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VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
11hr ago
Now, a red-blooded red triber will for sure be cheering if some Indian Googler who retweeted an "America is helping Israel establish neocolonial apartheid" tweet gets unceremoniously deported,
This is a weird scenario partially because Indians themselves (well, some) likely have at least interesting views on the situation between the Indian minority in South Africa during actual Apartheid (not entirely from within the borders of modern India), and modern day India's relations with Israel largely vis-a-vis it's relations with its Muslim neighbor Pakistan.
History and society is complicated.
Jazzhands
11hr ago
I hear that if you eat them you'll gain the powers of a shrimp: having EAs actually care about you.
It seems pretty clear that rhetoric from the top, especially from Trump, has pushed nativist ideas into the open. The strong version of this argument is that this has moved beyond simple policy disagreements (like border security) and has become a real cultural attitude of exclusion. How would you build the case that this isn't just a fringe phenomenon anymore, but a significant and growing force in American life?
I don't take those immigration arguments seriously. America is and will remain an attractive destination because America is doing better than most of the world, same as always. Americans are still, factually, incredibly immigrant-friendly by most standards. Hell, I think Trump may end up suffering because of the one thing he undoubtedly did well: closing the border reduces the salience of the matter and normies become much less willing to tolerate his other immigration shenanigans.
Complaints by downwardly mobile people online won't change than an Indian American woman is married to the VP right now and is closer to power than any online dissident rightist or person bitter about being driven out of a Google job
The argument I would make is that the left is better at this, according to the Right's own theory of the case. They took over the institutions more effectively, to the point where the attempted populist reclamation (which came pretty late) looks hamfisted and illegitimate in comparison. They possess the bulk of the human capital and their ideology is just baked into the culture now. So there'll be huge payback when they inevitably get into power with the support of a radicalized normie base. If you think this leads to awful decisions and a never-ending polarization spiral, it's pretty bad for everyone, not just Republicans.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
11hr ago
A more "gloves-off" approach to online speech is a win for free expression, but its most visible result has been the normalization of unapologetic racism. The core of this argument isn't just that it's unpleasant, but that it's actively corroding social trust and making it harder to have a unified country. Not sure if you’ve seen this too, but I see tons of ‘black fatigue’ and explicitly white nationalist people in my feed and there’s not much I or anybody else can do about it. What does the most persuasive version of this argument look like?
This is "wet streets cause rain" thinking. Unapologetic racism was always there, it was just some people weren't allowed to participate. Consider the recent blowup over Doreen St. Felix, a writer at the New Yorker who published an insipid bit of Sydney Sweeny commentary. She was discovered to have a decade+ long history of meme Nation of Islam tier racism against white people, and that was considered perfectly socially acceptable.
Have you ever actually looked at black twitter? Indian twitter? The stuff you're complaining about is still tame in comparison.
What makes me think about this point is all of the talk about Indian people online. Like them or not, they are STRONG contributors in the workplace.
Are they? Then why is India a dumpster fire? American culture has had the stereotype of the soullness, number-pushing striver for centuries. Are they STRONG contributors in a way that, say, Ayn Rand would recognize? Offering high value for high value? As opposed to ethics-free system-gaming? From the country famous for scamming and fake degrees?
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
12hr ago
A more "gloves-off" approach to online speech is a win for free expression, but its most visible result has been the normalization of unapologetic racism. The core of this argument isn't just that it's unpleasant, but that it's actively corroding social trust and making it harder to have a unified country.
I can't steelman it because it's begging for "remove the beam in your own eye!" or "your rules, applied fairly" and devolving into a chicken and egg argument. Unapologetic racism was already normalized, but only against certain groups. A win for free expression just opened that up to all groups on social media; it's still restricted in any meaningful publication and the consequences are quite different for racism against protected groups versus unprotected.
Apparently "no racism" wasn't an option on the cultural table.
How would you build the case that this isn't just a fringe phenomenon anymore, but a significant and growing force in American life?
Surely the DHS twitter feed does enough to provide that case?
we're sending a signal that the best and brightest should maybe look elsewhere.
The problem with this one is, there's nowhere else to look. Much of Europe is having its own nativist backlash and if you're particularly high-achieving in a technological field, you won't get paid a fraction as much. The H1B changes will mean fewer low-level people coming in that route, but I don't think the announced changes will affect the "best and brightest" that much.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
12hr ago
What is a socially acceptable way to express anger? Is there such a thing when you're a child in school?
In my time, it was listening to angry music (rap or metal, with the two being pretty mutually exclusive; the metal-listeners would generally turn out to be more successful for reasons that I had a whole teenage pop psychology theory for that these margins are too small to contain), playing first-person shooters, or getting into internet flamewars (my palliative of choice). I don't know about acceptable ways that can be used right there, in the moment, in a social situation, that go beyond giving the target a death glare and maybe clenching a fist in your pocket; bottling anything that can't be dissipated with just that up for later is a life skill that just needs to be practiced.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
12hr ago
Seems a little extreme to jump straight to talk therapy and medication. Have you tried heavy metal and a personal trainer?
But yes, you have correctly identified an issue. His emotions are an inconvenience to virtually every woman on the earth (which includes most of his teachers, administrators, therapists, and IEP-professionals). The call for him to express himself is somewhere between solipsistic ignorance and a cruel, Mean Girls lie.
This is unfair. There is no systematic solution. The closest you can get is to stop asking other women to fix him (be wary of feminine men here, too). My own teen son is very well-adjusted, and I still have frequent issues where his grandmother freaks out over his being "moody". Whereas I can tell that she's just utterly incapable of reading his moods and either working around them or overriding them. He needs male role models, male peers, and acceptably pro-social outlets. Sports would cover all three, but if he's not that kid, then at least try a gym membership with a trainer and a Dream Theater concert.
Tanista
12hr ago
For me, as much as I've been infuriated with progressive activism the past decade, the censorship rollback has revealed that the leftists were, in fact, right about many of the rightoids.
They've always been right that some people are racist. The steelmanned counter-argument is just that the cure is worse than the disease . Progressives themselves agree that pure racial animus alone is not that important, which is why they define it away via "racism= prejudice . Progressives can't be trusted not because racism doesn't exist, but because it's a blank cheque for a bunch of very stupid and/or illiberal policies.
I don't think that's possible at scale. You could get smarter, more self-aware people to do this, but most people aren't either one of these things. In fact, I think bots designed to grab your attention implicitly makes this point. The bots will grab the people's attention, so "Make better choices" isn't really feasible for the population.
The Left's attempt at trying to "end" racism by shifting blame onto the history of white people while also censoring their opinions made things worse, so I'm not advocating for going back to that, but the algorithm and its recognition of our tendency to gravitate toward controversy should maybe figure out better ways to redirect the energy people have for hating others.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
12hr ago
Mostly I was being cheeky and don't have a solid, well-thought-out definition of what it should mean.
I don't think it requires a naïve or writ-in-stone ranking, but one should, if trying to be principled, be able to articulate why they may rank principles a certain way and explain what may seem like unprincipled exceptions to someone else. In my experience not many liberals that claim to be principled are terribly effective at communicating reasoning behind their indifference to certain offenses or otherwise selectiveness of care.
WandererintheWilderness
12hr ago
a professor doing that for something a university doesn't like will often get at least a slap on the wrist for misusing their connection to the university.
I grant you that this is probably factually true, but I think they shouldn't. I disagree that highlighting one's credentials within an institution entails that you are speaking in that institution's name. Sometimes you might be trying to give that impression - but there is a difference between "speaking as a representative UCLA, it is our institutional belief…" and "here is my personal opinion; and by the way, you should listen to me because I teach at UCLA", and the latter should not be verboten, or otherwise under the university's control in any way.
"I'm a UCLA professor" is a factually true statement for Tao to make about himself. It's an outrageous free-speech violation to try and stop him from stating that fact wherever and whenever he believes it to be relevant. The university shouldn't have the right to (hypothetically) prevent him from pointing out that he has those credentials to help his case. This holds even if 299 other UCLA professors speak up as a group of private individuals, all of whom happen to be able to truthfully point to their UCLA credentials as a reason why the public ought to trust their wisdom.
Frankly, UCLA as an institution should not be in the business of having official political beliefs. The idea that any number of UCLA professors signing a politically-motivated letter could be interpreted as "representing the university" should be absurd, because the notion that "UCLA" could make a statement about Trump should be laughable - should be immediately recognizable as a category error.
throwaway-7742
12hr ago
I'll become your friendly neighborhood Shrimp-Man and the FDA can't stop me.
DelendaEst
12hr ago
I think the logic largely goes like this:
- The solution is just to jail the blacks who are committing all the crime and loudly say its a bad thing and then do nothing to the non-criminals
- The left has made clear that is not an option, as long as the levels are disproportionate doing anything about the problem members is not allowed, and loudly decrying them is absolutely verboten.
- Fine then, if the existence of a black population implies a large level of criminality and disfunction which we are not allowed to address then the problem is the existence of the population.
Its the same way that most people are not immigration absolutists but if the left and center refuse to deal with them problem and indeed insist on making it worse then I guess I'll vote for the right, even though they will go much further than I'd prefer. Or if the right insists on full abortion bans then I'll vote for the left and their up to the moment of birth plans, even though I'd prefer reasonable limits.
If the left was open to fixing the actual problem then throwing the baby out with the bathwater would be less popular. Though the fact that in this case the non-problem population is also very loudly offended by the idea of solving the problem makes it worse.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
12hr ago
I would expect the same if someone said blacks were animals or Jews were parasites or anything else.
Well yes, say anything within 10 degrees of the first and you'll be jettisoned immediately and the company will put everyone left behind through endless punishment sensitivity training. Reaction to the second depends if it was before or after 10/7.
The owner of a private company has editorial control over their company.
This attitude is what turned so many Mottezans away from being principled on this topic, noticing the massive gap between what people say they will do and how they behave in practice. Turns out very few people are really bothered by racism or sexism or discrimination in general, there's several populations that are totally fair targets. Alas, "your rules applied fairly" is not a stable point and assumes people are honest about what their rules are supposed to be.
For a public university? There should be none
The Harvard kid was more famous but it happened at NC State too. No consequences for the university afaict, and I haven't turned up the kids' names to see if they went elsewhere.
And if you think about it, groups like private Christian/Jewish/Muslim religious universities wouldn't be able to exist if they were legally bound to the same standards as public ones since they would not be able to select off religion as they do.
Are they allowed to select by religion? Hmm... looking at FIRE's page I may have been remembering that CLS v Martinez case, that student groups at public universities can't. Vaguely recall some other exception but maybe not.
I can name two pretty big examples of the top of my head, the targeting of evolution and the targeting of climate science.
I'd consider the the evolution complaint petty in comparison, but fair enough.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
12hr ago
It's maybe a depressing take, but I'd bet that aging and age-driven mortality is hugely multivariate as the result of at least a dozen factors that have all been locally optimized under a "needs to work at least one lifetime" metric. One could imagine a poorly[1] engineered car hitting it's warranty limit and immediately having all the wheels and seats fall out at once, without a simple "one weird trick" existing to maintain it indefinitely. I'm more hopeful for a bunch of weird tricks, though.
- "Poorly" here meaning not the car I want to own. But in practice, engineering things to last "just long enough" is often technically impressive, especially in other contexts. Boeing used to test it's new wing designs to failure to check that they weren't overbuilt (read: could be lighter).
Ioper
12hr ago
He is a teen and he is having tantrums and meltdowns in school? That doesn't sound like a case of a school overreacting to normal male behaviour.
Whether something this is "normal to him" doesn't really matter. This is unacceptable behaviour and he will have a really hard time if he doesn't learn to manage this.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
12hr ago
The premise is this: If we grant that the cultural right is "winning" right now, what's the strongest possible argument that this is leading to some genuinely bad outcomes for the country?
I think your premise is dubious, but assuming it's true, mostly what I see is a victory for accelerationists.
Everything Trump is doing now means when Democrats come back into power, they are going to try to reverse everything he did and then set the dial at eleventy and make sure no MAGA ever again. The MAGAs currently in power, of course, know this is what will happen, so they're doing their best to make their changes difficult or impossible to reverse, while hitting eleventy themselves.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
12hr ago
What he chooses to do with his reputation and credentials is up to him
When you're using your credentials and writing as a representative of the university, you are representing the university. He didn't sign it as "Terry Tao, regular schmo" or "Terry Tao, Fields Medal Winner," he signed as "Terence Tao, UCLA professor along with 300ish other UCLA professors."
The university didn't complain because they supported the cause, but a professor doing that for something a university doesn't like will often get at least a slap on the wrist for misusing their connection to the university.
First, culture war topics only in the culture war thread.
Second, this is not nearly enough effort even for a culture war thread, and it arguably violates our rule against consensus building (who is the "we" the recognizes "general facts" here)? "What will London look like in 30 years" is probably okay by itself in the Small Questions Sunday thread.
Third, a brand new account leading with white hot culture war material as its very first post? That's not getting through the filters, sorry. Maybe try participating in some existing conversations and get a feel for the rules and norms first?
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
13hr ago
· Edited 12hr ago
Yeah, I think that looks like a pretty good mirror image, and the US Left would be quite justified in deporting him.
(Whether it would be a good tactical move is another question. The visibly pro-Right immigrants in the US can probably be counted on one hand, so chances are the Right would just see that, take the implied deal and later expel pro-Left immigrants with far less restraint even if it means all the other three pro-Right immigrants get expelled too)
(Why do you even think I would have personal preferences in favour of one of the tribes here? I'm a European who previously spent time in the US on a student visa, and if I went again and my motteposting somehow came to the attention of the DHS it would almost certainly be the Right kicking me out for the anti-Israel component of it if nothing else)
bolido_sentimental
13hr ago
How do you feel about your personality, currently? Do you make friends easily, or have many satisfying relationships with other people?
I'm not implying that you lack those things, I'm just curious about your self-perception of them.
RenOS
something is wrong
13hr ago
As a guy, my experience is also that nobody actually wants men to show their real emotions, least of all publicly. Male anger or horniness is scary. Crying or anxiety is pathetic.
The good news is, this includes the men themselves. At least from my PoV, the toxic masculinity talking point is to a large degree the inversion of reality; there is a grain of truth, but there is also toxic femininity that tries to get men to open up more, expecting them to show emotions that accommodate the feminine worldview, in a female-friendly way, and then punishes them for having wrong feelings the wrong way, aka their actual male feelings.
And I mean, I get it, I do. They have a school to run and can't be spending all their time on the neediest kid. But I do worry at the message that he's getting. "It's not okay to be anxious." "It's not okay to get angry" - or at least not in a way that anyone can tell. Keep those feelings bottled up, young man, and only express them in socially acceptable ways. Otherwise, grit your teeth and get with the program.
So, yes, unironically this. It's not necessarily about simply ignoring or bottling up your feelings - it's that managing your own emotions is your own business, or at most to a minor degree that of your closest confidants who are giving you helpful pointers. If strangers or acquaintances can read your feeling in a way you did not intend, you screwed up. Some amount of screwing up is perfectly normal. And contrariwise, deliberately showing even anger is occasionally the correct course of action for the purpose of whatever your goals are. But losing control of your emotions as a man and openly & fully showing them to anyone but your closest friends will always be unpleasant for everyone involved (and often even then).
On the topic of managing emotions, anger is easy; Sports or competitive games generally do perfectly fine, depending on his inclinations. Anxiety is more difficult, and usually includes thinking hard about what you are really anxious about, and either convincing yourself that it is irrational or finding mitigation strategies, and then ideally exposing yourself to the thing you're anxious about, so that your strategy is proven correct (in reasonable limits, of course).
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
13hr ago
What predictions does he make that you think are wrong?
Arctotherium says this regarding AI:
For example, much writing on AI accurately points out how reliant the US AI industry is on foreign talent, with around 70% of high-end researchers being foreign born, and then condemn the Trump administration for hostility to immigration. But they typically fail to point out the tiny numbers involved.
We’re talking maybe 10000 people total in the entire world, with annual fluxes into and out of the US, including during the open-borders Biden years, in the hundreds. It is entirely possible to recruit as much of this talent as is willing to move to the United States while cutting skilled immigration by 99%, and we should. OpenAI technical staff and people Mark Zuckerberg is willing to pay a hundred million dollars to recruit are not generic H-1Bs or foreign students, and conflating the two is dishonest.
ControlsFreak
13hr ago
Yup. It's internecine war on the left. The foundational group desire is atheism. This part is the sacred, in Robin Hanson's terminology. There is a long history of trying to wield science as a sword for atheism, but in doing so, one runs headlong into pesky intellectual challenges. The core of this conflict is how to deal with them.
One common attempt is to just deny that there's any problem to be solved. The charitable view is to observe that such folks have mistaken methodological constraints for a metaphysical theory. But you sort of can't keep it from bubbling up, so you have to keep denying, keep refusing to talk about it. For example, since mathematics is so useful to the scientific method, it is natural to desire to include some grounding there. But, like, how does that work? What is the philosophy of mathematics, and how does it fit into the scientismist view? Let's not talk about it.
On the morality front, it has left most of the left just grasping for a naive form of meta-ethical relativism. When poked, there are often half-hearted appeals to game theory. I think that both sides of the internecine war do feel like this is their best grounding, but it's sort of interesting that one side just doesn't actually understand even the most basic components of what game theory is about. That's why they're surprised by the most basic concept in game theory - unilateral defection. The other side, the wokies, grok unilateral defection. They grok that once it has been accepted that it is declared not possible to reach the truth of a matter via rational argumentation, when the only thing left is game theory, one can simply move to brainwashing, shaming, canceling, deplatforming, intimidating, and maybe even having struggle sessions or genocides.
The thin line of hope for scientism on these issues was, "Since we have no clue what else to do, but we're trying to prop up science as the answer to all the things, I guess what we'll do is just ask the scientists to answer everything for us." That ran hard into unilateral defection. When the scientists are the new priesthood, it's pretty straightforward (and unsurprising to religious folks) to see that a simple strategy is to just corrupt the priesthood. The biggest difference between the corruption of the academic priesthood and the ratheism/atheism+ schism was that the former took time and was done with most people somewhat unaware, while the latter was quite sudden and visible. Neither is surprising; it's just unilateral defection, fighting the sectarian war by the only means remaining once one abandons intellectual rigor in favor of scientism.
Why does the heart/circulatory system break down, if not due to the failure of the cells to properly replicate over time, thanks to DNA damage?
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