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Why was faith in our institutions so high 50 years ago?
Because most of the senior people in US institutions at that time were rags-to-riches war heroes. There would have been people there that were literally born in a hole in the ground, and every single one of them would have experienced the Great Depression.
That sort of thing tends to bring... certain perspectives that most today lack. The hysteria over the uncommon cold would never have occurred with them in charge, because this actually did occur, twice, with flu viruses that were deadlier per capita than said cold.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
13m ago
And on a lot more than BJJ at that.
I realize I'm doing that annoying thing where I tell a story and then add details to it in a later reply, but you'd be very wrong to do so. The amount of absolutely horrifyingly bad advice on divorce, real estate purchases, finances, and car repair...it's actually shocking.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
16m ago
As captain Haddock would say...
MAGA inherited the power and organizations that old-school conservatives have left. They're aging out of the game of life, and their kids hate them and want to destroy their legacy, so they have decided to vote for their grandchildren's interests instead.
The goal of any rational traditionalist at this point should be to throw their support behind the political bloc that sees them more as a quaint curiosity (perhaps with a younger man writing an elegy for them) rather than an enemy to be destroyed. The new Red party is not going to advance Christian interests, but a draw in this matter is as good as a win given the alternative.
ControlsFreak
30m ago
They may send it to a collector. They may also just sue you directly, which is apparently a thing that has been happening more often. One of those things where, sure, if you're flat broke and judgment proof, then perhaps you can 'get away with something'. I was under the impression that you were inclined to disfavor systems that inherently gave free stuff to broke, judgment proof folks and crushed upstanding citizens with assets to lose.
Ultimately I think that's simply because most people are intuitively centrists or flexible, but that's a tough position to defend in debates, because keeping your options open is also what someone without a plan would say they're doing. But ideology blinds and binds. Whenever a politician is out of power, they argue like ideologues, and they argue that whoever is in power is failling their own ideology by not sticking to it. It's an easy position to stake. Keeping your options open, while smart, makes you an easy target for nasty headlines, anything you refuse to rule out off the cuff while talking to a journalist (and they won't give you time to think) will be held up as "(politician) could/might/is considering doing this stupid thing!" Trump got very good at evading the trap, but most politicians stumble, they either submit and rule out the stupid thing and then they're made to look weak or stupid for having even considered it, or they find themselves driven into defending the stupid thing.
And that's how we find ourselves in a situation where people kind of hates all sides and no politician can really ever seem like just a smart honest person. Because you can't argue the same positions in the opposition and in power.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
40m ago
It doesn't seem like your hiatus has given you much optimism on the culture war front.
It's been asked repeatedly in this thread, but can anyone name a single time Democrats opted for grace and forgiveness, for not "punching back twice as hard", for not "sending one of theirs to the morgue"?
The gap between 'grace and forgiveness' and 'punching back twice as hard' is wide enough to drive a semi through, but I'll try:
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After the conservative majority on the supreme court (viewed by many on the left as obtained through defection) struck down Roe v. Wade, many people here and elsewhere predicted riots and burnination in every major city in America. Ask Whiningcoil and FC about that one. Where, exactly, is the punchback from that one? Jane's revenge?
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Similar predictions of riots, defections, #resistance after Trump's inauguration in 2024. Even the protests were muted compared to 2016, Trump deleted USAID, laid off some largely indeterminate number of federal workers, is extorting Harvard and the other major colleges for hundreds of millions for 'antisemitism' (among other things). NIH and NSF have proposed budget cuts of ~40% each for 2026 - I suppose congress can appropriate the funds and Trump can just do to NIH/NSF what he did to USAID.
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Since you want to talk about immigration, where's the liberal defection in response to Desantis and Abbott sending busloads of illegal immigrants to Martha's Vineyard or other liberal strongholds? People bitched about it, but it's not like Desantis/Abbott are being harassed by the feds or blue states are shipping red-county fentanyl addicts to Florida and Texas.
In the dim recesses of the past, I can recall John McCain telling one of his supporters to be less racist and cruel towards Obama. But I sincerely can't think of an instance from the other side more recent than Bill Clinton's Sister Soulja incident.
Your example for Republicans is what, 17 years old? And isn't even from a sitting president. Has Trump ever told his supporters to be nicer to Biden? There's no asymmetric defection here.
For God's sake, we just had four years of lockdowns,
You mean the lockdowns that started during Trump's administration, that he could have stopped at any time for months? Lockdowns that had overwhelming bipartisan support in the first 1-6 months of their institution? Lockdowns that, I'll remind you, many people here predicted would be permanent as they asserted the government would never voluntarily relinquish power that they had taken from the people and it would be 'lockdowns forever.'
total defections on having a border at all. They went Stalinist levels of low to throw Trump in jail and bankrupt him, and as many of his supporters as possible alongside him.
You're not concerned about Trump calling a governor and asking him to find votes after losing an election? I'm genuinely asking - do you think it was justified because democrats stole the election in Georgia, because this is normal behavior for presidents who lose elections, or you just don't think he should face consequences?
The totality on the left of people who gleefully cheered when Trump was arrested spent this weekend crashing out because war criminal John Bolton was arrested
Come on, this is your steelman for why people are worried that John Bolton was arrested? The guy publicly had a falling out with Trump, wrote a nasty book about him and now he's got the FBI kicking down his door. You're not worried at all about the weaponization of the DoJ?
If Democrats honestly think this is "0.9-tits-for-a-tat", then we should just start the civil war.
There's this funny phenomenon I've noticed during my time here. Regardless of what happens in the real world, regardless of the fortunes of Blue Tribe or Red Tribe, blackpilling only increases. Lockdowns/COVID end? Roe V. Wade overturned? Trump wins a trifecta in 2024? Doesn't matter, the response is only either gloating or increased pessimism.
I genuinely still don't know why this is. Are the moderates leaving the site and losing interest, and all that's left is the bitterest remnant? My perception is that this seems to be broader than TheMotte, though. And my recollection of you, at least, is that you were fairly restrained in your rhetoric and beliefs.
Secondly - much ado is made about the loss of faith in institutions over the last decade, but I have to admit the inverse is just as interesting to me. Why was faith in our institutions so high 50 years ago? Do you really think the government or New York Times were that much more honest with the plebs in the 70s than they are in the 2020s? And if not, is faith in flawed institutions nevertheless adaptive for a society?
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
54m ago
If there was a concerted effort at any point in time, it would have to have been a pan-national cover up of frankly astonishing proportions
Steelman: the mistake is the assumption that you need a coordinated coverup. What about uncoordinated one?
Scientific literature has no shortage of results that don't hold up. If you take proponents of Bayesian statistics seriously, vast majority of statistical methods in all published literature use subpar methodology (NHST p-values) which is often misinterpreted. Does this need coordinated malice? No, incentives are sufficient to yield uncoordinated malice. I see similar stuff everyday at my work.
What is the one largest possible incentive? Find out that the institutions made a mistake, nearly everyone was pushed vaccine that has harmful side-effect, young adult males most at risk.
It is only a steelman however. Personally, my problem is that no anti-COVID-vaccine skeptic has ever pushed a study that attempts to there is prominent rise of side-effects and they can be attributed to vaccine, not COVID itself. Secondly, when vaccines really do cause notable increase of major side effects, people have previously noticed relatively quickly.
(Anti-anti-steelman, which makes me nervous: Swedish-Finnish pandemrix-narcolepsy case is about as well established as such causal relationship can be. It is notable that publications by anglosphere institutions like CDC and NICE and WHO seem to downplay it, presumably due to risk of fueling perceived fake vaccine scares?)
This isn't my main area of expertise. Someone else could give a better answer than me, possibly even on this forum.
That said, did you read the paper? They have a list of 3,000 traits they pull from and any gene associated with more than one trait is called pleiotropic. The 81% figure is functionally meaningless because showing that a gene can predispose you to both lupus and arthritis, or depression and anxiety is not particularly meaningful. They try to get around this with the 67% figure (i.e. grouping traits by domain), but even that is fraught.
Take, for instance (from their paper):
Interferon gamma (IFNG): Going to assume you have no knowledge of immunology, but I can be more granular if you like. This gene is important for the immune response to many different infections, many of which occur in the gut. SNPs in IFNG are also linked to GI issues, but these are downstream to it's role in the immune system controlling the gut microbiome/infections. Is this 'pleiotropy' as you would understand it? There's plenty of examples like this I could give.
If you really want to dig deep, look at supplementary table 19 or figure from that paper. The fraction of genes linked to cognitive traits that also have significant associations with inter-domain traits is very low for body structure, skeletal, connective tissue traits.
I'm far from the authority on human genetics, but look at the complexity from a casual conversation and trying to distill academia's definition of pleiotropy to a practical understanding. And if OP is so confident in his assertion, shouldn't he have the references/arguments ready at hand?
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