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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   4743 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 24, 2023

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

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

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

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So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Paradise Lost. So far God isn't coming off well and Jesus sounds harebrained. On the other hand, Satan seems to have unfortunate ideas about what to do with humanity, which feels personal.

Paper I'm reading: Magnus' Science and Rationality for One and All.

I just finished Freddie DeBoer's How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement which was just...utterly disappointing. It falls into the same normie-splainer genre as Louise Perry's The Case Against the Sexual Revolution which means it's worthless to anyone that is vaguely familiar with stupidpol rhetoric and arguments.

At least his book on education had an idea worth looking at. This one? There's nothing new there. It doesn't help that Freddie is even less willing to challenge his audience on their assumptions (e.g. the injustices of policing, where he basically accepts the progressive frame of "police hunting African-Americans" but with "but #Defund mainly hurts blacks though! Maybe one day but not now, not this way!").

And, add insult to injury, Amazon is wise to my tactics so I couldn't even exchange it. I'll have to wait for another credit to read Hanania and Rufo's takes on the "why 'wokeness'?" genre. They can't be worse than this.

I just started Chip War. Not much farther than the first chapters but it's not actively patronizing me so we're off to a better start. But I am debating just how much of the historical set up I care about compared to the exploration of the post-COVID situation.

The audience for these books are like 64 year old boomer centrists who think Trump is vulgar but “the left seems to be going crazy” (literally my mother). Expecting to get much out of them if you’re very online is fruitless, in many ways they’re written explicitly for people who aren’t.

Yeah, at this point it's my fault for buying books based on liking someone's (less dense) online output and just expecting them to say something different without checking. I got Freddie's cause I liked his first and figured it'd be more of the same.

But this is arguably bad even for the John McWhorter "I'm a fellow tribe member, it's okay. You're not crazy or racist if you ignore these wokes" genre

Of course, in hindsight, part of it may just be that I am (was, I dunno) way more of a normie-leftist on education than crime. IIRC Others here without that problem also complained about some of the same behavior I'm noting here in The Cult of Smart too.

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