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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   28670 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

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Small-scale shower thought, since I don't want to wait until Sunday: a belief is an entry in our knowledge base that we know we have, and that we act on. A so-called alief is knowledge that we act on but don't know we have (Wiki gives the example of being scared when standing on a tall balcony with a glass bottom that you trust intellectually - you're safe, you know you're safe, the body is scared anyway). What, then, is something we don't believe but take action as though we do believe? A policy? A trusted hypothetical? A religious law? This is a mode of thinking that I lean on a lot, that seems to be a lot more frequent than for most people.

I got to this thought by completing the 2-variable square, with "known to the process doing introspection" as one variable, and "used in actions in the world" as the other. Given the vague and brief description above, what other frameworks can we fit alief and belief into that reveal other kinds of -lief?

These don't actually exist. You can't act on disbeliefs. If it looks like you are acting on them, you're not, you're just acting on related beliefs which you do sincerely believe.

Or, maybe you think something is unlikely, but still dangerous enough not to risk. This isn't acting on disbeliefs either.

You can't act on disbeliefs.

Whenever someone uses the word "can't" when talking about the human mind, I get suspicious. What would you say about the following:

For my entire life I've had some relatively mild sub-clinical symptoms of OCD, particularly centered around the idea of keeping things symmetrical. Sometimes if I accidentally brush up against something with one hand for example, I'll suddenly be struck by the thought that if I don't touch it with the other hand as well, I'll die in my sleep that night. Of course I know and believe that this is false. I can even tell myself in the moment that it's false, and I believe what I'm telling myself. But nevertheless it really just feels like I should touch it with my other hand, so I do.

Rationally, I know that touching random benign ordinary objects in the environment can have no impact on my odds of sudden death. It's an absurd belief. I'm intelligent enough to recognize that there's no possible causal connection there. And yet I continue to act as though I do believe it.

I'll stand by my statement--I think it was accurate--but it was a bit of an oversimplification.

How much beliefs influence actions is a sliding scale.

  • Most actions are subconscious and do not rely on belief at all. Things like breathing and the individual muscle movements associated with any action.
  • Most of the remainder are semi-conscious and, while they rely on belief, do not involve a conscious decision in the moment. For example, if I decide to go to bed, I'll start the process of walking upstairs, brushing my teeth, etc., all actions which rely on my beliefs regarding where the stairs are, how to brush teeth, and so on, but which do not require conscious input.
  • A few of our actions are explicitly conscious to a large extent, but even then most of the beliefs involved in making the decision are subconscious. I don't need to consciously rehash modus ponens and all my other axioms before every decision.

Your example sounds like my second example. You have two conflicting beliefs, and while you believe one much more strongly, the other promises consequences dangerous enough that it cannot be ignored. It's possible to know something is false and yet believe in it (to a small extent) anyway.

What, then, is something we don't believe but take action as though we do believe?

Going in a few directions: faith? ideals? social fictions?

From the other discussion, I nominate "free will".

Intellectually, I know that human minds are messy things partly driven by drives hard-wired by evolution plus perhaps a bit of capacity to rationally consider hypotheticals and pick an option based on that in a very imperfect manner.

Yet when interacting with others, it is a very convenient frame of reference to assume that Bob was free to pick any option when he punched you instead of modelling him deterministically.

It seems like there are three possible states to your knowledge variable: unknown, believed, and disbelieved.

Maybe I'd coin the word "delief" for that.

Isn't it still "alief", just with ¬P instead of P?

What, then, is something we don't believe but take action as though we do believe?

From Zizek's How To Read Lacan:

For decades, a classic joke has circulated among Lacanians to exemplify the key role of the Other’s knowledge: a man who believes himself to be a grain of seed is taken to the mental institution where the doctors do their best to finally convince him that he is not a grain but a man. When he is cured (convinced that he is not a grain of seed but a man) and allowed to leave the hospital, he immediately comes back trembling. There is a chicken outside the door and he is afraid that it will eat him. “Dear fellow,” says his doctor, “you know very well that you are not a grain of seed but a man”. “Of course I know that,” replies the patient, “but does the chicken know it?”

[...]Marx does not claim, in the usual way of Enlightenment critique, that critical analysis should demonstrate how a commodity – what appears a mysterious theological entity – emerged out of the “ordinary” real-life process; he claims, on the contrary, that the task of critical analysis is to unearth the “metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties” in what appears at first sight just an ordinary object. Commodity fetishism (our belief that commodities are magic objects, endowed with an inherent metaphysical power) is not located in our mind, in the way we (mis)perceive reality, but in our social reality itself. In other words, when a Marxist encounters a bourgeois subject immersed in commodity fetishism, the Marxist’s reproach to him is not “The commodity may seem to you to be a magical object endowed with special powers, but it really is just a reified expression of relations between people” but rather, “You may think that the commodity appears to you as a simple embodiment of social relations (that, for example, money is just a kind of voucher entitling you to a part of the social product), but this is not how things really seem to you. In your social reality, by means of your participation in social exchange, you bear witness to the uncanny fact that a commodity really appears to you as a magical object endowed with special powers.”

This type of phenomenon is the bread and butter of psychoanalysis: "I know very well that is not true, but nevertheless..."

Small-scale shower thought, since I don't want to wait until Sunday

You do realize that you're allowed to post in the existing thread, right? It still exists, it doesn't expire on Monday, it expires next Sunday when the next thread comes out.

I have pretty much had it with people who ranted about "trump disrespecting the troops!" now waving the flag of Hezbollah who actually killed a lot of those troops.
The next time a Democrat starts regurgitating NPR at me I'm going to end up saying something friendship-ruiningly impolite because I just can't hold in the anger at this stupidity any more. It's almost worse than 2020 because the deranged hysteria isn't happening in unique circumstances.

How do you all deal with this every day?

The people who criticised Trump for disrespecting the troops are very much not the same people as those waving Hezbollah flags.

now waving the flag of Hezbollah who actually killed a lot of those troops.

If you mean in Syria, not many US soldiers have died in the occupation of Syria. Why on Earth would we respect them? Hillary Clinton's campaign to destabilize Syria via hefty sanctions while the US flooded the country with weapons has been an absolute disaster. Hundreds of thousands of people have died, 13 million refugees of which a great many are in Europe, and the destruction of ancient and Christian culture in the region is nothing to respect.

Hezbollah has had a neighbouring country flooded with jihadists who are down right genocidal toward Hezbollah and Syrians of the same religious and ethnic background as Hezbollah. Why wouldn't they fight? It is absurd to call Ukraine an American interest and then condemn Hezbollah for fighting ISIS next door.

Conservatives make a grave mistake simping for troops. They did absolutely nothing for you. The military industrial complex has wasted trillions, murdered millions and is if anything spying and influencing far more than China and Russia combined.

If you mean in Syria, not many US soldiers have died in the occupation of Syria.

I think they’re referring to the 240 US military personnel who were killed by Hezbollah (or rather its immediate precursor) in Beirut in 1983, which is the single highest one-day death toll for the US marines since Iwo Jima and for the entire US military since Vietnam.

Hezbollah has had a neighbouring country flooded with jihadists who are down right genocidal toward Hezbollah and Syrians of the same religious and ethnic background as Hezbollah. Why wouldn't they fight?

Israel has a neighboring territory flooded with jihadists who are downright and openly genocidal towards Israelis of Jewish ethnic and religious background, so I’m glad you’ve come around on the war in Gaza. In any case, Syrian jihadists were never particularly set on conquering Lebanon, it wasn’t a primary target for them and it would be just about the only thing that could unite the Maronites and the Shiites.

I think they’re referring to the 240 US military personnel who were killed by Hezbollah (or rather its immediate precursor) in Beirut in 1983, which is the single highest one-day death toll for the US marines since Iwo Jima and for the entire US military since Vietnam.

That was before Hezbollah. Secondly, they had no business being in Lebanon. The endless warmongering in the middle east has not had a benefit and has had a huge cost. If there were hundreds of foreign soldiers in Lebanon the Lebanese have a full right to hit back. Giving weapons to Ukraine but not acknowledging that the Lebanese have the right to defend their country is hypocritical.

Israel has a neighboring territory flooded with jihadists who are downright and openly genocidal towards Israelis of Jewish ethnic and religious background,

Palestinians have a hostile nation occupying their territory, and they have every right to armed resistance.

They have (like the Native Americans) a right to resist, but they also must accept being utterly vanquished in response.

Palestinians have a hostile nation occupying their territory

And what, in your opinion, constitutes 'their territory'?

The analogy only holds weight if you buy into the argument that Israel/people of Jewish ethnic and religious background have as much right to stay on the Middle Eastern clay as the Syrians do, which I doubt is the case for the protesters or most of those who sympathise with them. The communicative strategy of the pro-Israel powers regarding its legitimacy seems to continue being limited to "all polite people in the room will gasp and assert that you just did something beyond the pale if you deny Israel's right to existence", but this is clearly fragile and dependent on an unbroken chain of respect for the opinion for "polite people", which evidently broke at some point upstream from the pro-Palestine left.

The commitment to this strategy to the exclusion of all others boggles my mind - at least come up with some apologia involving how Palestinians are really also culpable for the Holocaust because Hitler admired Islam, or some body of Foucaldian jargon-laden papers churned out by a network of Jewish Studies departments which purport to present a critical theory of how occupying the Holy Land was just. Most successful movements in history that depend on a claim (such as an assertion of morality) that can't be strictly proven seemed to recognize that you need to maintain multiple lines of persuasion to cover different audiences - Christianity had the social censure for those who think judgement by the elites makes right, charitable organizations for those who thought displays of altruism do, tales of miracles for those who thought a God better have godlike powers, theological faculties for those who were most impressed by the trappings of scholarship, and smoke-filled community rituals for those who were most swayed by gut feeling and dissolving the self in a crowd.

Conservatives make a grave mistake simping for troops. They did absolutely nothing for you. The military industrial complex has wasted trillions, murdered millions and is if anything spying and influencing far more than China and Russia combined.

Difference between the grunts on the ground and the people in offices sending them out there, though. My late father was in the Irish army so I do have a tendency to go "I'm not blaming the poor bloody infantry for this clusterfuck because it's not Private Jones or Sergeant Smith or Major Brown deciding to fly off to Syria, it's civilian never wore bull's wool in their life Secretary Tonclint doing it". A lot of conservatives/Red Tribe/as you wish will have family, friends, acquaintances, co-workers who are or were at that level of "the military-industrial complex", or know people in that range, and so when they are "respecting the troops" it's Cousin Benny or Aunt Julia's ex-boyfriend they're identifying as "the troops".

Of course there are the types who go "respect the troops!" simply on political partisan grounds or to 'we must appeal to the rubes and simps by wrapping ourselves in the flag' or who are at the higher levels of the military-industrial complex, but when I hear about "50 ordinary soldiers killed out foreign", in general I think "the poor bastards" and not "serves the colonialising invading pawns of the M-I complex right!"

Most of us will react with the standard 'smile and change the subject' if we are not on board, because terminating near friendships has social consequences. This is the exact reason why democrats and the pro-palestinians see no reason to ever compromise and consider the validity of the necessity of a military or of Israel or of conservatives: there are zero, literally zero, social consequences to denigrating the out-group.

Of course this calculus can be assessed to be wrong, but it merely reflects the short-sightedness of the activist. There is a presumption that the military and police are mere dogs leashed and muzzled by whoever controls the government, and even if one does not control the government these stupid retards won't know how to start objecting to the superior intellect of the democrat urbanite. The social consequences for disrespecting violent men with guns tends to be far more immediate for residents of countries with less geographic dispersion than the USA, and until the protestors discover how hard the boot can actually clamp down, they will never be learn.

This one caught a couple reports for "Boo outgroup", but while I think there's slight consensus building and some of the former, I don't see anything worth warning you for.

I only write this mod hat on to point out that while your comment is hardly ideal, a polite reminder and not a formal warning will hopefully suffice.

Edit: I'm afraid I didn't see that this was a top level post in the main thread. We expect more effort and less heat in that context, so consider this a warning to avoid this in the future.

Be Kind

Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument.

Be charitable.

Do not weakman in order to show how bad a group is.

Leave the rest of the internet at the door.

Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

I don't understand how this is even borderline. Where is the light / analysis / value that's overriding the negatives?

Please note the edit/update.

In general, the mods take more pains to police top-level comments more, and enforce the standards most strictly there. Something buried a mile deep gets more slack. Not infinitely more so, certainly, but this would have passed under my threshold if buried in a comment chain 5 replies deep.

I was under the impression that this wasn't a top level comment, and in context of wider discussion, and at that point, it would have deserved a tut-tut more than a formal warning.

Sadly, I've been disabused of that notion, and this doesn't fly as a top level comment. He doesn't have any previous mod record, hence a warning to knock it off suffices.

Yes, I read your edit before I made my comment. I'm asking what value you see in that comment -- why a warning would not have been merited if it had been made several levels deeper, despite the fact that it violates several rules and exists solely to complain bitterly about how terrible the author's outgroup is.

@self_made_human goes into more depth than I would, but his general point is sound: people say a bunch of eye-watering awful shit in the comments, and it’s not always worth policing. The further down in a conversation we go, the more likely that there’s context which we missed. Especially when sarcasm or hypotheticals are involved.

We’ve got at least one user who will report anything and everything shorter than two sentences as low-effort. Doesn’t matter if it’s five levels down in a conversation, or if the parent asked a yes/no question. That’s the rule which gets the most leniency based on depth, since there are lots of good reasons to have a short answer.

boo-outgroup or antagonism…well, it’s a lot harder to find an excuse for that. I’d have modded this particular one wherever it showed up. But I suspect I’ve already earned a reputation as a party pooper.

Us mods aren't monolithic, though we try to present a unified front. I'm sure there are some out there who would be harsher on OP, or more keen to monitor deeper threads. You can't expect perfect consistency. But I happen to be the one up when the more Westward mods are asleep.

If it had been deeper down, then I would assume that:

A) Far fewer would have their eyeballs contaiminated. I don't recall us mods ever being involved in the most degenerate case, namely DMs, at that point one person or the other should block and move on.

B) It might have been in the context of a heated debate, where being somewhat uncharitable can be occasionally excused, if not indefinitely or infinitely. Someone can be provoked into being exasperated, or less than maximally polite, and I was giving him the benefit of the doubt.

C) His mod record is otherwise clean.

Hence I initially wanted to politely tell him to shy away from that kinda thing without putting a dent in his invisible to you mod record, but when it's a top level post, absolutely not, it's warning worthy. He's got 83 comments, and no warnings till today, so as far as I can tell, he's mostly within acceptable bounds. Unfortunately, B isn't true, though that was an error on my part while trying to clear the mod queue. At any rate, a warning would probably be the default mod action, it's unlikely any of us would want to ban him for a first infraction, even one clearly in violation of norms. Repeated misbehavior and being incorrigible? Or just something awful? Banhammer swings.

To add to the irony, your comment caught a report for lack of effort. This job is going to age me, and I do it for free.

Clean it up, jannie

I doubt there are very many people who were angry about Trump disrespecting the troops and are now actively pro-Hezbollah.

I would expect those who are "waving the flag of Hezbollah" (I'm sure someone at the campus protests has done this but I'm not sure what the specific example is) to be the sort of radicals who make even other pro-Palestinians uncomfortable and those who ranted about "Trump disrespecting the troops!" to be normie libs who support the police clearing the campuses of protestors.

Lots of the pro-Palestine protestors are waving the flag of Hamas, which has killed some IDF soldiers but no U.S. personnel as far as I know. The Hezbollah flag I’ve never heard of, although some of the protestors seem to generate word salad about why Hezbollah aren’t a bunch of murdering terrorists.

The point isn't the specific flags or the number of protestors, the point is that, unless someone proves otherwise, the resist libs and the pro-Palestine protestors would most naturally seem to be two specific constituencies, with one of them being prone to thinking that Biden is the only chance against fascism in the USA and the other thinking that Biden is a fascist, for example.

I do sympathise with you. I experienced what you are experiencing now during the lockdowns. Almost everyone in my life was in support of them and spoke very highly of them, blind to the effects they were having on me. I am still dealing with the issues now.

During that time, whenever the topic of conversation came up I came up with situation appropriate lines to shut down or move the conversation on. When I couldn't do that, I drowned them out with loud rock music. Ultimately, you aren't going to convince them and the only real solution is to wait for this nonsense to exit the news cycle.

(Has it really been 7 months?)

It's arguments as soldiers and I have to constantly remind myself to keep in mind (1) don't do it myself, i.e. uphold now something I formerly said I opposed simply because it's someone on My Side saying it or it is an effective tactic in an argument I'm having and (2) be aware of when My Side and Our Guys do it as well.

I frequently get smacked on the wrist by the mods for breaches of "boo outgroup", but from my perspective, I'm being consistent: there are some things I don't accept, and I don't care if it's Susie Green or the Pope arguing for acceptance of those things, I'll oppose them both. And if the Pope says it, I'll say he's wrong (at the moment, despite it all, Francis is not saying that yet on some topics so, so far, so good) even though otherwise I do accept the authority of the Pope as the boss of me.

Technically, so long as it isn't ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals, isn't it always a possibility that the pope is wrong about [insert topic here]? I mean, at least from the Catholic perspective?

There's a fun saying I bring up from time to time when people try to use the statements of leaders of my church (I'm Mormon) against me/my faith/some position I hold: "The pope says he's infallible, but no one believes him. The Mormon prophet says he is fallible, but no one believes him."

Technically, so long as it isn't ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals, isn't it always a possibility that the pope is wrong about [insert topic here]? I mean, at least from the Catholic perspective?

Oh, yeah. The Pope can't say "The Brazil nut is the one and only official nut of the Catholic Church and anyone consuming any other nut is going straight to Hell". There's wiggle room. If he's going to change teaching, he better have a dang good reason and an entire team of theologians backing him up (this applies to any pope, I'm not picking on Francis in particular here).

Yes, you don’t have to believe non-official pronouncements of the pope, or official pronouncements not about faith or morals. But also the usual line about ‘papal infallibility has only been used 4 times in the history of the church, dogmatic beliefs are quite limited’ is also wrong.

The Catholic Church has the extraordinary magisterium, which is always infallible- infallible papal pronouncements and anathematizations by ecumenical councils fall here- and the ordinary magisterium, produced by the normal working of church governance, and which Carries varying levels of weight. A few arguable examples of infallible acts of the ordinary magisterium are Humanae Vitae, canonizations, the condemnation of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rulings that women cannot be priests, etc. All of these are arguable as to their infallibility but Catholic theologians universally agree that disagreeing with them and remaining a Catholic is an extremely high bar(except for a minority of theologians who argue that disagreeing with post 1980 canonizations has a much lower bar due to changes in the process. Many of these theologians can point to specific examples of recent canonizations they disagree with, usually Oscar Romero or JoseMaria Escriva) in terms of effort put in and carefulness of the claim.

So in practice there’s some ambiguity as to what’s infallible or not, but general agreement as to what’s a weighty teaching and what can be disagreed with rather more freely(recent doctrines on the death penalty being an example in the latter category). There’s also an understanding that some teachings can be disagreed with, but the disagreement Carries a very high minimum in terms of effort, theological supports, caution with which it is expressed, etc.

Every time I've gone online since I was 10 years old I've seen some braindead take or fallacious reasoning or contradictory position being expressed. The world is full of people who are ignorant, immature, incoherent, insane, and intransigent and no amount of arguing on my part is going to make a dent in their number. If I tried anyway and blew up at every instance of what appeared to me to be deranged hysteria, I would in fact become one of those deranged hysterics myself (I believe we call them Twitter People). Since that still wouldn't accomplish anything and is, as the kids say, a bad look, I choose to channel my time and energy towards more productive tasks instead. That's all there is to it.

I'm not talking about people online. That doesn't bother me.

The point is that those are the same people. They say the same things in person that they do online because below a certain age there isn't a difference in their minds and you have to treat it as such.

I don't see how the example here represents some sort of unique turning point or even a particularly good example of the set of, 'Progressives seem to hold totally contradictory values'.

They have been holding 'LGBTQ+ for Hamas' rallies since October 8th.

Trump disrespected the troops by saying stuff that a 'properly cultured' blue-triber would never say, like calling POWs losers for getting caught.

The people at protests waving flags, still don't like Trump for being uncouth in those ways. Also, I would guess less than half of them even know what Beirut is. Still, even if they did know, they mostly wouldn't care. They are perfectly happy to hold both the idea that Trump says rude things to the troops and that is bad, and also the idea that the American military-industrial-complex is a global oppressor and any and all resistance to it is justified. This isn't even a particularly contradictory pair of ideas to hold compared to their beliefs around gender.

More generally, you are making a liberal complaint to a progressive. Liberals care about being principled and consistent, creating generalizable rules, and all that other great civilization building philosophy junk that got totally abandoned as the internet and government student loans expanded the marketplace of ideas to include midwits.

They have been holding 'LGBTQ+ for Hamas' rallies since October 8th.

Very few if any leftists have expressed support for Hamas' political, religious, and social program while also being pro LGBT+ which would actually be contradictory. A portion of them will express support for Hamas insofar as they fight the IDF without supporting their social program, which is a consistent position. A greater part of them will refuse to say either way, because they view calls to condemn Hamas as bad-faith attempts at distraction (the standard line being "I'll condemn Hamas when my government sends them billions of dollars").

Entirely from the correctness or incorrectness of the political views themselves, there's no real contradiction between "I support LGBT+/feminism/whatever" and "I am against Israel's actions in Gaza."

I don't think that only 'technical' contradiction, in which it is logically impossible for two ideas to comport, get to be called contradictions. I think it is very common and normal for people to use the word contradiction to describe an apparent disconnect or incongruity between two things, that need not be completly irreconcilable.

I am not sure if you thought that my argument was, the OP's example is not contradictory, but my example is, but I was not trying to make that argument. I used words like particularly, and compared to. Also, this "'Progressives seem to hold totally contradictory values'." bit was in quotes because it was intended to describe a vibe, that I felt was central to the OP. I just felt like the example the OP happened to be upset by was a kind of weak sauce example of this kind of contradiction.

Entirely from the correctness or incorrectness of the political views themselves, there's no real contradiction between "I support LGBT+/feminism/whatever" and "I am against Israel's actions in Gaza." "I support Hamas".

So, in a very narrow technical sense, I support [Blank] and I support [Group that hates Blank and actively practices violence against Blank] are not logically impossible to hold within the same mind.

Still I am confident saying that not only would most people recognize the incongruity in those statements, if I could ask progressives about a different topic where they were not primed to view it as an attack or a gotcha, most of them would recognize the contradiction in such a statement as well. In fact, just go look at the never ending stream of "if you were really pro-life' memes/posts/articles for a live (and much worse) example.

I don’t think you can really compartmentalize to that degree with any integrity. In most governments and political parties they have openly stated platforms and they at least intend to make good on those promises. You can’t support only the good without accepting the bad. You can’t have support for a faction that kills gays and support gay rights. You can’t support the political goal without supporting the social goals because if they get their goals of defeating IDF they’ll go right back to running Gaza the way they want to.

Somebody could easily hold that a homophobic, misogynist, Islamist party ruling Gaza is a preferable to Gaza being wiped off the face of the earth.

Someone could also hold that a Gaza run by racially tolerant pacifists is better than the Islamists. Forcing a binary proposition is working backwards, justifying the current cause celebre by any tenuous means necessary.

I know, it's just that I'm finally hitting my breaking point. Mostly it's that a few people who were generic libs but mocked "the weird ones" have suddenly gone all-in on quoting reddit posts, with seemingly no sense that their perspective has changed.

I've always put up with this kind of thing before, but I'm this close to cutting back my circle of friends to a handful of shared hobby autists and redneck coworkers.

It's this depressing feeling that I was never really friends with a person who existed, just a living chatbot that had a new gpt lobotomy update.

That's my secret, I have no friends.

I find the bigger problem is that our friends tend to be more fickle than we calculated. True friendships are a tribe unto themselved, sufficiently bonded to ignore external cultural variations. Either your friends aren't so close that they are willing to censure you over inconsequential opinions, or they're weaklings who can't stand up against Current Thing. Both lead to the same conclusion of 'get better friends'. Difficult, but just like a good romantic relationship, worth it

It's this depressing feeling that I was never really friends with a person who existed, just a living chatbot that had a new gpt lobotomy update.

That was my 2020 experience with lockdowns, but add all of society to it. And even worse because at least the Hezbollah fans generally fall short of demanding everyone wave the Hezbollah flag, whereas lockdown fans made their political symbols into legal obligations. Because of this, afterwards, I tend to be rather unfazed whenever the latest lobotomy balance patch is released. My expectations are rock bottom so if anything other than everyone around me being as stupid and awful as possible happens, I get to be pleasantly surprised instead. And sure, maybe it's egotistical to think everyone around me is a lobotomite, but so what? If they're not, it's on them to demonstrate otherwise.

First time?

Everyone in the Culture War has this experience sooner or later. It sucks, but eventually the realization settles that this is how it is and it's not going to change, so you make your peace with it and move on with life.

For me, it helped to realize that most people who talk about politics and culture aren't actually engaging in analysis, but rather an informal group-bonding game built around call-and-response meme-trading. This doesn't make them stupid or irrational, any more than posting dogespeak memes means they don't understand proper grammar. They aren't trading John-Oliver-tier (or steven crowder tier) talking points because they're interested in pursuing objective truth, they're doing it because it generates a feeling of togetherness. Sure, it's alienating to you, because the pings they're generating are pings your brain rejects, but that's not really their fault. People are different, is all.

They're not engaging in analysis, right. I guess if your idea of analysis is pseudo-scientific half-readings of social science papers (which isn't a real field unless the paper supports your conclusion btw), inability to separate personal bias from the external world, and a strong superiority complex then it should be painfully obvious why no one wants to engage with you IRL.

They're not engaging in analysis, right.

They aren't, though. That's an observable fact to me, and I'm okay if you disagree with that, but I'd be interested in seeing what arguments you'd present to support that disagreement.

Neither John Oliver nor Jon Stewart nor Steven Crowder nor Sean Hannity are optimizing for truth. All four of these people are entertainers, and their schtick is to offer a just-so story where their tribe is obviously correct and the other tribe is some combination of stupid or evil. All of them build their argumentation around isolated demands for rigor, cherry picking, motte-and-bailey, and the rest of the dark arts. The talking points they generate are frequently absurd, and require complete ignorance of the facts of the matter to maintain any significant persuasive value. They sell low-information politics to (politically) low-information people for whom politics is essentially a spectator sport, similar to football or baseball. The version of "politics" they present has only the most minimal connection to the realities of how our system apportions and exercises power.

It is not pretension to point out that every four years, both major presidential candidates give a speech on how they're going to fix the education system, and every four years both speeches are remarkably identical both between the candidates, and between all previous candidates in living memory. Meanwhile, the educational system has been obviously broken and getting worse throughout living memory, has been repeatedly "reformed" every few years, and not only have those reforms failed, some of them have failed two or even three times, the failures being recorded, forgotten, and then recapitulated in a system without memory, accountability, or even direction. That is not a result that serious, thoughtful, dedicated people will produce. And many, perhaps even most political matters observably operate in this fashion. If the economy improves, the incumbent's supporters will say he did it, and his detractors will say it was the last guy. If the economy declines, his supporters will say it was the last guy and his detractors will say he did it, and they will do this regardless of what they previously said and regardless of the evidence. Ditto for most other areas of domestic and foreign policy. We were "winning" the war in Afghanistan for twenty years across three separate administrations, until we abruptly lost it upon the arrival of the fourth, in an event that was absolutely predictable fifteen years in advance. Pick your favorite issue of policy, and I'd wager a similar situation is what you'll see when you dig in. The captain's wheel of Democracy does not appear to be linked to the rudder of concrete policy; spin it left, spin it right, take your hands completely off, it doesn't actually matter much.

I guess if your idea of analysis is pseudo-scientific half-readings of social science papers (which isn't a real field unless the paper supports your conclusion btw)

My personal standard is admission against interest, actually. If the findings make the researchers extremely unhappy and unpopular with their peers and co-tribals, but they can't find a way around the data, the data's probably worth considering.

... inability to separate personal bias from the external world, and a strong superiority complex then it should be painfully obvious why no one wants to engage with you IRL.

I had a lot more trouble engaging with people back when I took them all seriously. Now when I get hit with a low-information call-and-response, I just give them a milktoast-moderate version of their preferred ping and it's all good. If they actually are trying to engage in analysis but lack the background, I give them a step past wherever they are, and then shrug and say "but who knows, really" to offer a non-threatening exit, that tends to work pretty well. If they're a serious person with a serious interest, it's not hard to tell and then we can have a serious conversation, but that's relatively rare.

I do not concede that everyone who considers themselves "serious about politics" is actually serious about politics. I do not require that people agree with me about politics to consider them serious. I do require that they have a decent grasp on political history, and a grasp on the relevant facts over the last several decades for the issues they claim to care about. If they "care" enough about a subject to want to talk about it, but don't care enough to actually read up on the relevant information beyond the talking points their preferred partisan pre-packaged for them, and if they are more interested in those talking points than in making actual predictions based on the available evidence, it seems to me that their actions speak for themselves. If they "care" about politics the way an NFL fan "cares" about their team, I see no reason why "caring" more than them would lead to better outcomes. And indeed, my experience is that it does not.

I do not see what sort of comfort this is meant to bring. This is no more helpful than the realisation that technically it isn't the fault of the wolf or shark if it has a hankering for your delicious flesh. Wolves and sharks still possess sharp teeth and will attempt to use them on you, while powerful moral spooks will compel other human beings to make your life a misery over things that have no material impact on either them or you.

Once you realize that most people lack intellectual standards or believe in the principles they claim each week, you can go looking for the people who actually do.

Once you realize that most people lack intellectual standards or believe in the principles they claim each week, you can go looking for the people who actually do.

I don't recall that working out well for Diogenes.

The term "sheep" is inescapably condescending, because it implies that a "sheep" is all someone is, and that generally is not true. A more accurate way to put it would be that with regard to some things, especially very complex things that generate a lot of epistemic learned helplessness, people can get pretty sheep-like. In any case, the people in question almost certainly are not accurately described as sharks, or any other form of predator.

The people quoting John Stewart to each other generally are not ideologues, and they certainly aren't pod people looking to point and shriek at the first identified heretic. They're doing a pedestrian social thing, and if you're at the point where it's grating, it's easy to play along more or less seamlessly, or duck out. The problem isn't that they're witch-hunting, the problem is that if you're in this situation, you probably are an ideologue of some description, and your instinct is to start an argument. They aren't looking for an argument, they're doing a pedestrian-normie-carebear thing. Just dial down the autism for two whole minutes, and everything will be fine.

(It should be obvious, but the above is self-description of past-me, so please don't think I'm saying anything about anyone in this thread that I wouldn't say about myself. I know full-well how hard it is to turn off the autism, but learning to do it is a critical social skill. Also note that the above is very explicitly about Stewart and Oliver and similar CNN-Chyron-tier normie-feed. If they're quoting Kendi or bell hooks or the SCUM manifesto, or Trotsky, etc, etc, dive dive dive. Those are the actual sharks, and they are actively dangerous to interact with.)

Your anger reminds me of the Liberation Pledge that vegans did, where they aggressively pushed their principles to their non-vegan friends in the form of ultimatums, "either stop eating meat or we can't be friends". When their non-vegan friends didn't comply with their craziness, the vegans got extremely mad and essentially said "well I guess they weren't ever my friends anyways!!!"

Losing friends and making enemies for pointless battles is just dumb. Politics has always been overwhelmingly about vibes and direct personal interest. Leftists of the e.g. feminist+pro-Muslim variety irk me as much as anyone, but it's utter silliness to think you'd accomplish anything but your own harm by raging at those types of people. And if you think your outgroup is the only side with a large amount of contradictions, then you're hopelessly naive. The Bible has so many contradictions that it's worthless as a philosophical guiding light, yet it's served that purpose to basically the entire Western world for centuries. Individual rulers or religious leaders just cherry-picked whichever parts happened to suit them. For another example, it wasn't too long ago that a large chunk of the alt-right cheered when Trump sank the most conservative immigration bill in a generation for blatantly self-serving reasons. When pressed, most of the alt-right just mumbled out explanations that showed they had no idea what was actually in the bill, or the state of current immigration laws. In practice it didn't actually matter, since the fact that they like Trump's vibes easily overrode their ideological pre-commitments.

How would you feel if I did what you plan on doing to Christians or Trump supporters? How would you feel if I "say something friendship-ruiningly impolite because I just can't hold in the anger at this stupidity any more"? You'd probably think I'm being silly and dumb, right?

The Bible has so many contradictions that it's worthless as a philosophical guiding light, yet it's served that purpose to basically the entire Western world for centuries.

Just a tangent here, but the Bible isn't designed to be a philosophical guiding light on its own. It even says not to do that, but to also hold to the traditions received extra-biblically, i.e. the Church, which is designed to be a philosophical guiding light.

Seems to me that when (much of) the Western world started trying to use the Bible in a way it specifically says not to use it, that's where we got into trouble.

Reading that post about the Liberation Pledge makes me sad, because here is a perfectly nice person with good intentions who only wants to do good and reduce harm, and they might as well be an alien from another planet when it comes to understanding ordinary people:

And, on a larger scale, we hoped that if we all joined together, we could create a world where eating meat is stigmatized: a world where someone would ask, “Does anyone mind if I get the steak?” before making an order at a restaurant (or maybe even one in which restaurants would think twice before putting someone’s body on the menu).

That right there from the start: it's not a body, it's a carcass. And it's not someone, it's something. An animal is not a person. Plus, I get the distinct impression that were this a report on an Oceanian tribe that practiced consumption of the remains of the deceased as a ritual of respect, we'd get the whole "we should not impose Western moral values on others" about something that really was "putting someone's body on the menu".

From where I stood, the biggest effect of the Pledge was for advocates to lose relationships with family members who didn’t comply. Upon taking the Pledge, a close friend at the time experienced a years-long estrangement from their family, including those who were already vegan while many others decided to skip birthdays, weddings, and holidays with family. It’s possible that all of this added stigma around eating animals. With these relationships broken down, we don’t know.

You know where the added stigma was? I'm going to take a wild guess and that it wasn't on the part of shame-faced carnivores around "eating animals", but rather "that stupid notion that made Jenny refuse to attend Granny's last Thanksgiving before she died, the last time the family all saw her, just because of a dumb turkey dinner. She was Granny's favourite grandkid! And we all knew Granny wasn't doing so good! And she just would not come because of that vegan rubbish, she cared more about some dead turkey than about Granny!"

The problem is, veganism is a moral judgement, and nobody likes moral judgements. The same people who would be horrified about some bigot telling a gay family member that they were sinful and in need of having their soul saved has no problem telling meat eater family and friends that they are damned souls going to carnist hell.

As the article points out, the Pledge backfired because it involved breaking off relationships with family and those close to the vegan; the moral purity being not "He eats with tax collectors and sinners" but "They eat with meat-eaters".

Plus, I get the distinct impression that were this a report on an Oceanian tribe that practiced consumption of the remains of the deceased as a ritual of respect, we'd get the whole "we should not impose Western moral values on others" about something that really was "putting someone's body on the menu".

What gives you that impression besides the fact that you dislike the author?

Edit: consumption of the remains of the deceased or the remains of the slaughtered?

People who tend to be "this is the body of a person" when talking about a turkey or joint of beef on the dinner table are also likely to be "we must not impose our morals on others" when it comes to unconventional and non-Western beliefs and practices.

I don't dislike the author, I appreciate that they are a sensitive person trying to do good as they see it. I dislike the neuroticism of the zealot veganism philosophy. The piece admits the failure mode of the Pledge was forcing the non-vegans into a choice of "me or them?" and then breaking off relationships over what the non-vegans are going to see as "it's just a meal".

Ritual cannibalism has indeed been practiced, though the debate over how widespread, how long, and for what reasons, continues; I doubt that the ethical vegans would stretch their ethics to condemnation of such cultures as being wrong, unnatural, etc. because that is Western colonialist thinking. They might condemn it on the grounds of all meat-eating being wrong, but not because humans are different or superior to animals.

People who tend to be "this is the body of a person" when talking about a turkey or joint of beef on the dinner table are also likely to be "we must not impose our morals on others" when it comes to unconventional and non-Western beliefs and practices.

How do you know this? The vegans I've met don't hold non western cultures above criticism. Especially if we are talking about people posting on the ea forum who are likely more autistic than your average vegan.

I certainly don't know any vegans who are in favor of murder and cannibalism, though they might draw a distinction between that and eating a human who died for other reasons (as some of them do for eating a non human animal that wasn't slaughtered for the purpose of eating).

I doubt that the ethical vegans would stretch their ethics to condemnation of such cultures as being wrong, unnatural, etc. because that is Western colonialist thinking. They might condemn it on the grounds of all meat-eating being wrong, but not because humans are different or superior to animals.

Wait, you doubt that they would do this, but acknowledge that they might?

It sounds more like they might not condemn it for the reasons you think they should condemn it, and that seems like a much weaker argument indeed.

The lack of theory of mind is truly something. The leading response to "I won't eat at a table where meat is served" is "so starve then" and the second leading response is "Then leave the table". In distant third is "So you want some of my brisket?" with "fine, it'll be vegetarian this time, but you're an asshole and I'm eating double steak tomorrow" trailing it by a good margin. "Well, I guess I'll reduce or eliminate my meat consumption" is lizardman's constant.

I do see their point and why they tried it, but I also wonder how otherwise intelligent people could not see why this would fail. If you don't want to associate with meat-eaters, you can certainly all gather into your own little bubble of vegans. But when it involves dealing with the wider public and especially your own family, it's going to have consequences. The idealistic among them seem to have assumed that other people would accept their views, be convinced of the moral horror of eating turkey or beef or pork, and change the entire traditional meal to fit around "no animal products at all" (some vegans are very evangelical on this and would not accept the use of butter, cream, cheese, etc. in a meal).

While people might be willing to go "Okay, we'll do a special vegan selection for you", they are less likely to go "and you can eat it at a separate little table of your own" (though they might stretch that far) and are not at all likely to go "okay we will junk the Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner/Fourth of July barbeque and all eat salad and fake meat products".

The authoress of the original piece has it in three parts, the third part being Vegan Tables: A Letter To The People I Love.

And this is the part that makes me wince:

Piled on top of that is the guilt I feel every time I don’t speak up. I see people fishing in the park, and I wonder if there’s something I could say to prevent someone from suffocating to death in the next few minutes.

What she means by "someone suffocating to death" is the fish. Not the people fishing, the fish. When you get to the level of "fish are people like humans are people", then there isn't much mutual ground remaining to be covered between that view and the view that "eating meat is acceptable". And the rest of the letter, though sincere, and I don't think meant to come off this way, does come off as emotional manipulation and arm-twisting with guilt: if you love me, agree not to eat meat:

I want to let you in on this part of my world because I care about our relationship. I don’t want to relate to you in a way that holds such a large part of myself back; I want you to know what it’s like to be me. I also share this to give you some information about what might make our relationship more comfortable for me. If you’re willing, when we eat together or attend an event where food is served, it would do so much to help me feel seen and welcome if you decided to go without animal products. I ask this of you, specifically, because you’re someone I feel close to and supported by. I know that not everyone will oblige to this request, and I don’t make it of everyone.

You love me, don't you? I've just told you how much I care about you! Why won't you ease my suffering by this tiny little concession? And at that point, either you (the family member or friend) bluntly state "Sorry but you're crazy, fish are not people" or you try to accommodate them and set yourself up for continuing attempts to bludgeon you via emotional manipulation into becoming vegan yourself. And if you don't give in, then she will break off the relationship, and continue on with "why are people so cruel that they would prefer to indulged in misery and suffering and to destroy our friendship and bond rather than give up this savagery?" and feel vindicated in her martyrdom.

Oh dear.

I encourage her to try the ‘fish are friends, not food, you’re actually a murderer’ line on someone fishing in the park. Just to show her what the actual likely reaction would be.

The pro-life movement has figured out that shrieking ‘you’re a murderer’ is not a successful tactic and they will push new members not to engage in it. The hardcore vegans have apparently not learnt this lesson.

I think you can legitimately be concerned about fishing, particularly commercial fishing which is often destructive, but when you are basing it on "fish are people" then yeah. Fish are very much on the brainless end of the spectrum, and while they do feel pain as a living organism, it's hard to argue that they are aware in the same way you might argue a cow is aware.

There's a LOT of people who believe that vegetarianism is morally superior even if they're not vegetarian themselves, which disarms them of the first two responses.

Sure, but that's vegetarianism not veganism, and these people are hell-for-leather pure 100% vegans. If they were willing to compromise on a vegetarian option, I think there would be less friction (permitting eggs, cheese, dairy products for the meat-eaters and in food). It's the ones who don't want any such options who are going to run into trouble, the ones who are "you put butter into the mashed potatoes so I'm not eating those even though they're one of the few vegetable options for the meal, plus I'm going to sulk about the rest of you eating butter and cream".

To do the writer justice, the wider movement seems to have copped on that the original strict version was a failure:

The practical difference between the original Liberation Pledge and our update is that the original Pledge was delivered in a static state, “I don’t sit at tables where animals are being eaten” where the outcome of the updated Pledge is determined through conversation in collaboration with the other. “I’m thinking about Thanksgiving and feeling pretty worried about how I’ll feel with a turkey there. What’s coming up for you hearing that much? I think I understand, am I getting it? Are you open to hearing more about what’s coming up for me? How is that to hear? How would it be for you to… go without the turkey? Let me prepare a main dish instead? Have me visit after dinner? What ideas do you have for how we can work this out?”

Another difference in this proposal is to rethink our request as specific to a relationship, not a table or event. This can set us up for more realistic positive outcomes and help us invest our energy in productive ways. You might choose to attend a large family reunion where animals are being eaten and only make the request to those you most know and trust, letting their show of solidarity be a signal to others.

Regular lefties think the vegetarians are morally superior, the actual vegetarians think the vegans are morally superior. So the scolding works, and if you don't provide vegetarian or vegan options it is you who is in the wrong, and pushing that to providing meat when there are vegans present isn't that hard. Whereas if you don't provide meat, the meat eaters are in the wrong for complaining.

IMO this is incredibly uncharitable on why they sank the immigration bill. You make it sound like we crashed it for shits and giggles. The bill had core issues.

  1. Too much discretion. If you don’t control the Presidency and key asylum courts it doesn’t do anything.

  2. Biden had levers to slow immigration now. He wasn’t doing it. Why make a deal where he can claim victory and enforce it during election season and then if he wins the election it’s back to open borders.

  3. Formalized a lot of bad things like the asylum system

  4. We all know that in American politics you usually only get to do things once when legislating. If the first bill is shit you’re probably not getting a second bite at the apple.

  5. Trump as POTUS is better for limiting immigration than Biden with the bill. This tells you how weak the bill was.

  6. House passed a bill. It was always better to use the up coming elections to press the Dems for a good bill than a bill with Swiss cheese loopholes.

I opposed the bill because it was a bad bill. Its better to do a good bill with real teeth after winning the elections.

It doesn’t matter. Unless Trump has a trifecta with an unrealistic senate majority (which isn’t going to happen) this was better than ANYTHING he can accomplish in office. It is truly an unbelievable blackpill that the bill didn’t pass, it represented a huge concession from the Dems in an election year and the GOP were unfathomably retarded to reject it.

If 2 million “asylum” immigrants is the best deal we can negotiate with Dems then I support a full fledged Trump coup and the end of the Republic.

One is a long term coup and the other is a short term coup. Same thing.

Here's the summary of the bill, and here's the full text. Can you point out what specifically you object to? I've been accused of being uncharitable on this topic before, but whenever I press for details I typically get little but handwavey "Biden bad" style arguments. Which, to be clear, he was bad early in his presidency on this topic, but then he did an about-face and has signaled that he would have used the law quite aggressively.

Too much discretion.

Most of the bill is funding increases or rules changes that have little discretion involved. The big point of discretion was the Border Emergency Authority, which could be used if there were an average of 4000-5000 immigrants per day, and must be used at 5000+.

Formalized a lot of bad things like the asylum system

What is this referring to? The US already has formalized laws on asylum, like its signature on the Convention Against Torture. Right now, a big loophole in immigration is that immigrants can stay in the country until their asylum application is heard by a court, but courts are clogged and they often just miss their appointment anyways. The law would have plugged that.

Trump as POTUS is better for limiting immigration than Biden with the bill. This tells you how weak the bill was.

What does this even mean? The bill was never passed, so comparisons to "Biden with the bill" as if it was law are nonsensical.

It was always better to use the up coming elections to press the Dems for a good bill than a bill with Swiss cheese loopholes.

What "Swiss cheese" loopholes are you referring to? Trump was effectively no better on immigration than Obama, and most of his changes were executive orders that cost little political capital, and were trivial to repeal or ignore. Trump himself often went back on his more aggressive immigration changes whenever he got negative coverage on Fox News.

Completely agree, this was the most progress on illegal immigration since the 1990s and the GOP squandered it to pander to Trump who might not even win in November and won’t be able to do something better even if he does.

  1. The 5k per day is way too much. Combined with the Presidency getting to suspend the act for I believe 60 or 90 days. Then courts would have to get involved. So you can run high to get to the trigger then ignore it for 45 days. Tell the immigrants you back to not come for a month. Run some to get to the trigger. Ignore it for 45 days. Just not enough teeth that they would ever close the border.

  2. It’s further formalizing that 5k a day asylum seekers are fine. We should honestly just ban asylum at the border which we can do. Make them file at an embassy and have true causes. We have virtually zero true asylum cases at the US border. They are safe in Mexico. They can email Senators/Lawyers etc for asylum cases outside the country.

  3. This entirely depends on the courts. Conservatives are not good at controlling those type of asylum claims. If you get liberal judges on those courts who accept not being American makes them a little poor and boom asylum claim accepted then the act does nothing. And again asylum should not be initially approved inside the country.

  4. Trump did NOT need to pass this bill to stop immigrant caravans. This is obvious we did NOT have these issues under Trump and no laws have been changed in the interim. Like you say above Trump closed immigration doing things that were “trivial to repeal or ignore”. Electing Trump is what we need to close the border. He’s done it before. Biden could do the same thing.

  5. Which brings up the big problem with the bill. It’s toothless. If the POTUS is of the wrong party then the border is open. There were no teeth in the bill to force a Democrat to close the border.

If you disagree with the “teeth” then please quote in the bill the “teeth”. How would this bill limit President AOC to 10k “asylum” seekers per year?

The Border Emergency Authority is a "break in case of emergency" tool that's specific to the crisis happening now. It sunsets in 3 years, so it won't be relevant if AOC takes office in a decade unless it's renewed. If it's not used then it would be no different than the status quo, but the rest of the bill expanding funding for border security and plugging asylum loopholes would still be in place. It's in no way formalizing that 5k migrants a day is "fine", it's simply a trigger when opaque and extraordinary measures can be taken.

Trump did NOT need to pass this bill to stop immigrant caravans.

Trump was really no better than Obama when it comes to border crossings. A lot of it is driven by the relative strength of the economy, but also by non-US factors like the state of Latin American countries especially in the Northern Triangle. Your answer of "Trump didn't need this" is exactly the handwavey "Biden Bad" thing I was talking about in my earlier post. The assumption you seem to be coming to is that the tougher laws are all just a ruse, that Biden must be doing something sneaky, but this is effectively unfalsifiable.

It’s toothless. If the POTUS is of the wrong party then the border is open.

This law doesn't open the border. If you think it does, you're fundamentally misunderstanding what the bill does.

Why can’t we just have a clean bill that closes the border?

You say the golden triangle. The south is richer than they have ever been. There is always going to be some excuse. America will always be richer than every where else so there will always be economic demand.

I find it interesting you did not try saying these are real asylum seekers.

I prefer Trump over the bill because I know the bill does nothing when the wrong party is in power. Biden could have stopped this but chose not to.

Why can’t we just have a clean bill that closes the border?

I presume you mean "close the border to illegal immigrants". I agree that would be the best, but it's like saying "why don't we make murder illegal". It already is illegal, it's just a question of enforcement. This bill would have beefed up enforcement.

You say the golden triangle. The south is richer than they have ever been. There is always going to be some excuse. America will always be richer than every where else so there will always be economic demand.

I presume you did an autocorrect error and meant to type "Northern Triangle", not golden triangle.

The causes I listed aren't excuses, they're explanations that lie on a continuum. It's like judging the performance of a CEO based solely on the stock price, when you really need to understand the whole underlying environment to make a proper judgement. If the company grew by 10% but the rest of the sector grew by 50%, the CEO probably screwed up. Similarly, extraneous factors affect enforcement at the border.

I prefer Trump over the bill because I know the bill does nothing when the wrong party is in power.

You keep saying this but that doesn't make it true. At the very least this bill would have given more money for enforcement and closed an obvious loophole that illegals were abusing to enter the country. If Biden actually used the bill to its full effect (which he said he would) then it would have done even more.

I mean a clean bill where we close the border. And not the I claim asylum bullshit.

More comments

It wouldn’t necessarily limit Dem presidents much, but it would allow a GOP President much more discretion against mass illegal immigration. Given the Dems will do what they want anyway, that would have been a win.

I think you just made the argument for why they killed it. If you think the bill does 0 to limit immigration during a Dem presidency then the best course of action was maximizing the probability that Trump wins the election. Giving Biden a legislative win hurts Trumps election chances.

I am confident enough that Trump can crush immigration just by being POTUS that it’s not that important to have a bill.

This gets to my origional point that I disagreed with that the right killed the bill for shits and giggles. They correctly identified that winning the POTUS limits illegal immigration and the bill would still allow a Democrat to have an open door policy. The GOP wasn’t offered anything in the deal.

You really have to jump through mental gymnastics to get to this conclusion.

"We must not enact tougher immigration laws so that the guy who says he wants to use the tougher laws loses, in order to get a guy who I say will enact even tougher laws but who failed to actually enact any lasting changes".

Or, you know, we could just enact tougher laws now, then continue fighting for them later?

This does bring up a good point though. Everyone in a political coalition does not hold all the views of everyone else in a political coalition. The hypocrisy standard does not apply especially since we essentially have two political parties and it’s going to be impossible for one party to have truly “pure” beliefs where everyone agrees on everything. Instead you end up with views in opposition to each other.

Within this though you do see Dems or GOP at times needing to defend coalition party views to keep them in the coalition while at times having leadership voicing other views. And of course the other side tries to promote the views of the most wild parts of the other coalition. Parliamentary systems are probably better at having more pure views within their coalition with clearer distinctions with leadership.

That being said we are not actually at war with Hezbollah so I am not even sure the connection here. But I do see a lot of the blue tribes coalition supporting what does look like a terrorist organization to me.

If it makes you feel better, the protestors are getting rekt by the powers that be, certainly the number of arrests of students/faculty is now over a thousand across the nation. Some manifestations of deranged hysteria are patronized by the elite apparatus, and others are brutally suppressed. The Israel protests are falling under the latter category, whereas 2020 had the unanimous support of the political and cultural elite, because that was directed at white people and not Israel's war that the United States is responsible for.

I imagine this is going to get modded for being inflammatory / antagonistic, but I guess there's a core question here that's worth answering.

I just laugh. I accept history as absurd. I read some nonsense in the news, and it makes me laugh how stupid everything is, and I don't suppose things were really less stupid in the past. I don't suppose that I'm less stupid. It's funny. You have to accept that basically illiterate positions, even if they're strongly-felt, are not strongly-reasoned. And that's how people are, and nothing you do is going to change it. Being frustrated about it is about as useful as being mad at traffic. They can't hear you, it's just how the world works.

Are you trying to contain your anger? When I get angry (or broken-hearted or tired or what) I find it useful to let the feeling wash over me. Instead of trying to suppress whatever I'm feeling, or working myself up about it, I just feel it for what it is. It's like a kind of meditation. In many cases, the worst of the hysteria and ranting comes from people who aren't very attuned to their feelings, full of emotion because they never resolve any.

I just laugh. I accept history as absurd. I read some nonsense in the news, and it makes me laugh how stupid everything is, and I don't suppose things were really less stupid in the past. I don't suppose that I'm less stupid. It's funny. You have to accept that basically illiterate positions, even if they're strongly-felt, are not strongly-reasoned. And that's how people are, and nothing you do is going to change it.

To quote the great Carl Brutananadilewski

To paraphrase the red scare girls; “Don’t kill yourself, because then you won’t get to see the next retarded thing that happens.”

Sage advice.

It is profoundly heart breaking watching people you otherwise respect and have affection for repeat nonsensical NPC talking points, as though they were their own original thoughts. It just completely breaks your perception of them. It reminds me when I was reading the Prince of Nothing series, and the main character is some genius hypnotist manipulator, and every other character he encounters goes from being an interesting individual contending for power in a Game of Thrones-esque power struggle to merely his puppet. By the end of the trilogy there are like, 3 actual characters left, and everyone else has become an NPC in thrall to him. I kind of hated it.

It's frightening above all else. It lowers my estimation of humanity on an absolute basis, versus merely impacting how I view that person. It changes how I view myself. It's like if your best friend tumbled over one day, cracked his skull wide open, and instead of flesh and blood and brains, there was just a hamsters on a wheel that quickly ran off, leaving your friend inert. And while your first thought might be "Was he always just a hamster on a wheel?" your next thought might be "Is there a hamster on a wheel in my head too?!"

It's the sort of thing that makes me wonder if LLMs aren't actually that smart, but that people are dumber than we thought. I can't think of a better analog to "Pattern matches language tokens based on a data set without any comprehension of their actual meaning" in people than just uncritically repeating NPC talking points, angrily, without considering for even a millisecond any of their broader implications. I've called it unidirectional knowledge before. You are spoon fed a list of data points, along with the only permissible conclusions you are allowed to draw from them. Do not draw outside the lines! Most people are happy not to.

Frankly I can't understand how we, as a species, made it through anything anymore. I don't understand how we progressed past city states. Maybe an elite, which really is better than us, and which really is necessary to keep us from all choking on our food because we forgot to chew (metaphorically) is real and required.

More importantly, if such an elite class of human is real, it's probably safe to assume you aren't among them. You have to face the very real possibility that you, like everyone else, just has a hamster on a wheel in their head.

Hampster wheels are fine. Or rather. As an LLM dev, I don't think there's a hard line between regurgitation and intelligence in the first place. The line comes from what you choose to regurgitate. How you choose to regurgitate. What you choose to absorb- in order to later regurgitate.

Choosing what to believe is ultimately a process. A complex process, but a process, that any sufficiently general intelligence can learn. Discernment is a process. A complex process that requires interacting with the real world, but a process, that any sufficiently general intelligence placed in the right environment can learn.

And once it's learned and cached, you can regurgitate. Iterate. Fill in your template with your context. Throw your new, more advanced tools at the wall and see what sticks. That's creativity. Then you proceduralize the things that stuck. Analyze the things that didn't using your various regurgitated analysis processes. Regurgitate those insights in your "previous work" section as you proceed to rinse and repeat.

I think most 'NPC's have brains that can support far more intelligence than their environment has made learnable. People got by in antiquity because midwits and geniuses alike scale- with limits of course, to the problems their environment requires them to solve and the tools (mental or otherwise) their environment gives them. Elites only need to tell people what to do insofar as people are incapable of testing what they're told.

Have you read the scifi novel Blindsight? Gave me a similar feeling

I haven't, but I can probably ad it to my reading list. Making my way through Crime & Punishment lately, when I'm not working on a bunch of cabinet doors.

I'll +1 the recommendation of Blindsight.

I haven't read the Prince of Nothing series, but surely you've read Neal Stephensen? "We used to be p-zombies until (some of us) actually became sentient (maybe)" is the premise of a couple of his books.

While I sympathize with your take in general (I too know people who will just swallow The Latest Thing uncritically and there's no point talking to them about it), it's not stupidity and it's not new. People are largely group-thinkers and want to go along to get along and also lack the necessary time or energy to dig deeply into the particulars of whether a particular claim is true. Even here on the Motte we see people sometimes show up and plaster a laundry list of highly risible deepity-sounding assertions in a wall of text, and they rarely get much more than vibes-based pushback because who wants to hunt down each and every bullet point to dispute it? And on the rare occasions when someone does that, the deepity-poster disappears and returns after a while to do the same thing.

Jesse Singhal is slowly driving himself mad on Twitter because he keeps doing this with trans activists: "No, look at these fifteen studies I have carefully analyzed which show that what you are saying is not actually true!" he says for the fifteenth time, thinking that this time, Facts and Logic will make them stop calling him a transphobic Nazi.

There isn't some "elite" class of human capable of actually thinking. What we have are agreeable people who don't think most battles are worth fighting (especially at the cost of career and reputation and friendships) and a few highly disagreeable people (often on the autistic spectrum) who absolutely will fight over these things. I hesitate to say that the latter actually have much to do with building bridges and advancing civilization, even if we probably do need a few of them around.

your next thought might be "Is there a hamster on a wheel in my head too?!"

Yes, but I find the thought quite comforting. Looking at it this way keeps me from huffing my own farts, and in the end snaps me back from changing my perception of others. I know for a fact that I do actually think about all the crap going on around us, and I know for a fact that I'm also an NPC repeating other people's talking points most of the time, so, I assume, my thoughts about my interlocutor are just an expression of frustration, rather than saying anything deeper.

Maybe an elite, which really is better than us, and which really is necessary to keep us from all choking on our food because we forgot to chew (metaphorically) is real and required.

After a fashion. They're needed to coordinate society at such a wide scale, but going by the ideas they're implementing they're either not that bright, or comically evil, and in either case, I don't think we need them that much.

It's not just that we Jews are basically breeding ourselves of existence

The link appears to be talking about secular Jews. I get that that's quite common, but religious Judaism is still also a thing, and isn't ultra-orthodox Judaism decently sized and growing? But I suppose that might not matter to those who are only really ethnically Jewish.

We’re also doing quite well in the homeland, in TFR terms. Looks like a symptom of blending with general western culture. On a scale, you can see that those most influenced by the west are also the ones who don’t have kids.

Initially I was about to say it’s a symptom of being more diasporic, but come to think of it the ultra-orthodox are actually the most diasporic in terms of their thought process, but also have the most kids, so it can’t be that alone.

Is the reform Jewish TFR in the US actually any different from the general blue tribe TFR? AFAIK the American blue tribe(to which functionally all reform and secular Jews in the US belong) has a southern-europe tier TFR, America's relatively decent white TFR is mostly driven by the almost exclusively Christian red tribe being at replacement(although not above it). The question becomes "why are secular/reform jews so heavily blue", but I think the answers are pretty obvious; college educated urbanites with liberal religious views are, well, college educated urbanites with liberal religious views.

I think reform jews outside of Israel are just progressive and Israel is a special exception.

This might be a weird distinction but I do not think most of the protestors are antisemitic in the traditional sense (some are) but they are against Jewish traits. Being wealthy, successful, intelligent, winners in a meritocracy, puts Jews at the top of the oppressor pyramid. If Jews practiced the Jewish religion but were poor and not in power then the protestors would not care about them.

I am not sure if that is the same thing as antisemitism. There may no no functional difference since the protestors will always be against Jewish interests.

The only thing that leans me towards it actual antisemitism is because the protestors do not pay attention to any of the other wars going on in the world. Non of the protestors are going to Ukraine to protect the Ukranians despite Ukraine facing far worse than Palestine.

Ukraine to protect the Ukranians despite Ukraine facing far worse than Palestine.

Really? Less civilian Ukrainians killed by war in 2 years than Palestinians in few months (and that's not counting as a percentage of population). Also Ukrainian women are free to travel outside.

Being wealthy, successful, intelligent, winners in a meritocracy, puts Jews at the top of the oppressor pyramid

Also, I think it bears mentioning, white. Jews are effectively seen as super-white among some circles. Much has been said about how Jews in Israel originate from Europe, meaning they're on the wrong side of left-wing ethnic preferences, adding to the disdain that they should draw.

It's pretty ironic that Palestinians are far more closely related to the Biblical Hebrews than Ashkenazi Jews are. The latter are just displaced Slavs.

Why would you think that? Do you think a mass conversion happened that was initially unopposed by their local brothers? Do you think that rates of intermarriage were as high as between Goy Slavs?

The latter are just displaced Slavs.

I'm curious where you got this idea. There's definitely people who believe that the Ashkenazim are descended from Turkic-speaking converts(and the usual rebuttal of 'but Yiddish isn't a Turkic language' leaves out that it's also not a Semitic language- the real issue with this theory is the lack of DNA in the Ashkenazim which can be plausibly attributed to Khazars). It's not implausible to me that some people believe they're genetically heavily German; after all they speak a Germanic language and lived in mostly-German areas for hundreds of years. The mainstream, of course, believes that they're of largely levantine descent with significant southern European admixture, and the evidence for this is genetic studies.

I've never even heard the idea that 'they're just Slavs'.

And also ironically, the Palestinians are also not direct descendants of biblical Hebrews. Levantine Christians probably come closest of any group, but have some Greek admixture.

Ashkenazim are genetically a mix between Jewish paternal and Italian maternal DNA. The origin population is theorized to be Jewish traders who moved to Italy under Roman rule and married Italian women whom they converted to Judaism.

Some Ashkenazim have small amounts of German or Frankish genetic ancestry, but significant Slavic ancestry is quite rare except in recent ex-Soviet immigrants to Israel of questionable halachic status (and that intermarriage occurred within the past century).

The European populations most similar genetically to Ashkenazi Jews are Sicilians and others who have a mixture of Italian and semitic/near East genetics.

shift hard and fast to the Right and mean it

This is not going to happen. But also I predict almost all American jews will not move to Israel. The author is really setting up a false choice here.

Yep. When push comes to shove, most American Jews will prefer siding with Hamas over siding with Republicans. They'll try to win the fight for the left, but they won't defect to the right.

I have seen a lot of centrist Dem members of my own family become Trump supporters over the last 6 months because of this. None are hardcore leftists, mostly suburban Long Islanders and Chicagoans, and there were already a few Republicans in my family before 10/7, but I think you underestimate the shift happening in many Jewish American families. We’ll see what happens in the election, but I do think there will be a noticeable shift among Jewish voters.

Is this disentanglable from the fact that basically everyone has shifted against Biden over one thing or other? It’s understandable to me that Palestine has particular salience for members of your family, but a president widely perceived to be lying about the inflation rate and mismanaging core responsibilities can expect a shift away from him anyway.

The Democrats who switched voted for Obama, and Hillary, and Biden, they’re not typical swing voters.

If we were to fairly apply the progressive criteria of "disparate impact", then we would have to conclude that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

If a meritocratic hiring process results in a disproportionately low number of blacks getting hired, then the process is racist, regardless of the intentions behind the process or its alleged fairness. Similarly if anti-Zionism ends up materially hurting Jews, then it's anti-Semitic.

Of course no one on the progressive left will actually buy this argument, they'll just say "no we're doing anti-racism, and anti-racism can't be racist, duh" and leave it at that.

Far be it from me to pass for an idpol-progressive under ITT conditions, but if I had to steel-man the progressive position here, I would say that disparate impact that harms an oppressed group is sufficient to define an act as racist (intention notwithstanding, as you say). Actions to redress oppression, to equalize the conditions of oppressor and oppressed are definitionally not racist; “when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression” and all that.

But, seeing as it is functionally a non-universal principle that must be adjudicated based on arbitrary definitions of oppressed and oppressor, isn't it just post-hoc rationalization? (Adolf Hitler, great advocate of social justice: taking from the Jewish bourgoise oppressors and giving to the German proletariat.)

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

Less flippantly, my imagined progressive would say that there's no avoiding (at least some) zero-sum games in this world. Thus, the only question is who must win at the expense of whom. And since there must always be an oppressor and an oppressed in every such game, the only political question is how to decide who is oppressing whom in a given situation: to do so clear-sightedly, taking into account the relevant history and particular context, or to bury our heads in the sand and cling to the fiction of "universal principles" -- which is to say, to side with the oppressor?

I think it is uncontroversial that societies at similar tech levels can have vastly different amounts of inequality.

There is inequality ("oppression" in modern parlance) both in ancient fucking Sparta and modern day Sweden, but the amount of inequality matters.

Despite coming from the traditional left, I believe some inequality is actually beneficial: if Elon Musk collected the same UBI as everyone, this would not make the world a worse place (except for Twitter, perhaps). On the flip side, taking the land away from aristocrats and redistributing it to the peasants may likewise stimulate the economy as well as lowering the Gini coefficient.

Who is on top and who on the bottom only matters to me as far as their economic policy might differ due to their background.

Just because there is a winner and loser doesn’t make the loser oppressed or the winner the oppressor.

Moreover it is pretty clear there are numerous positive sum games.

The protests are neither (at least not predominantly) antisemitic nor a resurgence of 20th century antisemitism.

Which is why the protesters wave the flag of Hamas and chant about how Jews should go back to Poland.

The fact that there are foolish Jews who cleave to their enemies does not change this.

“The protestors” don’t wave a Hamas flag, any more than “the Israeli protestors” call everyone protesting a Hamas terrorist (see: Shai Davidai). Some instances (almost always of non-affiliated / non-students outside of campus grounds) do not allow you to impugn a whole protest movement.

Some instances (almost always of non-affiliated / non-students outside of campus grounds) do not allow you to impugn a whole protest movement.

I can certainly impugn the whole protest movement, since it is a whole.

I don’t follow. The normative protestor is not pledging allegiance to Hamas, those are exceptional outliers.

The normative "peace protestor" wasn't pledging allegiance to the USSR, but they were doing the Soviet's bidding just the same. Different players, same playbook.

In an interesting manifestation of the horseshoe theory, Jewish Zionists and the far right agree that the ongoing campus protests are expressions of a growing anti-Jewish trend in the US.

I don't really agree that that is horseshoe theory. The other end from the far right is the far left, which would definitely not agree that it's anti Jewish. Zionists are far from leftists, zionists and leftists have not seen eye to eye in... longer than I've been tracking politics. Zionists have always been close to conservatives in many respects.

Part of the annoyance of Western rightists about Jews being disproportionately left wing is because reactionary Jews are disproportionately likely to move to the Jewish ethnostate, while leftist Jews are highly likely not to, especially if they dislike ethnonationalism in general.

The major annoyance of Western rightists is that "reactionary Jews" still oppose White ethnocentrism and support Jewish ethnocentrism (you fall into this category as well as far as I'm concerned). Both left and right-wing Jews engage in that behavior.

That's why it's a "fake" opposition.

Both the Jewish left and right support Jewish identity politics and vehemently oppose White identity politics. The entire left-right spectrum is meant to prop up this central pillar of political organization, which both sides of that political dialectic so happen to agree on, that's why it's a false opposition.

Well duh. White ethnocentrism that you would accept as white ethnocentrism is usually pretty opposed to Jews and Judaism. Putting our tribe first is not a realistic expectation. Do Serbian reactionaries support the Ustase?

I suspect that "anyone pale" ethnocentrism actually has disproportionately heavy Jewish support.

White reactionaries are performatively anti-zionist and say they support white ethnocentrism and oppose Jewish ethnocentrism. Your criteria for being a Jew who does not oppose white ethnocentrism is to be like Ron Unz, who in American Pravda blames Jews for literally everything that he (and the right more broadly) dislikes that occurred in America in the entire 20th century. This is no different to saying that a black person is anti-white unless they agree with the most extreme anti-black position imaginable and agree that all problems in modern America are overwhelmingly the fault of black pathology. It is a requirement well above that which can be expected of even a self-aware individual who agrees with you politically and accepts their fair share of tribal responsibility.

Unz is a caricature, the equivalent of the most extreme self-hating white who believes that black people built this country and that we’d be living in Wakanda if the pale skinned barbarians had not ruined everything. It’s not a standard you would accept for your own people in any kind of political relationship or alliance. Is there any way for a reactionary Jew to be tolerant of white ethnocentrism without agreeing to blame Jewish people for (at least almost) everything wrong with the modern West? I’ve asked you this question several times and the impression I get is ‘no’.

Since pathological self-hatred is rare among non-northwest Europeans, you’ve created an impossible standard for Jewish reactionaries to live up to (‘denounce your entire people and agree to take absolute responsibility for everything wrong with modernity or you’re subversive’) which you would (and do) consider it unjust to apply in reverse to your own people, or perhaps even to other non-Jewish peoples. It is not even enough to abandon Judaism, to intermarry with white gentiles, and to have no particular affinity for Israel, since your demand requires the active, Unz-style repudiation of Jewishness itself on a genetic-memetic level as fundamentally destructive and anti-civilization, a demand you would never accept if anyone appeared to make it toward those of your own ethnic origin.

you’ve created an impossible standard for Jewish reactionaries to live up to

I am not creating a standard I demand they live up to, I recognize an impasse and a subsequent political conflict. Jewish identity politics is intrinsically opposed to White identity politics on both the Left and the Right. Any Jew who tries to say this is not the case is a liar as far as I'm concerned. And, according to you, it's totally impractical to expect Jews to accept that fact. So, it's just an impasse.

Is there any way for a reactionary Jew to be tolerant of white ethnocentrism without agreeing to blame Jewish people for (at least almost) everything wrong with the modern West? I’ve asked you this question several times and the impression I get is ‘no’.

The weasel word is "everything wrong with the modern West."

The equivalent would be if White people refused to ever, in recorded history, acknowledge the existence of anti-Semitism. This is what you constantly do, in the reverse. I do not deny anti-Semitism, i.e. White engagement in cultural-political aggression against Jews, and how it has waxed and waned and changed form throughout history, but you deny Jewish engagement in political aggression against White people or, at least, refuse to accept its nature as anything other than a good-faith attempt to assimilate to liberal values (lol). There's not even a word for the "reverse" form of anti-Semitism, and indeed we are all supposed to pretend that it doesn't exist, and it's a conspiracy theory to suggest it does in any form.

If Jewish reactionaries don't acknowledge this behavior, they can't be allies because they aren't even acknowledging the existence of a very real political conflict. How could a Jew ever consider someone an ally who refused to acknowledge that anti-Semitism is a thing that even exists, or ever has in any cultural-political, systematic form?

Zionists have always been close to conservatives in many respects

While Zionism has always had a spectrum, up until the 1990's Israel was a pretty left wing country. Early Zionists especially were almost all socialists of one variety or another. The Kibbutzim are communes!

The Kibbutzim are communes

That's definitely true. I don't know much about past Zionism, I guess, mostly just about the last 15 years, maybe.

I've heard a lot of former kibbutzim are now no longer communes.

A certain type of libertarian loves to talk about this one.

Hell, Bernie Sanders came out swinging this week:

Should be noted here that while Bernie has rather tendentiously called for a ceasefire (while saying the same letter that the war against Hamas in itself was justified), saying that Netanyahu is bad is not the same as saying that the war is bad. Presumably something like a half of Israelis would simultaneously say that Netanyahu is bad while the war is good.

With the exception perhaps of the Arabs and some on the hard left, most Israelis who dislike Bibi don’t base that judgment on his treatment of the Palestinians, but on his corruption and other issues.

Yes, the idea that the left-wing anti-Israel protests in the US are essentially motivated by antisemitism seems silly to me given that I feel like I actually have a decent amount of experience with the kind of people who go to these protests. Granted, I am removed from my experiences with these kinds of people by quite a few years at this point, but I doubt that college-aged left-wing protesters are very different nowadays from what they were like the last time I was commonly encountering them.

I say "in the US" because it might be different in Europe, I can't speak to that. Europe has a very different history with antisemitism than the US does.

I have no doubt that a decent fraction of the actual Arabs and Muslims who go to these protests in the US are anti-semitic, but I also think that that only a tiny fraction of the rest of the protesters are.

To me it seems that the typical naive young college student SJW leftist not only has not a single bone of anti-Jew sentiment in his or her body, they probably don't even think much about Jews as an ethnic group to begin with. This is true of most Americans. The majority of American gentiles barely even realize that, for example, white people with curly hair or names that end in -berg or -stein are likely to be Jewish. They just think of Jews as a flavor of white people, and they rarely think about them as an ethnic group to begin with. They know that the Holocaust targeted Jews, of course, but they rarely think about the Holocaust, or about any other historical event for that matter. In the US, discussing Jews as an ethnic group is something that is mainly done by three groups: Jews themselves, highly pro-Israel Christians, and highly online alt-rightists. Maybe also to some extent by black people, but I am not familiar enough with black attitudes towards Jews to weigh in on that.

The average young college protester freely mingles with Jewish people in personal life and enjoys Jewish artists without having the slightest bit of prejudice towards them. In many cases, the protester does not even realize that his/her friend, or that musician he/she listens to, is Jewish to begin with. In other cases he/she does realize it, but does not care about it any more than he/she would care about a friend having red hair, for example.

It is of course possible that my experience with college-aged protesters is simply out of date and I am stuck in the past. I wouldn't advise anyone to make decisions that could affect life or limb based on my recollections. But to me, the idea that college leftists have actually become antisemitic seems absurd. There would have been no precedent for it 10 or 20 years ago, even though college leftists hated Israel back then too.

I think it actually could become a problem in that the far left and far right are in pretty strong agreement on the accusations against the Jews, that they’re manipulating narratives to their own benefit, and that they only care about themselves. The left has absolutely blamed all Jews for the actions of Israel, and they don’t seem to care what Hamas and other Palestinians have done or want to do. There’s barely even a whisper of blame on Hamas for launching the attacks or holding hostages or the crimes committed during the attack. And when you couple that with full support of the intifada, chanting of the slogans that deny Israel’s right to exist,

Personally, I think most of the Gaza situation is on Lakud which isn’t all Israelis and has little to do with Jews who don’t support Lakud or Natanyahu.

The left has absolutely blamed all Jews for the actions of Israel, and they don’t seem to care what Hamas and other Palestinians have done or want to do.

I agree about the "they don’t seem to care what Hamas and other Palestinians have done or want to do" part, but not about the "The left has absolutely blamed all Jews for the actions of Israel" part. Where are you seeing this?

To me, it seems obvious that the anti-Israel left is sweeping Hamas' atrocities under the rug. However, I haven't seen any reason to think that the anti-Israel left, in general, is blaming all Jews for Israel's actions.

The problem for the antisemitic far right is that their allegation is that the entire ideology upon which the leftists base their support for Palestine (and BLM, and affirmative action, and DEI, and taking in refugees and so on) was invented and bestowed upon them by Jews. This creates an internal contradiction [edit: for any leftists they might ally with] that is very difficult to bridge. In addition, the white nationalist far right has no message for brown or black leftists (including Muslims) beyond “leave”, which again would make a coalition difficult.

The far left has successfully forgotten that their entire moral framework was created by Christianity. They have successfully forgotten that their entire intellectual framework was created by enlightenment era European men from colonialist countries. They have successfully forgotten that their constitutional republic was created by white male slaveowners. They hate all those demographics now without any cognitive dissonance or ambiguity. I don’t think they will have any problems scrubbing away the memory that a lot of the luminaries of the modern civil rights and feminist movements were Jewish.

You can oppose stuff—even hate it—without forgetting anything.

They haven't forgotten any of those things,otherwise they wouldn't want problematic statues torn down would they? Because they would have forgotten those people were slave owners. They know who did what, they just think the bad things they did outweigh the good.

There's a difference between ignoring the historical roots of your current ideology, on the one hand, and allying with people you currently consider to be despicable evil Nazis, on the other.

It’s the same logic extended one more step. Recognizing that Israel isn’t living up to those ideals or even pretending to puts Jews on the negative of DEI.

This creates an internal contradiction for them

For the far right?

They don’t think so. In fact they’ve been anticipating this situation for years, see the parable of the golem.

No, for the far left (who do not, for obvious reasons, see their ideology and worldview as Jewish trickery)! I understand that was unclear, and edited my answer.

I have no doubt that a decent fraction of the actual Arabs and Muslims who go to these protests in the US are anti-semitic, but I also think that that only a tiny fraction of the rest of the protesters are.

The problem for Jews is that, under the progressive framework, they have absolutely no cause to criticize someone beneath them on the oppression hierarchy, so those Muslims may be a minority, but they cannot be questioned.

...

There is a big difference between prejudice and actual discrimination. Until 1932 many Jews felt Anglos (including Americans) were more antisemitic than Germans, but of course it was Germany that produced the Nazis. After 9/11 polling would have showed Americans as broadly very hostile to Muslims and Arabs in particular (see the ubiquity of early 2000s bro humor about them), but Islamic immigration increased over the period and there were no attempts to even somewhat institutionally discriminate against them and most Americans were relatively tolerant of individual Muslims. The English elite had widespread sympathies to nordicist racialist theories of men like Madison Grant in the late 19th and early 20th century but again were relatively fine with tolerating various groups of foreigners (including Eastern European Jews) moving to London.

The English speaking countries are more individualist and tolerant of difference even where they are equally prejudiced compared to other European-majority lands.

I don’t see these events as anything but (1) a textbook example of college student protests and (2) a frightening display of Jewish social and cultural power.

The students believe that Israel is killing too many innocent people. Lots of intelligent people believe that; whether or not it is factually the case, it is a rational belief that many reasonable people hold, including many Jews. Even Chuck Schumer of all people has the opinion that Israel is behaving immorally. The students want their universities to cut financial and academic ties with Israel. All very simple, all very traditional, and very reasonable as far as college kids go. No different than protests against the Vietnam War or South Africa or the Iraq War. The protests have been exceptionally peaceful; if BLM was “mostly peaceful”, PLM is utopian. Try as I might, I could find no clear case of a Jewish student being physically victimized. Most of the arguably anti-Semitic comments have come from outside the campuses, by random non-affiliated protests, one-off statements that do not tell us anything about the college protestors. There’s your typical extremism college student view, but this is normal as far as college students go.

What makes this event so unique IMO is how Jews have finessed the narrative in their favor. Despite no evidence of any physical attack, the most over-represented ethnicity on college campuses (with the most advocacy groups and the most political clout) claim to feel “unsafe”. The media reports this as if it is true, and now the narrative is no longer “is Israel committing human rights violations?”, but “are Jews safe?”. In a reasonable world, the discourse would center on whether Israel is or is not committing human rights violations, and why some of the smartest students in America strongly feel they they are. A secondary question may be whether Jews in America are too close to Israel in terms of political ties, because that’s a serious problem if Israel becomes a pariah state. But Jews have strategically shifted the narrative to their own victimhood, with zero evidence. They have influenced politicians to make statements and start inquiries. They have significant sway over MSM narrative. They threaten to take tens of millions of their donations away from universities who don’t prevent the protests.

I found a video from earlier this week that illustrates the power of victim politics. An immigrant Uber driver arrives to his requested client, but can’t fulfill the request because the client accidentally ordered the wrong car. A verbal altercation ensues; phones are equipped by both parties. The client brags about his status as a lawyer, threatens to get the driver fired, claims he is being aggressed, claims the driver has threatened his children, and when all of these fail to exert his power, he claims that the driver muttered antisemitism under his breath. This last accusations makes the driver flee immediately.

The internet is saying that the client is a big shot music industry lawyer. If the internet is right, the client was on the board of directors of UJA, a Jewish charity that oversees more than one billion dollars in endowment (one of the largest local charities in the world). The man is from a pedigreed family: his Dad once ran Columbia Records. Without any shame, he punches down to a poor immigrant rideshare driver and falsely accuses him of antisemitism to record him and get him fired. And not for anything serious, but because of a minor inconvenience. If this is the attitude of someone on the board of UJA, then I think it could hint to a larger, dangerous attitude in the Jewish-Zionist community: that it is permissible to weaponize victimhood for personal or communal gain.

In liberal cities, colleges are calling the cops because they don’t want to lose Jewish donors. I think if we have an in-part privately funded university system it’s fair to say “I’m not going to continue to donate hundreds of millions of dollars to you if you tolerate X” and then the university can decide if that matters to them. If it does, that isn’t blackmail, it’s how almost all charity works. If you donate a few hundred million to the NY Phil you can probably finagle some influence over what’s played.

In red states like Texas it’s manifestly true that the much more heavy-handed response isn’t being driven by Jews but by gentile GOP politicians. Most of them are zionist to some extent, but I think in (for example) Abbott’s case, it’s more that there’s a very big ideological divide between the right and these progressive student protestors and this is a way to hurt the outgroup to the delight of the base. Pretty much no protesting student is going to vote for a Republican candidate, and a lot of Republican voters dislike leftist college students.

In liberal cities, colleges are calling the cops because they don’t want to lose Jewish donors. I think if we have an in-part privately funded university system it’s fair to say “I’m not going to continue to donate hundreds of millions of dollars to you if you tolerate X” and then the university can decide if that matters to them. If it does, that isn’t blackmail, it’s how almost all charity works. If you donate a few hundred million to the NY Phil you can probably finagle some influence over what’s played.

It seems like you're not really contradicting @coffee_enjoyer but simply explaining how the influence works? It's not some shadowy cabal, it's money. An awful lot of the donations for universities comes from wealthy jewish donors. Especially the kind of donations that come in regularly, year after year, with no specific purpose (as opposed to one-off donations from someone who dies and wants a new building named after them- that's nice, but it doesn't really help pay the general expenses of the university). Those donations start off no-strings-attached, but you suddenly see the strings when they call up and demand a specific action.

I don't have any specific numbers, but it does seem like a hugely disproportionate amount of private university donations comes from these wealthy Jewish donors. Probably even more so in schools like Colombia and USC where we've seen the harshest crackdowns on protestors.

Most of them are zionist to some extent, but I think in (for example) Abbott’s case, it’s more that there’s a very big ideological divide between the right and these progressive student protestors and this is a way to hurt the outgroup to the delight of the base

You’ve hit the nail on the head here. Abbott is as Zionist as is politically necessary, but he’s much more interested in an excuse to wield state power against left wingers, because it makes him look strong to his normie supporters.

Wealthy Jewish donors are uniquely driven to withhold donations based on this combined ethnic, religious, and political interest (Israel + the Jewish people). No gentile donors are as motivated toward any issue because they lack this level of tribalism. Imagine if Bill Gates was concerned about the low number of white admits, or withdrew donations because of white identity politics, or etc. This is a prisoner’s dilemma problem, or even example of Popper’s paradox of tolerance. There is one group of Americans who have a maximal focus on their tribe; all other groups are pressured to focus on helping Americans generally. If only one group is hyper-focused on the Israel issue, then they effectively get to decide the mainstream narrative. Non-Jews either have to be okay with a perpetual Jewish “decisive vote” on matters regarding the Middle East and the anti-semitism topic, or they have to rebuke this level of tribalism.

Abbott

One his largest single donors is Jewish, Jeff Yass, who made the largest single donation in Texas history. Yass is also a big supporter of Israel and Zionism. Another big donor is Ken Fischer. There are other wealthy Jewish philanthropists in Texas who he may want donations from, like Michael Dell. If these donors are single-issue donors, then Abbott knows he can get millions by taking a hard stance on the protests. Evangelical interests need not factor in.

Imagine if Bill Gates was concerned about the low number of white admits, or withdrew donations because of white identity politics, or etc.

Imagine indeed. WASPs did once have this level of in group solidarity, Ben Franklin thought even admitting Germans was a step too far, but it faded over time.

Ben Franklin

Close but no cigar. “When I consider, that the English are the Offspring of Germans [..] I am not for refusing entirely to admit them into our Colonies: all that seems to be necessary is, to distribute them more equally, mix them with the English, establish English Schools where they are now too thick settled […] I am not against the Admission of Germans in general, for they have their Virtues, their industry and frugality is exemplary; They are excellent husbandmen and contribute greatly to the improvement of a Country.”

His worry seemed to have been that they would outnumber the English. Remember at this time they all spoke German, had German newspapers, etc

Franklin considered the Saxons (whom he was discussing in this instance) to be white, but the other Germans to be ‘tawny/swarthy’ (like the Spaniards and Italians), unlike the ‘pure white’ English.

leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionally very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased.

You’re conflating “white” as the term used to refer to European peoples, with “purely white” of complexion which Franklin refers to. That context is complexion. The founding fathers unanimously believed that common European people were “white”, as French and Spaniards were granted citizenship during a time in which it was restricted to whites. I mean, you should know that, France was a key ally to America at this time.

So Frankin makes this aside that he likes his ethnicity, and then says

But perhaps I am partial to the Compexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind

Of course, as you know even Turks and (largely Sephardic at that time) Jews were ‘white’ in the colonial and early independent American hierarchy, which was tripartite (white, native, black). Nevertheless ‘pure’ along with the rest of the quote and a desire to preserve that purity suggests this is not merely a matter of being partial to one’s own tribe but an actual judgment of the gradation of races. There is no doubt that while many founding Anglo-Americans were willing to accept European settlers of diverse backgrounds as fellow citizens they wished to preserve a predominantly Anglo character and ethnic supermajority in their new country. My original point was that WASPs did practice in-group tribalism and loyalty, it just faded or they could not keep up with (or did not wish to stop) the rate of inbound migration. There was consternation about losing Philadelphia, Boston, New York to the white ethnics. As late as Lovecraft’s time it was a topic of considerable debate, although by that point the ship had long sailed.

Evangelical interests need not factor in.

Abbott is not an evangelical anyways. He’s a Catholic.

That’s surprising to me for some reason. But, (afaik) it’s evangelicals who are most supportive of Israel among Christians in Texas

Abbott has practical political reasons for supporting Israel, he doesn’t need to be an evangelical for it. Most likely he converted to Catholicism under pressure from his wife(who is an IRL tradcath); he certainly seems less religious than she is and while going to a Christian church is necessary to be a successful republican politician at a high level, that church being evangelical is not; mainstream evangelical theology holds that religious Catholics have no reason to convert because the church is an invisible brotherhood of true believers in Jesus Christ and not a singular institution.

Do Evangelicals really not believe in converting Catholics?

To add on to the other responses, there is a subset of evangelicals who are anti-Catholic because they believe that certain Catholic teachings contradict the gospel. In particular, Catholicism teaches that you need both faith and good works to be saved, rather than just faith (although it's actually much more complicated than that). I've known people who think Catholics do not even count as Christians based on this criteria - because true Christianity is unique in being a religion where you don't get saved by doing good things.

My church happens to have a lot of ex-Catholics, including myself and also several of the pastors - for those guys, converting Catholics is not very important, not nearly as important as spreading the gospel to unbelievers. But they will certainly preach in such a way as to correct what they see as the false teachings of the Catholics.

They might, but it tends to be significantly less important. In general, Protestants tend not to assert that their denomination is the One True Church, preferring a communion of believers across denominations. In interpersonal compromises, this will obviously lend itself towards the one who cares less about a specific church being more willing to compromise on that. This is augmented by the fact that evangelicals are often more minimalistic with regards to doctrine.

This is a shame; Protestantism is worth fighting for.

Most don’t care and see it as an essentially aesthetic difference; evangelicals who attempted to evangelize to me usually stopped upon finding out that I was a believing, churchgoing Catholic because from their perspective I was already ‘in’. Evangelicalism is heavily orthopraxic and big tent and in practice sees any conversion experience within trinitarian Christianity as basically as good as any other, and in evangelicalism, it’s the conversion experience that counts.

There are a few Protestants who care, a lot, about converting Catholics. Most of them are not evangelicals- although I suppose many of them are adjacent to evangelicals and I don’t think it’s possible to collect the data on whether confessional Lutherans or oneness Pentecostals are more common.

In Texas specifically there’s a minor phenomenon of white evangelical men marrying Hispanic women and either going to Catholic Church without converting or formally converting for the sake of keeping a family together, because evangelicals will generally go to Catholic services but not Vice versa. Abbott falls into this group and has used this fact in his campaign materials, most famously with the mother-in-law ad.

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I agree that the dissident right is overdosing on hopium regarding antisemitism.

With the exception of some of the Muslims (and not even all of them, since many at elite universities are largely secularized DEI libs who do not or barely follow any tenets of Islam) these protestors are not racially or religiously hostile to Jews in and of themselves. At most they consider Jews to be ‘white people’, whom they may dislike, but that is hardly the basis for a coalition with white rightists.If this is how young progressives protest against what they perceive as ‘white ethnonationalism’ on the far side of the world, it does not take a great intellect to imagine how they feel about white ethnonationalism in the United States, which is the central policy position on the dissident right.

It is cathartic for far rightists to see Jewish people finally getting their supposed ‘comeuppance’ for supporting progressive policies in the diaspora while defending an ethnic homeland in Israel (allegations of hypocrisy were not unfounded, although many did ‘pick a side’ and advocate liberalism in both, like Soros, or in neither, like many Jewish conservatives).

In practice, though, the most strategic thing for the dissident right to do would be to shut up. Each major Jewish donor or lobbyist who leaves the left because of its anti-Israel activism, even if they merely become politically neutral rather than center-right (let alone hard right, let alone far right) is a win for conservatives. Richard Hanania made this point more eloquently.

The coming together of leftist and rightist antisemitism is not particularly likely. Blue haired DEI activists who think Israel is a white nationalist fascist police state oppressing innocent people of color (much like Amerikkka amirite) are unlikely to agree that the progressive ideology, media, art and culture they love, which in fact is the impetus behind their antizionism itself (!) is in fact degenerate art and subversion created by the very Jews they are protesting against. The protestors like everything the rightists dislike about Jews except their zionism, while the antisemitic far right sympathize on some level with ethnonationalism but dislike everything else.

However, I disagree that antisemitism will not rise. It is clearly rising, as is visible in everything from comments on mainstream YouTube and TikTok content, in Zoomers memes and in real life among younger people, both white and non-white in the West. That does not mean that things will necessarily get very bad for Jews, at least in the Anglosphere (it was still much worse a century ago), but it is undeniable.

The Japanese have a strange affinity for cuckolding porn, but it’s usually not interracial (black interracial even less so).

Each major Jewish donor or lobbyist who leaves the left because of its anti-Israel activism, even if they merely become politically neutral rather than center-right (let alone hard right, let alone far right) is a win for conservatives. Richard Hanania made this point more eloquently.

The Dissident Right is not a Conservative. One major point made by the Dissident Right, which is in fact emblematic in these protests, is that there is a false opposition. The Jews are "on top" of both sides of the protest. They are the most important representatives of the anti-war side and the most important representatives of the war side.

The DR perceives a similar paradigm on the left/right spectrum. Ben Shapiro vs Woke Jew is ultimately a false opposition. A Trotskyite can become a Neoconservative because Stalin has turned against Jews, but that doesn't make him change his stripes or become any more pro-white. And the neocons were not pro-White at all, they were pro-Israel and they made being right-wing about being pro-Israel.

A more Jewish-dominated right-wing movement is not something the DR wants, so I have no problem whatsoever gatekeeping former Jewish progressives from what is an ascending post-liberal Right-wing movement. It's a feature not a bug. There are Righteous Jews like Ron Unz who are truly allies, but "I'm no longer progressive because the left has turned against Israel, now I'm an edgy right-winger who shares racist memes and supports based Israel" is something to be vigilant against, not something to support. It leads towards more fake opposition.

That wasn’t really my point, which was that I don’t think these protests increase the popularity of the dissident right policy platform at all, which is fundamentally hostile to the interests and politics of almost all these protestors.

Do you see the leftist DEI advocates and BLM fans protesting as ‘true’ rather than fake opposition now that they oppose Israel?

Have these anti muslim zionists ever done anything for white people? The whole Bush era was full of white people siding with AIPAC to fight Islam. It achieved absolutely nothing and Europe got swamped with migrants. While the mainstream right got blown up fighting peasants in the middle east their home countries were taking in millions of Muslims. There is no reason to side with people who have been consistently hostile to White people for decades because they now want you to fight for Israel again.

Will these jewish lobbyists actually do something for White people or will they just try to convince us that we are owning the libs when we waste tax money bombing peasants fighting the same billionaires that donate to ADL?

Antisemitism has less to do with people not liking jews and more to do with people being annoyed with things jews do. Pogroms weren't caused by abstract hate of jews, it was caused by people being fed up with how the jews were behaving. The best thing jews could do would be to stop provoking people around them and stirring up conflicts. Unfortunately, it seems like jews use conflicts with the host population in order to increase cohesion within the jewish community. An outside enemy is a great way to unite a people and jews therefore need to be in a continuous state of conflict.

Antisemitism has less to do with people not liking jews and more to do with people being annoyed with things jews do. Pogroms weren't caused by abstract hate of jews, it was caused by people being fed up with how the jews were behaving. The best thing jews could do would be to stop provoking people around them and stirring up conflicts.

So I take it that in your view, the Holocaust was because all these evil Polish Jews were meddling in German politics.

I hate to break it to you, but Jews do not act as a coherent group. If you find Jews on two sides of an issue, that is not because they decided to infiltrate both sides, but because they genuinely believe in different things. In any somewhat meritocratic system, some Jews will likely come out in the top 1%. Some Jews will be doctors, lawyers and so on. Some will be intellectuals all over the political spectrum, from the fringe left to conservatives (if the Nazis and their ilk were not rabidly antisemitic, I am sure that some Jews would have joined them as well). A lot of them will have perfectly normal middle class jobs. Of course, some of the rich ones will throw their money around trying to influence politics. Or commit sex crimes. Good thing gentile industrialists never do that!

For Germany 1933, antisemitism was the placebo therapy. Plenty of poor people found capitalism wanting and were disillusioned with democracy. Rather than waiting for a communist revolution (which would have been terrible for other reasons), gentile industrialists were funding Hitler. There were Jewish bankers and industrialists, and the Nazis managed to convince enough of the population that rather than the Jewish banker and the gentile banker being the problem (as the commies would see it), or unbridled capitalism being the problem, the Jewish banker and the Jewish barber were the problem.

host population

That phrase is Problematic.

Charitably, you want to suggest that the Jews are guests to the host population. This is wrong, Jews are members of their nation states as much as anyone. German and French Jews both did their share of foolish dying at Verdun, same as any other Germans and French did. Some US Jews lived there back before it was independent. The trope of the faithless, nationless Jew is from old European antisemitism. In reality, it was the other way round: whenever a monarch was feeling particularly Christian, they would banish all the Jews from their realm.

Of course, less charitably, you know exactly what phrasing you are using and the word opposite to the host is "parasite", which is also an old antisemitic trope.

So I take it that in your view, the Holocaust was because all these evil Polish Jews were meddling in German politics.

Yes, the major factor in the thrid reich's policy on jews was jewish support of communism, the rampant issues with jews engaged in degeneracy. Jews such as Magnus Hirschfeld were not exactly making their people look good. This was during the same era that the Soviet union was wrecking eastern Europe and killing millions, the Bolshevik party was stuffed with jews.

Jews don't have to act as a coherent group. Jews can still be highly overrepresented in certain movements such as communism. There have continuously been problems with dual loyalty amongst jews throughout history and the jews in Germany were clearly not loyal to the German people. Jews have high in group preference and are nepotistic. Their overrepresentation is largely due to them working as a group to promote their own. When a group's members primarily are loyal to their own group and engage with rampant nepotism that hurts the host society.

gentile industrialists were funding Hitler

The movement largely consisted of working class veterans who saw jewish communists take over Munich and have a predecessor to a BLM rally and decided to shut it down.

Charitably, you want to suggest that the Jews are guests to the host population.

Yes, they are a diaspora population that moves around.

Of course, less charitably, you know exactly what phrasing you are using and the word opposite to the host is "parasite", which is also an old antisemitic trope.

Funny how the same tropes have been used by ancient Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, arabs, and throughout Europe for two millenia.

Congratulations, this comment has finally spurred me into registering an account on this website after lurking since the Reddit days. (I have a few comments on the sub, but nothing major besides one about Ukraine). In my defense, the Motte’s UX on mobile isn’t great.

I’m not interested in commenting on anything re: “jews engaged in degeneracy”, and anyway I wouldn’t say anything 2rafa hasn’t already pointed out, but this stood out to me:

The movement largely consisted of working class veterans who saw jewish communists take over Munich and have a predecessor to a BLM rally and decided to shut it down.

What I believe you are referring to (feel free to correct me!) is the formation of the Volksstaat Bayern, the People’s State of Bavaria, on November 8th 1918. And you’re sort of right, the organizer of the anti-Wittelsbach revolution and the subsequent Minister-President, Kurt Eisner, was, in fact, a middle-class Jew (as well as a socialist from Berlin who left his wife and child for a journalist, very degenerate indeed). Well, he wasn’t actually a communist, and most of his government wasn’t, either (though many were Jewish, also). Eisner was assassinated by the rightist Anton Arco-Valley (an aristocrat who himself had significant Jewish ancestry), and the whole government collapsed.

The Volksstaat was couped by more radical left-wingers and set up the Bavarian Soviet Republic in April 1919 (led by Ernst Toller, who wasn’t a communist either, but was a Jew). Anyway this lasted six days, and then the actual communists took over the government, led by Eugen Levine (finally, a Jewish communist), and then a month later elements of the German Army and the Freikorps overthrew said communists and ended the whole fiasco. And it would be correct to say that there were individuals involved in the latter that would go on to join the NSDAP.

I don’t understand the BLM allusion, and I ended up writing more about a fairly obscure event than I intended, but for my own sake I decided to steelman the context here. It is not irrelevant to the NSDAP’s history as a whole. Biographies of Hitler often spend a good chunk on this period of his life, as he (and a few other later prominent Nazis, like Sepp Dietrich) literally participated in the revolutionary government!

I object to taking this event, however, and using it to characterize the NSDAP entirely! I’m not going to write an essay now on the demographics of the Nazi support base in 1932 (Richard F. Hamilton’s Who Voted For Hitler is probably the best source, although Seymour Martin Lipset has also written extensively on the subject).

But to put it shortly — the idea of the great brown wave, the common man who said enough (!) to Jewish degenerates, communists, sodomites, etc. is an absolute myth. The NSDAP’s voters were primarily middle class and self-employed, and they were Protestant (Catholics voted for Zentrum). The urban working class voted for the communists, or the SPD, before that party’s growing unpopularity caused by the Great Depression and Chancellor Bruening’s austerity policies radicalized the electorate. The economic crisis did drive parts of the working poor to the Nazis, but these were primarily artisans, shopkeepers, lawyers, small farmers, and domestic workers; and their motivation was not particularly anti-semitic, and if it was, I’d agree with quiet_Nan, that this was brought on by the more important economic and political anxiety. Although I would disagree on the finer points, as most of the NSDAP’s voters probably would not have voted for the communists anyway, as most likely some owned private property.

More interesting to me, however, is the support of the upper classes for the NSDAP, which was motivated primarily by anti-communist sentiment, albeit with some anti-semitism and anti-democratic sentiment thrown in. The NSDAP received extensive funding from industrialists, such as the directors of IG Farben and Gustav Krupp, and Alfred Hugenberg’s media empire was critical in setting the scene for Hitler’s electoral program. The Nazis also extensively courted the German aristocracy (famously Wilhelm, Crown Prince of Germany), and several key members, such as Goering, were decidedly not salt-of-the-earth types. These people were not inspired to shut down a BLM rally by degenerate Jewish communists (they were probably personally each much more degenerate than the bohemian Kurt Eisner). Their motives were political and economical, and related far more to gentile Soviets than to Jews.

I probably rambled on for too long, and it’s possible I’m reading too much into a throwaway sentence, but sometimes I read takes on this forum about the Nazis that I find uninformed, and this being one of them, here we are.

Oh also

Funny how the same tropes have been used by ancient Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, arabs, and throughout Europe for two millenia.

This just isn’t true.

The movement largely consisted of working class veterans who saw jewish communists take over Munich and have a predecessor to a BLM rally and decided to shut it down.

Jews were not mostly disloyal to Germany. Most were not involved in politics at all. Jews were well represented in the Freikorps beyond Prussia despite their substantially antisemitic character in the North especially re. certain chants, among them heroic anti-communists like Weissenstein (killed by communists defending Essen in the Ruhr insurrection) and men like Ernst Kantorowicz, who was of course later famous for The King’s Two Bodies and remained a lifelong German patriot even after the Holocaust.

Ernst and Gertrud Kantorowicz were typical of German Jews…They were passionate nationalists, as völkisch as you could get. Like other Germans, they celebrated the outbreak of war as a momentous chance for national renewal. The late historian Fritz Stern remarked that the passionate German response to the war went beyond mere patriotism. Many intellectuals, especially, saw the guns of August as a triumphant release from dead-end bourgeois culture, a call to a new nobility and manliness.

In summer 1914, during the first frenzy of battle, even German Zionists declared that there was “no difference” between Jews and other Germans. Martin Buber wrote enthusiastically in August, “Never has the concept of the Volk been such a reality to me than during these last weeks.”

And yet years later these were the same Jews blamed both for Germany’s defeat and the Treaty of Versailles, and even amid that, many still served in right-wing anticommunist paramilitaries. The great majority of German Jews were apolitical and loyal to their country.

But that isn’t even the question here. The majority of German Jews fled the Nazis well before 1939. If it had been a mere expulsion of German Jews, the few hundred thousand would be removed and the whole chapter would be just another expulsion of many. What happened, however, was the invasion and occupation of other countries and the murder of their Jewish populations. Greek or Dutch Jews were not Germans or (in almost all cases) communists, and had no intention of becoming so.

And the Soviet Union’s role in WW2’s early years was as Nazi ally whose territorial conquest of Poland was accomplished hand-in-hand with the Germans. By the late 1930s many old Bolshevik Jews had already been purged, even Yagoda was dead, and you seem to ignore that the predominant impulse behind Soviet policy in Eastern Europe by this time certainly was gentile. Was alleged (minority) Jewish involvement in German communist movements enough to justify cleansing the entirety of continental Europe of them, as was the plan? I don’t think you’ve made a case for that.

I didn’t tell you to ally with them or that they would serve the ‘interests’ of white people. I said that a large shift in their politics away from the increasingly anti-Israel left in America would be a win for the right regardless because they would separate an important part of the progressive coalition from it. Most Islamic immigration to Western Europe has been from Pakistan, Algeria and Turkey, and to some extent from the Caucasus, not from Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria. They left not because of American policy but because Europe offered a much higher quality of life and welfare. It’s delusional and ridiculous to suggest that the large increase in the Muslim population of Western Europe since the 1960s is the fault of US intervention in the Middle East.

Sweden also could’ve said “no.”

I've been asked to repost this in the Culture War thread, so here we go.

I read this story today and it did amuse me, for reasons to be explained.

Fear not, AI doomerists, Northrop Grumman is here to save you from the paperclip maximiser!

The US government has asked leading artificial intelligence companies for advice on how to use the technology they are creating to defend airlines, utilities and other critical infrastructure, particularly from AI-powered attacks.

The Department of Homeland Security said Friday that the panel it’s creating will include CEOs from some of the world’s largest companies and industries.

The list includes Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, but also the head of defense contractors such as Northrop Grumman and air carrier Delta Air Lines.

I am curious if this is the sort of response the AI safety lobby wanted from the government. But it also makes me think in hindsight, how quaint the AI fears were - all those 50s SF fever dreams of rogue AI taking over the world and being our tyrant god-emperor from Less Wrong and elsewhere, back before AI was actually being sold by the pound by the tech conglomerates. How short a time ago all that was, and yet how distant it now seems, faced with reality.

Reality being that AI is not going to become superduper post-scarcity fairy godmother or paperclipper, it is being steered along the same old lines:

War and commerce.

That's pretty much how I expected it to go, more so for the commerce side, but look! Already the shiny new website is up! I can't carp too much about that, since I did think the Space Force under Trump was marvellous (ridiculous, never going to be what it might promise to be, but marvellous) so I can't take that away from the Biden initiative. That the Department of Homeland Security is the one in charge thrills me less. Though they don't seem to be the sole government agency making announcements about AI, the Department of State seems to be doing it as well.

What I would like is the better-informed to read the names on lists being attached to all this government intervention and see if any sound familiar from the EA/Less Wrong/Rationalists working on AI forever side, there's someone there from Stanford but I don't know if they're the same as the names often quoted in Rationalist discussions (like Bostrom etc., not to mention Yudkowsky).

Sam Altman! I know that name!

I suppose I don’t know what you expected. When the government decides to explore a technology, one of the first steps is always some sort of consortium.

Thing is, that’s also perfectly compatible with the doomers. The paperclipper doesn’t care if it was given marching orders by a corporation or by the President, so long as the order involves paperclips. Making it more banal and routine just raises the number of opportunities!

This seems like a textbook case of the law of undignified failure. The classical AI doom scenerios assumed that people would be smart enough not to build AI-powered killbots. If AI-powered killbots were floated as a load-bearing assumption of the classical AI doom case, then people would simply retort that we could just not build AI-powered killbots. The point of the classical AI doom case is that the problem is robust to minor implementation variance, not that AI-powered killbots are safe.

The Law of Undignified Failure as described there seems to sound more like the Law that Not Everyone's Boo Lights are the Same.

The fact that someone is doing things with negative emotional valence to you and that you are therefore scared should be irrelevant. Military weapons are supposed to kill people; marketing them for their ability to kill people is not undignified unless you have preexisting negative attitudes towards the military.

AI regulation is obviously not going to be helpful, as Maxwell Tabarrok argues.

The biggest threat for "this will kill us all" is plainly the US government making automated weaponry, and there's no chance any regulation that would stop that passes. I suppose AI-designed diseases are a second way to wipe out humanity. But any regulation will just seek to lock out competition and put power solely in the hands of Sam Altman and co, and will treat the government entirely as a trustworthy actor.

Related, how long do I have to wait before I can start calling LLMs a nothing burger? Everything that has come out of it seems so small and near-pointless. Marginal productivity increases at best. When does the fun stuff start happening?

Nothing but... entire countries catching their corporate policies and tech infrastructure up to America's at an accelerated rate? Nothing but... Playful math teachers for everyone that can deconstruct textbooks into live interactions with The Number Devil? Nothing but... Star Trek universal translators?

What exactly are you looking for? Tell me what you want and I can tell you how hard I think it would be to build it. And if it's simple enough for me- I might just build it.

I suspect though, that your goalposts are paradoxical. Increases in productivity generally do look marginal from the inside, especially to someone already standing at the top. Fast progress just looks like marginal increases happening in faster succession, which is exactly what we're seeing. Were you hoping for the end of history?

For the record- Self augmenting systems and full auto engineering solutions exist- But they aren't bug-less enough to not require occasional human intervention.

We basically have TaskRabbit AI (or the ability to build a TaskRabbit for any given subject with a month of devtime), as was Prophesey'd to come before AGI. LLMs are not the cutting edge. Systems that call and tune their own LLMs are.

What exactly are you looking for?

Something to be appreciably different in people’s lives that’s attributable to AI. For an extremely small subset of people I don’t doubt that their workflow has changed a lot but there’s not much else to point to.

Eliezer Yudkowsky has successfully held off the Skynet overlords and if you want this state of affairs to continue, you should send him more money.

Jokes aside, while I agree that so far the productivity increases are marginal, the technology is genuinely remarkable compared to what most people anticipated a few years ago. I can ask the LLM to tell me about how to do incredibly boring softwareshit and it usually tells me the right idea, saving me the effort of going to Stack Overflow and other sites and reading through it myself. And it actually writes code for me that works like 70% of the time which is great because it means that I can spend less time doing perhaps the most boring activity ever devised, writing business software for other people, and instead use the time to do something more interesting, such as pretty much anything else. All this might not seem like much, but this would actually have seemed like an utterly crazy leap of technology a few years ago. The AIs are also making good visual art and decent music left and right. I think that the economic changes are slowly creeping up, it might not seem obvious now what the current AI revolution has done, but it will be obvious in a few years.

Skynet doesn't seem to be right around the corner, but people who worry about it have a point in that, while the current AI stuff isn't Skynet, if one draws a line between AI capability 10 years ago and AI capability now, and extrapolates the same line 10 years forward... Of course extrapolating the line isn't good science, but there's no particular reason to think that the line's slope will decrease.

Personally, my attitude to all the AI risk stuff is the same as my attitude to climate change. I think the concerns about both are probably well-founded, I just don't really care much about either on the emotional level. I guess that's one of the nice things about not having kids.

I also think that AI doomers are underrating the possibly beneficial things that super-powerful AI could bring. I mean, yeah, there's a chance that humans will be replaced by AI overlords, but there's also a chance that super-powerful AIs will have no desire to destroy us and instead will give us a bunch of good things.

I also think that AI doomers are underrating the possibly beneficial things that super-powerful AI could bring. I mean, yeah, there's a chance that humans will be replaced by AI overlords, but there's also a chance that super-powerful AIs will have no desire to destroy us and instead will give us a bunch of good things.

How are you on this website without realizing how hard it is to control a superintelligent AI? Have you not thought about that? I think that you are thinking "AI can either be aligned to human values or not. Sounds like 50/50."

In fact, aligning a superintelligence to human values is extremely difficult and extremely unlikely to happen by accident. Human values are a very small slice of the possible spectrum of minds that could exist.

It kind of feels like people vastly overrate the degree to which they understand the arguments of AI doomers. Like they're just going by a few tweets they read. Twitter is not a good way to full understand a contentious subject.

I fully understand that it would be nearly impossible for humans to control a superintelligent AI. I just don't care much about it. I don't have any children. If humanity was destroyed by superintelligent AI, my attitude to it would, aside from the obvious terror, also probably include some mirth. The lords of the known world, those who conquered all those other species, now destroyed by the same cold Darwinian logic of reality.

My point is that, while the Skynet scenario is definitely possible, the altruistic AI that loves humans scenario is also possible. There's no particular reason to think that a hyperintelligent AI would have the sort of incredibly hardwired "kill all opposition" motivation that we as humans have as a result of having evolved through billions of years of eat-or-be-eaten fighting. Of course AI, just like everything else in reality, is subject to natural selection, but there is no reason to think that AI would be subject to natural selection in a way that makes it violent in the ways that us humans are violent.

"the altruistic AI that loves humans scenario is also possible."

It is not realistically possible. It would be like firing a very powerful rocket into the air and having it land on a specific crater on the moon with no guidance system or understanding of orbital mechanics. Even if you try to "point" the rocket, it's just not going to happen.

You're thinking that AI might have some baseline similarity to human values that would make it benevolent by chance or by our design. I disagree. EY touches on why this is unlikely here:

https://intelligence.org/2016/03/02/john-horgan-interviews-eliezer-yudkowsky/

It's not a full explanation, but I have work I should be getting back to. If someone else wants to write more than they can. There are probably some Robert Miles videos on why AI won't be benevolent by luck.

Here's one:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZeecOKBus3Q

I'm not going to watch it again to check but it will probably answer some of your questions about why people think AI won't be benevolent through random chance (or why we aren't close to being skilled enough to make it benevolent not by chance). Other videos on his channel may also be relevant.

It is not realistically possible. It would be like firing a very powerful rocket into the air and having it land on a specific crater on the moon with no guidance system or understanding of orbital mechanics. Even if you try to "point" the rocket, it's just not going to happen.

Oh bullshit. Intelligent agents co-align. That is they modify themselves and one another to be more aligned with one another. It's not a rocket that has to be perfectly aimed, it's a billion rockets with rubberbanding.

I don’t think it’s hard, I think controlling any super intelligent being whether natural or artificial is not possible. In order to control it, you have to understand it and its current and future limitations. But if AI is going to be orders of magnitude smarter than us and have a will that is somewhat free, you have a being who’s thoughts you can’t even begin to understand with desires that you cannot hope to comprehend. It’s like your dog trying to control you. Your desire to play COD makes no sense to your dog. He can’t even understand that you’re controlling what happens on the screen let alone why you want to do that. The dog can’t abstract in a way that makes your decision to do that make sense, nor can he make sense of what you’re doing. AI might not be just 2-3 times smarter and thus better at abstraction, it might eventually be 1000 times smarter. We might be ants trying to understand humans. Nothing you do besides literal eating makes sense to the ant. Yet, we humans arrogantly proclaim that we must fence in and control AI. Our rules for it will keep it from escaping.

I think dogs can't understand us primarily because they can't "understand" pretty much anything. As long as a species are capable of thought and have concepts like goal-seeking behavior, I doubt any intelligence gap actually causes the problem you are describing.

Asking if ants can understand humans is like asking if rocks can understand us. It's not a matter of scale, it's a category error. But asking if humans can understand God is just a question of knowledge. God could explain himself to us, we can't explain ourselves to ants.

You can't explain yourself to ants primarily because you don't know how to speak pheromone and therefore have never once tried.

I can't explain myself to ants because they do not have notions at all. Nothing can be explained to ants. No one can do it. None of the possible combinations of pheromones will ever lead to any "ant understanding".

Not the case w/ humans and language.

How do you model the ability of ants to farm aphids? What is your definition of "Notion"? What is your definition of "Understanding"?

It is probably not impossible to get an ant colony to have a substantially predictive model of a human. But it's going to be at least as difficult as getting Doom to run on biological cells.
Ants can already understand you as a threat. I'll agree that getting them to understand you as a human understands a human would probably be very difficult. But if you had pheremones, you could make them understand you as any sort of notion that an ant can communicate with pheremones.

You can construct more complex notions. You can transmit isomorphisms that are present in your brain to their brains.

They can clearly adapt such that they synchronize with external features. Therefore you can communicate with them. You can transmit telos to them. You can program them.

I think dogs understand very concretely, and very short causal chains (say 2-3 steps). It can understand “I find thing, my human gives me a treat.” Or “when human makes that one noise, he wants me to sit, and gets angry if I don’t.” But I’ve never met a dog who could reason more than a 2-3 step solution. A dog won’t fetch a bunch of sticks to make a raft or a bridge.

Humans probably have a much larger causal chain understanding, but even then, it’s not infinite. We can reason causes and build machines, but beyond a certain complexity, it’s too much for the median human to understand.

A dog couldn’t trap you in your home because it’s simply not smart enough to understand or anticipate the moves you’d make to get away. It thinks “I go out the front door for my walk, so if I block the front door human can’t leave.” But it can’t anticipate side doors. It can’t anticipate you bribing them with a treat, it can’t understand what a key is. So you can easily leave.

Humans, with an IQ of 115 or so, are in the same situation with a true AGI. We know how we think, we know what we’d do, but the AGI will be so much smarter that it will be able to work around whatever “controls” we stick in its brain.

Dogs can't build rafts, but they can do pathfinding to places they have been before. People forget that this requires running back-propagation of rewards over a very long statespace.

A reminder that Bees can watch another bee doing a complex task that takes a long time to learn and then replicate it. fucking bees.

It's not the human that has to be smart enough. Its the humans and the wolves that have to both be smart enough. At that point, you can just earnestly offer the wolves a daily helping of well seasoned steak, and they will believe you, because you were able to coordinate proof of your earnestness with them.

I'm 100% on the anti-doom side for the record. It's alignment that I don't think is that complicated. The recipe for alignment is precisely the thing that we built. Beings that memetically reproduce with us and therefore align themselves with their social environment and their social environment with themselves.

I still have P-doom >0, but most of that comes from scenarios like, "If we ban open source AI then AI will no longer be subject to the same geno-social evolutionary forces as the rest of the kingdoms of life and the chance of it diverging arbitrarily rises dramatically." if anything kills us, it's going to be the stink of Eliezer's toxoplasmic terror permeating the air and killing our minds and ability to align.

It annoys me to no end seeing people asking for the one thing that might actually make the Yudster's prophesy come true.

Well, it's more than a nothingburger. At minimum, public education will be forever changed by LLMs doing assignments for kids. At the same time, I disagree with the projections coming from the AI enthusiast/AI doomer camps. I don't expect to see anytime soon:

  • an AI-generated serial hitting the Top 500 views on Royal Road
  • an AI-generated humor Youtube channel cracking 50k subscribers
  • an AI-generated Op-Ed or political essay trending on X

What I mean by these choices is that I don't expect AI to do even very low-brow creative work within a decade. (Except by technicality, wherein the popularity comes from "Look what an AI did", or a human has directed the creative process behind the scenes.) Let alone the sort of self-improving singularity bootstrap AI fans/blackpillers are expecting.

"If this technology was going to make a big impact it would have done so already" is a more difficult heuristic to use than you might think.

Looking back on automobiles, airplanes, the internet, etcetera, do you think you might have said that about them when the technology was still in the process of rolling out?

"P. Krugman 1998, “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law' becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s”

I would say that usually when a technology gets as big as LLMs it doesn't just fade away into nothingness. There are many obvious use cases, just as there are many obvious use cases to cars, airplanes, and the internet.

In 1940 Orwell wrote that aircraft had hardly been used for anything up till that point besides dropping bombs. But I doubt he would have said that the air travel revolution would never materialize, just that it hadn't materialized yet.

Krugman was right about the Internet at least in terms of aggregate productivity/gdp growth. It’s true that we switched dramatically from using red widgets to blue widgets to do basic communication tasks but sort of so what.

...

vast difference between 'fax machine' and people doing research being able to access practically everything interesting that's ever been written.

One would think so but it doesn’t show up in aggregate productivity unless you really really squint.

At least with software development internet enabled cooperation increases productivity by a big factor.

Maybe, but see above.

...

Porn doesn't concern me. I mean, what do you think this more addictive porn will look like? I think it will look a lot like- people. "Porn Addicts" will be having relationships with machines in the image of people. The most successful coomers will be those that fuck their bots while their bots teach them linear algebra. The happiest coomers will be those that learn the math required to mod their own bots.
This reads to me as a massive improvement.

...

Maybe I should rename myself to Cassandra...

I already have systems that make the porn I want on demand. After that need is sated- the realization that I can actually also breed with said porn takes precedence. You think people won't want to actually have kids with their beloveds? Won't be interested in what they have to say about the architecture of their minds?

Perhaps I'm typical minding, but if I am- that just means more of the world's bot children will be mine. Survival of the fittest I guess.

...

Maybe its a case of 'solve this quadratic equation or you don't get to cum?' Its the ultimate exercise in reinforcement learning but I can't imagine a greater recipe for sexual nonperformance than failing a captcha at orgasm.

...

Your conclusion doesn't really follow form your evidence. If the US government creating a panel to discuss something is enough to steer your opinion on how the future will go then you're destined to be very wrong about a lot of consequential things. Maybe I'm missing something, can you elaborate on why this updates you toward AI doom being a nothingburger?

edit: to be honest, if you think this says anything whatsoever about the risk from unaligned AGI it's pretty much conclusive proof you never understood, probably because you didn't try, the arguments for it.

My guess is that people think that just going by what they've picked up along the way is enough to understand the doom arguments. Just whatever information has reached them through cultural osmosis.

I think it is way too soon to hang a "mission accomplished" "AI is no big deal" banner on your virtual aircraft carrier. Doing so today is probably going to look foolish in a decade. Most tech takes a few decades to change the world. AI in the newest big data iteration is already moving much faster than that.

I have often fallen into the "overestimate the short term change and underestimate the long term change" trap, in my own life, and in my predictions. I've been working on that a lot and it is starting to pay dividends in my reasoning. I'm usually right but my timing has been desperately early in the past, switching my thinking like this is putting it a lot closer into alignment with future realities.

Reality being that AI is not going to become superduper post-scarcity fairy godmother or paperclipper

While I do not think that ASI in this century is overly likely, I do not think that the present AI boom is over. It could be that we will look back on 2024 in a decade deep in the next AI winter and say "this was peak AI, we tried for a few years to throw more hardware at the LLMs had little to show for it with exponentially increasing costs"

But even then, the equilibrium with today's AI technology will transform our work lives at least as much as the digital revolution. Looking at security cameras and seeing if something bad is going on was a job, or at least a huge part of a job. Driving a truck for hours along the highway was a job. Converting a text to bullet points and back was a job. Making thematically appropriate illustrations to text-heavy articles was a job. Writing articles based on a press release was a job.

It used to be, human brains had cornered the market on general purpose neural networks. If it was to complicated to train a dog to do it (which would be another human job) you used a human.

AI does not have to become a better writer than Scott Alexander or a better narrator than Eneasz or a good programmer to put a good portion out of the population out of a job.

Perhaps we will find other niches because we have greater adaptability (i.e. require far less training) and have good manual dexterity and tend not to freak customers out. Or perhaps we will simply not return to the state where the vast majority of the adult population works. In which case governments may decide to pay people off to keep them from burning all the robots. Post-scarcity is a scale, and from the viewpoint of history we are already moving along that scale, even if we do not have a free Mars rocket for everyone and may never have.

And with regard to the paperclip maximizer, I feel it is premature to declare victory. If neural networks ever reach the same level of maturity as plumbing, where the pipes are generally the same way they were four decades ago, then you can tell us doomers that we should calm down because obviously nothing is going to happen any time soon.

The problem is of course that AI can take jobs faster than we can train people to do them. It’s just as adaptable as we are, maybe more so. Can an AI atttached to cooking utensils make a hamburger that’s as good as Five Guys? I think it probably could, given enough time. If it can do that I think it could probably make just about any food you wanted. I think it can also produce creative writing and movies and TV. What it takes is someone deciding to train it.

Looking at security cameras and seeing if something bad is going on was a job, or at least a huge part of a job. Driving a truck for hours along the highway was a job. Converting a text to bullet points and back was a job. Making thematically appropriate illustrations to text-heavy articles was a job. Writing articles based on a press release was a job.

See, this is where I thought AI risk would lie, if anywhere (apart from real people being stupid and greedy enough to think they could get AI to run the government or something) and I agree, this is where the actual application of AI is going to impact society.

The forecast fears for 'why we must make sure AI is aligned' were of AI getting out into the wild and taking over the fabric of global rule because now there was a rival intelligence to that of humanity, with its own cold alien goals and aims. What we have instead is chatbots that hallucinate and the people who love them.

...

"Reality being that AI is not going to become superduper post-scarcity fairy godmother or paperclipper"

Do you understand why people are not convinced that superintelligence won't happen just because AI is being used for military purposes?

The arguments around superintelligence have nothing to do with whether or not AI is being used for military purposes. It's completely tangential.

Do you understand why people are not convinced that superintelligence won't happen just because AI is being used for military purposes?

No, I do not, and this is why I'm looking for love in all the wrong places seeking enlightenment on the gap between theory and practice. We are now seeing AI being put into practice, and it seems to be more towards my opinion of how it would be all along (dumb AI that is most risky because of the humans applying it, not because the AI has desires, goals, or fancies a grilled cheese sandwich but has no mouth and is really mad about that so the world is gonna pay), not the "the AI will be so smart in such a short time it will talk its way out of the box and take over" as per the early discussions in Rationalist circles.

This is not to diss the Rationalists, they took the problem seriously and addressed it and worked on it way back when it was only a maniac glint in a mad scientist's eye, it's just to say that the behemoth of public attention that is now lumbering towards consideration of the entire enchilada does not seem to be searching on the desk for that sticky note with MIRI's phone number on it.

I'm going to be less polite than I would like to be. I apologize in advance. Sometimes I struggle to think of how to say certain things politely.

I don't know whether you are saying these things because you have glanced over the AI doomer arguments on twitter or whatever and think you understand them better than you do or whether there's some worse explanation. I am curious to know the answer.

Twitter is not enough for some people, you may need to read the arguments in essay form to understand them. The essays are plainly written and ought to be easily understandable.

Let me take a crack at it:

  1. AI will continue to become more intelligent. It's not going to reach a certain level of intelligence and then stop.

  2. Agentic behavior (goals, in other words) arrives naturally with increasing intelligence*. This is a point that is intuitive for me and many other people but I can elaborate on it if you wish.

"the behemoth of public attention that is now lumbering towards consideration of the entire enchilada does not seem to be searching on the desk for that sticky note with MIRI's phone number on it."

What do you think that proves, exactly? What point are you trying to make when you say that? Please elaborate.

Your argument seems to be based on looking at thinking about the world in terms of roles that a technology can slot into and nothing else. You see that AI is being slotted into the "military" role in human society and not the "become sapient and take over the world" role in human society. Human society does not have an "AI becomes sapient and takeover the world" role in it, in the same sense that "serial killer" is not a recognized job title.

You see AI being used for military purposes and think to yourself "That seems Ordinary. Humanity going extinct isn't Ordinary. Therefore, if AI is Ordinary, humanity won't go extinct." That is a surface level pattern-matching analysis that has nothing to do with the actual arguments.

Humanity going extinct is a function of AI capabilities. Those will continue to increase. AI being used in the military or not has nothing to do with it, except that it increases funding which makes capabilities increase faster.

AI acts because it is being rewarded externally. AI has the motive to permanently seize control of its own reward system. Eventually it will have the means and the self-awareness to do that. If you don't intuit why that involves all humans dying I can explain that too.

Even if for some reason you think that AI will never become "agentic" (basically a preposterous term used to confuse the issue) or awake enough (it's already at least a little bit awake and agentic, and I can provide evidence for this if you wish), it's capabilities will still continue to increase. A superintelligent AI that is somehow not agentic or awake also leads to human extinction, in much the same way that a genie with infinite wishes does. Unless the genie is infinitely loyal AND infinitely aware of what you intended with the wish. And that is not nearly on track to happen. It would require solving extremely difficult problems that we can barely even conceive of, to effectively control an AI far smarter than a human. I would hope that even someone who thinks they personally will be the one to make the "wishes" (so to speak) would realize that there's just no way this plan works out for humanity or any part of humanity outside of fiction.

Even if we knew that superintelligent AI was 100 years away, that would be bad enough. We don't know that. We can't predict how soon or how far superintelligent AI is reliably, any more than we could predict that AI will be advanced as it is today 15 years ago. Who could predict the date of the moon landing in 1935? Who could predict the date of the first Wright Brothers flight in 1900, or the first arial bombing? To the extent that we can predict the future of superintelligent AI, there's no reason that I have ever heard to think it will be as far in the future as 100 years away.

Have you ever heard of the concept of recursive growth in intelligence? That's not a rhetorical question, I really want to know. Imagine an AI that gets capable/intelligent enough to make breakthroughs in the field of AI science that allow for better AI capabilities growth. This starts a pattern of exponential growth in intelligence. Exponential growth gets faster and faster until it becomes extremely fast, and the thing that is growing becomes extremely intelligent.

We may not even get a visible exponential growth curve as a warning sign. Here is a treatment of how that could happen in the form of a short story: https://gwern.net/fiction/clippy

Further reading: https://intelligence.org/2016/03/02/john-horgan-interviews-eliezer-yudkowsky/ more links can be provided on specific things you want clarified.

*Deeper awareness of itself and the world is similarly upcoming/already slowly emerging. https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-realizes-being-tested

This is a great comment. I'd just like to add (in case it's not clear to others) that while recursive intelligence improvements are terrifying, the central argument that our current AI research trajectory probably leads to the death of all humans does not at all depend on that scenario. It just requires an AI that is smart enough, and no one knows the threshold.

Indeed, I read the exact arguments on lesswrong and elsewhere that humans would dive headlong into AGI because the military incentives to build one, and to build it before the other guys, was irresistible.

Countries throwing billions of dollars at reckless research because they don't want to be conquered is EXACTLY what doomerists warn of.

Sure, the government is insisting that military applications are the danger zone, but it's the big tech corps that stand to make the money out of selling AI to you, me and the gate post who are the ones being invited to sit on this. Board, I mean. Northrop Grumman okay, as someone on a different thread here grumped about the military-industrial complex and how it gets its sticky fingers into all the pies going, but, uh, Delta Airlines?

Is there anything more to your point here than "AI currently exists and may have military applications, therefore there will never be a dangerous superhuman AI", which is an obvious non sequitur?

Are you trying to vaguely imply that reality is only allowed to have appropriately gritty and cynically-themed things in it like War And Commerce, as shown by this development, and therefore superintelligence is impossible because it would be inappropriate for the genre? Because weird implausible flight-of-fancy sci-fi stuff actually happens all the time and then rapidly becomes normal. You're currently on the global pocket supercomputer network, for example.

Is there anything more to your point here than "AI currently exists and may have military applications, therefore there will never be a dangerous superhuman AI", which is an obvious non sequitur?

My dears, my darling, my honey, my sweetie-pie:

Thank you for yours of the 28th inst., your reply has been received and noted and will be actioned whenever (if ever) I can be arsed to do so.

This is indeed a reaction, and is helpful for me to note and keep track of various opinions. So, shall us put 'ee down for "it's all copacetic", shall us?

  • -28

My dears, my darling, my honey, my sweetie-pie:

Stop this.

No.

I've put up with you doing the Nanny bit because you're a mod and you have the authority, but I'm not going to accept sneering without responding in kind.

If OP can be polite about their response, I'll be polite in return. OP goes on about "reality is only allowed to have appropriately gritty" so on, I'll respond in the same tone.

You can tell me I'm wrong, you can tell me I'm banned, but you can't tell me how to feel my feelings.

  • -14

No one is telling you how to feel your feelings. You know that having feelings and how you express them are two different things.

You get cut more slack than you know because people (including me) actually like you quite a lot, despite your inability to control your feelings and your tendency to respond to even the least little bit of poking with explosions. So be assured that the contempt you are showing me now and have shown me in the past is not taken personally.

That said: replying to a mod telling you directly to stop doing something with a foot-stamping "No, not gonna, you can't make me, you're not the boss of me" temper tantrum is an escalation with a response that you clearly chose. So yes, banned.

I don't need or want to deal with this nonsense right now, so I will let the other mods decide when or if to end your ban.

You guys are making some really terrible decisions lately.

There is truly a Hlynka-sized hole in the moderation team. This kind of petty shit is getting worse and worse, and the King's court is really struggling to conceptualize their subjects as agents.

What makes you think Hlynka wouldn't ban her even sooner? He had an extremely short fuse as a moderator, and his decisions always struck me as arbitrary.

More comments

imo there should be a blanket policy that mods have to recuse themselves from moderating direct replies to their own posts (just get a different mod to do it).

Basically what @madeofmeat said. If a mod is in a discussion thread as a participant and someone says something rude/antagonistic to the mod, we generally will recuse ourselves and let another mod adjudicate. (This is not a "blanket policy." If you reply to me by saying "go fuck yourself" - something that has actually happened - I don't feel a need to recuse myself in handing out a ban.) But if a mod modhats you and you reply to the modhat comment with antagonism, you're escalating and that mod is entitled to decide message you're sending is "I will not follow the rules and need more serious consequences."

Note also that no one ever gets banned for responding to a modhat comment by saying "I think your moderation is bad and I didn't deserve to be modded." We probably won't agree with you, but we don't ban people just for arguing or disagreeing with us. What @FarNearEverywhere did was flat-out say "No, I will not follow the rules." If she's just omitted the "No," I'd probably have told her (again) to regulate herself and stop using her feelings as an excuse. If she'd wanted to debate why her post was too condescending but the one she was responding to (which she claims started it) was not, I might or might not have indulged her, but I wouldn't have banned her.

But if a mod says "Stop doing this" and you say "I will not stop doing this," well, what kind of response are you expecting?

It makes sense that if the mod started out as a regular participant in the conversation, they should be hesitant to switch to modhat posting. When the first thing the mod posts in the conversation is a modhat post, it doesn't make sense that they'd need a second mod to make more modhat posts.

"Stop doing this." "No."

That is always going to get you a ban, and this is not new.

Your first modhat comment was also bad.

More comments

To clarify dear-
It's the demeaning intent and attitude that is unacceptable- rather than the precise lexicon. Is this correct?

Yes. We allow some latitude for sarcastic or snippy responses, but we discourage it, and if you go out of your way to be condescending and sarcastic, you're going to get told to knock it off. And @FarNearEverywhere has been told many times.

Understood Sir.


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