culture war roundup
faceh
11hr ago
Re-upping the one piece of advice I have on this.
It has to be effortful, uncomfortable, and entail (friendly) conflict.
Videogames sublimate this urge easily, especially in PVP modes, but lack the physical strain.
Men have to learn to fight. They have to have something to capture, some opponent to beat, and some promise of reward for taking risks.
Otherwise, they flail around without purpose, the urges get released in distinctly destructive ways, they fall in with anti-social crowds who will use them as a weapon, and they start taking really ill-advised risks on the promise of spurious rewards. Crypto-gambling is arguably the best case scenario there.
Not a cure-all, in the least, but its a START, which is more than a lot of guys get. Coach knew.
And what happens when the rewards for all that effort are, rationally, not worth the effort and expense?
More to the point, after a guy goes through the painful efforts of making himself better, can he expect to achieve a loving marriage, have a kid or two with a loyal wife, and see these kids to adulthood in an intact home?
The stats on that are bleak, as of now.
If not, then what, truly, is the point? Why does he do what he does if not to preserve his status and pass on his genes?
quiet_NaN
12hr ago
See my reply here.
Again, it is technically possible that they aided Reyes in raping the victim alone, then killed her, and for some reason decided to shield him (and only him) in their confessions by claiming he was not present. Perhaps he was a member of the illuminati, and the defendants who were afraid enough to betray their buddies were nevertheless more afraid of him than of a murder sentence, and had taken the steps to coordinate a false version of events -- which lead to them spending decades in prison -- so they did not have to implicate him.
Or it could be that Reyes is psychic and edited himself out of the memory of his accomplices after the deed.
Or perhaps a bunch of forensic experts formed a conspiracy to falsely exonerate a bunch of murderers and get them millions in restitution instead, and falsified the DNA evidence after convincing Reyes to confess. Perhaps they did it to make Trump look bad a decade later when he would start to become a political force.
Here is what I think likely happened. CP5 was a big, political case. Trump published his attack ad on the mayor. The mayor knew that he needed a conviction, and made it clear to the police that he wanted a guilty verdict. For a cop, this is the kind of case which will make or break your career. They found the likeliest suspects that they could find and convinced themselves that they were guilty, which was easy because it was in their personal best interests to believe it (as opposed to telling the mayor that they had been unable to find the killer). Confirmation bias did the rest.
They did not follow good epistemic protocols, like having different cops get confessions from different suspects, and then check the confessions for consistency, or determining if the suspects had perpetrator's knowledge.
In their mind, there was no need, because they already knew that they were guilty ("police instinct" and all that), and their job was simply to paint a picture which would convince any bleeding heart jury.
They very likely cut corners in the process, skipped legally mandated safety checks. Even if you are a cop who will mostly play by the book, this case was to important to leave it up to chance if the real, circumstantial evidence would convince the jury. So you 'forget' to give your suspect the Miranda warning. Perhaps you beat a few of them up to get them to confess, after all, these scumbags just murdered a girl, and you are not even breaking their bones. Or you prompt them with the same story which they should confess. Who cares if you find out in which order they raped her, the important thing is that you present a version of the story which will get them sent to prison, not contradictory confessions which will confuse the jury. Simulacrum level two, not one. Perhaps you even plant a bit of evidence to help justice along.
And they would have gotten away with it, too, if it were not for the fact that the boffins developed a new forensic technique which is far more reliable than any amount of confessions.
In a way, the case exposed the whole rotten underbelly of the US criminal justice system. I wonder how many other 'criminals' are still sitting in prison because the same dirty cops played the same dirty tricks on them. (While I believe that most convicts are in fact guilty, I also believe that US cops do not have a culture of good epistemics and calling out the ones who use illegal shortcuts to paint a nicer picture.)
The reason why every kid learns that the only thing you say when arrested is "I will not answer any questions and I want a lawyer", no matter if you are innocent or guilty, is because US citizens can not trust the police to be interested in determining the truth, especially if they are already detaining you.
The fact that they are still breathing is an affront to justice
Oh come on. Now every state that does not execute prisoners is inherently unjust?
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
14hr ago
This past Sunday, I received baptism into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
As some of you may be aware, I have been passively orbiting this church with various degrees of interest over the course of my entire life, as a result of family connections and several very close friends. Like most non-Mormons, I found various reasons not to pursue any active interest in the church: the total lack of anthropological/scientific evidence for historicity of its central religious text; the concerning signs of Joseph Smith’s charlatanry and general strategy of “making it up as he went”; the onerous lifestyle restrictions; the financial burden which tithing imposes, etc.
Furthermore, I’m occasionally cited here as an able critic of Christian ideas about theodicy, the efficacy of prayer, and the apparent contradictions between the idea of a loving and omnipotent God on the one hand, and the sheer amount of random and wanton suffering present in our world on the other. People have linked to my somewhat recent discussion with @FCfromSSC regarding this matter as an example.) Thus, it may strike many users here (and does seem to have struck at least some people in my IRL life) as surprising to see me commit myself to this church.
However, about eight weeks ago I was approached by a pair of pleasant-looking young sister missionaries at the mall while leaving the gym. Although I was sore and tired and just wanted to go home, I couldn’t resist stopping to speak with them. We had a conversation about what I believed about the Book of Mormon, and about my research into, and interest in, the church. They invited me to attend services with the local Young Single Adults ward that upcoming Sunday, and I accepted. I decided that this would probably be my last opportunity to sincerely immerse myself into the church, at least on a provisional basis, and see what my experience would be. I also, for reasons I’ll keep personal, saw this as at least possibly an answer to prayers I’d offered not too long ago. Since that day, I have consistently attended Sunday church services (both the sacrament meeting and the subsequent scripture discussion sessions, where I’ve been an active participant even since my first week of attendance as an “investigator” of the faith) and plan to continue doing so. I have successfully given up coffee (not caffeine entirely, although I’m actively working to reduce my daily caffeine consumption and dependence) and pornography. (I had already drastically decreased my alcohol consumption, so reducing it even further to zero has been trivially easy.) I’ve attended various social events organized by the ward, which has allowed me to ensconce myself into a community of bright, wholesome, surprisingly-mature and well-grounded young people. I finally decided that baptism is the next important step — a costly signal of my escalating commitment.
It is difficult for me to articulate the reasons for my decision in a way that would meet the intellectual standards of this forum. I still have many of the same doubts I did before accepting baptism; I still don’t believe that the Book of Mormon is a historically-accurate description of real events that took place in the pre-Columbian Americas. (Rather, I currently believe that it is an allegorical text, intended by God to usher in a new dispensation by providing a scriptural text which would be narratively and intellectually compelling to the specific audience to which He intended it to be presented, given their particular interests, level of historical understanding, and literary/religious frame of reference.) I still have a lot of questions about Joseph Smith’s character, intentions, and leadership qualities. I’m still working on wrapping my mind around what it actually means to aspire to live a Christ-like existence; toward what political/philosophical positions and actions does this obligate me? There are, however, many elements of Mormon theology and the Mormon lifestyle which appeal very strongly to me. (Ideas about the Plan of Salvation and the nature of the afterlife being chief among the theological appeals, and the sexual conservatism being the primary secular/lifestyle appeal.) I was strongly influenced and encouraged by a post a few months ago by @2rafa — arguably my favorite poster here, and the one with whom I probably feel the greatest degree of intellectual and personality kinship — in which she implored people here to embrace the benefits of a loving and welcoming religious community and to try hard not to ruin the experience by thinking too deeply and skeptically about the inner workings of the theology. I decided that if she could do it, I should probably try to see if I could as well. So far it has been more enriching than I could have imagined.
Over the coming weeks I will undergo the rites of the lay priesthood common to all male members of the church, set myself up to begin automatically tithing, and begin working towards obtaining a “temple recommend” allowing me to enter LDS temple buildings. I am actively working on finding a spouse with whom I can raise a family; I’ve already been on a lovely date with an intelligent and creative woman (one of the few female members of the ward somewhat close to my age, as most are closer to 18-20) and have another one already arranged. I expect at least a few of these people to become long-term friends. I don’t know what else to expect in terms of how this will affect my life trajectory, what will be asked of me, etc. All I know is that right now I am finally beginning to taste what it might be like to truly believe that I have a Heavenly Father who loves me, that my Redeemer lives, and that he has provided me with a way to dwell with Him eternally along with my loved ones.
Totalitarianit
15hr ago
I made a comment here that broadly addresses some of these points you're making.
The gamble here is that the optics will have significant utility in deterring other potential migrants. The short term results suggest that it is effective.
"Muh masks" seems to have become a meme here, but it's real. You're Americans, why are you okay being cucked by your government. Masked non-uniformed men are stuffing people into vans. Not just that, they're sending them to third world prisons??? That's insane. Obviously it's nowhere near as bad as the NKVD, but why are you okay taking even a step in that direction? What if the Democrats spin up the "super ATF" who start kidnapping people who fuck up their gun paperwork into unmarked vans to be sent to Romania? Government overreach is bad, period.
We know the potential of the online left to find, doxx, and terrorize people. It's not even up for debate. They will terrorize ICE agents' families. The tools and collective effort that anti-ICE and anti-Trumpers have at their disposal when it comes to identifying, locating and terrorizing these people is massive, and it will be an all-hands-on-deck effort. To them, they would be doxxing Nazis, so it would be for a noble cause.
They made ICE maximally inflammatory, and then you act suprised the Dems are inflamed?
I don't think you appreciate how little "Dems being inflamed" matters anymore. It's not because I, or many other middle right people want to do that. Some do, but I don't want that. That's not the goal for me. It has just become utterly impossible to not inflame Democrats at every stop. Everything Republicans do is racist or fascist, so it doesn't matter. It reminds me of this meme. It may come off as cheesy, but it is nonetheless a great way to convey what the non-left is up against every time they do anything that deviates from kit glove treatment of nonwhites or any "marginalized" community.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
16hr ago
Masked non-uniformed men are stuffing people into vans. Not just that, they're sending them to third world prisons??? That's insane.
They're not US citizens, I don't give a fuck. It's extremely sane, and extremely awesome. FAFO, lawbreakers.
What if the Democrats spin up the "super ATF" who start kidnapping people who fuck up their gun paperwork into unmarked vans to be sent to Romania?
Gun people are meticulous about paperwork, and don't have much sympathy for people who don't do their paperwork. FAFO, lawbreakers.
So make ICE not maximally shit looking, and then let the Democratic leadership alienate themselves protesting something Americans like, instead of currently, where Americans are starting to dislike ICE.
I have already covered this before.
This massively undermines the legitimacy of ICE.
Perfect is the enemy of good. When the GOP fields a "deport all lawbreakers except hotel and farm worker candidate" versus a "deport all lawbreakers" candidate, I'll vote for the latter. But so far, we've only ever been offered the former.
They made ICE maximally inflammatory, and then you act suprised the Dems are inflamed?
I'm not surprised, I'm indifferent. They are inflamed because I exist. I don't care that they don't like it. No matter what I do, they will be inflamed and continuously encroach on me and mine. It's war now, war to the knife. The time for talking is over.
I write this not to wage the culture war, but to express what (I think) many who support these ICE actions are feeling and thinking. In the context above, supporting ICE makes sense. Your use of caps lock made me think you were genuinely distressed and looking to understand the other side. Maybe my answer is disappointing because there is nothing there for you to relate to (hopefully I'm wrong!), but I really think that many people feel this way and therefore really do not care what ICE does to illegals.
clo
23hr ago
So what you're saying is the (current) left is female coded and the right is male coded?
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1d ago
You can look at the court filings yourself. Looks like a travesty to me. Discussed in more detail here.
And yeah having some travesties is unsurprising. The surprising thing to me is that someone is claiming that everyone detained can be looked up on a public website. "Everyone" is quite a high bar.
gattsuru
1d ago
If Democrats believe what they claim to believe, then their actions are in line with those values. ICE agents look like an angry paramilitary that a dictator would deploy against his populace. People believe what they see. Democrats are cherry picking, but the cherry picked images are still real images.
Does this rule apply to any other political cause?
Because we had a debate about a predawn raid where masked and unidentifiable men broke down someone's door and shot the guy in the head over some simple paperwork crimes -- complete with defiance of long-standing policy and only-by-the-text compliance with a warrant -- and people here defended it as all acceptable because He Broke The Law.
For some reason, the cherrypicked image of his ventilated skull wasn't a cause celebre nor a moment for deep retroflection on the costs of a cause; at most, it was reason Those Damned Republicans Should Want Police Reform (that won't apply here). Nor, for that matter, were the dozens of other examples going back decades, sometimes with far greater casualty counts, which, to skip the charcoal briquettes rant, did nothing to sate progressive efforts to The Cause.
Ah, well, nonetheless.
Perhaps there are clear examples of immigration enforcement that weren't cause celebres for the Left? The Nicer, Kinder, Cruelty Isn't The Point 2018 policies were not tolerated and accepted -- even when some of the outrage was based on photos dating to the previous Democratic admin, or entirely made up, it still became The Worst Thing Ever at the same time it didn't work, only for all of those problems to get shoved back in the box as soon as something was (D)ifferent in the Presidency.
Eupraxia
Of all words spoken, all things read / most true was that which went unsaid
1d ago
People who are afraid will self deport.
Illegals aren't afraid of being caught by ICE, they're afraid of having to leave America. The only illegals who will actually leave on their own are either rich enough to avoid the dysfunction of their home countries (in which case, they're probably not illegal) or so dirt-poor that it makes no difference. For the average Jose, living in America is such a massive increase to quality of life that he'll pay his life savings to smugglers for the chance to escape his shithole of origin[1].
roystgnr
1d ago
It seems that people are interpreting "someone on the right engaged in violence or violent rhetoric and Trump offered nothing but a full-throated, unequivocal condemnation" to mean "nothing-but-condemnation of the violence", in which case your request was a reasonable one, but it has been answered. But it seems to me that you meant "nothing but condemnation-of-the-violence", in which case your request might not be answered, but it was an unreasonable one.
Recently I brought up Obama as an example of a very high-profile Blue Triber who was neither cheering nor minimizing the murder of Charlie Kirk ... but should I have been criticizing him instead? He was quick to point out that he thought some of Kirk's ideas were wrong, and to bring up left-wing victims too; he definitely failed the "nothing but condemnation-of-the-violence" standard despite passing "nothing-but-condemnation of the violence".
So, which standard are we looking for here? If "The point wasn't whether he was technically correct when he implied that all sides engage in political violence." then we have no choice but to criticize Obama too!
For that matter, could you clarify what standard Trump was failing with his slippery slope argument? The slope was indeed slippery, including with regards to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in particular. The only "league" in those statements is the class of people whose statues were in jeopardy, and it turned out that he was correct that they were all in that same class. I mostly like your reasoning better, personally! The idea that the Founding Fathers should have been in a league of their own beyond anachronistic condemnation was defensible, until we discovered it was wrong. It's only the part where you get upset at him for being right in foresight where you were wrong despite hindsight that you went off the rails.
Some of these may be "stopped clock is correct twice a day" situations for Trump, but then just stick with the incorrect things to criticize instead! The trick to criticizing people for merely being "technically correct" is that you have to remember that our goal is to be morally correct in addition to being technically correct; you can't be morally correct instead. I get that it's infuriating to have to hold yourself to a higher standard than the President of the United States, but in a virtue and deontological sense that's the right thing to do for its own sake; and in a consequentialist sense, the worse the target of your argument is, the more important it is to not just throw mud at the wall to see what sticks.
ulyssessword
1d ago
I remember Netstack's top level comment how the vibe shift even affected his parents.
And that wasn't about how great she is. It's about how great other people find her (and yes, how she brought the vibe shift). There were a couple real examples downthread from that, but the overall sentiment in that thread is still negative.
I think you're presenting a fringe opinion (on the motte, not in the States as a whole) as a consensus, or at least a major fraction. The threads I saw were overall negative on Harris, though some comments did contain more equivocation than I remembered.
ulyssessword
2d ago
I distinctly remember posters here telling me how great she is.
I found it! Perhaps the only comment on the entire Motte that is unequivocably pro-Harris. Oh wait, I found one more, and a third that might count.
I suppose the plural is valid, but I expected a lot more than that when I skimmed through the entirety of those two threads.
I thought Klein had it mostly right there, and it reminds me of something Dean said on this site a while back, albeit about fictional characters. Do so-and-so feel like they want people like me in their lives? Not just tolerate me, not be civil or 'inclusive', but genuinely want people like me to be happy? Do they want me around?
It's a piece of advice that I would actually generalise to all people. Be the kind of person who is interested in other people. Be the kind of person who wants other people in his life. As this applies to gender, I'm reminded of Eneasz Brodski writing about the same - be the kind of man who genuinely likes women, and look for the kind of woman who genuinely likes men. That doesn't necessarily mean sexually or romantically (here I like Dean's examples of celibate or homosexual women who clearly care deeply about white men in their lives), but you need to like other people.
Obviously policy matters and this is not the one weird trick that will fix all the Democrats' problems, but insofar as attitude or culture can help, I would advise them to start by trying to like - to genuinely like and appreciate - the kind of people they want to vote for them. You cannot say, or even imply, "vote for me you pond scum". Start by training yourself to like them. It's possible. Openness and affection for people is something that can be practiced.
faceh
2d ago
Oh yeah.
Lets leave aside how he's in a central 'position of trust' for the State.
I feel vaguely hypocritical on this point because I generally support the idea of using political power to make your ideological opponents uncomfortable enough to leave (I mean implement policies they don't like and would want to get away from, rather than policies specifically targeting them for their political associations) but having your state's executive branch have an unstated policy of leniency on violence against political opponents is a genuinely terrifying thought to me. Doubly so if your state's self defense laws are weak. Virginia is Stand Your Ground, at least.
Thankfully one that IS pretty handily solved by moving away and/or organizing a campaign to oust the problem candidates. But it does harken back to my Skin in the Game rant. If you want to support the idea of political violence against opponents, in the abstract, I would prefer if you, personally, or people you care a lot about, are at risk of getting targeted by it. Instead, what always happens is the political class circles the wagons and ups their levels of security and leaves everyone else to fend for themselves.
Would it be wrong to suggest that a Gentlemanly duel between the parties in question here might be a way to resolve the grievances?
As I said, these are not folks I want to share a country with.
I want the temperature lowered and I want there to be pretty swift consequences for those engaging in and fomenting political violence.
I do not think that is possible, I do not think that is going to happen, while Trump is in office.
Nor do I think it would happen if literally any Republican is President and the GOP grasps Congress.
Because the source of the problem appears to entirely be due to the behavioral tendencies of lefties when they're out of power.
And I've observed 'normal' people gin up justifications for enacting violence on random bystanders for, e.g. Wearing a MAGA hat, saying the N word (esp. within earshot of a black person), or expressing an anti-abortion position. (The righty version of this tends to be ginning up justifications for why someone's behavior warranted police brutality or being victimized by a criminal. "Your policies created this" is a common theme there).
We have some amount of evidence that Democrats in power at least tacitly approve of randos taking potshots at their political opponents. And a little evidence that they desire it.
And this isn't really limited to the States as far as I can tell.
I'm barely old enough to remember when Margaret Thatcher died and her opponents made Ding Dong the Witch is Dead a top-playing song on the radio in the U.K.
Regardless of how distasteful it was, I can commend at least waiting for someone's natural death of old age to celebrate it.
All the reliable-seeming sources I look at has it clear that political violence aimed at advancing one's agenda is more accepted the more left/liberal the respondent, generally. Variations by age and sex, but a clear contrast remains.
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52960-charlie-kirk-americans-political-violence-poll
https://research.skeptic.com/support-for-political-violence-agreement-by-political-orientation/
This one was revealing, support for political violence is higher among the most educated class. Which we know skews liberal, but these are also the people who are probably least able to carry out such violence. Maybe its merely an artifact. https://research.skeptic.com/support-for-political-violence-agreement-by-educational-attainment/
Note: I think this actually makes the lefties fairly consistent. If you actually maintain the belief that your ideological opponents are authoritarian genocidal maniacs who will create the Fourth Reich the very instant they acquire full power, then yes, you kinda have to approve of any and all methods of stopping them.
And while I do not accuse ALL liberals of wanting me dead, by a long shot, the evidence is also showing that they're far too milquetoast in restraining the ones who do, so they're not very useful allies for the decreasing the temperature. It reads like they are getting bullied by their own extremists and are folding due to Taleb's Dictatorship of the small Minority. To the extent liberals are ambivalent towards political violence by their side, they will continue to permit it.
I really do want those who are actively ginning up violence and the relatively small category of crazies who are most likely to act out violently to be removed from the country. Ideally, voluntarily. I don't want them dead, although I approve of acting in self-defense against those who attempt to kill others. And the fact that BOTH those variables seem to correlate with Democrat voters is very much coincidence to my desire here. I live mostly around righties, and if I thought they were likely to support outbursts of the old ultraviolence, I wouldn't live around them and would want them removed too.
Caveat that I'm pretty sure the strongest mediator on support for violence is whether your 'side' has political power. It is also hard to find as much good data prior to 2020, and I'm also guessing that most of this is downstream of the deepening overall political divide, so its not that this can't be repaired... its just been more tolerated recently.
I don't like that I'm basically holding my breath as I wait for the next incident of targeted political assassination to occur, and hoping that its not a bomb this time. I might be overreacting in general, but I feel pretty detached as I remain confident I am not a target of any kind.
For bonus points, Jones specifically demanded that a police officer be booted after donating to Kyle Rittenhouse's defense fund. To be fair, this dropped on a Friday, and perhaps the other VA Democratic party is just working up to slapping him down. To be less charitable, the Dem governor candidate's released a statement demanding 'responsibility' rather than 'resignation' or, to drop the alliteration, leaving the race, and some local Dems and orgs are just more full-throated in support; it doesn't take a Cassandra to know where this is going.
Both Jones and Spanberger has more than a fair share of past scandals (Jones also dealt with a ludicrous speeding ticket by getting 500 hours of community service... which he served with his own PAC), they 'only' had a significant but not insurmountable lead in the last polls (for whatever giant grain of salt you want to take those with), and their opponents are pretty boring milquetoast conservatives. It's possible they'll have put forward their best efforts toward losing, and will somehow manage it for Jones.
But I'm not optimistic, and perhaps more damning, very few people on the Dem side of the branch is treating this like even a purely-political five-alarm fire. Just like Omhar avoiding censure where Gosar ate one, we have past examples of how politicians react to truly disqualifying acts by one of their compatriots being dropped too late in the race to replace them. This ain't it, bub.
One could argue attorneys general don't 'really' matter. But we have examples of elected Democratic officials dropping charges in cases with literal video evidence; there are recent situations where Virginia specifically needed and didn't have a chief law enforcement officer willing to cauterize out endemic tolerance of serious crimes.
But, yeah, the pattern's continuing, falcon gyre yada yada. It's not just The Algorithm when it shows up in random who's who of this very community and gets directly sent from one politician to another, it's not nutpicking when it walks up to you at work, it's not just some rando on the internet when it's a big part of the communities you wanted to spend your time in or the big names in industries you wanted to get involved with.
oats_son
2d ago
I am worried about this, just not "they're going to start rounding up red-tribers any day now" worried.
This, too, seems like it's a misunderstanding of @WhiningCoil's point. Did you read his original post about pogroms? It's not about rounding people up and executing them, it's about making it clear you hate a class of people, through rhetoric and through occasional targeted violence. Please tell me you've read his post fully before you downplay the fear of a pogrom again. His logic makes sense to me, and it's pretty topical, given current events.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
2d ago
Yes, Democrats Really Do Want You Dead
Some people have already put the Charlie Kirk assassination into the memory box. For others it still feel terrifyingly relavent. The initial shock at the cheers and jubulant celebration at his gruesome public execution has faded slightly. The public square dominated by Democratic figures and Never Trumpers invoking some fraudulent both sidesism has, like it or not, dulled some of the public backlash. And honestly, the compulsive conspiracy theorist on the right hasn't helped maintain moral clarity in the wake of his murder either.
You may remember, I've talked before about the casual genocidal bloodlust the average Northern VA Democrat has based on the time I lived there. And while Democrats, for now, seem to have enough message discipline to not get on CNN and openly say "Yes, Republicans deserve to be murdered", their line is just shy of that incredibly low bar. Enter Jay Jones.
He's been caught essentially laying out the case that Republicans should be shot and killed, and their children murdered in front of them, so that they change their politics. A DM conversation "leaked" where in he has this conversation with a Republican colleage in the Virginia House I believe. So this wasn't even exactly an "in house" conversation. Just straight up telling the opposition, "Hey, I think you deserve to die" like it would never or could never come back to haunt him.
As of now, no Democrat has pulled their endorsement of him, I saw one single local Democrat say he would stop campaigning with him, several groups have actively reaffirmed his endorsement still saying he's somehow better than your generic Republican. His brazen assertion that you should kill even the children too, because "they are breeding little fascist" is probably a huge hit in Northern VA. Finally someone who openly talks and thinks like they do. I've seen those exact words on the NOVA subreddit every day. He's very likely to have top legal authority over me and my children, whom he believes deserve to die.
I'm gonna be honest, I'm fairly distressed over this. This is how Pogroms work. In the famed Jewish Pogroms of 1881, 40 Jews were killed leading to a mass emigration from Russia. I wonder if we'll hit that number in Virginia the next 4 years. I fully expect my deep red rural county that's been electorally attached through gerrymandering to Fairfax will be aggressively "enriched" as punishment for voting wrong.
Eupraxia
Of all words spoken, all things read / most true was that which went unsaid
5d ago
It's a belief that whites as a class as superior to other races as a class which requires an additional very important racial consciousness layer that is not necessarily present.
Civilizations can be considered as the cumulative efforts of a people/race "as a class".
That I'm closer to the center of a bellcurve of my race than my equally qualified colleague Milton is a curious bit of trivia that need not concern either of us.
It concerns your hypothetical colleague when women cross the street when they see him coming, when his kids stand out in the good schools he sends them too, when the criminals on the news always seem to look like him.
You'll note that I mentioned group dignity as a reason why non-whites/asians are understandably hostile towards HBD. I'm working on a post expounding on this at length, but for now I'll leave you with @hanikrummihundursvin's comment on a related thread:
[Humans] exist as biological entities. Genes expressed in an environment. We are a 'social animal'. We exist in groups. We interact with groups. You don't exist as an idea. You exist as a part of a greater whole. [...] I wish that the individual, reason driven, enlightened and fair minded people could understand and empathize with the emotion being displayed in the OP. Being part of a 'whole' that is in some ways lesser than another is a constant feeling of badness. The aforementioned minded, who want to rise above such silly emotions, or simply lack them, need to understand that they are a minority of a minority.
There doesn't seem to be anything special about this form of getting money as opposed to any other form of getting money (except that it's bad and the left did it, so it's a chance to get in a partisan dig).
It is, potentially, a massive amount of money; it can, potentially, be specifically targeted and legally obligated to be used for a specific partisan activity; it also leaves a massive ideologically-unappealing penalty that will often be directly acting as a reminder while waving signs on the lawn of the bad actors in question.
Uhhh, so how does that help? Is that what was demonstrated to work in the past? Did prior Democratic administrations actually fix something about the banks or whoever they sued when they got money from them? If not, then ???
The Democratic administrations did, in fact, get the banks (and many tech companies) willing to bend over backwards out of fear of costly not!fines which would sent to activist groups that hated them and would have the backing to bring other costly lawsuits. I wouldn't call it fixing, since I don't have the same goals as the but the banks drastically revamp their behaviors for more than a decade, even through the first Trump admin, both on who they allowed to have accounts and who they didn't.
There's reasons that might not work for the Republican Party -- judges tend to treat colleges better and Republicans worse, having an adequate supply of favorable news coverage seems like it was important, the Red Tribe does not have as many of the relevant dedicated administrative agents required, and there's just a second actor disadvantage. But it's not an Underpants Gnome proposal.
It doesn't reduce the ability of the federal government to act against universities, if that's what you're asking. But that ship has sailed; no one has any proposal with any chance of working to do that. If we want university administrations to be less likely to actively discriminate, and to not promote hilariously fraudulent partisan activities under the auspices and honors of 'research', I'd love an answer that wasn't the government's carrot or stick. But there's zero idea on how to do that.
Your own proposal of requiring administrators to affirm things isn't even coherent within that framework, but it's also a joke given that these orgs were long supposed to already be affirming it, and were more likely to get in trouble for fucking with an antivirus setting than for putting out Whites Need Not Apply signs.
This (bad, partisan) way of getting money may be doable and hard to undo, but it seems to not even have a passing familiarity with solving any of the actual problems we set out to solve.
I think it does. There are several extant lawsuits focusing on unlawful DoE discrimination against disfavoured minorities, university discrimination against disfavoured minorities, of widespread fraudy behaviors by colleges and their research components, and that's before the widespread tolerance or outright advocacy of political discrimination or violence. Many of these orgs running those lawsuits have a lot of focus on these problems; many of these lawsuits are focused on the very specific issues that impact the ability of academic institutions to perform in their claimed roles.
And those are just the lawsuits already in pipe. A lot of the other stuff doesn't have lawsuits floating around simply because any lawyer worth their salt knows without a friendly federal admin it'd be a vanity suit.
Again, I'm not convinced this will work! But again, it's also far from Underpants Gnomes.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
6d ago
I think this is the part that upsets me about the situation. I used to hope for this too, but that pretty heavily relies on a slow take-off. What happens when the friendly AI is simply better able to make your decisions for you? To manipulate you effortlessly? Or when you can't understand the upgrades in the first place, and have to trust the shuggoth that they work as claimed? You might not want to wirehead, but why do you think what you want will continue to matter? What happens when you can get one-shot by super-effective stimulus, like a chicken being hypnotized? Any takeoff faster than Accelerando probably renders us well obsolete long before we could adjust to the first generation of upgrades.
In most of the scenarios, there's literally nothing I can do! Which is why I don't worry about them more than I can help. However, and this might shock people given how much I talk about AI x-risk, I think the odds of it directly killing us are "only" ~20%, which leaves a lot of probability mass for Good Endings.
AI can be genuinely transformative. It might unlock technological marvels, and in its absence, it might take us ages to climb up the tech tree, or figure out other ways to augment our cognition. It's not that we can't do that at all by ourselves, I think a purely baseline civilization can, over time, get working BCIs, build Dyson Swarms and conquer the lightcone. It'll just take waaaay longer, and in the meantime those of us currently around might die.
However:
Or when you can't understand the upgrades in the first place, and have to trust the shuggoth that they work as claimed?
I think there's plenty of room for slow cognitive self-improvement (or externally aided improvement). I think it's entirely plausible that there are mechanisms I might understand that would give me a few IQ points without altering my consciousness too much, while equipping me to understand what's on the next rung of the ladder. So on till I'm a godlike consciousness.
Then there's all the fuckery you can do with uploads. I might have a backup/fork that's the alpha tester for new enhancements (I guess we draw straws), with the option to rollback. Or I might ask the smartest humans around, the ones that seem sane. Or the sanest transhumans. Or another AGI, assuming a non-singleton scenario.
And that ties back to the "meaningful work" stuff. We're not just souls stuck in a limited body, and it would be neat if the souls could be transplanted to awesome robot bodies. The meat is what we are. The substrate is the substance. Your cognition 1.0 is dependent on the hormones and molecules and chemicals that exist in your brain.
I'm the evolving pattern within the meat, which is a very different thing from just the constituent atoms or a "soul". I identify with the hypothetical version of me inside a computer as you do with a digital scan of a cherished VHS tape. The physical tape doesn't matter, the video does. I see no reason we can't also simulate the chemical influences on cognition to arbitrary accuracy, that just increases the overhead, we can probably cut corners on the level of specific dopamine receptors without screwing things up too much.
If you want an exhaustive take on my understanding of identity, I have a full writeup:
https://www.themotte.org/post/3094/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/362713?context=8#context
We are specific types of creatures designed to function in specific environments, and to seek specific goals. How much "upgrade" before we turn into those animals that can't breed in captivity because something about the unnatural environment has their instincts screaming? Again, it's one thing if we're slowly going through Accelerando, taking years to acclimate to each expansion and upgrade.
Some might argue that the former has already happened, given the birth rate crisis. But I really don't see a more advanced civilization struggling to reproduce themselves. A biological one would invent artificial wombs, a digital one would fork or create new minds de-novo. We exist in an awkward interlude where we need to fuck our way out of the problem but can't find the fucking solution, pun intended.
But fast takeoff, AGI 2027? That seems a lot more like "write your name on the Teslabot and then kill yourself" - as the good outcome. Maybe we can just VR ourselves back to a good place, live in permanent 1999, but why on earth would an AI overlord want to waste the resources?
Isn't that the whole point of Alignment? We want an "AI overlord" that is genuinely benevolent, and which wants to take care of us. That's the difference between a loving pet owner and someone who can't shoot their yappy dog because of PETA. Now, ideally, I'd want AI to be less an overlord and more of a superintelligent assistant, but the former isn't really that bad if they're looking out for us.
You talk about writing a character only as smart as yourself, but that's keying into the thing that terrifies me and missing the point. What happens when "smarter than you" is table stakes? Imagine life from the perspective of a pet gerbil - perhaps vaguely aware that things are going on with the owners, but just fundamentally incapable of comprehending any of it, and certainly not of having any role or impact. Even Accelerando walked back from the precipice of the full, existential horror of it all. You don't want to write a story about human obsolescence? Bro, you're living in one.
My idealized solution is to try and keep up. I fully recognize that might not be a possibility. What else can we really do, other than go on a Butlerian Jihad? I don't think things are quite that bad, yet, and I'm balancing the risk against the reward that aligned ASI might bring.
You don't want to write a story about human obsolescence? Bro, you're living in one.
Quite possibly! Which is why writing one would be redundant. Most of us can do little more than cross our fingers and hope that things work out in the end. If not, hey, death will probably be quick.
RenOS
something is wrong
6d ago
While I agree with Tractatus' reply as well, I've also had a recent post on a very related topic, namely the dissolution of marriage. Social changes are rarely actually instant; They are spreading & compounding. Just because something became legal, doesn't mean that everyone is doing it. Usually it's only a small community really taking advantage of the most recent change, while the majority just mostly carries on with what they grew up with, unless they have a very good reason.
I'd argue the social normalization of the porn industry reached a peak in the West about 20 or 30 years ago, and a reversal has been palpable since then. I mentioned it before here. So the article is probably correct about the overall trend.
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