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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28414 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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But if someones recognizes that what you're saying there is 'fuck everyone not like me' and responds with 'hey, fuck you too', that person is not being polite and must be eliminated.

One man's recognition that his interlocutor is secretly saying 'fuck everyone not like me' is another man's uncharitable mind reading.

I would think that there would be pattern matching. It’s one thing to have an opinion that those on the receiving end won’t like, and then there’s active dislike for those people. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to criticize any group or culture. On the other hand, when a person is running down the Welsh every chance he gets, and pointing out everything that those Welsh do is stupid and they shouldn’t act so darn Welsh, even if the person is polite, it’s hard to miss that this person has an active disgust towards Welsh people. And I think even when stated politely, active disgust is not a good thing.

And I think even when stated politely, active disgust is not a good thing.

I have explicit and active disgust for the neoconservatives who supported and advocated for the Iraq war, and though I usually state this politely the underlying disgust most likely comes out anyway. Is this a problem only for identity groups (like Welsh people) or does it apply more broadly?

Consequentialist 'fuck everyone else', not deontological 'fuck everyone else'.

(which is to say, if that wasn't clear: part of the entire functional purpose of a political ideology is to come up with an intellectual and narrative framework in which you can advocate of policies and ideas which advantage you and disadvantage your enemies, without ever descending into negative-valence emotions or traits. EG, coming up with arguments for why the policies that favor you and hurt your opponents are actually best for everyone 'in the long run' or are morally correct, without relying on having to say that you selfishly want things that benefit you or vengefully want things that hurt your opponents. Coming up with rational scientific matter-of-fact reasons why people like you are better than people like your opponents, and why that means society will be better served by people like you having more power and privilege. etc.

The fact that you honestly feel no explicit hostility or superiority towards the people who are screwed over by the things you are advocating, and would never dream of being directly rude to those people and telling them to go fuck themselves, is not impressive, even if it's 100% sincere. The whole point of ideology is to construct teh narratives and dialogues which allow you to do that while still taking the side that favors yourself and your team.

That's why a consequentialist looks at the slate of policies/stances a person or group takes and goes 'cui bono?' Everyone thinks their beliefs are dispassionate truths, if the set of dispassionate truths you believe all add up to obviously rationally objectively point towards policies that fuck over group X, that's the same as you just saying 'Fuck group X' in terms of consequences

See The bottom Line for why you look at the consequences rather than the justifications in cases like this).

Then you doom us to antagonism. Every division of spoils cannot be neutral, it is an assault against you by the other group who could give you just a little more.

You may say there is some fair division, but you literally just argued that you can't trust any such argument.

Seems like a non sequitur?

Not that I think this is the strongest form of the argument, but... One side points at specific statistical material gaps between two groups and says 'the gap is evidence that there's some form of discrimination or inequality at play somewhere, we should have policies to try to eliminate the gap.' The other side says 'One group is naturally inclined to outperform the other on whatever metric there's currently a gap in, so those gaps are natural and unavoidable and we shouldn't try to close them.'

To me, it seems like that second position is the one that can justify literally any size of gap, since there's no comprehensive a priori model of how big the performance difference is, or how big of a gap that should translate to (comprehensive and a priori being relevant word here).

Whereas the first side at least has a natural stopping point of eliminating the gaps, and would need some kind of major narrative shift to justify going past that.

But you think the opposite is true? I don't understand your reasoning.

Conservatives underrepresented in academia and owners of websites? Oh, it's not our fault conservatives cannot create modern software themselves. Men having higher suicide rates than women, shorter life expectancy and higher chance to be homicide victim? Again, not a problem.

Conservative is a lifestyle choice, not an innate identity. Editors control more newspaper columns than surgeons, that's not a social injustice, that's just people doing their thing.

You don't consider it a real answer, presumably, but progressives/feminists attribute those problems men face to a mixture of toxic masculinity and economic/social problems, and are actively trying to fight those problems on many fronts. Saying that your opponent doesn't adopt your preferred solution to a problem, and your preferred narratives about it, is not the same as them not trying to solve the problem on their own terms.

Conservative is a lifestyle choice, not an innate identity.

So... you could choose to become a conservative?

"I could, I just never would" is as good as a "no" btw.

Conservative is a lifestyle choice, not an innate identity. Editors control more newspaper columns than surgeons, that's not a social injustice, that's just people doing their thing.

How can we tell without a few centuries of affirmative action?

The issue is that there isn't an objective standard of a fair split (this is precisely what you argue).

I don't think you'd think we should make these sorts of policies broadly applicable.

One side points at specific statistical material gaps between two groups and says 'the gap is evidence that there's some form of discrimination or inequality at play somewhere, we should have policies to try to eliminate the gap.' The other side says 'One group is naturally inclined to outperform the other on whatever metric there's currently a gap in, so those gaps are natural and unavoidable and we shouldn't try to close them.'

Now let those two groups be defined differently. Urban areas have higher GDP per capita. Should we, to fix this inequity, direct money to even this? There are many other axes you could look at: even if you choose a 50-50 split, always, as the fair option, your selection of what measures to check along itself involves bias.

Whereas the first side at least has a natural stopping point of eliminating the gaps, and would need some kind of major narrative shift to justify going past that.

We know what happens when gaps are eliminated: switch measures until you find one where your favored groups are disadvantaged, or just stop caring.

You see this in education: no one complains that it's unfair that more women go to college than men.

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