domain:tracingwoodgrains.com
OliveTapenade
18hr ago
The thing traditionalists don't seem to have a satisfying answer for is "why is gayness uniquely bad"? Why does it uniquely fuel identarianism, if it does? When I consider the question of "if it wasn't this, would it have been something else?", I think back on all the times it has been something else, and note that there's nothing unique/special to non-straightness that lends itself to being used as a weapon in this way.
I'm a little confused here.
Firstly, social conservatives and particularly conservative Christians do have quite detailed answers for why same-sex relations are morally bad. If you aren't satisfied, presumably you either don't find those answers convincing, or you aren't aware of them, but I suppose neither strikes me as a particularly devastating criticism. Let's charitably assume that you are familiar with and unconvinced by, for instance, teleological arguments, or arguments from natural law. It's not clear to me why that in itself should be that concerning, particularly since my suggestion here is not "social conservatives are absolutely correct in everything they have asserted", but rather "social conservative predictions coming true is an opportunity to re-evaluate their earlier claims". Social conservative arguments around sexual morality might be only partially true, or might lead to some pragmatically true conclusion for the wrong reasons; in either case it would still be worthwhile to revisit their arguments and see what might be salvaged.
Secondly, social conservatives do not claim that same-sex relations are uniquely bad, and I don't know where you got that idea. Let's assume a traditionalist Christian approach here. That approach is that same-sex relations are one species within the wider category of sexual sin. The category of sexual immorality or porneia is quite a broad one, and the reasons why same-sex unions are bad (illicit, to be discouraged, sinful, whatever language you like) are substantially the same reasons why many other forms of sexual behaviour are bad (this is where progressives would get very angry at the comparison between homosexuality and various other paraphilias).
So I'm not sure I understand your retort here. Social conservatives have explained why same-sex relations are bad at great length, and they have not argued that same-sex relations are uniquely bad in a way that sets them apart from any other sexual immorality. What's left here? You don't find conservative arguments against same-sex relations convincing? Well, good for you, I suppose.
without ultimately falling back on some variation of "sin"- if they had a better argument, they'd be making it- then I judge they're no different than those who also have the same definition of sin but with the who and whom switched.
Replace the word 'sin' with 'bad', if you prefer. It doesn't make much practical difference. I'm often baffled by the way secular people seem to understand the word 'sin'.
Botond173
18hr ago
None of my half-dozen female cousins are whoring themselves out.
With all due respect, they probably won't have many problems keeping you in the dark about if they are indeed doing so after all.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
18hr ago
Great post OP. On the part about Yud and the people over at LessWrong, rationalists as a whole, a few weeks ago, I posted about the religious fervour many have for AI as the future sentient god. To me, it feels like the sci-fi idea of Skynet fills a god shaped hole in their hearts, and they cannot rationalise normal religious values on a mass scale.
For instance, neither Scott nor Yud are programmers; this is not to chide them, there are plenty of MMA scouts who get MMA better than top coaches or fighters, but these are few and far between, and they cannot affect the game as much as a live player can. If you have not worked on basic ML models and know about the way some of the architectures work, you can arrive at conclusions that stretch the current capabilities or your perception of them with a future where the improvements never cease, which to me seems ludicrous in a way.
Scott's 2027 post and Yuds AI ramblings seem extremely improbable, and given that I foresee an economic meltdown thanks to the corporate and vc greed behind the modern ai bubble, these statements would be used to question the non-AI things they post, things that are actually really good. We have a lot of trouble understanding intelligence, the human brain and how the two interact. There are systems within the body that make some of their own decisions iirc. It's truly fascinating as a field to study, the usage of AI propaganda like AGI is here by conning former YC president and Paul Graham's favourite human being, Sam Altman, and you will be jobless by every podcaster's favourite CEO, Dario Amodei, will be remembered. For anyone unaware of how low people can stoop, Austen Allred lost hundreds of millions by lying and PG still defends him, as he shifted his grift to learn programming via my bad bootcamp to learn AI via my bad bootcamp.
Theranos apparently did not get VC money, the Bay Area is where a lot of ratioanlists live, a lot of VCs are aware of the ideas, this must have had some role with the hype as rats are usually very smart, decent people. Regardless, this was a very well-worded out take on this issue. I have a rough outline that matches your worldview, though it is nowhere as precise, nor could I have presented it in a decent manner.
Botond173
18hr ago
I reckon there was some woman who made an unsuccessful attempt to enter local politics somewhere in New England who was revealed to be a camwhre. Either way, you touched on something that is important in this context. As time passes, women who become public figures for whatever reason will be increasingly likely to have a past as camwhres, Twitch th*ts, porners, escorts or OF models.
Botond173
18hr ago
Poland is likely the most religious country in the western world.
That largely applies to the older generations though who grew up at a time when religiosity was a covert expression of anti-communist sentiment, as the Church was suppressed and regulated through rather heavy-handed and pig-headed methods. The Polish youth, on the other hand, is just as irreligious as the youth in any other European country.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
19hr ago
The rat obsession with AI to me feels like smart people finding a new god and being too afraid to go back to older ones.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
20hr ago
It is chutzpah of the highest order to rely on the charity and good will of your enemy to feed your people.
It’ll be nice to see siege warfare make a return.
EvanTh
20hr ago
- Higher standards for filing a case to begin with
This could be a good thing, but I'm concerned about cases where people don't have the evidence up front and need to get it through discovery. People with very legitimate cases can end up in that situation.
- Another similar option, just ban someone from seeking further redress for a while (forever?) if they're found to be constantly abusing the courts.
This is a thing in some jurisdictions: recognized "vexatious litigants" have to get the court's pre-approval before filing further complaints. However, standards for being a vexatious litigant are high.
faceh
20hr ago
Yep. Once I read about the Analog Hole I realized that there is no possible scheme of DRM, access control, or privacy measures that can ensure anything you transmit digitally will be kept 'secret.'
Encryption gets you something resembling 'privacy' in the data being transmitted, but you CANNOT control what the end user does with it, and they can record and expose it at will if they're malicious in the slightest.
Combine that with dirt-cheap storage and its best to assume that most of your digital communications could resurface at any time. I try to hammer it into my legal assistants' heads: Don't put anything in an e-mail or chat message if you wouldn't want it to be read out loud in Court in front of a Judge later.
Attorney-client privilege is powerful but not invincible.
This gets REALLY interesting when discussing cryptocurrency and private keys.
We could do the discussion of voyeurism vs. exhibitionism and the "reasonable expectation of privacy" if that illuminated the issue more. I've actually got a claim to real expertise on such matters. Its almost beside the point, to me, though.
A year and a half ago I was 'forced' to learn that there are Congressional staffers who will film themselves having gay sex in the hallowed halls of the Senate. Assuming all involved consented to it, including the recording of the act, whatever, its not the most immoral thing done in that building by a long shot.
But can we agree it displays bad judgment? Disrespect? A lack of concern for others who might prefer not to stumble upon that sort of thing while just going about their day?
Granting that someone doing risky public sex is an even larger red flag, I can pass similar judgment on someone livestreaming sex acts to an anonymous audience. Don't do that unless you EXPECT it to possibly be recorded and possibly republished. You're not a 'victim' in the most stringent sense if someone takes a recording here and passes it around.
Maybe it makes me a prude (I'm not, I've pushed these sorts of boundaries before, but I also knew the precise definition of public indecency. so I could mitigate the legal risks.) but the type of person who does this stuff openly and often enough to get 'caught' is displaying a disregard for risks that probably hints at sociopathy. At least in the same way that a person who routinely drives 15 mph over the posted speed limit or hops on the shoulder of the road to dodge traffic is being anti-social. And filming the act is just compounding it.
Even if the rules are stupid or a bit arbitrary, the person who flouts them is still defecting in a way that makes them, to me, inherently less trustworthy, especially in positions of 'power' or authority.
Civilization is a game that only keeps going if people don't defect too often. And we certainly don't want to reward the defectors once the defection comes to light.
This recent article from WaPo via their local reporters is filled with anonymous and Unnamed General claims, so I take it with a grain of psyop salt, but its the first time I've seen a WaPo-like outlet assert that the food aid is important to Hamas operations with any specifics attached.
For instance, the officials said, Hamas seized at least 15 percent of some goods, like flour, and aid vouchers that international agencies had intended to provide to hungry Gazans...
A Gazan businessman said Hamas had imposed a tax of a least 20 percent on many goods. But the group also would take control of trucks carrying high-demand goods like flour, which could sell for up to $30 for a kilogram, and steal fuel meant for aid groups. Fuel supplies have produced high revenue for Hamas during the war, with the group both taxing and seizing fuel stored at gas stations for sale, said an Israeli military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in accordance with military protocol.
Taking control of the food distribution is the first yuge strategic decision that Israel has committed to following the invasion. If aid supplies are as critically important for Hamas as reason and reporting implies, then this is actually a plan to judge. Hamas can subsidize motivation with martyrdom, but even fervor requires sustenance. Assuming Israel doesn't starve everyone to death -- which I don't expect they will -- then the NGOs will cave before famine. They will submit to Israel's request to manage all the aid distribution and Israel takes full charge of the grain doles. I guess it is technically more accurate to call the GHF an American group sanctioned by Israel for aid distribution, but, is anyone under the impression there's any real difference in this case?
They are perfectly willing to watch Gaza starve until some entity comes out of the territory that they can negotiate with.
Which, until that happens, Gaza and the responsibilities associated with managing will increasingly fall to Israel. Until it finally becomes governance. Sure seems to me they wanted to avoid that outcome and may have even procrastinated decisions in hopes of an alternative. Israel left Gaza not 20 years ago. There's no winning. Not even if they defeat their enemies do they win.
At the moment Israelis may shrug callously at the idea of governing Gaza. Certainly not with any measure of goodwill or with any concern for headaches that are associated with that responsibility. Until I see the yet-to-be-seen viable alternative actually come into existence, then that's what the future looks like to me. Alternatively, Hamas has enough recruiting power to be fed by Israeli aid distribution while continuing to lead the forever war. I doubt it.
benmmurphy
21hr ago
Honestly, maybe we should remove defamation and have a free-for-all and consumers of media or other people's opinions have to just exercise caveat emptor. Part of the harm in defamation is because there are defamation laws. People are more trusting of another person's claim if they are putting money on the line. I guess the problem with ditching defamation laws is it might destroy the utility of useful information that was previously trusted.
Maybe Trump abusing defamation will produce a positive change. I guess its much harder to push a case against defamation when the victim is Alex Jones.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
21hr ago
I'm not finding evidence of this, though obviously it's possible I'm missing something. States mandate that the Holocaust be included in the educational curriculum, among myriad other topics, but I'm not finding anything specifying mandatory classes focused specifically on the Holocaust.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
21hr ago
But…Germany also fought Stalin.
Surely there are some former East Germans somewhere in the country, too.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
21hr ago
Instead, the unwashed masses decided that BTC would be a great investment, so you got an endless procession of shitcoins and NFTs instead.
I find this a weird conclusion given that Congress just passed a big series of crypto regulation and specifically of stablecoins which seem like a very clear candidate for an alternative to payment processors.
Now Circle and Tether do still have a sort of similar problem to Visa and MasterCard, but the ground isn't exactly the same as it was then years ago and you ought to acknowledge it.
vorpa-glavo
21hr ago
My take is that there is no such thing as a "free" market, just like there is no such thing as objective absolute individual liberty. "Free" tends to be defined by whoever happens to be winning the market at that point in time.
I certainly accept a weaker version of this claim.
We could talk about "really existing free markets" if you want, in opposition to the made up models of economists. Even so, my assessment is that above a certain threshold of "freeness", really existing free markets tend to do better than centralized or relatively unfree markets.
are we going to ignore things like cartels and monopolies that exist in absence of regulations and laws? I'm willing to cede that there are bad actors who rent seek through regulatory capture, but are you willing to cede that there are bad actors that rent seek through market capture?
I'm not an anarchist - I don't think we should have no laws.
Ideally, I think we should have the minimum number of regulations and laws necessary to prop up a functioning and trustworthy market, along with things like pigouvian taxes and legal nudges to help the market avoid market failures.
I do think a lot of cartels and monopolies are only able to exist because they're propped up by government in various ways (i.e. drug cartels can often only exist because drugs are illegal, American tech monopolies in Europe are given a boost by EU regulations being so onerous it is hard for a small European tech company to comply, etc.) But I'll grant that some forms of these are not directly or indirectly propped up by government, and I'm not against light touch, effective regulation that minimizes the damage to society without radically limiting the speed of growth and innovation.
stolen_brawnze
I am the way Sia says "batteries" in that one song.
21hr ago
There's a lifecycle that a very specific sort of amazing poster here can fall into (if he's young enough).
- Post a lot
- get recognized for quality writing
- take it off-site (subtack or twitter)
- (here's the critical part) link you're real-life identify to your username
- come back to the motte every now and then
- now that your irl identity is revealed, somehow criticism of your writing seems a lot more personal, and you react badly
- flame out
The exact same fucking thing happened to ymeskhout, another former mod. A kinda similar thing happened to Kulak_Revolt.
Trace was a very highly valued member of the forum, and the forum was even prepared to look past the fact that he tried to recruit all the left-of-center users to a new subreddit. Then the rest happened.
Rov_Scam
22hr ago
The loser already does pay in the sense that any personal injury action is going to require a lot of up front money for medical experts, depositions, and the like before the defense is in any position to settle. And they're always going to settle because liability isn't usually as much the issue as damages are. Best case scenario for a defendant is that the plaintiff isn't as injured as he'd like you to believe. But even these cases are relatively rare since the costs of litigation and attorney time make anything under $100,000 simply not worth it for most plaintiff's lawyers. Low value cases that are actually filed are usually ones where the plaintiff is paying by the hour or the lawyer is taking the case on the side pro bono.
I'm any event, truly frivolous lawsuits are pretty rare. The ones that do get filed make the news for how unusual they are. When you hear about something like Trump suing the WSJ in a case he can't possibly win, he's paying his attorneys by the hour and isn't concerned about costs, and cases like this aren't going to be deterred by a loser pays rule. Any attorneys fees must be approved by the court, and courts are usually pretty stingy about rates charged and how many hours they'll let you bill. They could ironically make it worse, since a client is going to be disinclined to pay the balance of the bill after the court knocked half of it off.
Rov_Scam
22hr ago
No, not really. A motion to dismiss won't be granted unless the facts in the complaint don't trigger liability. This is a low bar, and even questionable claims will pass muster if the complaint is drafted well. Summary judgment isn't much better. First, it happens after discovery, which is the most expensive and involved part of the process, assuming the case doesn't go to trial. And even then, the motion won't be granted unless there's no evidence; not bad evidence, no evidence. If you have one witness who says they saw something and fifty witnesses who said they didn't plus documents to back it up, the jury could always believe the one witness. The non-moving party gets the benefit of the doubt and the court views the evidence in the light most favorable to them. This is why anti SLAPP statutes and other mechanisms have been put into place in certain jurisdictions for certain kinds of cases—because the rules that apply most of the time can be abused by vexatious litigants.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
22hr ago
The Israelis are not bluffing. They will not give in, no matter what the pressure. They are perfectly willing to watch Gaza starve until some entity comes out of the territory that they can negotiate with.
They're not bluffing, but will the US stay their hand when no such entity appears?
Tiber727
22hr ago
I guess maybe I'm being uncharitable by interpreting this as "Please associate with each other as a cohesive, organized political movement so I can attack the principles of your group rather than deal with the 17-headed hydra that is contemporary social liberalism". Maybe I shouldn't have use the term "single theory".
If we must say that there's 17 heads and name each of them, that's at least in the direction of what Freddie and I are saying. The complaint is that first they deny that there's anything there, then that it's a hydra, then that the hydra is good. And of course once the conversation is over they will return to acting like the people who cried hydra are responding to literally nothing. If people see sky blue and cyan and aquamarine together, they're going to call it blue. Ain't nobody got time to go one-by-one with 100,000 ever-so-slight variations on a theme, and if you demand they must they will simply refuse. Republicans have been successful in painting the progressive left as obnoxious, and young men are swinging right despite having many left-wing views.
You and Freddie both are painting contemporary social liberalism as a monolith, with the implication that it's a coordinated effort with offices and political committees. Maybe there's a reason that it's so hard to wrangle these disparate movements together (and why they seem to cannibalize through debates on intersectionality):
No, the issue is that you think these are requirements. Central coordination is not required; the only thing that's required is reasonably definable goal that a noteworthy amount of people would agree with and are or would cooperate towards. Many movements don't have leaders, or if they do most of their own members probably couldn't identify them. Was GamerGate a movement? Tea Party? 99%ers? BLM? Are all of those words useless and should be dispensed with?
I've actually seen the pendulum swing way harder in the past couple of years, with many more complaints of too many non-white male characters.
Well yes, the artists (generally left leaning) started doing it, and people noticed. Said artists will happily admit in a friendly environment that it was a conscious decision to increase representation - the idea that people empathize more with their in-group and this is a good thing (except for white men).
It seems to be the consultants, focus groups, and corporate America that are guiding these decisions - not some National Wokism political action committee.
In other words, college-educated people.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
22hr ago
Let's talk about Israel and Palestine.
Okay, I can hear you sighing already. But before you look away, let's talk about Clausewitz.
War is a continuation of politics by other means. In our ideological age, where everything is political, it may not seem profound: but it establishes a commonality between the military and civilian where analogies can be made. Like, 'what if we have no ability to fight a war, but continue it anyway?' Could we just... filibuster, our enemies, until they give us the political ends we desire?
This concept is similar to the Trotskyite concept of 'no war, no peace'. (That the policy ended in disaster and Brest-Litovsk bodes ill.) In the Clausewitzian model, war is conducted between states. The loser gives concessions to the winner, with the assumption that even a bad peace is better than a bad war, that ending hostilities - even for the moment - is the best way to bring about revanchist policy.
The differential between Palestine and Israel in terms of military capacity is greater than ever: it was never at par, even in 1948. Seventy-five years later and the Arabs might as well be Ewoks against the Empire. Not to say that they lack the capacity to harm the Israelis, but they have no military capacity to enforce political goals on their enemy. Even now, their demands for a ceasefire are entirely one sided: they are simply outmatched in every conceivable military dimension.
There exists a hope in the Palestinian cause, that there will be a tipping point where they can present to the international community of some Israeli atrocity that will bring about a external intervention. It is the only card they have to play. But now that Israel has control of the food aid that goes into Gaza with the ousting of UNWRA, time is no longer on their side. Their enemy will never consent to a return to the former status quo, no matter how urgently the international community chastises them.
Not coming to terms and holding on for maximalist goals may seem like a cheat in insurgency warfare. But inevitably, reality and physical limits intrude onto the nationalist fantasy. It is chutzpah of the highest order to rely on the charity and good will of your enemy to feed your people. This conflict - indefinitely sustained by Soviet leftist dregs of the anti-colonialist cause - will come to an end not through some master stroke of diplomacy, but a famine long in the making.
Hamas sought to use international sympathy as a weapon, relying on the services provided by American and European NGOs so that they could devote all the funds they neglected to invest in their civilians into their military. Now that military is destroyed, they have no leverage at all. The Israelis are not bluffing. They will not give in, no matter what the pressure. They are perfectly willing to watch Gaza starve until some entity comes out of the territory that they can negotiate with.
As Calgacus would say, "They make a desert and call it peace." Modern problems require Roman solutions. The fatal Palestinian mistake was that they always assumed Israel would come to the negotiating table. After fifty years of fruitless negotiation, the Israelis finally have had enough. There will be no more deals, no more bargains. Just the short, terminal drop to destruction.
ThisIsSin
Liberty has an anti-privilege bias
22hr ago
Yet I still see this quite determined hostility to re-evaluating.
I don't believe traditionalists' revealed motives are trustworthy.
It was absolutely a stupid, destructive idea to replace abuse and overreach perpetrated by men (traditionalism) with abuse and overreach perpetrated by women (progressivism), yes. We have noticed the skulls that gynosupremacy has created, including the fractional ones generated by concern trolling.
But the traditionalists are, at least in popular consciousness, insisting that we merely reset it so it's male abuse and overreach again, uncritically and unironically- where for everyone else, the problem isn't who's doing it, it's what they're permitted to do. They're trying to prosecute a culture war they've already lost, in the same way they lost it before, and expecting things to be different somehow.
correlation and causation
The thing traditionalists don't seem to have a satisfying answer for is "why is gayness uniquely bad"? Why does it uniquely fuel identarianism, if it does? When I consider the question of "if it wasn't this, would it have been something else?", I think back on all the times it has been something else, and note that there's nothing unique/special to non-straightness that lends itself to being used as a weapon in this way.
Because the traditionalists (as a natural consequence of being traditionalist) are unwilling, or unable, to come up with an answer for why it is unique (vagina-having and melanin-having being the two used for this before, with dishonorable mentions to religion and nationality) without ultimately falling back on some variation of "sin"- if they had a better argument, they'd be making it- then I judge they're no different than those who also have the same definition of sin but with the who and whom switched.
The axiomatic rejection that gayness (or whatever else) at times can be productive/the right answer to a particular pair-bonding question means that the needle cannot be threaded/competing interests cannot be balanced between "these relationships function mostly like straight ones do outside of certain specifics; we don't need to hunt these guys down" and "doing this thing that just so happens to be more common in this subgroup creates externalities that are not society's bill to foot".
I'm not interested in swapping a failing axiom for an already-failed axiom (while I am broadly OK with feeding progressives to traditionalists I'm under no deception that's productive); either we grow together limiting/harnessing the axioms to guide us into a position that can be rationally justified, or we don't grow.
Indeed. There's a map shared on Reddit for illustration. And The Jolly Heretic had a YT video about this very phenomenon.
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