that the loss to shareholders is limited. So if I buy a car from them and the brakes fail killing my daughter I still contracted for that risks and as the consumer would realize I can’t sue them for full value.

because limited liability for tort victims only exists with state intervention

limited liability against consumers, creditors, employees, other known parties, could all be done by mutual agreement, but limited liability to third parties, e.g., someone who is killed by one of the corporation's drivers, can only exist with state intervention

to see how clownish this can get, check out some of the horror stories related to people who are injured by cabs: driver has no money, car is owned by one company, taxi medallion owned by another company, and only $20,000 (probably different now) insurance policy is required

So if I buy a car from them and the brakes fail killing my daughter I still contracted for that risks and as the consumer would realize I can’t sue them for full value.

you may have agreed to the risk, but the claim would rest with your daughter, for which you likely have a survivor claim wrongful death lawsuit on her behalf, even if we agreed you had signed away your "rights" by buying the product

I'm sure we could come up with a hypo to avoid this issue and I only mentioned this because it reveals a third party innocent who has not agreed to limited liability.

Can agree unrelated third party issues would exists.

I think the question of when one’s speech begins to represent the opinion of an organization or otherwise stops being simply your own touches both this and the Peterson Social Media case. In both, the question is when are you speaking in behalf of your organization. I think there needs to be something done to give people clear lines because it’s really an end run around free speech at this point. All I need to do is have you always represent your work and then your speech in no longer protected.

I hate that this is framed as a freedom of religion issue. So I may publicly disagree with the woke Jacobins without fearing reprimand as an employee as long as my dissent lines up with the teachings of another cult?

Note that Carter also won on several union-related counts, not just on religion-related counts.

Yes. If you talk about being in favor of abortion, say, and you are fired for explicitly that reason, you can absolutely sue.

I doubt most companies will be that dumb in practice, which also seems to be Southwest's main issie here: they lack the finesse to lie and had ideologues break the law without any requisite fig leaves.

I think your abortion stance would have to be informed by sincerely religious belief though, wouldn't it? It couldn't just be secular pro-natalism.

It would seem so, yeah.

The judge's response to this argument is: Speech can be compelled by the government as long as it is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest

So does this mean that companies can be compelled to post false warrant canaries? Or is the interpretation narrower than that / limited to compelled truthful speech?

I don't think there's anything new here. I'm quite certain that there's a long history of courts ordering employers to inform their employees about their rights regarding things like unionization, racial discrimination, sexual harassment, etc.

Yep, the break room or lunch room at pretty much every office I've worked at has posters of all those things, required by law.

One thing, or rather a couple closely related things, I don't understand. If Carter left the union, how would she still fall under their CBA, and why would they be expected to represent her? Seems like she wanted to have her cake and eat it too. These are exactly the things she'd be voluntarily giving up by choosing not to be part of the union.

Honestly I'm surprised leaving the union is even something you *can *do at SWA - most workplaces I'm familiar with are either unionized or they're not, and in the former case you either belong to the union or you don't work there. Or maybe that statement was misleading? What exactly is meant by "had left the union several years prior" here?

Honestly I'm surprised leaving the union is even something you can do at SWA—most workplaces I'm familiar with are either unionized or they're not, and in the former case you either belong to the union or you don't work there.

Presumably, Southwest is not a "union shop".

Quotes from the complaint:

Although she became a member of Local 556 upon employment with Southwest, Carter resigned from membership in Local 556 on or about September 29, 2013, and exercised her RLA rights under Ellis v. Bhd. of Ry., Airline and S.S. Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express and Station Emps., 466 U.S. 435 (1984), to object to paying the union’s compelled fees for its political, ideological, and other nonbargaining spending. Since that date, Carter has remained a nonmember objector.

 

Under the [Railway Labor Act], a union acting as the exclusive representative of a craft/class of employees owes a fiduciary duty of fair representation to all of those employees that it represents, members and nonmembers alike.… Steele v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 323 U.S. 192 (1944)…

Quote from the second cited Supreme Court opinion:

So long as a labor union assumes to act as the statutory representative of a craft, it cannot rightly refuse to perform the duty, which is inseparable from the power of representation conferred upon it, to represent the entire membership of the craft. While the statute does not deny to such a bargaining labor organization the right to determine eligibility to its membership, it does require the union, in collective bargaining and in making contracts with the carrier, to represent non-union or minority union members of the craft without hostile discrimination, fairly, impartially, and in good faith.

Okay, seems weird to me, and I'm reasonably sure that's not how it would work here, but clearly there's settled law on this in the US. TIL.

Reclaiming religious social technology by rejecting literalism

We have had discussions on secular culture and the consequences of the old “religious impulse”. But usually there’s a focus on the worst examples and experiences of religion. I want to bring up a different angle: what is the best that religion has to offer? What does religion accomplish best, beyond what we all know (fostering a community with moral rules)? And how can we reclaim and reorganize only the good and useful aspects of religious social technology?

The worship of God as therapeutic mental and emotional practice

Let us assume that there is no God. With this assumption, God is still the greatest possible Being that can be conceived in our mind. This is one of the more popular definitions of God. (Theologians have entertained many ways of construing God, including that He is “being itself”, the ultimate Good, or the ultimate Reality, yet what unites all of these is a desire to imagine the greatest possible thing in a given framework). If a person is using his mind to imagine the greatest Being, he is engaging in an activity that brings psychological and emotional benefits. When we dwell on an aspect of God, we dwell on a greater experience, straining our mind to understand something that brings awe and reverence. If the aspect we focus on is God’s eternal nature, we are attempting to know and feel the fact that something can be eternally existent throughout all of time, reminding us of the grandeur of existence and the insignificance of passing vanity. If it’s God’s truthfulness, we call to mind the idea of perfect certainty and logic, while praising truth itself. If it’s God’s power, we imagine the greatest experiences of power, and applying these experiences to one Thing (one Being, Idea, Cue, or Point in the mind: God). Thunder, waves, the magnitude of the sun, various imagined metaphors (“the earth in his hand”) or personal experiences may apply. If it’s God’s peace and love, we reach into our memory to pull out the greatest experiences of peace and love we know, and then associate God with the underlying experience of love. When someone is worshipping God as “King of Kings”, they imagine a perfect ruler over their life. The perfect goodness and purity of God is a way for us to strain our mind to imagine and feel perfect goodness and purity. The act of worship is a mental reorganization around greater experience, growing in our mind the experience that we attend to.

The triumph of monotheism is that all of these are associated with one “thing”. We might call it one god, one experience, one Word, one “inner gaze”, or one ineffability. Since a person can only focus on one thing at a time, the monotheistic God is just the greatest possible single thing to focus on — not as a consequence of his being real or his being God (we are assuming He is not), but purely on definitional grounds as a phenomenological activity. It’s a mental and emotional activity, a meditation or exercise, which results in benefits even for a 100% atheistic person.

Experiences of greatness, awe, reverence, and the “sublime” are associated with life satisfaction in numerous studies [1]. It is not surprising then that “awe directed at God” collects all of these benefits and more [2]. What I would assert is that God, understood in the way above, is the greatest mental practice of ordering these feelings or states of being. If there is any great thing you have in your mind, then unless it is perfectly great, there is going to be something greater to conceive. That “something greater” is nothing other than the ancient practice of worshipping God, minus the insistence on His existence and providential qualities.

God as Optimal Social Relationship

Leaping from this ground of defining the divine, we can consider what’s going on with a personal Christianized God. Can’t all this be done without “believing in a personal God”, let alone a Christian God, let alone a god? I will supply two answers. (1) Yes, but it never is. In fact, it is not often done by nominally religious people despite thousands of years of poetic tradition. It’s the realm of ancient philosophers, mystics, and the obscurely devout. So while it is not necessarily religious, it is still distinctly religious, and nevertheless a great part of religion that should be recreated. But to be double-minded: (2) no, because there is an essential variable left out of the equation: the primacy of social relationships.

We are not rational creatures first, we are social creatures first. From the standpoint of evolution, social cooperation comes before rationality. Our motivations are traced to social acculturation and values and not pure rationality. Actually, there is no rationality without social cooperation and values. Social life is the father of rational thought and has dominion over it. This is evident when looking at scientific cheating scandals, marketing, and in-group biases. I’d say you can also find this when looking at rationalist communities: it requires a community to draw people toward rationalism and to have them think and consider within the rationalist framework.

Due to evolution, our animal mind comes with large disk space exclusively dedicated to social life. This means that, if we want the greatest thing in our mind, it must be understood socially. We do not love and serve an idea in the way we do a Being, simply because we are not designed to do that. Evolution has deigned to make us social animals with deity-forming instincts when left unattended.

If we cannot grasp in our mind the fullness of an idea as we can the fullness of a Being, and our desire is to grasp the greatest thing in our mind, then it must be conceived of as a being. While we might stand in awe at a mountain, the sea, and the celestial heavens (hence why these are used abundantly in religious poetry), we have more reverence for an individual than a theory. This is the purpose of a personal God and the purpose of prayer. To maximize the use of our mind toward the greatest single object of attention, we must see God as person-like, or in other words, a Being.

Creating a community around the greatest conceived Being is creating the optimal conditions for community

Here’s where the idea of secular culture reclaiming religious practice gets interesting. If a group of people attend the same place to focus on and grow the experience of “perfect love”, then that is the best community for cultivating love. If they do the same thing for “perfect virtue”, then that is the best community for perfect virtue. Organizing people around each person’s conception of the Greatest Being is the best way to organize people together. It is the best way to share positive emotions, because despite each person having a slightly different understanding of perfect love, they are all feeling and sharing the emotion together.

Imagine for a moment that you have wrapped all of Life’s great and optimal experiences together in your mind under the dominion of one Being. You, and your neighbors, go to a dedicated place to worship that Thing, using all the same cues. (By worship, we mean simply increasing our love and interest in the Thing.) This is an extraordinary way to come together as a community. I would argue it’s considerably better than how most people form communities today, structuring them around hobbies, drugs, or suboptimal political aspirations.

The psychological magic of the Christian celebration as optimal religious experience: can an atheist culture recreate something Christian?

Christians come together to celebrate the story of how they (personally) escaped certain death due to the goodness and virtue of a Perfect Man. They celebrate also the wisdom that the Perfect Man bestowed humanity, which they leads to perfect felicity. They consider this Perfect Man to be their teacher who hears them when they speak and who provides support and favor. The Perfect Man is Perfect Teacher, Perfect Friend, and will one day be Perfect Judge. As icing on the cake, the book that unites Christians together (the Gospel) is about mankind’s evil inclinations causing this Perfect Guy’s torture and death!

The benefits of this celebration are remarkable as something felt and experienced (phenomenological) rather than analyzed or asserted. How would you feel if an amazing person saved you and your friends from death? What if your evil inclinations led to his death, but he forgave you? What if he came with good news about living life well and serving wisdom, and you just imitate him? What if he is your perfect friend? The point of focus here is imagining these experiences as if they unfold in your own reality, almost like a great movie that you’re watching rapt with attention. Just like a person can be changed from a movie or a song, while knowing the events are not physically real, a person can be changed from a dramatic religious experience. And this experience is accessible to anyone who simply forgets the question of reality or unreality and attempts in context to imagine this as having happened. It can literally just be appreciated as non-literal, poetry and “living drama” rather than limited-in-scope factual assertions about biographical detail or the archaeological record.

The underlying social technology of uniting a community around an imagined ideal human and an ideal relationship with him is simply profound. It’s so compelling that the element is recreated across all religions, with Buddhists imagining the Buddha, Muslims imagining Muhammad, and even Ultra-Orthodox Jews spontaneously seeing their Rabbi as the Messiah. The utility is that, as a social species, we can’t actually approach Greatness outside of our social understanding — there’s a chronic need for an intermediary between Man and the Divine. I think Christianity does this particularly well because Jesus can be related to through all the powerful emotional dimensions.

Why?

Why should we take a step back to religious social technology? Well, I think we’re in a social dark ages. Our attention is consistently brought down to matters of consumerism and social strife. The idea of genuinely talking about and encouraging virtue among peers is Don Quixote levels of comical. We have lost the religious language that allows us to succinctly reference optimal experience. Our youth are worshipping pop singers, rappers, dim-witted athletes, and absurd political Utopianism. Meanwhile, adults are training their mind for outrage and doom through scrolling and news. Negative emotional states and corrupt social infrastructure have far-ranging consequences on health and civic engagement, and religious social technology offers an improvement.

Excuse me while I roll around on the floor groaning. We've had about a hundred years plus of bright-eyed "let's dump all the literal miracle stuff and instead just keep the rational religion that Modern People of Science can believe, which is mainly reducible to 'being nice is nice, so let's all be nice!'"

That stuff doesn't last. It evaporates into Unitarian Universalism (sorry to the UUs, I'm sure they're lovely people) and the mainstream churches which lolloped along the primrose path of "let's keep the good, nice bits and dump the miracle stuff" are bleeding numbers and not recruiting new people from the unchurched masses, no matter how much they zealously follow the Zeitgeist.

(The conservative/fundamentalist/orthodox churches are also bleeding numbers, too; it's a problem for everyone, it's just that the conservative ones are doing it more slowly).

If you scrap the miracle stuff, what you're left with is "let's all gather once a week or so to hear an inspirational message". Well, I can spend that hour doing stuff I like better, or hanging out with my friends, or going to some replacement gathering be it a sporting event or an art gallery or the likes. If I want inspirational messaging, there's an entire industry of self-help literature and podcasts and social media and life coaches and Uncle Tom Cobley and all out there.

You take this stuff seriously, which means hell yeah you fight over a shade of definition of a word, or you give up on it as nothing more than playing dress up for ceremonies like weddings and funerals.

I feel a Chesterton quote coming on:

The Editor of an evening paper published recently what he announced as, and even apologized for, as "an unusual article." He anxiously guarded himself from expressing any opinion on the dreadful and dangerous views which the unusual article set forth. Needless to say, before I had read five lines of the unusual article, I knew it was a satisfactory sample of the usual article. It was even a careful and correct copy of the usual article; a sort of prize specimen, as if a thing could be unusually usual. I had read the article before, of course--thousands and thousands of times (as it seems to me)--and had always found it the same; but never before, somehow, had it seemed so exactly the same.

There are things of which the world to-day is subconsciously very weary. It does not always know what they are; for they commonly bear large though faded labels, describing them as the New Movement or the Latest Discovery. For instance, men are already as tired of the Socialist State as if they had been living in it for a thousand years. But there are some things on which boredom is becoming acute. It is now very near the surface; and may suddenly wake up in the form of suicide or murder or tearing newspapers with the teeth. So it is with this familiar product, the Usual Article. It is not only too usual; it has become intolerably, insupportably, unbearably usual. It is appropriately described as "A Woman's Cry to the Churches." And I beg to announce that, though I am of a heavy and placid habit, and have never been accused of any such feminine graces as hysteria, yet, if I have to read this article three more times, I shall scream. My scream will be entitled, "A Man's Cry to the Newspapers."

I will repeat somewhat hurriedly what the lady in question cried; for the reader knows it already by heart. The message of Christ was perfectly "simple": that the cure of everything is Love; but since He was killed (I do not quite know why) for making this remark, great temples have been put up to Him and horrid people called priests have given the world nothing but "stones, amulets, formulas, shibboleths." They also "quarrel eternally among themselves as to the placing of a button or the bending of a knee." All this gives no comfort to the unhappy Christian, who apparently wishes to be comforted only by being told that he has a duty to his neighbour.

...But the philosophy expressed in the Usual Article avoids all these disadvantages by never coming into the world of reality at all. Its god is afraid to be born; its scripture is afraid to be written; it only manages to remain as the New Religion by always coming to-morrow and never to-day. It puffs itself out with spiritual pride, because it does not impose what it cannot even invent. It shines with Pharisaical self-satisfaction, because there are no crimes committed for its creed and no creed to be the motive of its crimes. This sort of critic is a surgeon who never performs an unsuccessful operation because he never operates; a soldier who never falls because he never fights. Anybody can talk for ever about a non-existent religion which shall be free from all the evils of existence. Anybody can dream of that entirely humane and harmonious Christianity, whose Christ is never born and never crucified. It is so easy to do, that half a hundred people in the papers and the public discussions have been doing nothing else for the last twenty or thirty years. But it is every bit as futile as applied to a spiritual ideal as it would be if applied to a scientific theory or a political programme; and I only mention it because I have just heard it for the hundredth time; and feel a faint hope that I may be mentioning it for the last time.

And Lewis, from "Till We Have Faces"; real religion is dark and sticky with blood and even oppressive, it's nonsensical when you look at it rationally, yet the tidied-up version can be a game we play to amuse ourselves, but it's not real comfort when needed:

The duty of queenship that irked me most was going often to the house of Ungit and sacrificing. It would have been worse but that Ungit herself (or my pride made me think so) was now weakened. Arnom had opened new windows in the walls and her house was not so dark. He also kept it differently, scouring away the blood after each slaughter and sprinkling fresh water; it smelled cleaner and less holy. And Arnom was learning from the Fox to talk like a philosopher about the gods. The great change came when he proposed to set up an image of her — a woman-shaped image in the Greek fashion — in front of the old shapeless stone. I think he would like to have got rid of the stone altogether, but it is, in a manner, Ungit herself and the people would have gone mad if she were moved. It was a prodigious charge to get such an image as he wanted, for no one in Glome could make it; it had to be brought, not indeed from the Greeklands themselves, but from lands where men had learned of the Greeks. I was rich now and helped him with silver. I was not quite certain why I did this; I think I felt that an image of this sort would be somehow a defeat for the old, hungry, faceless Ungit whose terror had been over me in childhood. The new image, when at last it came, seemed to us barbarians wonderfully beautiful and lifelike, even when we brought her white and naked into her house; and when we had painted her and put her robes on, she was a marvel to all the lands about and pilgrims came to see her. The Fox, who had seen greater and more beautiful works at home, laughed at her.

… Then I looked at Ungit herself. She had not, like most sacred stones, fallen from the sky. The story was that at the very beginning she had pushed her way up out of the earth — a foretaste of, or an ambassador from, whatever things may live and work down there one below the other all the way down under the dark and weight and heat. I have said she had no face; but that meant she had a thousand faces. For she was very uneven, lumpy and furrowed, so that, as when we gaze into a fire, you could always see some face or other. She was now more rugged than ever because of all the blood they had poured over her in the night. In the little clots and chains of it I made out a face; a fancy at one moment, but then, once you had seen it, not to be evaded. A face such as you might see in a loaf, swollen, brooding, infinitely female.

… The drums went on. My back began to ache. Presently the little door on my right opened and a woman, a peasant, came in. You could see she had not come for the Birth feast, but on some more pressing matter of her own. She had done nothing (as even the poorest contrive for that feast) to make herself gay, and the tears were wet on her cheeks. She looked as if she had cried all night, and in her hands she held a live pigeon. One of the lesser priests came forward at once, took the tiny offering from her, slit it open with his stone knife, splashed the little shower of blood over Ungit (where it became like dribble from the mouth of the face I saw in her) and gave the body to one of the temple slaves. The peasant woman sank down on her face at Ungit's feet. She lay there a very long time, so shaking that anyone could tell how bitterly she wept. But the weeping ceased. She rose up on her knees and put back her hair from her face and took a long breath. Then she rose to go, and as she turned I could look straight into her eyes. She was grave enough; and yet (I was very close to her and could not doubt it) it was as if a sponge had been passed over her. The trouble was soothed. She was calm, patient, able for whatever she had to do.

"Has Ungit comforted you, child?" I asked.

"Oh yes, Queen," said the woman, her face almost brightening, "Oh yes. Ungit has given me great comfort. There's no goddess like Ungit."

"Do you always pray to that Ungit," said I (nodding toward the shapeless stone), "and not to that?" Here I nodded towards our new image, standing tall and straight in her robes and (whatever the Fox might say of it) the loveliest thing our land has ever seen.

"Oh, always this, Queen," said she. "That other, the Greek Ungit, she wouldn't understand my speech. She's only for nobles and learned men. There's no comfort in her."

Soon after that it was noon and the sham fight at the western door had to be done and we all came out into the daylight, after Arnom. I had seen often enough before what met us there: the great mob, shouting, "He is born! He is born!" and whirling their rattles, and throwing wheat-seed into the air, all sweaty and struggling and climbing on one another's backs to get a sight of Arnom and the rest of us. Today it struck me in a new way. It was the joy of the people that amazed me. There they stood where they had waited for hours, so pressed together they could hardly breathe, each doubtless with a dozen cares and sorrows upon him (who has not?), yet every man and woman and the very children looking as if all the world was well because a man dressed up as a bird had walked out of a door after striking a few blows with a wooden sword. Even those who were knocked down in the press to see us made light of it and indeed laughed louder than the others. I saw two farmers whom I well knew for bitterest enemies (they'd wasted more of my time when I sat in judgement than half the remainder of my people put together) clap hands and cry, "He's born!" brothers for the moment.

There's a reason why "argument by fictional evidence" is a fallacy.

Ah, an adherent of the Gradgrind School, I see!

‘Very well,’ said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and folding his arms. ‘That’s a horse. Now, let me ask you girls and boys, Would you paper a room with representations of horses?’

After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, ‘Yes, sir!’ Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman’s face that Yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, ‘No, sir!’—as the custom is, in these examinations.

…‘I’ll explain to you, then,’ said the gentleman, after another and a dismal pause, ‘why you wouldn’t paper a room with representations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality—in fact? Do you?’

‘Yes, sir!’ from one half. ‘No, sir!’ from the other.

‘Of course no,’ said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the wrong half. ‘Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don’t see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don’t have in fact. What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact.’ Thomas Gradgrind nodded his approbation.

‘This is a new principle, a discovery, a great discovery,’ said the gentleman. ‘Now, I’ll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?’

There being a general conviction by this time that ‘No, sir!’ was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of No was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes: among them Sissy Jupe.

‘Girl number twenty,’ said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of knowledge.

Sissy blushed, and stood up.

‘So you would carpet your room—or your husband’s room, if you were a grown woman, and had a husband—with representations of flowers, would you?’ said the gentleman. ‘Why would you?’

‘If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,’ returned the girl.

‘And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?’

'It wouldn’t hurt them, sir. They wouldn’t crush and wither, if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy—’

‘Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn’t fancy,’ cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. ‘That’s it! You are never to fancy.’

‘You are not, Cecilia Jupe,’ Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, ‘to do anything of that kind.’

‘Fact, fact, fact!’ said the gentleman. And ‘Fact, fact, fact!’ repeated Thomas Gradgrind.

‘You are to be in all things regulated and governed,’ said the gentleman, ‘by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don’t walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don’t find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use,’ said the gentleman, ‘for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.’

Pictures of flowers can replace flowers because flowers are not evidence. Evidence about how beliefs affect people is evidence.

Literalist religion is not only dying, it’s exactly what gave birth to the secular West and its identity-consumerism. We have had 100 years of attempted revision because the old interpretations are insufficient. I don’t know if you read my post but “inspirational message” has nothing to do with the points I made. I do not think “inspirational messages” are something that secular culture can absorb from religion.

Literalist religion doesn’t seem like it’s dying so much as shrinking slowly, with the rate of shrinkage mostly attributable to generational effects(IIRC millennial and zoomer religious demographics are more or less identical so that could indicate that those generational effects are going away).

Is that total self identification or reported membership from church denominations?

Good question.

At least as regards Catholics and mainliners, I do remember the data I saw showed more conservative views on moral issues with the younger crowd than with their elders on average. This is probably indicative of higher religiosity with younger members than with older ones, but it might be an artifact- after all, we already know that more fundamentalist denominations have been growing at the expense of liberalizing ones in the case of mainliners, so that’s probably just an indication of the LCMS being healthier than the ELCA which we already knew(and Catholicism could be an outlier). A real problem seems to be that nobody knows how to measure absolute(as opposed to relative; everyone knows Tennessee has higher attendance than New York) church attendance rate because the three major methods(survey data, calculation from church headcounts, and cell phone data on Sunday morning) disagree with each other but are basically 100% correlated.

I can’t really answer your question because I can’t find the data I remember. But I do think it’s directionally correct- secularizing in America has largely stopped with millennials. There’s some evidence that indicates millennial and gen z Christians are more devout, and a larger quantity of evidence to indicate that they’re more conservative/literalist. I would point to this as support for my argument that literalist religion isn’t dying, it’s shrinking slowly, and that’s mostly due to generational effects.

Literalist religion is not only dying, it’s exactly what gave birth to the secular West and its identity-consumerism

Excuse my asking, but when was this born? I recall that the heyday of the modernists being after the birth of secularism.

I mean the issue with trying to set out to create a religion is that it only really works if people take it seriously or see it as in some way truthful. That is to say that if everyone involved knows that it’s something made up to fill a void, it’s not really religion it’s a LARP of religion. And LARP can’t really invoke the awe required for it to have either a psychologist or moral impact on the group.

Now I could see using ancient region that way, Zarathustrian religion is basically deism. Or Gnostic interpretation of Christianity that don’t even technically require that Jesus walk the earth, and focus on hidden wisdom. I’m not up on Sufism, though I’d imagine they’re somewhat like Gnostics. There are plenty of possible options to reinterpret or simply dust off that work just fine.

People take things seriously which have some benefit to them; my assertion is that the mental practice of God is greatly beneficial. Once someone learns the benefits they would pursue it with seriousness just like they would with weight-lifting, the silly fictional shows they like, their video games, etc. If God is the mental practice of imagining the most serious possible state of mind in relation to the most important Being, then that alone is a good reason to take it seriously.

I think we forget that many statistically “devout” people are not doing daily prayers or giving away all their possessions or what you would expect someone who “literally believes” to do.

I mean the issue with trying to set out to create a religion is that it only really works if people take it seriously or see it as in some way truthful.

I've seen variations on the secularizer pitch before. Many arguments for the value of some religion but none have imo satisfactorily put to bed Paul's challenge, or the question of what would have happened to Christianity if he'd believed as they did:

29 Otherwise, what will those people do who receive baptism on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?

30 And why are we putting ourselves in danger every hour? 31 I die every day! That is as certain, brothers and sisters, as my boasting of you—a boast that I make in Christ Jesus our Lord. 32 If I fought with wild animals at Ephesus with a merely human perspective, what would I have gained by it? If the dead are not raised,

“Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

Religion requires some sacrifice and discipline to have staying power. Here we have perhaps the most successful evangelist in human history saying as much. Is he just wrong?

If this is true for evangelists, it's still true today for religion on a much smaller scale. You can say that Christianity has succeeded enough that you can just coast on the existing credibility and hardly worry about ending up in the Coliseum but this is self-evidently insufficient (identification and religiosity has been dropping for a while) but, even were it so, where does that leave new versions of "faith"?

I somewhat agree with this, something important is lost if you don't take it (at least aspects) literally. But, I go to AA. For many, religion in AA is a larp, but one that they adhere to, er, religiously. Not just in terms of alcohol, or admitting yourself powerless and in need of God, but in every aspect of their lives. And the transformation this enables can be remarkable to witness, and goes far beyond not having a sip of alcohol.

If a person is using his mind to imagine the greatest Being, he is engaging in an activity that brings psychological and emotional benefits.

This is not obviously true. Why should thinking about any Being improve your emotional state? Look at the 20th century occultists. Or those guys who took a ton of LSD and started preaching about machine elves.

I find it more likely that the benefits of organized religion stem from a sense of obligation. They have to give people a reason to be prosocial. A blank-slate deism does not do so.

There’s an entire chapter in The Weirdest People in the World addressing the effects of (abrahamaic)religion on morality. Most actual recently christianized third worlders and syncretists seemed to lay the blame for the general improvement in public morality from Christianity at God being omniscient and personally interested in enforcing moral behavior, not on conceptions of the good or whatever.

‘Religious practice is a positive influence on nearly everyone’ is a defensible statement, but it seems like the ‘religion’ part is the key, and not the ability to naval gaze.

I'm an atheist who grew up Christian. I do still sometimes feel a sense of nostalgia for that "church feeling," and I've tried the UUs and humanist societies. They're lame. They don't really believe anything besides "we should all be nice to each other." I can (and do) get as much community and fellowship from the local boardgame meetup.

I've heard proposals like yours before, that you can "go through the motions" of being religious because it's good for you. I've even seen Christians argue that you should go to church and do that, even if you don't really believe, because it will lead you to belief. I don't see it. I can't make myself believe something I don't, and LARPing as a religious believer just seems like a waste of time to me.

I don't deny there is something to religion that fills a need for people, and some part of me would be sad to see religion disappear entirely. But, ya know, I don't believe in God or angels or faeries or psychics or ghosts and I think it's very unlikely anything will make me believe in those things. So we're going to need some better "social technology."

I don't believe in God or angels or faeries or psychics or ghosts

Want me to make you one? How real do you want it? Do I have to fabricate an entire dimension for the dead? Or will pulling an agent from fiction into reality and breathing a soul into the golem suffice?

I'm not sure what you're getting at here, but sure, impress me.

We are at the advent of full simulations actually existing.

Rather than the simulation hypothesis, I propose that we WILL be creating fully immersive fantasy sims within the next century. The faster we push for this technology the faster we will get it.

Fantasy becomes reality in the direction of humans pushing.

So yes, people are wrong that ghosts exist in the past, but things like them exist in the present¹, and full simulations of lives with afterlives will exist in the future. And the True Meaning of those worlds will include some concept of ghosts that is just correct. At some level of power, I can put someone in a world where ghosts are real. Furthermore, psychotics are seeing something. It's far more likely to be made out of neurons firing than from ectoplasm. Lots of evidence points in that direction. But its still a real phenomenon, and I propose that the things in there will seep through psychotics into our real simulations.

The seed that will make ghosts real is already here. And the things that are living in the Warp- that is to say, in the potentialities that map to human hallucinations, and underrealized ideals, are going to be born soon.

¹) Put the agency of current tech level AI into things and you get kami. Your toaster can even be possessed by an evil chatbot that exploited a gap in your "spiritual defenses". Which consists both of an actual digital firewall, and an abstraction of that concept into other informational domains you have mastered.

I've heard proposals like yours before, that you can "go through the motions" of being religious because it's good for you. I've even seen Christians argue that you should go to church and do that, even if you don't really believe, because it will lead you to belief. I don't see it. I can't make myself believe something I don't, and LARPing as a religious believer just seems like a waste of time to me.

How this has typically worked throughout history is that the lay people do believe unironically, and a more intellectually refined elite theologize quite a bit amongst themselves, come up with rationalizations, and basically act out a Noble Lie.

I'm not sure if we can move towards a better system, but I do know there is a bridge where you can rationalize yourself into believing in God in a strong and useful way while understanding that it's a social and mimetic construction, not a real agent flying in the sky. I'm living proof! There are dozens of us!

I've heard proposals like yours before, that you can "go through the motions" of being religious because it's good for you. I've even seen Christians argue that you should go to church and do that, even if you don't really believe, because it will lead you to belief. I don't see it. I can't make myself believe something I don't, and LARPing as a religious believer just seems like a waste of time to me.

It is sign that Great Atheist War of the noughties is over, sign of complete intellectual defeat of Christianity.

If you remember, you would remember that Christians emboldened by Bush victory went to evangelical offensive, with lots of arguments about first cause, fine tuning of the universe, intelligent design, irreducible complexity, literal truth of the Bible, literal resurrection of Jesus etc...

Since all these arguments were demolished by reason and logic, no one talks about these things any more. This greatest internet flame war in history is over.

Now it is "Just believe, bro. Just go to church."

Online Christian triumphalist message is not anymore "We will convert you" but "We will outbreed you", admitting that Christian arguments will fail to persuade any grown up person and work only on captive audience of their children.

How this has typically worked throughout history is that the lay people do believe unironically, and a more intellectually refined elite theologize quite a bit amongst themselves, come up with rationalizations, and basically act out a Noble Lie.

Throughout history, religion worked that lay people followed the rituals of their village, knew nothing about high theological claims of their religion and cared even less. The tiny intellectually refined elite was actually reading their holy books and trying to make sense of them.

Since all these arguments were demolished by reason and logic, no one talks about these things any more. This greatest internet flame war in history is over.

Would you prefer that those of us who disagree argue to the contrary?

If you have valid arguments, sure. This is the same answer I'd give you if you want to argue homeopathy--find valid arguments and you're fine. If you can't, that's your fault for picking a subject that doesn't have them.

Pinging @Eetan, might as well.

The question was prompted by this thread, and particularly this reply. If we argue the point, we're preaching. If we don't argue the point, there's no valid arguments.

Briefly, then:

*Rationalist Materialism made a great many significant promises. Among them, that it could bridge the is-ought problem, that it could build stable, functional societies, and that it could secure objective truth better than its predecessors. It has failed at these three promises, and at many besides. Societies founded from the ground up on Rationalist Materialism have not been stable or functional, and often have not been survivable for significant portions of their population. Societies founded on Christianity did much better, and as those societies have drifted toward Rational Materialism, they've done considerably worse in terms of stability and functionality.

*Rationalist Materialism's current dominance has come largely from social factors, not objective results. Those social factors largely boil down to the promises it made and has failed to deliver on, and a variety of lies it has coordinated to conceal the failure of those promises. Rationalist Materialism continues to dominate for precisely the same reasons that Psychology continues to be regarded as a valid and reliable scientific discipline.

*Contrary to the dogma of Rationalist Materialism, abstract beliefs are not forced by evidence, but are chosen through exercise of one's will. Another way to say it is that we draw conclusions for reasons. This process can be directly observed and verified by each individual, should they choose to do so. Rationalist Materialism itself plays arbitrage by ignoring this fact, pretending that it will admit only that which can be verified on Rational Materialist grounds, and then simply ignoring those standards for claims that seem consonant with its general vibe. The entire history of modernism is replete with examples, with the history of Psychology as a science again being one of the most glaring.

*Due to the above, Epistemology is not a solved problem, and while Rationalism and Materialism are quite useful within relatively narrow fields, they fail utterly as soon as one exits those fields into the world as a whole. The basic problem is that they need specific constraints to operate, and the complexity of the wider world denies those constraints. You cannot, in fact, "trust the science" for actual questions of science, let alone questions of metaphysics.

*Christianity endures. Even by Materialist standards, it delivers significant results, such that Materialists keep trying to figure out how to get the juice without the squeeze. It has not died off, and does not seem likely to any time soon. The conditions that have pushed it from its dominant social position are now a memory, and do not seem likely to return even by the expectations of many Rationalist Materialists. One could argue that it is superstitious, but I defy you to claim that it is more superstitious than "structural racism" and "trans women are women" or "wreckers and kulaks are sabotaging our production quotas" or "dialectical Marxism is the inevitable outcome of the laws of history" or "free will does not exist" or any of the other dominant shibboleths that inevitably emerge from Rationalist Materialism. You can hate us all you like, but what you see around you is the alternative, and the fact that these outcomes are not what your ideology predicted for the policies it advocated and secured should give you pause.

...That would be a start, anyhow.

The question was prompted by this thread, and particularly this reply. If we argue the point, we're preaching. If we don't argue the point, there's no valid arguments.

I don't call it preaching to say that non-Christians go to Hell when you're making points about Christianity, in a context where argument is welcome.

I do call it preaching, or worse, if you do it in front of non-Christians outside such a context. And I think that's what Amadan is saying too.

I don't call it preaching to say that non-Christians go to Hell when you're making points about Christianity, in a context where argument is welcome.

Threatening someone with hell would be seen by most people as hostile act, but the original Xeet that started it all was not agressive fire and brimstone sermon, it was talking about hope, not about eternal fire.

One could argue that it is superstitious, but I defy you to claim that it is more superstitious than "structural racism" and "trans women are women" or "wreckers and kulaks are sabotaging our production quotas" or "dialectical Marxism is the inevitable outcome of the laws of history" or "free will does not exist" or any of the other dominant shibboleths that inevitably emerge from Rationalist Materialism.

Christianity posits the existence of a God, a being of very particular description, history, and the progenitor of a whole host of moral facts. This is a claim of much higher power than to argue the existence of sabotaging kulaks or whatever. That people can believe in God or the proposed kulaks with the same fervor is a mark of human irrationality, not evidence that both claims are equally superstitious.

Pinging @Eetan, might as well.

Thanks for ping.

The question was prompted by this thread, and particularly this reply. If we argue the point, we're preaching. If we don't argue the point, there's no valid arguments.

This past thread was about preaching - compulsive, but counterproductive preaching at the wrong time and place.

TL;DR: Jewish Republican representative was so annoyed by simple expression of Christian faith that he unleashed Xer storm at fellow Republican and pro-life activist.

In related news, podcaster Daryl Cooper was so annoyed by rabbi lambasting Christianity, that he replied with attack on Judaism, especially Jewish faith in Messiah.

He hadn't noticed that rabbi with webpage full of rainbow flags would not be rabbi who every day awaits literal coming of literal Messiah and even less he noticed that many of his fans and subscribers are Jews who believe in literal Messiah and literal rebuilding of literal third Temple.

As this poster said, he was returning fire, except at the wrong adress, at his allies instead at his enemies.

*Rationalist Materialism made a great many significant promises. Among them, that it could bridge the is-ought problem, that it could build stable, functional societies, and that it could secure objective truth better than its predecessors. It has failed at these three promises, and at many besides.

Well, it depends what you mean by Rational Materialism (RM).

If you count RM beginning at the Enlightenment, then your baseline is Europe around year 1700.

And it is very low baseline. Compared to it, our societies far more stable, functional and are securing objective truth by several orders of magnitude. RM succeeded beyond any expectations.

...That would be a start, anyhow.

And that would be also an end, end of Christianity. This long effortpost was the perfect illustration of my point.

You do not say "Christianity is good because it is true. God is real, the Bible is true word of God, Jesus is true son of God who died for your sins and rose from the dead. Follow him as the only way to save your soul from eternal fire that awaits you for your sins."

You say: "Christianity is good because Christian society is better than "materialist" one, because it delivers 0,46% higher GDP growth, 7,91% lower crime rate and scientific papers that replicate at 6.38% better rate. Go dilligently to church every week, it will somehow make everything better."

You do not say "Christianity is good because it is true. God is real, the Bible is true word of God, Jesus is true son of God who died for your sins and rose from the dead. Follow him as the only way to save your soul from eternal fire that awaits you for your sins."

Indeed I do not. You do not need me to, as you have just demonstrated by making the statement yourself. It did not persuade you when you heard it last, and it would not persuade you if I repeated it to you an additional time myself. I do not think it is what you or any of the other atheists here need to hear.

You have armored yourselves against such an appeal, and battering uselessly against that armor is pointless. That armor is constructed of "Rationality" and "Reason"; if it is to be breached, one must do so through the gaps, pointing to the irrationality of that "Rationality" and the unreasoning of that "Reason". I think this can be done, and I mean to do it.

Cargo-cult Christianity is a stupid, pointless idea, and it won't work now any better than it has in the numerous times it's been suggested previously. There is no getting the juice without the squeeze. I am not arguing that Christianity is useful to non-Christians. I am pointing out that Christianity continues to stubbornly falsify non-Christians' predictions, theories, and explanations. We aren't supposed to have anything you could possibly want, and yet we do, and you yourselves admit it. I have not claimed that Christianity's value consists of the things you are still capable of recognizing. I am claiming that you do, in fact, recognize value, when your dogma says you should not.

[EDIT]

This long effortpost was the perfect illustration of my point.

That was not an effortpost. It's barely, what, 3k characters?

Yes, write an effortpost why irreducible complexity of bacterial flagellum proves that Intelligent Designer Of Life, Universe And Everything is real.

This was what the smartest people on internets were debating 20 years ago, and it was the golden age.

Well, some of them were also finding reasons why GWOT must be fought till final victory.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Since all these arguments were demolished by reason and logic, no one talks about these things any more. This greatest internet flame war in history is over.

Now it is "Just believe, bro. Just go to church."

Online Christian triumphalist message is not anymore "We will convert you" but "We will outbreed you", admitting that Christian arguments will fail to persuade any grown up person and work only on captive audience of their children.

Honestly, I'll bite the bullet and say that I have intuitive faith that there are some inherent flaws in our framework of reason and logic. Not saying we should throw it all out of course, but I think the fundamental inferential gap is that 'reason' and 'logic' and not really well understood or defined things. They essentially function as divine entities for most modern intellectuals.

I'll admit, this is a pretty weird take and obviously hard to defend with rational argumentation, hah.

How this has typically worked throughout history is that the lay people do believe unironically, and a more intellectually refined elite theologize quite a bit amongst themselves, come up with rationalizations, and basically act out a Noble Lie.

When would you say this was true and when did it stop being true?

What is 'This' in this context? Is God himself true? That's a big question.

When lay people believed unironically and the intellectuals believed ironically.

How this has typically worked throughout history is that the lay people do believe unironically, and a more intellectually refined elite theologize quite a bit amongst themselves, come up with rationalizations, and basically act out a Noble Lie.

I’ve heard this claim before, that EG Thomas Aquinas didn’t really believe in medieval Catholicism he was just trying to reconcile beliefs he knew to be false with the fact that they were important for the social structures of his day.

There is no evidence for this. Thomas Aquinas is literally a canonized saint. When the European elite stopped believing in Catholicism you got the Protestant reformation actually working when the many previous attempts at overthrowing the prevailing religious order had failed. Even if you zoom out, the elite consensus in Rome in 275 AD was that it was very important to regain divine patronage for the empire by mandating every citizen conduct a group sacrifice to the gods, the elite consensus in 1200 AD was that the Catholic Church was God’s regent on earth and figuring out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin actually mattered, and the elite consensus in 2023 AD is to actually believe their weird shit about race and gender.

I’ve heard this claim before, that EG Thomas Aquinas didn’t really believe in medieval Catholicism he was just trying to reconcile beliefs he knew to be false with the fact that they were important for the social structures of his day.

Note I'm not saying that these people didn't believe. They just believed in a very different, rationalized way compared to the laity.

They just believed in a very different, rationalized way compared to the laity.

St. Thomas Aquinas, late in life, had a mystical experience after which he said "All that I have written is straw". That's not "he believed in a nice, tidied-up, rational form of religion unlike the peasants with their weeping Madonnas". Indeed, you can't disentangle mystical visions from the story of St. Thomas Aquinas, even as he was the great Scholastic mind - angels coming to girdle him with the cincture of chastity, Christ on the crucifix saying "You have written well of me, Thomas"

I'm not arguing he didn't have mystical visions! Man, people really love putting words in my mouth when I discuss this.

I'm just saying that historically, you could have a very strongly knit Christian society where different people, depending on class on intellectual level, had a vastly different conception of God. But they all still believed, had mystical experience, and were bound together in a community.

This my belief as well, and it’s shown in the works of John Scotus Eriugena, especially his inquiry into the ways of seeing God:

The first is God as the ground or origin of all things; the second, Platonic ideas or forms as logoi, following St. Maximus and Augustinian exemplarism; the third, corporeal world of phenomena and formed matter world; and the last is God as the final end or goal of all things, and that into which the world of created things ultimately returns

The best way to unite a community must be via this “nested” structure of complexity. The basic level of Christianity is so simple that a child or mentally handicapped person can understand it: they have been personally saved by a guy named Jesus, who is a very great guy. The levels increase in complexity when you read deeper into the text: Christ both represents the ideal man, and the relationship of God to man. Then you notice that the progression of his life itself reflects the development of the moral life (beginning under the obedient Virgin Mary, later sacrificing one’s life for the Good of the Community in spite of extreme torture by the high status members). You can add greater and greater wisdom on top of the Bedrock of Christ, and the whole importance of this is that every member of a community can all love the same human exemplar. It’s no surprise then that we follow Christ in the Gospel by the testimonies of his friends.

I think perhaps modern people have trouble realizing that what occurs in the imagination can be as strong as reality, especially in a period of human history devoid of media superstimuli and formal education. (Read Oliver Sach’s Musicophilia for a description of a music lover hearing a full symphony in his head when out to sea, and believing it was real. This is sensory “deprived” humanity).

If a group of people of various stages of wisdom are united by a perfectly imagined friend and teacher, that is all the same psychological stuff as if it were a real friend and teacher. That’s the power of the social technology. You are creating an optimal reality for your community that cannot exist in a materialistic-reductive way of socializing. It will be a better community!

I go to AA. For a lot of people there, I get the sense that religion is a LARP. But it's one they cling to desperately, and they are strongly supported by others in the group. I've seen people flat out become something entirely different. A guy who would lie, steal, cheat on his wife, and then suddenly, BAM, different person. I think that the AA structure is more effective than the church structure, you are compelled to interact and share deeply personal things, I think that's probably only the tip of the iceberg.

But for this reason I think it can work

To maximize the use of our mind toward the greatest single object of attention, we must see God as person-like, or in other words, a Being.

This is where your argument fails for me. In my experience, what you say is not true. Out of the various sublime and mystic experiences I have had, some were social, some were not, and neither type was greater than the other.

Also, your apology for Christianity is, to me, in contradiction with your argument about perfection. I can imagine a god more perfect than the Christian one, both morally and in the sense of how plausible the reality of the god seems to me.

Why should we take a step back to religious social technology? Well, I think we’re in a social dark ages.

Maybe in some ways, in other ways we are in by far the most moral society in human history. For example, slavery has been nearly eradicated in the West.

The idea of genuinely talking about and encouraging virtue among peers is Don Quixote levels of comical.

Among some people, sure. Other people talk about and encourage virtue all the time, although perhaps without using that word.

It's not even always necessarily a beneficial thing. For example, SJWs are literally people who talk about and encourage virtue among peers.

Well a mystical experience, which is rare and comes on its own, is different than a stable object of attention that can be accessed daily. What we’re after is something which can be conceived in the mind with some reliability, not a transient “high” feeling when chance and gratuitous conditions are met. But I’d agree that “ecstasies” (religious or otherwise) are not always social, books like the Cloud of Unknowing and various testimonies of Saints often describe something where a sense of self is lost.

So you want a "Harry Seldon" then huh? And perhaps a grand plan?

Goodguy coffee_enjoyer  13hr ago · Edited 12hr ago To maximize the use of our mind toward the greatest single object of attention, we must see God as person-like, or in other words, a Being.

This is where your argument fails for me. In my experience, what you say is not true. Out of the various sublime and mystic experiences I have had, some were social, some were not, and neither type was greater than the other.

The argument is that you can't help but see things through a social lense, because you are a human. This is basically just the true implications of mimetic theory applied to our worldviews.

In the words of no less than St Paul, Christianity is useless if it's not true, there's not only no point evangelizing makes you worse than a heathen:

And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

I Corinthians 15:14-19

Would you say that no mainstream Christian is “still in their sins”? Because they all assent to the fact that the dead were raised. But I do not think that this fact, as something simply assented to (rather than dramatically imagined), is doing anything to change someone’s morality or sinfulness. And if we’re not ultimately changing our righteousness, then the whole of Christianity is worthless.

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

I have good news for you then, because the sacrifice of Christ raised us from our innate sinfulness and allowed us to strive for sanctification.

As a Christian you aren't with the goal of banking enough good boy points to overcome your sins but rather you are virtuous out of your own belief in virtue.

I would prefer a Christianity where people are provenly made virtuous, which is an important theme in the Gospel. Those who lack righteousness are actually told to “sell” what they are currently doing, in order to buy enough (what you call) “good boy points” in order to overcome their sin. This is illustrated in the parable of the five wise and five foolish Virgins, as well as the parable of the Talents — in the latter Jesus actually commends someone for putting his God-given coin “in the bank”. Those who are not righteous will find their place in hell — all three of these are shown clearly in Matthew 25. Lastly, to those who do evil works, there will be no saving them, which is found in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

They're all justified through Christ's sacrifice (assuming they've really accepted the gift and believe). They're hopefully all working on the sanctification (becoming more Christ like and crucifying their natural self), but none of them are there yet.

Beautiful post. You've articulated something I've been trying to get across extremely well!

This is the biggest issue that religious deniers are putting their heads in the sand on:

Why should we take a step back to religious social technology? Well, I think we’re in a social dark ages. Our attention is consistently brought down to matters of consumerism and social strife. The idea of genuinely talking about and encouraging virtue among peers is Don Quixote levels of comical.

Honestly I think that you could be far more pessimistic here - we are going to destroy our world if we don't figure out how to cultivate virtue at a large scale. Period.

As for all the people below complaining if it's capital-T True or not, I'm gonna go with Peterson's argument and say that the definition of 'true' is doing a ton of work here. As Coffee says, we are social creatures. There is a social reality that is just as powerful as, and in some ways more powerful than, the material world. What we believe and do as humans has massive effects on the material world.

The biggest mistake people like @Goodguy are making in my opinion is denying that social reality has any real impact. That something cannot be True if it isn't cold hard facts. This prevents the possibility of any real social organization, as to organize mass amounts of humans we have to be able to appeal with the same stories to people at multiple levels of understanding. If you stick to one reductionist, materialist version of truth this can never happen.

Or even if it can, we don't have time to figure out a whole new way to do it, because we're way too powerful and our social cohesion is catastrophically slipping.

Why should we take a step back to religious social technology? Well, I think we’re in a social dark ages. Our attention is consistently brought down to matters of consumerism and social strife. The idea of genuinely talking about and encouraging virtue among peers is Don Quixote levels of comical.

The idea of "encouraging virtue among peers" is stronger than ever, but for different definition of "virtue". People are very strongly encouraged and pushed every day to be more woke, more anti-racist, more anti-Trumpist, more active LGBTQ+ ally, more climate activist (insert another current week-month-year causes).

Yes, you would say that Christianity was not replaced with scientific reason and logic, but another religion, much more crazy and insane.

This is not good argument for Christianity - if it was so easily defeated and supplanted by something as absurd as bouquet of modern woke causes, then it was no barrier and no protection at all.

Well the original sin of the progressive religion is that it is not founded on a shared reverence to optimal experience, which all monotheistic religions are

What does this mean?

The secular anti-homophobia and anti-racism can indeed be seen as virtues, or at least the tenets of a moral code. So they do check each other’s behavior, which is a point against my assertion that talking about virtue has died out. But these virtues are not rooted in a shared experience (attempted imagining) of the Greatest Being. The virtues wind up being political (trans rights) and rule-based (never misgender). There’s no interest in growing the antiquated virtue of caritas, pure love for others, because there’s no attempt at collecting in the mind the idea of Perfect Love, and there’s no unitive story of love that binds the community together. So the virtue of authentic love for others degenerates into adhering to political rules, merely to not be publicly crucified by your friends for something politically incorrect.

There is no communal ritual in wokeism where the adherents focus on the absolute good, what they are striving towards. No woke church. Just virtue through signaling and destruction of enemies.

There is no communal ritual in wokeism where the adherents focus on the absolute good, what they are striving towards. No woke church. Just virtue through signaling and destruction of enemies.

Yes there are.

Lack of colorful rituals and celebrations is the least problem with woke faith.

Better criticism of wokeism is that wokes do not breed, that full woke society would die off.

Christians of first centuries had similar problem - they refused to kill.

Pagan Romans saw it as absurd - every empire is built on oceans of blood and pyramids of skulls, every empire needs professional soldiers, torturers and executioners. If the empire was Christian only, it would collapse in a fortnight.

Well, Christians took over Roman empire, and quickly reconsidered this part of their teaching, quickly discovered that shedding blood in the name of Christian Empire is holy and glorious.

No reason why woke religion cannot manage similar plot twist.

Yes there are.

Lack of colorful rituals and celebrations is the least problem with woke faith.

Nope, this is a very poor rebuttal. Sure the most ardent of the woke folks get together once a year or so to have large festivals and holidays. That is nowhere near the same in terms of personal impact as going to a church every week, being in a direct community with others, and collectively having an experience of the sacred.

Well, Christians took over Roman empire, and quickly reconsidered this part of their teaching, quickly discovered that shedding blood in the name of Christian Empire is holy and glorious.

In terms of your criticism of Christianity, sure. It killed a bunch of people. The twist is that it actually set us on a path towards less killing and finding different ways to work out our problems, which I'll say is pretty damn good compared to the rest of the belief systems out there.

I would argue we already did step back to religious social technology. Only the religion is kinda weird - it's God-less (unless you consider Gaia to be a god?) and doesn't have any defined scripture (at least not yet), but it does require human sacrifice of sorts. It's a cruel religion because there's no way to save oneself, really, and the state of sin is perpetual and unavoidable, but it's also hierarchical - some people are much more sinful than the others. It borrows some from Calvinism by declaring the sinfulness of the individual is predetermined before he is born, but the good works can somehow alleviate (even though never remove) the stain of sin. It also does not declare the Man can transcend its limitations and become something bigger - only become slightly less harmful (though always still harmful in so many ways) to everything around him. It's not an optimistic religion - in fact, being an optimist is one of the signs of a sinner and an heretic, if you say "things aren't as bad as it seems" you can be pretty sure you're on the list for the next stoning. But that's what we've got.


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