site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3688 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 7, 2024

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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

What things do you have very different personal preferences and policy positions on? Do you have any area that you didn't even realize that until the policy changed and lined up with your stated position?

The biggest one that I have been having a difficult time with lately is marijuana. For my entire life, I thought marijuana should be legal and that it's pretty hard to justify having a substantially different control scheme for marijuana than alcohol (tobacco is quite different and I think the comparison is pretty stupid). I still hold this position due to everything I can figure out objectively. There are a few caveats, such as the potential for marijuana to trigger schizophrenia, but really, I doubt it does more harm to a typical person than drinking. I even smoked a decent bit when I was in my younger, party years, and pretty much just had harmless fun.

Nonetheless, it turns out that I don't actually like legal marijuana much. I didn't really notice it when it was mostly illegal, but weed culture is fucking annoying. I get that some people feel that way about alcohol, and I can certainly think of all-out drunkenness scenes that I don't like, but there are big chunks of drinking culture that I do like - craft beer, good bourbon, wine-tasting, cocktails, tailgating, food-drink pairings, this stuff is all somewhere between lowbrow fun and genuinely interesting culture. Pot though? Just fucking annoying. Stupid aesthetics, lazy slobs, constant whining about how pot is actually good for you, man. I don't personally dislike the smell of pot but smelling it on my state's capitol square on a weekday morning is just utterly degenerate. None of this convinces me that it should be illegal, my annoyance doesn't suffice to want something banned, but damn, it turns out that I find stoners way more annoying than I ever would have thought when they had to just smoke at their houses.

I am very pro pot legalization and share your annoyance. I like in a non-legal state, and I hope it always stays this way. As I can drive an hour to a neighboring state for whatever I want, but enjoy the fact that there isn’t a ton of dispensaries littering all the roads and stoners being brazen in public. The only people who actually get in trouble here are behaving in a way where it’s a public nuisance, in which case, good riddance. That said, I do hope it is federally decriminalized.

Always found it interesting that the studies on marijuana use focus on health and not whether the person is being as productive, forming memories of positive experiences, or engaging in a social community. i know a dozen people who used marijuana and then had to stop because it essentially drained their vital life force — they stopped doing anything worthwhile and stopped being motivated toward things. With tobacco it’s the opposite — it’s unhealthy, but no one’s ever been like “this tobacco is really ruining my creativity and preventing me from bonding with friends”. Perhaps the state cares more about a docile population that is not costly for medical services?

So, there's the theory that the left cares more about politics, which is why they show up more and are louder about it, including the wokeness business. Presumably, they're also much more likely to want to use marijuana. Will the ever-growing train of legalization cut out a contingent of them? Or within that population, are there two subpopulations - one which was already trending toward lethargy, which will descend yet further, and another which was already hyper politics, which due to some composition effect results in them eschewing marijuana for their own personal use?

Agreed, marijuana addiction doesn’t necessarily look like serious health issues or criminal dysfunction, homelessness, etc. It looks like stunted potential and an unfulfilled life.

Considering the state banned weed in the first place and it's still federally illegal, any argument for why the state likes weed can be dismissed out of hand.

Anything can be dismissed out of hand if we don’t think thoroughly. The feds have turned a blind eye on state marijuana activities for a long time now, and the interests of the state can change over time — norms in 1937 are not the norms of 2020, right?

  1. Why would the feds not simply legalize it?

  2. The fact that it is federally illegal puts a big damper on the market. Dispensaries are usually cash only or otherwise forced out of the normal banking system. You can't sell weed out of state so states with no growing operations are out of luck.

  3. Weed is only legal for recreational use in 24 states.

"The feds want you to smoak" is an argument that simply doesn't hold water.

The State, namely Congress, prevents federal agents from raiding state marijuana dispensaries: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/837011#?form=fpf. If the State were to treat marijuana as it does other illicit drugs, it would continue to raid marijuana dispensaries and not specifically pass an exclusion for only marijuana dispensaries. “Why not Congress make legal??” is not a serious retort because an explicit legalization involves unwanted political ramifications from voters, whereas allowing people to smoke marijuana in “legalized” states does not (note that these two are different things: “the State” can implicitly permit marijuana usage through policy without making it legal).

Okay, so why don't the relevant enforcement agencies turn a blind eye on banking for weed businesses and sales across state lines? There's money on the table here.

Simply ask yourself if the world we live in looks more like the world where uncle sam wants you to smoke weed or the world where there's no clear policy from the top leading to a mishmash of regulations and enforcement. If you think it looks more like the former, then G-d bless.

“The state” still says marijuana is the devil’s lettuce, at least in the US. It’s a Schedule 1 drug with the same (nominal) restrictions as ecstasy, LSD, and heroin. Amphetamines, opioids, and benzodiazepines are all scheduled lower. Why? Because they’re some combination of less addictive and more medically useful. In theory.

This drug scheduling scheme isn’t based on docility, and it certainly isn’t based on cost. It’s also not interested in drawing lines between stimulants and depressants, which is rather important when comparing tobacco and marijuana. Alcohol is a better comparison; despite being a very effective social lubricant, it is definitely able to cripple social and creative abilities. Naturally, neither tobacco nor alcohol are scheduled by the DEA. They are in two leagues of their own.

The ongoing debate is very much defined by state governments pushing back on something Byzantine and possibly counterproductive from the Feds. Just because Democrats adopted the issue doesn’t automatically make it authoritarian!

This is literally me. I used marijuana to self-medicate for anxiety and depression. It seemed like a miracle drug: it helped me quiet my mind enough to sleep and provided a relaxing buzz similar to alcohol but without the hangover or calories and significantly cheaper. But fast forward 5 years and I found myself socially isolated, intellectually stunted, and boring. I realized that I didn't do anything after work other than watch tv and play video games, and the underlying issues weed allowed me to ignore just slowly got worse until I was able to force myself to make a change.

Alcohol is definitely more acutely worse for you, but the insidious, underappreciated danger with weed is that you never get any "holy shit I need to change my life" moments. There's no overdose risk, it's not disruptive enough to prevent you from putting the minimum effort in at work, and there are few, if any, negative physical side effects associated with over-use. Like you said, it just slowly sucks your vital life force away. And you don't even notice it's happening.

Funny you mention the insidious part because I immediately noticed that being a failure mode the second time I smoked weed in my life.

I've noticed that I lose my literal and figurative mojo when I jack off too much, and that loss of mojo felt exactly the same when smoking weed. So maybe I'm primed to notice subtle changes in mojo.

Seems different for everyone. My social circles as a teenager were intensely invested in smoking weed, with all the accompanying weed culture one pictures. But weed just never did anything for me. Maybe I did it wrong? It just seemed to have no effect whatsoever. But my friends at the time all seemed increasingly passive and isolated in their little smoking enclaves, not going anywhere where they could not smoke all day long, and only spurred to action in order to acquire and consume more weed. The negative effects of either the drug or the culture seemed very obvious. Some of those people got better, some stayed the same, some went under, and most I just lost track of because I got tired of their antics and they of my insufficient participation.

Seems different for everyone.

Slingerland, in Drunk, makes the point that Alcohol has remained the universal social solvent across cultures and history because alcohol has fairly predictable effects on people. People may be lightweights or have a hollow leg, and they may be angry drunks or sad drunks or horny drunks, but the basic frame of alcohol--suppressed impulse control--impulsive behavior is fairly universal. While he specifically calls out marijuana as having unpredictable effects on people, causing a variety of impacts at a variety of intensities for what seem to be genetic reasons.

Some of my friends who smoked too much weed turned into doctors and accountants. Some of them seem to have had mental breaks and went from successful high school students to wash-outs.

But we're really bad at handling the idea that X works well for some people and doesn't work for others.

I used it to self-medicate for insomnia. Worked better than some other off-label stuff which caused insane weight gain. It was actually great...for a year. Lost weight, maintained regular exercise regimen for months...

And then...it crept up on me but now the motivational hit when I toke is insanely noticeable. I thought I used to slack off at work, no I was working in bursts. Now I slack off. Even basic "lazy" shit I used to do - blast through an audiobook of a book I really should sit down and read - is harder.

but the insidious, underappreciated danger with weed is that you never get any "holy shit I need to change my life" moments.

Lucky you. Now I get the self-loathing and the lack of impetus to change.

So...yeah. I think the other side was right on this one.

danger with weed is that you never get any "holy shit I need to change my life" moments.

I realized that I didn't do anything after work other than watch tv and play video games

It's funny that weed actually did give me one of those moments, albeit because I was already often doing nothing while sober before I started using it regularly.

It was just that (since I was using edibles) I was having to make a conscious decision to be alone doing nothing of value for several hours and the highs were punctuated by moments of stark self reflection. Before I started using them, I was instead regularly making the decision to do nothing without really thinking about it and without getting caught up in my own thoughts.

I haven't fully quit weed now, but I have cut down from my peak while also trying to be more social + productive while sober.

Similar story here.

you never get any "holy shit I need to change my life" moments

I stopped smoking weed because that was literally the only effect it was giving me. It became like a boredom magnifier where instead of zoning out and happily wasting time I'd zone alllll the way in and get frustrated about the lack of progress on my ambitions. Made worse by smoking it at the end of the day when there was no opportunity to make any concrete progress on those projects beyond ruminating on how I could do them if this, which I would do if that, which I can't do because...

A large fraction of weed users are not into weed culture, it's just that the ones who are into weed culture stand out a lot.

If anything, legal weed is likely to diminish obnoxious weed culture because if weed is legal and you can go buy it at the local 7-11, then it is no longer so much a cool rebellious thing that motivates people to have a subculture around it.

Yeah, that was the claim, and it's what I thought would happen, but it seems like the opposite happened.

That has not been my experience. I remember weed culture from 20 years ago pretty well, since I was part of it. And it wasn't any less obnoxious than weed culture now. Was it more obnoxious than now? To be honest, I have no idea.

As someone who grew up in a California beach town and never enjoyed the experience of smoking weed, I cant begin to describe how much I relate

Briefly, I wish there were welfare for a wide variety of things. It just feels good to not have to pay for things. However, economically on aggregate I understand it's inefficiencies and the effects it has on incentives and all the things downstream of that.

I would also not lose much sleep if certain social things were illegal, but that's a slippery slope to a nanny state.

I persistently run into, in myself and others, a fantasy of welfare that would be perfectly set up to keep people from suffering a problem while also giving zero incentive to utilize it, and that it would be efficient. A world where no family is hungry because basic food ingredients are subsidized, they can get big sacks of rice and beans and potatoes and flour and milk for free that will keep them alive. Then someone shows me the actual math and how vastly inefficient such a system would be such that it would be more expensive than the food stamp program while delivering a worse product, purely for the purpose of punishing people who collect welfare and soothing the hurt feelings of people who don't. But still, I kind of wish it were real.

You can get a 10lb bag of rice for $10, that might as well be free. And rice and beans and lentils honestly aren't that bad, I'd much rather eat just that than whatever the average american eats, both by taste and by health.

I'd echo what others have said about locality. There are tons of behaviors for which my deontological side wouldn't necessarily support a national ban. Unfortunately, on a practical level, there are often so few options for local bans my consequentialist side wins out and gets me wishing for a general ban.

There seems to be a spectrum of positions on any given nuisance ranging from "the courteous thing is to not make the nuisance at all" to "the courteous thing is to let people do what they want". I'm on the rather extreme end of the former on a many issues (no one should have to hear your dog bark, smell your cigarette smoke, or feel the vibrations of your subwoofer from within their own homes).

Most people, in my experience, seem to lie moderately in that direction (they'll deal with a dog barking for a few minutes or a subwoofer for an hour in the afternoon without getting too annoyed). These people usually act responsibly without needing a ban to force them. Unfortunately, in an apartment building, all it takes is 1 inconsiderate tenant to ruin it for everyone else.

Frankly, I would pay double to live in a neighborhood of likeminded people who agree that barking, smoking, and subwoofers just don't belong in a shared building at all. Let the people who want those things live in their own building and deal with the constant smells and noise. The problem is it's actually really hard to find a place willing to actively exclude the latter type of individual. The best you'll often find is noise ordinance that is "enforced" by a half-hearted "warning" but rarely any real consequences for offenders.

I'm going to be frank: such enforcement is rare because it is completely unreasonable to expect people to metaphorically walk on eggshells within their own home. If you wish to live as if other people do not exist near you, then live apart from other people, invest into soundproofing and/or vote for building better-insulated apartment blocks.

Then you're just one of those people who think "the courteous thing is to let people do what they want", which is perfectly fine. I just want to live around people who believe otherwise.

It costs me nothing to not have dogs or subwoofers or cigarettes. In fact, I strongly prefer not doing those things (certainly nothing approaching walking on eggshells). All I'm saying is that I'd like to find a few dozen others who agree to live together and keep the ones who disagree out.

I am actually planning a soundproofing enhancement, but nothing's going to fix the fact that opening a window at any point means I'm assaulted by some combination of dog piss and cigarette smoke from the balcony two below mine. Not much I can do about that.

Frankly, I would pay double to live in a neighborhood of likeminded people who agree that barking, smoking, and subwoofers just don't belong in a shared building at all.

Pay perhaps around twice as much and live in a nice single family home only neighborhood.

Let the people who want those things live in their own building and deal with the constant smells and noise.

Yeah I lived like that a bit. Even decent apartments are slums compared to SFH suburbs. Just a big building of annoyance.

I recently moved from a modern apartment building with decent soundproofing to a single family home out in the suburbs.

My stress levels instantly plummeted and I regret not having done this much sooner. The occasional bark or lawnmower is nothing compared to what I was putting up before whenever I opened a door or window.

What are SFH suburbs?

Single family home. Condos, apartments and townhouses don't count.

"SFH" = "single-family house".

Oh, that makes sense. I thought "SFH" was some iGen dunk on...well, I don't know, I thought I was going to have to ask Christine Baranski about it. She's pretty up on the kids today.

Maybe in (parts of?) America that's true but certainly not in general.

Frankly, I would pay double to live in a neighborhood of likeminded people who agree that barking, smoking, and subwoofers just don't belong in a shared building at all

If you've got the budget it for it, and like the other aspects, you've just described much of suburbia. If you'd buy the house from the new house flipper guy just down my street, mine would go back to being one.

I think about it often, but at the end of the day it's hard to let go of being in walking distance to work. >95% of my neighbors are great. I just wish it were easier to coordinate making that 100.

I am a libertarian mostly. But I hate smokers, loud trucks, gun culture, sugary beverages, marijuana, ugly strip malls, gambling, and just lower class preferences and behavior in general. I prefer to be in places where these things don't exist, but I don't support banning them.

I think weed is a great example, because I feel the exact same way. I don't want people to be criminals for choosing to smoke weed, or for that matter for doing any drugs really. I think that we should cover bad behavior arising from drug use with the laws which outlaw that behavior anyway, e.g. if you murder someone because you are an addict we have existing murder laws for that so no need for drug specific stuff.

But all that said... bloody hell, the stoners in my state (CO) are fucking dicks and they make me seriously reconsider my position. I shouldn't have to smell them smoking weed (which smells absolutely awful) when I go to events, when I go to the park, or even when I drive down the bloody street. It seems to me that we (CO society broadly) gave them an inch, and they took a mile. Well, if that's how it's going to be then maybe we should take the initial inch back from people who have shown themselves to be completely antisocial.

I try to stick to my convictions. I'm not actually out there campaigning to reinstate a ban on weed under state law. But holy crap, the stoners have made it hard to stand by those ideals.

I’ll say this about almost any form of legalization. Basically, it becomes available enough that children will have access to it. It’s going to be common in homes much like alcohol and cigarettes are. Which will lower the mean age of people getting access to it. I’m not familiar with the effects of cannabis on a child, but I think any legalization scheme needs to understand this reality and be willing to put up with those negative effects.

It's always my position that if we're going to legalise weed, I want stench nuisance laws alongside it.

What things do you have very different personal preferences and policy positions on? Do you have any area that you didn't even realize that until the policy changed and lined up with your stated position?

I'm an Ancap-leaning libertarian with an overall socially-conservative bent. I don't like abortion, prefer monogamous marriage, am bullish on religion and Judeo-Christian norms, I like guns and I don't mind racial diversity. I feel much more affinity with red tribe than blue tribe.

I simultaneously think that people should be free to engage in debauchery in their private lives, and generally be free from judgment for it to the extent they don't parade it around in public...

AND that people should suffer the consequences of their decisions and externalities should be minimized.

Which is to say, I'd prefer my own local community to follow fairly traditional norms that don't need to be heavily enforced, and resists outside influence attempting to subvert them. So red-tribe norms are a natural fit... except for the parts that I don't like.

So I don't like most laws that restrict non-aggressive human behavior... but there's a laundry list of non-aggressive human behavior that I don't like being around.

This is mostly resolved by my adoption of Taleb-style localism as an ideal.

And of course a ton of smart people have proposed the concept: Nozick's Utopia of Utopias, Scott Alexander's Archipelago, Yarvin's patchwork, Weinersmith's Polystate. It's all the same idea. I'm forgetting a few others who pretty much came up with the same thing.

Thousands of different cultures can co-exist as long as there's an overarching framework that keeps them from interfering with each others' internal affairs. The internet is a living example, insofar as themotte can have our own internal culture and processes meanwhile groups who absolutely hate our guts can have their own forum and websites with their own internal culture and neither one need disrupt the other.

Nonetheless, it turns out that I don't actually like legal marijuana much.

I don't personally dislike the smell of pot but smelling it on my state's capitol square on a weekday morning is just utterly degenerate.

Never touched the stuff, but I also think that criminalization is absurd.

And yet, I also don't want to have to smell it whenever I go out in public spaces. Vapes are also up there but I find it somewhat more tolerable.

This is mostly resolved by my adoption of Taleb-style localism as an ideal.

I've been a non-Catholic Distributist for the past several years and have made comments to that effect even on the old reddit. Given what you've just said, I highly recommend looking into that philosophy - and at the very least it means you get to read more G.K. Chesterton, which is always a treat.

Wow thanks for mentioning this philosophy. Seems excellent to me. Like a less crazy version of anarcho-syndicalism.

This is mostly resolved by my adoption of Taleb-style localism as an ideal.

And of course a ton of smart people have proposed the concept: Nozick's Utopia of Utopias, Scott Alexander's Archipelago, Yarvin's patchwork, Weinersmith's Polystate. It's all the same idea. I'm forgetting a few others who pretty much came up with the same thing.

I really do think this is the answer. As long as there is freedom to leave, then almost any other freedom can be safely constrained.

For me, as a libertarian, there is all sorts of stuff I'd like to ban. But a government empowered to ban those things is also empowered to rob of us our freedoms. Better to fight against government power in general, even if it means having to be surrounded by annoying stoners all the time.

But a sufficiently local, atomized government could make all sorts of tyrannical rules, and no people would be seriously injured as they could choose a different system that works for them. In that world, I would have no problem criminalizing marijuana in my local area.

As long as there is freedom to leave, then almost any other freedom can be safely constrained.

Right, but for some 'odd' reason, almost no centralized authority likes to give people the 'freedom' to leave if they can control it.

I'd highly recommend reading The Dawn of Everything. I'm not sure I totally buy into the conclusions, but freedom of movement is something considered deeply in the framework of "Three Fundamental Freedoms" when examining prehistoric and non-European societies.

One theory proposed is that many Amerindian societies in North America maintained a degree of freedom through a system of Clans which stretched between polities, forming a cross-cutting identity set from the broader tribe. Bear, Wolf, Hawk, etc clans are found within tribes stretching from upstate New York to New Mexico, with an expectation that a traveler would be able to expect hospitality from clan members in other tribes. This system, the authors argue, provided a safety valve against tyranny, as any tribe which tried to enforce brutal rules would find itself leaking members outward.

I'm not sure I entirely buy it, but systems where small patchwork principalities existed also often show evidence of extended networks between and across polities, which frequently took on religious or kinship qualities. While authoritarian governments which restrict movement successfully often feature citizens who have nowhere to go (eg German Jews in '38, or Gazans today).

What is this place?

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

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

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


Why are you called The Motte?

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

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


New post guidelines

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

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

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats