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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

Seeing this written out explicitly, it makes me wish that more people would be open and honest about their view on this like here. Because this comment reminded me of 3 different things.

One was during the aftermath of 9/11 when the PATRIOT ACT and War on Terror were pushed through, with one of the arguments from the Republican/conservative side in favor of these things being that "the US Constitution is not a suicide pact," which was completely ineffective as an argument against most Democrats/liberals/progressives by my observation. The reasoning being that, if adhering to the Constitution would result in the destruction of the country that follows it, then that justifies not adhering to it, so that the country that actually makes the Constitution meaningful beyond some scribbles on paper, can keep on keeping it meaningful. And the most common counterargument was some variant of, "If this means the USA is destroyed, then so be it, at least we followed principles of civil liberty and privacy and etc. along the way."

Another was part of an interview in a documentary called The Red Pill, which was made by a feminist named Cassie Jaye as a way to explore the red pill community/movement/whatever and related man-o-sphere groups like men's rights activists and men going their own way. She interviewed a lot of people, but one of them was a feminist academic, and one of the questions had to do with the idea that, what if the Patriarchy, as feminist academics like herself, understood it, was something that was needed in some form in order to keep human civilization going, since women freed from its shackles empirically keep choosing to have too few children to keep above replacement. Her answer was pretty much "that's a depressing thought," followed by a non-answer in a way that gave the impression that she clearly had thought very little about this possibility, i.e. that this possibility just wasn't something she particularly cared about.

The third is more general throughout the interminable arguments about US immigration, where a common conservative argument against open borders is that allowing anyone in who wants to come in would cause US society to worsen, including, at the limits, just destroying the country altogether. And one common sentiment, though rarely stated explicitly, among progressives who reject this argument, has been something along the lines of, "If open borders would destroy the USA, then so be it; at least we didn't discriminate against foreigners along the way." This happened to explicitly be my own position for a while, before I decided I was selfish enough to want to keep some of the benefits of USA society for myself in the future.

In each of these, one can make some argument based on facts for why the bad thing won't happen: even without the PATRIOT ACT, USA would remain a safe and powerful country; even with maximal female emancipation and sex equality for whatever those mean for any given feminist academic/activist, human society could keep surviving and even thriving; even with open borders, it's possible that USA will be just as prosperous and safe a nation to live in as before, just servicing more and poorer people. There are good and bad arguments for and against all of these positions. But looking from the inside, it seemed to me that these arguments weren't made based on good faith belief in them, but rather based on motivated reasoning, in order to avoid having to make the argument that the benefits are worth the harms, in favor of just denying that harms exist (this is a common pattern you've probably seen in every aspect of life, from the most minute decisions one might make in everyday life all the way to the biggest, most world-altering policies or military actions).

Now, I have little idea if this is a left/progressive thing; I've just observed it in that group because I am part of that group and have spent most of my life surrounded by people in that group. I suspect that conservatives, by their nature of preferring tradition - such as the tradition of keeping civilization going for the next generation - have a greater tendency to want to keep humanity and human civilization going than progressives, who tend to be skeptical of tradition. But either way, I'm quite sure this attitude of "why care about humanity's survival when we have my favorite principles to worry about" is extremely common among progressives. Usually, it's not explicitly spoken or even thought, it gets laundered in, as alluded to above, by motivating oneself to believe that the evidence indicates that one's principles don't actually conflict with other goals such as survival of humanity/human civilization (in fact, I see such motivated reasoning often leading people to believe that their principles are actually synergistic to good goal, such as game devs genuinely believing that putting in characters that conform with their ideology would also lead to more sales due to expanding the market).

Which, to me, is interesting to think about with respect to the concept of a "progressive," which indicates someone who wants to "progress" - but what's the point of progress if there's no one around to enjoy its fruits? One way to think about it might be that we've "progressed" beyond ideologies for the benefit of the comfort and life satisfaction of mere animals such as ourselves and to pure principles that are Good or Bad due to arguments that I found convincing, rather than due to empirical consequences of following them. Which looks a lot like inventing a god or a religion.

Traditional religions make this kind of argument all the time, of course, under the justification of God, who is said to be intrinsically good and beyond understanding and judgment by mere mortals such as ourselves. And He might also punish/reward us in the afterlife, which means even from a completely selfish cynical perspective, following His principles is in my interest. Convincing if you already believe in Him, not so much if you don't. But progressive ideology largely rejects religion and associated supernatural beliefs, and so there is no Heaven or Hell to reward the souls of extinct humans; we just stop existing. And there's no God or faith in God to use as a compass for figuring out what principles are good, we just have academics at our local Critical Theory-related college departments to instruct us what's good. I'm reminded of the criticism often thrown at "wokes," that they copied the original sin of Christianity without copying the forgiveness and redemption.

There's also the reality of a group like "Extinction Rebellion," which is explicitly against the extinction of humanity and what most people would agree is a "progressive" group. However, the fact that the group's mission has to do with stopping global warming, something I don't think I've seen anyone seriously argue has a meaningful chance at making humanity go extinct or even destroying human civilization to enough of an extent to be close enough, makes me think it's more motivated reasoning with an intentionally eyebrow-raising name than genuine motivation.

In any case, I doubt that more than a handful of particularly honest and self-aware progressives explicitly believe this notion, but I commonly see this attitude of "human civilization is a small price to pay for achieving our principles" at virtually every level of analysis and rhetoric put forth by people belonging to this cluster of ideologies. I just wish everyone was more honest and open about this. A progressive who thinks like this and a conservative who wants human society both to stay alive and stay just as good, if not become better, are actually, fundamentally, at odds with each other in terms of goals, not just the methods. If people actually have honest, true, correct beliefs about the goals and principles of others, a lot less time and effort can be wasted in making arguments that falsely presume a common ground.

I'm also reminded of the commonly known "thrive/survive" dichotomy, where progressives are characterized as focusing on how we can thrive, which is only possible in times of plenty, and conservatives are characterized as focusing on how we can survive, which is most relevant in times of not plenty. Sacrificing thriving too much for the sake of survival seems like a likely failure mode of the latter, while sacrificing surviving too much for the sake of thriving seems like a likely failure mode of the former.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

The problem with the end of civilization is that the alternatives suck.

Furthermore, I think we have a serious problem in humanity civilization or not if basic biological necessities like perpetuating the species or not eating ourselves to death, or those kinds of things. I’m hypothesizing that we’re creating a very hyper stimulating environment that hijacks our normal biological systems in ways that are more stimulating than the normal activities that our hyper stimulating environment creates. I’m looking into a minimalistic sort of entertainment tech detox that im suspecting will prove this out. But if people are hyper stimulated by media, technology and so on to the point that they don’t end up socializing as much as they should, or if porn (which I don’t do) is hyper stimulating to the point that real life humans and dating them cannot compete, I think we may be engineering our own species out of existence much like we created beer bottles for Australian beetles to prefer to hump over real female beetles. If this is the case, it needs to be dealt with unless the royal we are perfectly okay with killing off the most intelligent species we know of in the entire universe to make the money printer go brrrrr.

I always imagined the Great Filter might be something exciting like a war or a plague. Turns out that it might be us creating systems that stimulate our brains too much.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

hail mary to game the stats

Or maybe it was a way to keep them busy and out of the way of people doing actual work.

Why not both? And I don't mean game the stats to get more white offenders or whatever, I mean it in the usual sense that police departments game the stats by going out trying to write lots of citations to hit their quotas for the week. These lady cops (or their supervisor) had the bright idea to go out doing this to generate some citations and pump the numbers, and the supervisor might have signed off on it to help his employees hit their numbers, as well getting them out of the way for some actual work being done. Unremarkable business as usual for police departments.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

This is not the sort of engagement we are looking for here. You are a brand-new account, and do not appear to understand the rules here or the intent behind them. Banned for a day; please familiarize yourself with the rules linked in the sidebar before engaging further.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

Annoying nitpick. Civilization ending and the human species existing are not necessarily equivalent.

I personalty would prefer for any future descendants to live in a high functioning civilization, but presumably the anarcho-primitivists might still have preference for human species existing but also for civilization ending. Return to Monke, and all that.

Travel Report: Bikepacking through Switzerland

10k mAh bank

I understand that mAh is the most common way to quote power bank size, but why do the manufactures insist on quoting it that way? Do they really run the cells in a 1SnP configuration? Or is it mAh per cell times n cells? Why can't they use Wh?

At 10 Ah, assuming nominal cell voltage of 3.6 V, and a 1C charging limit, that probably does limit you to 30W input banks. It's surprisingly hard to find banks that will charge at a full 1C though. A 60W+ charger still might be worth it, they can be pretty compact now. Then you could also plug in your phone, and over a one hour lunch, you should be over 80% on both the phone and bank.

I feel for you on the lunch situation. We once got trapped from 11:15AM-2:30PM in that area. There was only one hostess working a pretty decent sized floor and she decided to work it first in last out for a bunch of multi course meals.

It's very strange, given the high standard of living, but my anecdotal experience is that people from the US often get inexplicable GI things in the Franco-Swiss region. I had a friend who ended up hospitalized. She wasn't even drinking for streams or anything, just eating more or less normal stuff. I wish I knew what we are doing wrong.

Travel Report: Bikepacking through Switzerland

I've done a fair bit of solo travel both on and off the bike,

Done any interesting distance hiking? I'm contemplating a long trail (CDT or PCT) for next year.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

With catcalling, it seems to me pretty unreasonable in 2025 to imagine catcalling might be welcome, so even if a given catcaller wishfully thinks it will be taken as flattery

Society is not uniform. For instance the incident that naraburns alluded to when most of the catcallers weren't white. I wouldn't be surprised if there are sections of society where catcalling is acceptable. They just don't overlap with friends of Internet geeks very much.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

For example, if I was in a jury, you would have a hard time convincing me that someone who wolf-whistles intends to humiliate the recipient

This gets into questions of constructive intent. If you know or should know that your actions result in X, did you intend X?

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

The interesting thing about social norms and equilibria though is that they interact strongly with intentions. In other words, whereas in the past catcallers may well have reasonably intended flattery, nowadays (arguably), they can't possibly think that because it's been made so clear to them that their attention is unwelcome.

Travel Report: Bikepacking through Switzerland

No, I wouldn't, for many of the same reasons (including that I know I couldn't compete). As you mention, it may be fun to leave with everyone else.

One of the people I met training for it was a woman for whom it'd been a dream of for a long time. She was a traveling nurse and so had accumulated the PTO, and was running through Wilson's Ramble with her male boss to get ready. Her bf got jealous and she'd broken up with him because of it. I never really figured out how I felt about that at the end of the day, but I have a family with young children and was able to line this up. ~40+ days and 2 weeks are very different animals though.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

As you allude to, there's a 'reasonable person' standard. Someone could flash a woman hoping the woman would be excited by the sight of some random unexpected genitals in their eyeline. But that's unreasonable. A reasonable person would understand that they are more likely to cause upset, so the only reasonable intention we can impute is a malign one.

With catcalling, it seems to me pretty unreasonable in 2025 to imagine catcalling might be welcome, so even if a given catcaller wishfully thinks it will be taken as flattery, British society has (arguably) reached a point where the only response to this is 'Give me a break, pal'. Among my own male friends, certainly, I would flatly disbelieve one of them who said they thought catcalled women liked it and they were doing it to flatter them. I'd tell them, 'Really? Or do you get off on upsetting them, because that's what you're mostly doing.'

With the walking in a string bikini example, depending on the location I think this would very possibly be done with mischievous intent. Except at a beach though I think that's a pretty strong example. Tight leggings or bare midriff is more likely the disputed case and I think a woman dressed thus would be within her rights to say to someone offended, 'I wasn't thinking of you at all'.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

and just being seen by them as you go about your own business.

Well, some guy who is jogging stark naked through the city is also just going about their own business, and yet we treat it as actively getting into someone's space in most of the Western world.

I think that I can understand where the puritans would come from at least in theory. If I were in a business meeting and the woman across from me was sitting there bare-chested, I would be annoyed because her tits would be hijacking my attention. By contrast, if I go swimming in the lake and see some women tanning topless, I think 'yay boobs'.

I realize that this is totally dependent on culture. Some guy from Saudi Arabia who has never seen the hair of a woman who was not his wife or relative might get similarly distracted by seeing a woman without a headscarf. And some guy from a society where clothing was not a thing and people masturbated during social gatherings all the time might consider me a terminal prude, but would perhaps freak out when people were eating meat during a business dinner.

Transnational Thursday for August 14, 2025

Reuters:

The prominent Donald Trump supporter and private security executive Erik Prince says he has a 10-year deal with Haiti to fight the country's criminal gangs, and then take a role in restoring the country's tax-collection system.

In an interview with Reuters, Prince said his company, Vectus Global, would be involved in designing and implementing a program to tax goods imported across Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic once the security situation is stabilized.

He said he expected to wrestle control of major roads and territories from the gangs in about a year. “One key measure of success for me will be when you can drive from Port-au-Prince to Cap Haitian in a thin-skinned vehicle and not be stopped by gangs,” Prince said in the interview.

Prince would not comment about how much the Haitian government would pay Vectus Global, nor how much tax he expects to collect in Haiti.

A person familiar with the company's operations in Haiti told Reuters that Vectus would intensify its fight against the criminal gangs that control large swathes of Haiti in the coming weeks in coordination with the Haitian police, deploying several hundred fighters from the United States, Europe and El Salvador who are trained as snipers and specialists in intelligence and communications, as well as helicopters and boats. Vectus's force includes some French and Creole speakers, the person said.

Haiti used to collect half of its tax revenue at the border with the Dominican Republic, but gang control of key transport routes has crippled trade and cut off state income, a report commissioned last year by Haiti's government and several multilateral organizations found. This has undermined the government's ability to respond to the crisis or deliver basic services, the report said.

Other security firms working in Haiti have raised questions about how Vectus would hold onto cleared gang territory as well as the wisdom of channelling resources to private security firms instead of the country's own security forces.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

I think this kind of thing actually does affect life right now. There’s a qualitative difference in what life is like in a civilization that is alive, growing, and still believes in itself and what we have now.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

I feel like I need to see the actual encounters being solicited and/or prosecuted to have an opinion on this. Making it illegal to hit on women in public is left-coded (feminism run amok), but arresting flashers on public transportation is right-coded (tough on street crime). Which one of these is, “sting operation on catcalling hotspots,” closer to? I have no idea.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

I don't disagree with your opinions much, it's quite hard to find any sources that are untouched, beowulf for instance is said to be heavily inspired by Christianity.

I don't agree fully with Norse mythology being substantially different, I can't discuss that in detail since I'm not as caught up on the scriptures, not do I know any real Norse Pandits if they even exist now.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

I was raised christian (though I'm not anymore) and traditional teaching is very clear that avoiding sin is a communal project, i.e. you're supposed neither to directly sin, nor to make someone else sin. See the literal Enemy, Satan, whos' most dangerous attribute is making humans sin, not the fact that he himself sins.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

Hinduism isn't strictly defined by Vedas, the Vedas uplifted India, it was a Bastion for the world for thousands of years and produced works that in some domains remain unmatched. Beyond just spiritual practices, linguistics and literature, the sciences were pretty advanced too.

A pagan Europe would not have sent hit squads instead of missionaries to most places. Europe did well because the spiritual inwards facing faith is always an esoteric path that's reserved for the few.

We have a saying here which translates to "you don't seek the divine, the divine allows you to find it". Hinduism is mostly coded in ethnic identities and in the spiritual side, if you choose the former, you ensure that there is no "world is one" pan Islam or pan chriatianity rally in your city where both the groups are made up of migrants, if you choose the latter, you'll realise god. It's not for me to convince anyone, people have their own beliefs and I respect that, trying to socialogicially break down religion can only be done if it's dead, the way we view sacrifices to Moloch.

There are dharma sutras which had a tradition of discussing morals, codes of conduct etc that made sense, these were not seen as words of god, so yes, there are in fact actual traditions that specifically existed here to appeal to nerds who were not religious but wanted good social outcomes.

I'm a Hindu because of birth, it was the only thing that kept my civilization ahead of the world for a millenia, it keeps dysgenics away but that's not why I pray. I pray because it's true and other socialogicial benefits are just added benefits. This is a very privileged answer so I recommend checking out dharmasutras.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

Your first impulse was the right one. A person without kids musing about why legacy doesn't matter is the same as a person without sex organs musing about why sex doesn't matter.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

Responding before reading the whole thing is indeed my weakness.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

The attempts at a preservation of a nobility were carried out here in a much stricter sense.

Right and that's my point. There's very clearly a modus operandi in what you could call "Aryanism." This is well embodied in Greek/Roman religion, I agree it is very influential in Hinduism, but Norse mythology is something clearly different.

Norse Paganism isn't that Christian though

But if you're trying to understand European, pre-Christian worship then I am very hesitant to look towards a religion in which the central figure was created after Christianity and very obviously influenced by Christianity. And the most important texts were written a thousand years after Christianity and preserved/transmitted (potentially even subversively editorialized) through Christian sources.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

"unwanted behaviour directed at an individual with the purpose or intent of humiliating, disrespecting, intimidation [sic], hurting or offending them"

I think that the intent of the actor is a much better standard than the interpretation of the receiver.

For example, if I was in a jury, you would have a hard time convincing me that someone who wolf-whistles intends to humiliate the recipient. It seems reasonable that in the mind of the accused, he would merely be acknowledging that the recipient is judged sexually desirable, which is not an insult.

Even a sexual invitation might not meet this standard, in my mind. "Hey babe, wanna have some fun with me" is likely to make a jogger uncomfortable, but might be a serious suggestion on the men's part. In Victorian England, that would be the kind of insult which leads to duels, because it implies "you look like the kind of woman who would fuck men she just met on the streets". Today, there is nothing wrong with women fucking men who just cat-called her.

Of course, if the woman was wearing a hiab instead, I would assume that the man had concluded that the woman was very unlikely to be promiscuous and was just trying to insult her by implying otherwise.

Likewise, "why don't you gag on my cock, whore!" seems pretty clearly intended to humiliate. The defendant might claim that the humiliation was just instrumental for getting sex because he thought that the woman was into that, but that does not change the mens rea. Of course, if he can prove that his victim had explicitly opted into being sexually humiliated by random guys in the street, it would be fine.

Honking a car's horn except to warn of danger is already a traffic offense. If the driver wants to argue that she was causing a danger by being distractingly sexy, then that raises doubts about his general ability to drive a vehicle in the Western world, unless she flashed him or something.

By contrast, single remarks which merely felt insulting to the recipient -- e.g. by someone who does not know the rules or is just gambling on low odds -- should not be a criminal matter. People feel insulted by all kinds of statements directed at them specifically or not. Personally, I think it depends on the odds. If a verbal behavior will feel offensive to 60% of women in the same situation, but also leads to 10% of them being flattered, that seems very acceptable from a criminal law point of view. If 95% would feel deeply offended and less than 0.1% would be flattered, things look different.

As an unfortunate consequence, this probabilistic standard would mean that the line of what is acceptable would depend not only on the woman and her situation but also on the guy. So a 25yo Chad driving a Tesla might be allowed to ask a given woman if she would be interested in "having some fun", while a 60yo homeless alcoholic with a beer belly might be on the other side of the dividing line.

While it would be possible to replace the person of the speaker with a generic standard person for the purpose of determining if the success chance meets the threshold, I think that this would decrease overall utility.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

I already covered that.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

issue being much more pressing and therefore developing differently in modern-day India.

The people from aristocracy here have notably higher amounts of steppe ancestry, though phenotype isn't a 1 to 1 with your genotype. The attempts at a preservation of a nobility were carried out here in a much stricter sense.

Norse Paganism isn't that Christian though, the idea that all of what we see in their folklore is heavily inspired by Christianity cannot be true for all of their folklore. Tom has listed plenty of them in the work he does with his own revival and many go agaisnt Christian values. It includes Anglo mythology as well.

Greek/Roman paganism remains the supreme representation of pre-Christian, European worship.

Its unfortunately dead and still differs from innate values many live by. They can't draw inspiration from that which is forgotten and also isn't appealing. My central theme is that the values they find within texts found south of the Indus are appealing because they carry the sMe same values they wish for which they cannot find in Christianity and also in Greek lore, which is also why the modern revival movement, the non larpy parts lean towards germanic myths.