domain:firsttoilthenthegrave.substack.com
SophisticatedHillbilly
4hr ago
Wait I’m confused. Wasn’t creationism just being suggested here because it’s a right-wing theory with roughly equivalent public support to the core wokism (like the actual serious all whites are racist etc type) and with roughly the same level of grounding (which is to say, a lot of circularly cited papers and few ground facts that don’t have better alternative explanations) and so would be a ‘fair’ replacement?
I don’t think the point was ever that there’s actually a 1-1 prevalence of every single problem between the two of them.
OliveTapenade
4hr ago
I apologise for obsessing over this, but I can't help finding it strange and interesting. This is not how the "sneak it in through fiction" gambit works. That trick requires two things: firstly, that the story be independently compelling, enough for people who disagree with its conclusions to enjoy it anyway, and secondly, for the conclusion to be sufficiently subtle or concealed for the reader not to notice it. The goal is to slowly initiate the reader into this world, and get them subconsciously accustomed to a logic other than their natural one, so that eventually, without even realising it, the reader notices their view has been shifted.
This is why, for instance, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe isn't that good at it. It's too obvious. If the lion just comes out and says "by the way, I'm Jesus", the gambit fails, because all of our pre-existing beliefs and assumptions around Jesus appear again. The best Narnia books are the ones where the religion is mostly implied. However, The Lord of the Rings is good at it. The mask never drops; Tolkien never tells you that the value-system underlying his whole work is Christianity, or more specifically Catholicism. The Lord of the Rings therefore has a large number of non-Christian fans - most famously atheists, but plenty of lukewarm agnostics, and I believe even a fair share of fans of other religions entirely. Once you know to look you can see the points Tolkien's making, and you might realise that Christ was in there all along, but the presence must be hidden to be effective.
Even LotR isn't a great example because Tolkien did not intend it to preach Christian or Catholic values - he just wrote a book that expressed what he believed was good and true, and because he was a devout Catholic, that was reflected in the work. The point, at any rate, is that it needs to sneak in - even in a work intended to proselytise.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4hr ago
Nobody is expressing that idea. You are making an unwarranted assumption.
Most of human communication operates through these sorts of assumptions. Why would they be unwarranted? Are books not inanimate objects? Are letters and the written words we assemble out of them not inanimate objects? When someone waves a rainbow flag or a hammer and sickle flag, Are they not specifically inviting everyone watching to infer their message? If not, why wave the flag? And sure, this can be abused by assuming a message that was not the signaler's actual intent... and yet, flags exist as a tool of communication because such malicious interpretation is orders of magnitude less effective than the primary signal.
If your standards of rigor are that communication should be happening with no assumptions being made either way, I'll note that no actual human communication works or has ever worked this way.
Not just to be able to state an idea, but be able to defend it in open debate.
Can a book defend its ideas in open debate? I mean, sort of. It seems to me that a flag can as well. Who's invoking the message and its associations, and how?
Moreover, I can put a flag in my store for trolling purposes, or just as a freedom of speech prop. Why are you assuming intent from inanimate objects?
I'm not assuming, I'm inferring. Inference is a necessary and irreducible part of human communication, which is necessarily lossy, compressed, and unreliable in the best of times.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
4hr ago
Yeah I don't like it when populism is defined by its stupidest proponents either, but that's the world we live in. Do you think people with those values would not recognise themselves as globalist, academic, secular or progressive?
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
8hr ago
shit happens. thanks for all of the stuff that goes well! we really appreciate it!
felipec
unbelief
8hr ago
A white supremacist is by definition committed to the idea of their race deserving to reign supreme, so your criterion absolutely applies.
That is not true, and if even if it were, it has zero bearing on the importance of debate.
????????!?!
That is not an argument.
I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
That is not an argument either.
If you are going to make the claim that white supremacists are conflict theorists, you have the burden of proof.
Personally I do not care. The only comparison between "mistake theorists" and "confllcit theorists" that matters here is in regards to freedom of speech, and I don't see any white supremacist trying trying to silence my ideas, or anyone's ideas.
felipec
unbelief
8hr ago
What I'm saying is that you can't just get around their memes by switching terminology.
Yes you can. That's the whole point of rebranding.
They will have to come up with entirely new memes.
The way to win is to confront them head-on.
How is that working out?
felipec
unbelief
8hr ago
Contrary to common belief, freedom of speech does not only apply lengthy substack articles explaining ideas in great detail, but also to symbolic acts which show support of an idea, such as flying symbols or flags, or burning them.
No it doesn't. Quote a freedom of speech thinker stating anything similar to that.
It is a handle attached to a certain ideology with well established ideas.
So?
felipec
unbelief
8hr ago
"Swastikas are cool" isn't an idea?
Nobody is expressing that idea. You are making an unwarranted assumption. Inanimate objects are incapable of defending an idea, which was the whole point of freedom of speech. Not just to be able to state an idea, but be able to defend it in open debate.
How do you propose a flag can defend an idea?
Moreover, I can put a flag in my store for trolling purposes, or just as a freedom of speech prop. Why are you assuming intent from inanimate objects?
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
9hr ago
@Eupraxia's post hit most of the relevant points, but I do also want to clarify that I chose the narrow "white supremacists are generally conflict theorists" very deliberately. The group that's been called "classical liberal HBDers" are mistake theorists, but are not white supremacists despite SJ's histrionic claims otherwise.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
9hr ago
Oh, I'm not for a second saying that they can't be beaten. They can be beaten. What I'm saying is that you can't just get around their memes by switching terminology. That is the fool's errand - and is what your post is advocating.
The way to win is to confront them head-on. They're fast, but they're not unstoppable.
My recent reading queue has been a tour through various subgenres of speculative fiction, with predictably mixed results.
First, John C. Wright’s Golden Oecumene trilogy. Post-singularity fiction is a high-difficulty endeavor, usually collapsing into either utopian hand-waving or prose so baroque you cannot parse what the god-minds are even doing. Wright’s work mostly sticks the landing. It presents a surprisingly coherent model of a far-future society without shying away from its deep strangeness. I have a much longer post on this simmering in my drafts, but the short version is that it’s one of the few genuinely solid attempts I’ve seen.
Next was Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt, an alternate history with a compelling hook: what if the Black Death was 99.9% fatal in Europe? I found it interesting, but with two confusing caveats. The author makes a strange ontological commitment from the outset: Buddhist reincarnation is literally true, and we follow a small cluster of souls through the ages. I’m still not entirely sure what work this does for the narrative that couldn’t have been achieved by other means. A more confusing structural choice is the novel’s reluctance to explore its own primary conceit. A vast, effectively empty Western continent is sitting there, yet we spend surprisingly little time with the civilizations that eventually investigate it. It feels like a missed opportunity.
Then I tried Virtuous Sons, a highly-rated web serial. A Greco-Roman take on Xianxia cultivation tropes is, on its face, a brilliant idea. And to its credit, the story executes the core translation of concepts like qi and cultivation into a classical framework with reasonable competence. The problem is that everything else is aggressively mediocre. The characters lack interiority, the prose feels unrefined, and the worldbuilding seems to operate on dream logic. This seems less an indictment of one specific author and more a reflection of the incentive structures of platforms like Royal Road. It is optimized for high-volume, low-friction content, and the market rewards this optimization with high ratings. A classic case of revealed preferences in action, and the revealed preference seems to be for slop. I could not continue.
Finally, I am now reading Through Struggle, the Stars. It’s military science fiction, and the most accurate description is that it’s aiming for the same niche as The Expanse. This story, however, operates under stricter constraints: no alien magic, and a much more rigorous adherence to the laws of physics. So far, it’s just solid, competent storytelling. No major complaints.
quiet_NaN
9hr ago
An Aryan Bakery has nothing to do with Open Ideas, because there's no idea being expressed or defended.
Contrary to common belief, freedom of speech does not only apply lengthy substack articles explaining ideas in great detail, but also to symbolic acts which show support of an idea, such as flying symbols or flags, or burning them.
This is a load-bearing feature of free speech. A society where people could only academically discuss ideas but not establish common knowledge about certain ideas being popular would not be a free society.
In the Western world, the meaning of the swastika is rather well established. It is a handle attached to a certain ideology with well established ideas. I see very little difference between our baker putting the swastika in his logo and him writing a lengthy article regurgitating Mein Kampf. I mean, with the logo, I do not learn if he blames the Jews, the Left, or the Blacks for high flour prices, but I am unlikely to find that very interesting, personally.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
9hr ago
Well, according to the Anchorage School District, the top 5 languages after English (for K-12 students, as of 2023) are:
- Filipino
- Hmong
- Samoan
- Spanish
- Yu'pik
Presented in alphabetical order, not ranking. Based on an older Anchorage Daily News article from 2018 (which gave numbers, but had Korean in fifth place and Yu'pik a couple rungs down), the order should be:
- Spanish
- Hmong
- Samoan
- Filipino
- Yu'pik
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
9hr ago
Curiously enough, I've been reading the Old Testament.
Uh... I'm doing a lot of noticing. Like the entire story is just Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and then Joseph ingratiating themselves with wealthy and powerful people, then running off with all their shit. Possibly their daughters. Joseph really takes the cake, where he convinces the Pharaoh to tax his people exorbitantly, and then sells their grains back to them at such insane prices, they have to sell themselves into slavery to him in order to not starve. But you know, they're happy to do so. That's what the book says after all. So anyways, the next book starts with the Egyptians unjustly turning on Joseph and his clan as soon as the Pharaoh dies and they lose his protection, for some reason.
Like, bronze age morality, I get it, Odysseus is quite the scoundrel too and he's still a hero. But, uh... that is the single most Jewish origin story I could possibly imagine. Like if the most antisemitic person you'd ever heard of tried to write a story about where the Jews came from, I'm not sure he'd do it any different. And that's the first book and change of Moses.
Anyways...the bronze age, amirite?
Onystri
10hr ago
Once a week or so I come by /r/foxhole subreddit to harvest the crying and the bitching.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
10hr ago
I was horrified to see that I spent 7 hours looking at my phone yesterday.
The biggest challenge for me is finding a replacement which allows for frequent interruption without diminishing enjoyment. Memes and X threads take a seconds to consume, so if one of my many children spills a cup of milk or bumps his head I can easily put the phone down. Even smartphone games require too much unbroken engagement. I would love to read some of my many books, but I've tried and I just end up reading the same page 47 times.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
10hr ago
Interesting, I have the opposite experience with sleep trackers. Rather than feeling wracked with guilt for feeling energetic despite my low sleep score, I feel confused because unless my sleep score is >90 (Garmin) I feel at drowsy and a little sluggish.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
10hr ago
English and Chinese, then a big gap, then probably Vietnamese and Tagalog.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11hr ago
That he got shot and his reflex was to jump up and yell fight fight fight. You can't teach that.
Soteriologian
11hr ago
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the DLC, aesthetically or gameplay-wise, and even the base game's combat often felt "overdeveloped" to me. There were multiple occasions where a boss uses what is obviously a finishing move (e.g., Tree Sentinel raising his weapon and smashing it into the ground) only to PSYCH! ITS NOT ACTUALLY A FINISHER LMAO with some physically-nonsensical follow-up attack to smack you in what obviously "should" have been a punish window. Also, lots of bosses have input reads, where if you try to do anything (in particular use a potion to heal) outside of a designated punish window, they'll immediately intercept your action with a fast attack. I found this extremely crass design.
It feels like FromSoft is annoyed that good players are too good at their games, but the ways in which the developers are trying to raise the difficulty are pretty lame. Though in some sense, I do understand their frustration: Souls games have a skill window that is far smaller than most other games, in the sense that beating them as a casual is quite hard, but learning to play at a near-pro level (in the sense of doing lvl 1 challenges, no-hit challenges, etc.) is surprisingly easy. It really is too difficult to be mediocre at the game, and too easy to be good at the game.
ABigGuy4U
11hr ago
Anecdotes and rumors. The fact that it gets mentioned in both positive and negative anecdotes about him makes me think it’s true. Muhammad Ali dodged the draft too, that doesn’t mean I would want to get in a fight with him.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
11hr ago
Snow flakes are not susceptible to social contagion.
An avalanche seems very similar to to a social contagion that snowflakes are susceptible to, if we're accepting metaphors in the first place.
An Aryan Bakery has nothing to do with Open Ideas, because there's no idea being expressed or defended.
"Swastikas are cool" isn't an idea? "I stand with the people who use the Swastika as a symbol" isn't an idea? Where would you get the idea that abstract symbols aren't routinely freighted with meaning by humans, and thus used to communicate ideas?
The fact that you believe an Aryan Bakery has anything to do with actual freedom of speech shows the need for Open Ideas.
How so? what's the argument?
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
12hr ago
Spanish is #2 by far. #3 is hard to say, but maybe Korean? I see Korean writing on some businesses and churches in my part of town, but can't think of any other foreign languages I see while out and about.
Plutarch’s Athenian Lives: if you have any interest in history, human nature, or human greatness, you owe it to yourself to read Plutarch.
Walter Ong, Fighting For Life: picked this up because I wanted a different perspective on some of the stuff in The Mountain. The first 40% or so of the book is awful, one of the worst attempts at psychoanalytic writing I’ve ever read, and I’ve read some stinkers. It’s just starting to get good now as he dives into a field he’s qualified on - agonistic competition in academic and intellectual history. Cautiously excited to see if he can turn it around, since I’ve greatly enjoyed his other work.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: well, the section on linguistics drags, but now it’s heating up again. I’m frustrated at times, cruising at times, mindblown at times, but it’s a hell of a ride.
Machiavelli, The Prince: like Plutarch, a re-read, but very interesting to compare the two directly. Machiavelli has this very incisive, diagrammatic way of analysis that, now that I say it, reminds me of some stuff Deleuze says. He writes in a very “arborescent”, binary-tree way, but the cumulative effect is a tremendous deterritorialization that rips the prince from the feudal order. I don’t think Strauss’s claim that Machiavelli and Bacon are the beginning of modernity is at all a stretch.
More options
Context Copy link