domain:mattlakeman.org
Shrike
11hr ago
humans' moral instincts (telling them that mass murder is wrong)
This is not a human moral instinct. Humans are quite comfortable with mass murder. That's why we've done it repeatedly (that, and it's a very good strategy).
(I suppose we can argue about whether or not something is a "human moral instinct" if it's not shared by all humans. And it is true that some humans are uncomfortable with mass murder. But the fact remains that mass murder is a very typical human behavior.)
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11hr ago
But rumors are coming out that it's manufacturing sector in panicking, with factories sitting idle and orders drying up.
There have been rumours like this for the last 10 years at least. Remember Evergrande?
Obviously the tariffs hurt the Chinese economy but it's the biggest manufacturer in the world, the biggest trading nation in the world and the biggest economy in the world in terms of production as opposed to accounting tricks. Energy in the US is more expensive than China - higher US GDP! Burger King has been selling burgers at US $1.37 in China, there's a massive price war in just about everything. Lower China GDP! When you use appropriate metrics for economic size, China surpassed the US a long time ago.
Thus I'm sceptical of the China-collapse narrative. Big things are tough and hard to break. COVID hit China pretty hard but they tanked it and moved on without any inflation. Tariffs aren't going to do more economic damage than COVID.
By the time demographic shrinking really kicks in, they'll have a gigantic, automated industrial base and still enjoy a huge pool of STEM talent. Nothing short of losing WW3 is going to stop China.
So of course there will be factories that are hard hit and go out of business. But China is not short of factories, they have huge capacity. During the Great Depression the US was in a very poor state but they were still the biggest economy on the planet. Likewise with China, except they're not in a Great Depression.
Shrike
12hr ago
I'd just add that the New Testament is actually very skeptical of wealth (there's a strong connection made at points between the wealthy and the oppressors) and the church is condemned for showing partiality to those who are wealthy. So it's interesting because it's not really proto-communist-egalitarian-paradise but neither does it succumb to a sort of "will-to-power" fantasy where strength or power are to be privileged. Really what's elevated is moral goodness and wisdom.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
12hr ago
You mean you don't want flame retardants for children's sleep clothes? You think you can just clothe your child in loose fitting, non-retarded cotton? What if your child falls asleep while smoking and the cigarette lights their jammies and they just get fucking immolated? Has that thought crossed your mind?
swift
12hr ago
That's true, the Church is a hierarchy and has leaders and followers. However, Christianity is very explicitly egalitarian about moral worth: every human being is equally morally worthy, because we all have an immortal soul and were made in the image of God.
Shrike
12hr ago
Is not the doctrinal communist ideal -- the universal fraternity of man, sacrifice for those who are in need, "the last shall be first" -- ultimately just an expression of universal Christian love?
Interestingly from what I can tell the "proto-Christian-communism" was within the Christian community - and it came with rules.
Besides Acts 2 (where the holding of "all things in common" was within the church) see for instance Galatians 6:10 ("...let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.") and 1st Timothy 5, which gives these instructions for granting charity to windows: "Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband, and having a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work."
So while Christianity definitely has an idea of the "universal fraternity of man" within Scripture the brotherhood of believers is privileged. That's not to say that charitable works to nonbelievers are forbidden, but it's not the communist ideal of the Universal Brotherhood of Man (...or perhaps it is similar, in the sense that the Communist Universal Brotherhood of Man was in practice often restricted to, well, Communists.)
swift
12hr ago
The faucet was closed. The program is no longer feasible to run.
They are protesting the faucet being closed, by doing the only thing that they can do to hurt this administration: talk about it, and refuse to provide services the admin actually wants.
swift
12hr ago
a refugee is someone in danger in their home country, not someone that is poor, isn't he? where are you taking this conflation of refugee with poor from?
Most refugees are poor, because countries with armed conflicts and political persecution are largely dysfunctional and poor. Afrikaners are very much an exception to this.
Isn't that referring to your neighbors and people like you?. Yes, people like you, like every other human is like you. Humans are all created in the image of God and are all thus equally morally worthy.
Definitely not just people of your same ethnicity.
And that tidbit about "resources allocated for the poor" should be "to the persecuted". I think, your whole line of argumentation falls apart when we take that into consideration.
Wealthy people fleeing persecution can take care of themselves, the money is largely useful for the poor (and persecuted yes).
I don't understand the point you're trying to make with your last verse.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
12hr ago
I don’t know enough Aristotelian (I assume) philosophy to speak fittingly in terms of essences, properties, and qualities
No background in Aristotle needed. The word "quality" is just being used in its ordinary sense. Intelligence is a quality. Beauty is a quality. Nothing fancy going on.
But I can point out that in Christian belief all men possess the image of God, which gives them value in itself
Sure. But then, all people would be the same in that regard. Love has to single out a particular person (or a particular thing) in contradistinction to others.
In my own view, universal love is at worst incoherent, and at best it's a particularly tepid form of love. There is no love unless you can draw a distinction between those who are loved and those who are unloved; and so universal properties shared by all people cannot be the basis of love.
swift
12hr ago
Sorry to hear, that does sound very frustrating. It does look like they have traditional academic prestige on their side, maybe that tipped the grant over to FRI. Did you apply for the same objective, or something else? Would you consider joining them so they do a good job?
I've seen proposals for tech worker unions. It's mostly about social justice and workers refusing work due to ethical concerns. As though a union could block a corporate contract with the Israeli government or the US military. As though less work is good for us.
Another main issue is making it harder to fire tech workers. It being easy to fire tech workers is a good thing. Driving out weaklings is obviously good. It makes the rest of us more valuable.
The one defensible point they make is regarding number of hours worked. I understand why some people don't want long hours. I'm still against the proposals since hiring more people to do the same amount of work would probably result in a decrease in compensation per person.
The above points are pushing for more people and person-hours with less work. That should result in a decrease in total compensation per worker. My entire concern is total compensation. Their concern is progressive culture warring and an understanding of workers' rights that amounts to encouraging mediocrity. Our values are incompatible and I don't want a union forced onto me. They would be taking my dues and spending them on progressive political lobbying while working on goals that would decrease my total compensation. In every way bad for me and opposed to my values. And then people act like "techbros" are fools working against their own interests.
They want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs and tell me it is for my own good.
Hieronymus
12hr ago
It means that love of neighbor follows from love of God, but the former doesn’t subsume the latter.
Let me give an example that I read a zillion years ago in the New Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. I may get the details wrong, and I haven’t confirmed the thoroughness of the book’s sources, but it works just as well as a thought experiment anyway:
A woman was in the custody of the Soviet secret police. These sometimes took a perverse joy in breaking people they weren’t going to let leave alive anyway, and they had decided to break her faith. When maiming her legs didn’t do it, they brought in her children and threatened to shoot them if she did not deny Christ. She refused, and the secret police shot her children in front of her.
If love of God is the higher good, she did the right thing. It’s not that she didn’t love her children enough; it’s that she loved God more than that.
Throwaway05
12hr ago
it’s convinced society that pretty much everything negative that happens to you is traumatic in some way.
This is not the fault of the "mental health industry." Ask any clinically practicing therapist, social worker, or psychiatrist what they think of "little t trauma" and they will BITCH.
The problem is some combination of wokeism/snowflakeism/safetyism/influencer culture etc.
You will find professionals supporting this kind of garbage but it is more often non-clinical/non-practicing people.
You will find that people in mental health find the current paradigms on these matters to be extremely deleterious to human development and flourishing.
Additionally, something that often gets missed when therapy is mentioned - the goal of therapy is to stop therapy. Competent therapists will emphasize this early and often and actually do it.
mr_bailey
12hr ago
Most US prostitution is not streetwalker (estimates range from 10-20% streetwalkers). The dominant forms of prostitution are call-girls/escorts and pseudo-brothels (e.g. massage parlors, etc.). Both claim the fig leaf (with varying seriousness/success) that the payment is nominally for other legal services and any sex is just happenstance.
hydroacetylene
12hr ago
I have never understood why some women go on about how sex work is empowering for women.
Presumably, as a luxury belief.
hydroacetylene
12hr ago
It occurs to me that in a recently-established environment of equality we should expect mothers to [not necessarily intentionally] sabotage their sons romantically by failing to explicitly point out how and why female sexuality works. Uniquely, men are evolved to do this with their daughters with respect to male sexuality because up until about 150 years ago the inequality tilted that way- since this is a new requirement for women, an outsized proportion of mothers will fail to do this (and will then hide behind "social justice" as a means to escape blame for that failure).
Why should we expect evolution to push for ‘getting your kids laid with as many partners as possible’? This is not an offspring maximizing strategy(for humans early and stable marriage is the fertility minmax).
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
13hr ago
Asexuality is a genuine thing for both men and woman.
I suppose so, in the sense that both men and women can be paraplegic or born blind or whatever.
The ADHD comparison falls apart in that when someone claims to have ADHD they're trying to get the treatment for ADHD (meds, extra exam time) to get an advantage. People who claim to be asexual claim don't want to be treated for it at all.
It is perhaps more accurate to consider the pre- and post-Mao CCP as entities that share continuity but otherwise represents a break, in the same way that the Tang overthrew the Sui in the 6th century (after the Sui were bankrupting the country to invade Goguryeo) but essentially retained its edit: broad institutions and ministries.
One important thing to note about the Mandate of Heaven is that it is less extensive than the divine right of kings elsewhere in the world. The right to rebellion is explicitly written into the Mandate of Heaven.
hydroacetylene
13hr ago
The episcopal church has always been more or less defined as the liberal branch of the Christian communion least defined by doctrinal concerns.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 'We have a golden rule: "Mind your own damn business!"'🍞🌹
13hr ago
I could be wrong about their motivations, but the impression I get from the Episcopal Church's decision is something along the lines of "The administration is aiding white people who are or might be in danger of their lives, while telling people of colour in similar danger that they are obligated to stay in their own countries and die. This suggests that the administration believes that the life of a white person matters more than that of a person of colour. This belief is a grave sin, and we refuse to be complicit in it."
hydroacetylene
13hr ago
Christianity is, quite explicitly, not egalitarian. There’s the inequality between God and man and the angels, obviously. But then the New Testament describes an early church which is profoundly class based- there are different types of clerics, men are the head of women, and slaves are expected to obey their masters. These classes might differ in some regards from secular social classes but it isn’t the classless, property less, stateless society which is communism’s raizon detre. In fact Christian theology has from early days been very skeptical of hostility to the state.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 'We have a golden rule: "Mind your own damn business!"'🍞🌹
13hr ago
Failure to grasp this is how you wind up with “Love wins” and “Hate has no home here” churches that would never tell anyone they are living in specific sin.
At least some of those churches condemn sin, but merely disagree with you about whether certain things are sinful (e. g. whatever happens in Pete and Chasten Buttigieg's bedroom).
I'm going to go against the grain and say rather than the Pratchett novels, where I've read two but felt they were kind of uneven and mostly just imitations, just go straight to the original delight: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the original trilogy. The quotes are literally next-level.
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