domain:felipec.substack.com
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
1hr ago
Religious leaders did not adequately stand up against the mass movement.
Academics did not adequately argue against the mass movement.
They ARE the movement bruh.
This is problematic: if learning the best of western culture does not lead to protecting said culture in any genuine sense when it matters the most, then how great is the actual utility of such learning?
People have been asking this for at least a century. "The Nazis listened to Wagner and read Goethe and they still plunged the entire planet into total war, how is that possible?"
Philosophy in the Socratic tradition (and if we can speak of a "western tradition" at all, as distinct from other traditions, then we must start with Socrates) never promised wisdom. It promised a love of wisdom; it promised a critique of those who pretend to wisdom. But wisdom itself is for the gods alone. So it is unsurprising when mortals do things that are unwise.
The main “public critics” of the period have little in common except that they were passionate and somewhat neurotic men.
You have to be something of a weirdo to violate social consensus as publicly and flagrantly as Peterson did.
Random people online were able to sense a threat that leading experts weren’t able to sense, and made arguments that leading academics did not make.
Because the experts wanted it to happen, they couldn't perceive it as a threat if it wasn't threatening to them in the first place.
PokerPirate
1hr ago
Flagged as consensus building.
What you call "optimal cultural leadership" is really just "how to make my outgroup not get in power". And your use of neutral language to cover this switch up is bad rhetoric.
A very large percentage of Americans still find the "social justice craze" to be a good thing, including many of the academics/religious leaders/politicians you are critiquing for not being anti-social justice craze from early on. It's fine for you to be anti-social justice craze. But you shouldn't be assuming that everyone else is or that it is the norm around here.
FWIW, I would be very interested in reading an ideologically neutral account of the failures of conservative leadership to account for the rise of wokism, and what lessons can be learned in order to better spread/suppress future ideologies.
fmaa
1hr ago
Otoh it turned out that the optimal level of smallpox was in fact 0. Don't confuse "eliminating this bad thing isn't worth infinite resources" with "eliminating this bad thing requires infinite resources".
John_Doe_Fletcher
anarcho-heretic, Quokkit guy
2hr ago
Random people online were able to sense a threat that leading experts weren’t able to sense, and made arguments that leading academics did not make. Why?
My belief, based on my recollections of the time, is that "leading experts" and "leading academics" were the originators of the social justice memeplex, and therefore wouldn't make arguments against it even if they could conceive of them. In support of this, the common dismissal at the time of "it's just college students spending too much time on tumblr" highlights that this memeplex's breeding ground was immediately downstream of leading academics. Or perhaps more accurately, academia was the superfund site and Tumblr was the groundwater.
Sorry if the metaphor is too dramatic, I'm feeling bitter.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2hr ago
One in a thousand find a gamer girl. But at the cost quite often of having hundreds of women see anime and gaming in the bio and deciding to not engage.
This is the point. It's not that for each random woman who sees your profile you roll a random die and there's a 99% chance you lose her interest. It's that for each woman when she was born and grew up life rolled a random die and there's a 99% chance that she became the kind of person who would lose interest in a man who likes anime and video games. If you want to date a woman who hates anime and videogames then I suppose you might consider scaring her off to be a bad thing, but if you want to find that gamer girl then the normie woman is an obstacle. A waste of your time. Instead of spending hours, days, years of your life sending messages and spending time with women who would have been scared off by videogames and anime but you kept by playing it cool, you could instead scare them all off and then the only people left are the gamer girls.
You don't have time to date 1000 women. If you're some super hot gigachad I suppose you could if you go on a brand new date every day for three years without breaks or repeats. But realistically, that's way too many. But if you scare 99% of them off (and not randomly, you're scaring the worst 99% off) you DO have time to message and date the remaining 10 until you find the perfect one in a thousand.
HereAndGone
2hr ago
which implicitly means that there is some amount of premature violent death of children we are collectively willing to tolerate as the price of doing business
I hope it is with you in your social circle as with the anarchist in "The Man Who Was Thursday" 😁
"I preached blood and murder to those women day and night, and—by God!—they would let me wheel their perambulators.”
Though it would be a unique selling point for a creche or daycare: "Some small number of premature violent death may occur on these premises, kindly remember that, should it happen to your children, you are helping preserve our liberties".
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2hr ago
Sure, I think of myself as a fairly honest person. But in my life I have shoplifted, perhaps three or four times, by accident or out of pure cussedness. Certainly if the owners of the store maintain a policy to trust people similarly situated to me, they will suffer additional losses over time compared to what they would if they sought a "zero shoplifting" policy. But they will probably lose more business than it's worth.
We aren't arguing that shoplifting isn't bad. We're arguing that some risk of shoplifting is better than no risk of shoplifting, because in order to achieve zero shoplifting, the convenience store must undermine it's own raison d'etre: convenience. Hence the optimal amount of shoplifting for a convenience store isn't zero. More shoplifting isn't better than less shoplifting, but as the amount asymptotically approaches zero there's a point where the security procedures become too much, where the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
We see this all around us. Self checkout leads to massively increased losses, but not enough to balance avoiding paying a cashier. EZ Pass and toll by plate on highways leads to significant lost revenue compared to toll booths, but reduced costs and increased traffic flow make it worth it. If I put on a pink polo shirt and a white baseball cap with a finance logo on it and throw my golf clubs in my truck and drive to a nice country club and walk out and start hitting balls on the range, no one will stop me, because staff can't constantly be harassing members and it's not worth the risk.
The optimal point isn't zero.
TheDemonRazgriz
2hr ago
Is there evidence that this is not because US-based social media actively suppresses pro-Palestinian content?
Admittedly I don’t think anyone has done that study, but honestly I find it very hard to believe. Certainly if they are they’re doing a pretty terrible job: pro-Palestine content dominates pro-Israel content on all US social media, as far as I know.
Anyway, I was doing some quick searching and I believe this is the original study I was remembering: https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/NCRI-Report_-The-CCPs-Digital-Charm-Offensive.pdf
Frankly I think there was at least one other study done as well, but I couldn’t find it in my cursory Google search. I have an admittedly somewhat vague memory of more graphs comparing the different social media sites in terms of non-China-related political content as well that I didn’t see in this particular Rutgers study, which is entirely China-focused. I also recall reading about this topic in both the mainstream news (likely NYT but I don’t remember) and a fairly detailed substack post, possibly by Jonathan Haidt? If you want I can try harder to find it again later (I’m procrastinating at work at the moment by writing this post so my time is limited) or you can look for yourself. In my opinion the study is convincing in its main point that the TikTok algorithm emphasizes pro-Chinese and de-emphasizes anti-Chinese political content. It is not a blunt promotion/suppression, just a light-touch thumb-on-the-scale approach, but I think it shows willingness to interfere in Chinese-owned US-facing media even in the relatively peaceable geopolitical environment of today.
Honestly, though, the concern of whether the CCP is currently manipulating the algorithm is, in my view, very much secondary to the plain fact that they are capable of mandating such manipulation through their leverage over the company. I don’t think that some sort of naive free market principles (which, as far as I can see, are really the only counterargument to the ban/forced sale) justify exposing our media environment to that kind of risk.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2hr ago
This is the result of the much-discussed "march through the institutions". By the time social justice began to come out in the open, the institutions -- even religious ones -- had largely already been taken over by progressives.
HereAndGone
2hr ago
My view was that con artists prey on greed and stupidity, and in a low-trust society there's plenty of people who are greedy and willing to bend the rules, so a shady proposition isn't an immediate turn-off so long as you set it up right: let's you and me profit off this dumb government initiative to give free money to people with curly hair; here's a secret deal that only a few insiders know which will make them hugely rich and you can get in on the ground floor; shoplifting isn't theft, insurance covers it, the big stores expect it and price it in, and besides we're striking back against the big fatcats of capitalism. It's a lot easier to sell "I got this hot tip from my inside contact in the government department" when everyone knows bribery and corruption are what makes the world go round and it's expected that you have to grease palms and give presents to the right people to get anything done.
Then the sucker ends up losing the shirt on his back, because he might have been venal enough to be willing to do something dishonest but he wasn't smart enough to work out some things are too good to be true.
HereAndGone
2hr ago
because most people in the community were trustworthy, this gamble paid off most of the time
That's the point I'm trying to make. If you tolerate fraud, or even promulgate "well the chance of fraud is better than a world with no fraud" (which is different from "there will always be a risk of fraud"), then what is tolerated becomes commonplace. Once the water changes, the fish change too. Once the bedrock assumptions of "be honest not criminal" are weakened by lack of social reinforcement and no longer passed down, you'll get more and more people willing to be scammers, which in turns mean fewer people opting to put their trust in others, and the costs of protecting yourself against fraud rise because now you have to either spend time and effort on not being scammed, or risk being scammed and losing very badly what you can't afford to lose.
"There's always going to be fraud out there, just be careful and be aware" is not the same as "we need a certain amount of fraud to happen, otherwise it's the Panopticon and economic stagnation". That second message is an encouragement to be fraudulent - after all, everyone else would do it too if they could, and you are just filling your role in the ecosystem!
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2hr ago
Be quick about it; I think the gratis period expires today or tomorrow.
HereAndGone
2hr ago
I'm going to assume that alongside whatever native honesty you have in your nature, you were raised not to do something like that: that stealing is wrong, that you pay for the goods, and the rest of it.
That's how we get high-trust societies.
Some people, though, weren't raised like that and/or aren't basically honest. We've all seen the videos, and that's how you get toothpaste has to be locked away and retailers close down because the professional shoplifters aren't afraid of the law since the law won't go after them.
SSCReader
2hr ago
Right, but those politicians are white themselves overwhelmingly right? 75% of Congress is white. Its not black people or Asians or whatever making those choices. They don't have the numbers or power. If you want to say elite whites are making different choices than non elite whites want then perhaps you have a point. But its still white people making those choices.
And even there i'll point again to the discrepancy that haunted the Tories, people say they want less immigration, but they also punish any party that oversees an economic downturn.
If you want politicians to really drop immigration you have to show you will vote for them when the economy tanks. And mostly people don't. That was our finding when I worked for the Tories. All our modelling showed that doing what people said they wanted, would lose us votes. Same with Brexit, as soon as the economic winds started to bite, voters turned on the Tories. What lesson does that teach your politicians?
We get the politicians we deserve. People may say they want lower immigration, but they are not prepared to pay the costs that involves. I'll bet dollars to donuts that in 2028, if Trump really has made a dent in numbers of illegal immigrants and the economy has suffered that Republicans lose, even if they did what most people wanted. And politicians learn that lesson.
More people rate the economy as their most important political issue than immigration. Therefore spending billions on immigration enforcement, driving up costs of food, cutting other programs for Americans to pay for it, is a losing proposition. Thats why even Trump was going back and forth on enforcement for illegal farm workers.
Its not that the call is coming from inside the building. Its that there are 300 million calls all saying contradictory things, reduce immigration, make my food cheaper, make American goods, make me able to buy a truck and a TV, and so on and so forth. Trump to his credit, is trying to stick to some of these, but even he admits it will make things worse in the short term.
That means you need to persuade people in 2028 to vote Republican even if, especially if! the economy sucks. If they do, then you are creating a new signal. If they don't then they are telling politicians what their revealed preferences really are.
HereAndGone
2hr ago
That's one way, and the less desirable way, of doing it.
HereAndGone
2hr ago
Oh, were I Dictator of Earth, I'd happily go "ban 'em all, the stupidity level is too high".
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2hr ago
Probably because this is my background but I would conceive of it as analogous to computer security. When you are talking about adversary-proofing your production you need to have in mind, what adversary? What capabilities does that adversary have? How are they going to try and attack my production? You need to start with a Threat model and go from there. Talking about "adversary-proof" in a vacuum is as useless as talking about a "secure" computer in a vacuum. Secure from what?
To take a common example, the United States imports a lot of the goods used in our defense industry. Particularly computer chips and the parts used in their production. Specifically, these parts are often imported from countries which we believe have a substantial likelihood of being adversaries in the future (primarily China). So it would be sensible to talk about adversary-proofing the United States supply chain for computer chips from China. If China decided to invade Taiwan tomorrow and we were unable to source chips from there, what are the alternatives? Same question for the case of China cutting off exports of all rare earth minerals. Crucially the answers to these questions may be different depending on who we are modeling as our adversaries and what their capabilities are.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
3hr ago
What can we learn about optimal cultural leadership in light of the 2013-2021 social justice period?
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Religious leaders did not adequately stand up against the mass movement. Although many conservatives see value in religious institutions as a cultural defense, mainstream Catholicism and Protestant denominations did not substantively address the social justice craze. In some cases they placated or even promoted it.
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Academics did not adequately argue against the mass movement. It is not the case, for instance, that the experts in western history, literature, or philosophy were more likely to argue against the mass movement in any substantive way. This is problematic: if learning the best of western culture does not lead to protecting said culture in any genuine sense when it matters the most, then how great is the actual utility of such learning?
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The main “public critics” of the period have little in common except that they were passionate and somewhat neurotic men. Yarvin, Peterson, Weinstein, Scott Adams(?). My memory of who was most dominant in this period is somewhat hazy, maybe someone with a better memory can correct me. There were more psychologists among critics than philosophers. You had people like Stefan Molyneux passionately criticizing the proto-movement well before its zenith. His Twitter attests to his neuroticism.
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Random people online were able to sense a threat that leading experts weren’t able to sense, and made arguments that leading academics did not make. Why?
It’s difficult to come away with clear takeaways. IMO: (1) it is beneficial to increase anonymous discussion, as this laid the groundwork for future criticism, and allowed for arguments to spread which would otherwise be banned. (2) It may be essential to increase the number of passionate and neurotic men, over men with other skills, as the major critics were more often passionate and somewhat crazy. A “passionate” temperament is occasionally inaccurate, and may result in behavior that leads institutions to weed them out — but their utility in sensing and addressing threats compensates for the occasional bout of craziness.
There is a funny review of Jordan Peterson from 2013, possibly the first time anyone commented about his personality online. It was made on the anonymous literature board of 4chan in 2013, long before his rise to fame.
he's craaaaazy. he so crazy. I had a class immediately following one of his lectures like, his was from 1:15-3:15 in Room 101., and my different classes was from 3:25-5:25 in Room 101 too. ok? So... he would totally bug out if someone opened the door early. Like, screaming fits and stuff. my prof (who was just a postdoc and wasn't going to get tenured at u of t) encouraged us all to fuck with his head because in addition to being a rageaholic spaz, peterson would also leave the podium really dirty. also, he lectures in a cape for some reason. he went on this ontario talk show with his daughter talking about how they're both clinically depressed bla bla, I feel bad that she's his dad, that must be hard to deal with
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
3hr ago
The only crime of that movie is that it sets up a metaphysical science fiction story that's much more interesting that it with its ending and never delivers on it.
I want to see that world 2000 years in.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
3hr ago
I'm surprised no one compiled a list of all of the jobs or things he claimed to have experience with, but I wasn't about to spend the time going through his comment history to do it.
If you or anyone actually does have a list like this, it would be helpful. People keep handwaving that he was doing all sorts of nefarious debate tricks but nobody can actually point to any examples. Nobody has receipts, so they broadly fall back on "trust me bro".
"Engaging in good faith" seems to be synonymous with "only disagrees with me within certain bounds".
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
3hr ago
4chan is already controlled by the American Intelligence Community, that's the only meaningful difference.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
3hr ago
what the internet did is not make people crazy, but show them how much of a fraud the world they lived in is.
It specifically made them think the world they currently live in is a fraud much more than ever before. The Right takes this to mean we must RETVRN to the 1950's (when we didn't notice the fraud) while the Left takes it to mean insane purity-spiral wokeism is the only cure.
WhiningCoil
3hr ago
Overwhelmingly, every time it's put to a vote, people vote for less immigration. People vote against affirmative action policies. People vote against racial carve outs. Don't pretend the call is coming from inside the house, and whites are inflicting this on themselves. The government is running amok, either because racial spoils are easy to lie about but still deliver votes, or because some unaccountable aspect of it has been captured by racial interest groups. Might be worth looking into that "Critical Race Theory" thing. Whenever it comes up, I always hear it's defenders claim "They aren't teaching that in schools, it's only a legal theory".
Pynewacket
3hr ago
the once-oppressed Chinese have been content with their rising standards of living.
isn't the US in a fentanyl epidemic?, last I heard it came to the US through Cartels that bought the necessary precursors from the Chinese.
I get the strong impression this is not a movie made for black people, it's a movie made for white people who like to think about racism and all the rest of that stuff. Which is fair enough, I think specifically black movies for a black audience would be way different and have much less broad appeal, which means they'd do poorly at the box office (I think Moonlight, for instance, was absolutely a 'black movie made for white liberals').
The vampire element could be fascinating if done well; vampirism as a metaphor for conversion is one of the readings on the topic. Here comes an outside entity totally different to everything you know that takes over your life and changes you completely by force and without your will, and if you are willing that is in fact even worse. Applying that to "white vampires against black descendants of slaves" is going to dig up a lot of interpretation.
But I don't know if they do that, or if the movie can handle that. I haven't seen it, I'm only going by reviews, and it does seem to be a bit too pick'n'mix about the Oppressed Minorities on one side and the - well, the who? The KKK? The vampires? - on the other side. The Chinese couple and Choctaw vampire hunters? That's taking the BIPOC acronym a little too literally.
And why Irish? I don't know enough about this Remmick to know what flavour of Irish he is meant to be (the Scots-Irish of the South, who I presume would be the whites living beside and racist to the black population? Southern Irish as per "the rocky road to Dublin"? Protestant? Catholic? Neither?) Something odd going on there. Why Irish, as against the Anglo-philic culture of the plantation owners? Or is it meant to be a subtle reference to "Gone With the Wind" (the O'Haras and "Tara" being southern Irish by descent) - a sort of 'this is how the glamorous figures in Southern-set movies really are' notion?
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