domain:theintrinsicperspective.com
naraburns
nihil supernum
21hr ago
In essence, though, whether we're talking about catcalling, or panhandling, or various other things associated with homelessness, what we're really talking about is obnoxious behavior that occurs in public, and the right to be obnoxious in public.
I agree. I think in some of the conversation downthread this is getting teased out further. Actual physical contact is (generally) an easier line to draw; when it comes to things like offensive clothing, nauseating smells, vulgar music, horrifying imagery, etc. people often have very strong but not very consistent opinions about what should or shouldn't be allowed, and what constitutes an appropriate response or deterrent.
naraburns
nihil supernum
21hr ago
With catcalling, it seems to me pretty unreasonable in 2025 to imagine catcalling might be welcome, so even if a given catcaller wishfully thinks it will be taken as flattery, British society has (arguably) reached a point where the only response to this is 'Give me a break, pal'
I think this is probably close to correct (obviously from these articles, there is a meaningful percentage of British society that presumably hasn't reached this point, as they still engage in catcalling), but is rather my point about being in psyop territory. Convincing everyone to believe that catcalling should be perceived as negative seems to be the actual goal of these "stings," not because it was democratically decided that catcalling is in fact negative, but because certain people genuinely don't like it and they don't want anyone else to like it, either, or be subjected to it as a result of others liking it.
As I suggest in my original post, I don't really understand catcalling and regard it as at best inconsiderate. But I also don't like it when the government and news media collude to nudge people's values around instead of having an honest conversation about controversial-but-not-to-everyone behaviors.
Goodguy
21hr ago
That's a good point. Yeah, abstractly I don't care whether humanity survives in the long term or not, but in practice it would probably be very unpleasant to live in a society that is convinced that humanity is about to go extinct.
zPvQINBQvfFR
21hr ago
Does it only matter to those people when they're relying on GPS coordinates or something like that, or to anybody trying to keep things at a certain attitude in general?
The latter would be surprising to me. Like, did pilots in the 1950s have to think very carefully about Earth's exact shape?
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
21hr ago
I believe you're correct that it was him. Good recall. Truly a shame that no one saved that conversation.
Goodguy
21hr ago
I don't think it would be prosocial to bring humans into the world just to pay my social security and wipe my ass.
Of course I would love for people to take care of me when I'm old, but to me that just doesn't seem like a good enough reason to bring new people into existence. It's very selfish. If I'm going to help bring new people into existence, I would probably like to do it for less selfish reasons than that.
07mk
21hr ago
I tend to perceive progressive strains of liberalism as making the assumption that civilization as they know it is tge default state of humanity and you can’t really destroy it. It’s not “sacrifice survival for thriving” it’s “survival is a given, so let’s thrive.”
I perceive the same, but I disagree with that last sentence. One is the other. If you care so little about survival that you haven't done the research to learn just how unusual and precarious modern society is, then you're deciding that sacrificing survival for the sake of thriving is worth it.
JarJarJedi
21hr ago
"Since Trump's return to the White House" is a temporal mark. Since Trump's return to the White House I've lost five pounds, but Trump didn't really help me do it. The assumption that Trump personally controls every Prince's operation is quite ridiculous. Which is par for the course for an "expert" from "Geneva-based" NGO, but including this nonsense in the article is on Reuters. And of course no private business needs prior "consent" of the government - that's the opposite of how this works, the government is only supposed to intervene if something is wrong, and if nothing is wrong, the "consent" is implied. US govt, undoubtedly while rolling their eyes very hard, confirmed that they had absolutely nothing to do with it, as expected. Overall it looks like Reuters went to ridiculous length to mention Trump here.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
21hr ago
Now, I have little idea if this is a left/progressive thing; I've just observed it in that group because I am part of that group and have spent most of my life surrounded by people in that group. I suspect that conservatives, by their nature of preferring tradition - such as the tradition of keeping civilization going for the next generation - have a greater tendency to want to keep humanity and human civilization going than progressives, who tend to be skeptical of tradition. But either way, I'm quite sure this attitude of "why care about humanity's survival when we have my favorite principles to worry about" is extremely common among progressives. Usually, it's not explicitly spoken or even thought, it gets laundered in, as alluded to above, by motivating oneself to believe that the evidence indicates that one's principles don't actually conflict with other goals such as survival of humanity/human civilization (in fact, I see such motivated reasoning often leading people to believe that their principles are actually synergistic to good goal, such as game devs genuinely believing that putting in characters that conform with their ideology would also lead to more sales due to expanding the market).
I tend to perceive progressive strains of liberalism as making the assumption that civilization as they know it is tge default state of humanity and you can’t really destroy it. It’s not “sacrifice survival for thriving” it’s “survival is a given, so let’s thrive.” On tge conservative side it’s understood that civilization is not the default state, decorum, high trust, low crime, safe environments etc. do not just happen, nor will they just continue without some efforts put toward maintaining those things or preventing their destruction. Now I think you can have thriving as well as civilization if you bother to do so correctly. If you make sure that the support structures aren’t destroyed or that public morality, health, and welfare are preserved, then you can do things to allow people to thrive. It’s not a zero sum game.
They do this for the same reason police in the US write tickets for people going 45 in a 30 instead of 90 in a 55. It's safer, easier, the person going a measly 45 is more likely to comply, and they just don't give a fuck.
I've also heard theories this is a desperate hail mary to game the stats and have more white people committing "sex offenses" since the current stats are so stubbornly brown
I'm fascinated by the fact that people like Jess Philips have no problem talking about misogyny or condemning the more gender egalitarian Western societies but generally but shy away from specifically targeting minority communities (I don't see how this can fit @TwiceHuman's model: if the point is for high status men and women to tamp down on low status behavior why give low status minorities a pass?). The (apparently correct) assumption is that they're the ones that will take it.
It really does seem like a weird displacement thing where you go after the easy cases. The charitable stance is that they go after both in the background but it's rhetorically easier to not get into migrant/brown crime. I don't know how many people in the UK believe that though.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
22hr ago
This forum also has seen some Aella-inspired discussion of this phenomenon.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
22hr ago
Does this have anything to do with Trump?
The article does mention some connections with Trump specifically and with the US government in general.
Prince, a former U.S. Navy Seal, founded the Blackwater military security firm in 1997. He sold the company in 2010 after Blackwater employees were convicted of unlawfully killing 14 unarmed civilians while escorting a U.S. embassy convoy in Baghdad's Nisour Square. The men were pardoned by Trump during his first term in the White House.
Since Trump's return to the White House, Prince has advised Ecuador on how to fight criminal gangs and struck a deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo to help secure and tax its mineral wealth.
“It’s hard to imagine them operating without the consent of the Trump administration,” said Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, head of the Haiti program at Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
When asked for comment about Le Cour Grandmaison's assertion, a State Department spokesperson said it has not hired Prince or his company for any work in Haiti.
A senior White House official said: "The U.S. government has no involvement with the private military contractor hired by the Haitian government. We are not funding this contract or exercising any oversight.”
hooser
22hr ago
On the one hand, police clamping down on catcalling with anything other than a talking-to seems to me like a government clampdown on an unsavory lower-class norm. On the other hand, I sure am glad that bottom-pinching is no longer considered merely an unsavory lower-class norm.
JarJarJedi
22hr ago
Wait, I am confused - does this have anything to do with Trump or journos are so addicted that they are just unable to report any news, no matter what they are, without mentioning Trump somehow?
Setting that aside, I think that's pretty much what Russians, including the infamous Wagner, had been doing in Africa for a while? And in general some state hiring mercenaries to keep the order - this seems to be a common picture for millenia (Carthage did something like that, and probably more ancient examples exist) though I guess it has been out of fashion for a while, but never really went away.
2rafa
22hr ago
What happened in India is just a late stage version of what is already happening in Brazil and what will happen in America, it happens whenever these kind of ethnic merger events happen. Over a long enough time, two ethnically different populations who share the same land will intermarry. Ethnic enclaves - in the Ottoman lands, in 30s Shanghai, elsewhere - can last a while, perhaps even a few centuries - but in the end shared ethnogenesis is inevitable. Even Ashkenazi Jews are the product of Levantines and Italians, after all, and today over 60% of American Jews intermarry. If two people inhabit the same soil long enough, they will breed.
This dates back the full length of human prehistory, it encompasses even Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal interaction, or those other early hominid interactions in Southeast Asia that led to the situation in Australasia and Melanesia etc.
Supah_Schmendrick
22hr ago
from the point of view of at least N=1 progressive, what's the point of civilization?
Not dying. Maintaining the level of success, arete, and prosperity that has already been obtained. These are not only good insofar as we get more of them - they are good in and of themselves, and forgetting and taking for granted the successes of the past is one of the chief flaws of modernist thinking.
The example I provided was a picture of women in full niqab. My experience with men from countries where niqab is common is that they are often extremely distressed by the comparatively immodest dress of Western women. Traces of that remain in most Western regimes, too, though usually limited to the exposure of genitals (and sometimes breasts) being treated as legitimately "distressing" to display.
I'm pretty sure there was a post here by a frustrated man who didn't appreciate seeing tight gymwear constantly in public. I can't find it now unfortunately but I believe it was well-received or even AAQC.
So apparently not just a Muslim thing.
The problem is that the Brahmins could not control their own poor. This is what I have come to believe is the foundational problem of modern India. Land reform is impossible, because the peasants will revolt. Behavioral reform is impossible, because the peasants will revolt. Even political reform is impossible, because the peasants will revolt. Why did your tribe, your caste, grant them endless reservation, government employment, political power? Because you could not stand against it! I have met many extremely intelligent higher caste Indians, far more intelligent than me. This is clear by their extraordinary success in the West, especially by niche subgroups like the Tamil Brahmins, the Iyers and Iyengars and so on.
But in the homeland, they were too weak to conquer their own common people. This is the ultimate failing for any ruling class. You must save India before you can do anything else. I respect that your religion neither destroyed you nor saved you, but it is not important now.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
Yes, looking at women(other than your wife) in bikinis is sinful… but Jesus also says that those who lead others to sin are more sinful- he specifically says it would be better for them if they were killed.
JarJarJedi
22hr ago
Obviously I am considering Jews to be a single race in this context, just like Israel does.
Israel does nothing of the sort, Israel does not have racial policies. You completely invented this, out of nothing, and you pretend this is "obvious". It's not obvious, it's you saying things that are not true. Stop doing that.
just like South Africa was a very racially diverse country under Apartheid
No, much more diverse actually. Which you would have known if you knew anything about Israel beyond a bunch of fourth-party packaged woke slogans, but you don't, do you?
Still, the laws of Apartheid made it a country designed first and foremost around the well-being of white people
And Israel doesn't have laws like that. Which again is very easy to learn, if only you tried.
they do not have civil marriage
They do. Ask me how I know? That's how I got married. The marriage in Israel is a bit complex topic, but it's not too hard to learn about it. Again, you didn't even try.
And of course it is completely unreasonable to expect Israel not to take Syrian land that is just there for the taking,
Syria is at war with Israel, and repeatedly refused to sign a peace treaty. When you start a war and lose it, that's what happens. When you are dumb enough to continue the war after losing it, that's going to happen to you again. And yes, it's completely unreasonable to expect from Israel to not act as they deem necessary to protect their borders. If Syria didn't like it, they should have signed the treaty long ago, when Israel offered it. They wanted to keep the state of war instead, because they were unable to admit being defeated by filthy Jews. They are now living with the consequences of it.
This tired talking point about double standards being applied to Israel is the most worn out argument that is just based on playing the victim.
"Tired" is not as strong an argument as you may think it is. If you're tired of hearing the truth, keep being tired, the truth doesn't change from it. Israel has been and continues to be attacked by Arabs - from Hamas to Iran to Husites to Hezbollah to others. All those people eventually find out the dear and grave costs of such actions. Israel does not need to "play" anything - Israel can defend itself very well, it's you and other Hamas defenders who are whining and crying and claiming they are victims - fresh after murdering thousands of Jews and still keeping hostages in Gaza. What they are suffering is the direct consequence of their behavior.
Israeli Arabs are excluded from conscription, so they are not equal.
Yes, they have the privilege of benefitting from all services Israeli society has to offer, without having to risk their lives to defend it. Still, many Druzes and Bedouins serve, and I am sure if a particular Arab citizen wants to contribute voluntarily, he will be afforded this opportunity. If the inequality consists of having less chance to be murdered by other Arabs, then I don't see it as a huge problem, and neither see the Israeli Arabs.
Driving people together is a typical precursor to cleansing.
Nobody "drew them together" to Gaza - they went there voluntarily and they resist all efforts to relocate them anywhere - except, of course, capturing the territory of Israel and cleansing it of the Jews. And their population grows by 2% every year, which is faster than Israeli population (1.5% a year). That's some shitty cleansing.
I have a hard time believing that you are arguing in good faith if you equate a free nation state to a ghetto.
I do not, you do. You said there are "ghettos" - I say they do not exist, what existed in Gaza was completely autonomous self-rule by Gazans, with complete and full withdrawal of any Jewish presence and Israeli control. And the only thing that was asked from them is to please stop trying to murder us. Gaza answered to it by trying to murder Israelis even harder - and succeeding to murder thousands and kidnap hundreds on October 7. That was completely voluntary action from their side, and now they are suffering the consequences of it.
I have seen no poll that shows that all Palestinians are in favor of killing all Jews
Not "all", but 80 to 90 percent. Look up any poll on support of Hamas. You are trying to construct a ridiculous sentence by claiming every Arab in Gaza, including just born infants, is in favor of killing every single Jew. Of course in this ridiculous form it is not true. But it is true that overwhelming majority - about 80 to 90 percent, usually, though it varies with time, but is never not overwhelming majority - of Gazans support Hamas, and their goal of destroying Israel as a state, capturing its territory and murdering as many Jews as they can while doing it. It's their official and well known goal, they have never hidden it, they have gleefully filmed themselves doing it, they have bragged about it repeatedly, and they promised to do it again as much as they can. Israel knows that, and the result of it is what you see now in Gaza. In fact, Israel repeatedly, multiple times, for months, asked Gazans to do one single thing - let the people they kidnapped go, let those Jews live and be free - and they always refused. They will find out there is a price for such actions, and will keep finding out until one day they decide to do what other, more smart, Arab populations decided - that the dream of murdering the Jews and kicking them out of Israel is not worth the pain they will suffer trying to fullfill this dream. That this is no longer the goal they want to spend their lives achieving. Then we will have peace.
Supah_Schmendrick
22hr ago
Here's the thing though. I'm fine with human civilization ending. I don't see anything inherently good about human civilization continuing. And I don't see anything inherently good about human civilization ending. I'm neutral about it.
There's a saying about this..."so open-minded his brain fell out."
I enjoy being alive, but I see no fundamental deep importance in keeping the human species existing. I'm not a nihilist in the least bit. I love being alive in a very visceral way.
Okay, so you're a solipsist, not a nihilist [edit: fixing a brain-fart]. This is not an improvement.
Rov_Scam
22hr ago
The New York Post ran an article about this a couple days ago, and the comments were variations on the following themes:
- You can't compliment women anymore!
- This intrudes on free speech
- This law probably doesn't apply to immigrants
- They were wearing enticing clothes; this is entrapment
- The women were too unattractive to deserve catcalls
- The police need to focus on actual crimes, like grooming gangs, not this penny ante bullshit
- This is Sharia law
- This is a dumb idea that Democrats probably like
I'll admit to admit that it's a bit unfair to judge conservatives as a whole based on the New York Post comment section, or any online comment section for that matter, but I don't think I'm going out on too much of a limb to suggest that conservatives in general think that busting people for catcalling, or even viewing it as a police issue, is stupid. The culture war angle here is that if you replace "catcalling" with "panhandling" the polarity reverses instantly. I have no doubt, based on prior stories the Post has run on panhandling, that if they ran a story about how some American city did a similar crackdown on begging we'd be hearing about how it was about time that a mayor grew some balls and cracked down, and that all those people should be locked up in mental institutions or forced to get real jobs.
In essence, though, whether we're talking about catcalling, or panhandling, or various other things associated with homelessness, what we're really talking about is obnoxious behavior that occurs in public, and the right to be obnoxious in public.
The class of ideas I’d like to name is more intentional than that.
Consider feminism as a set of ideologies versus feminism as a political movement. Different feminist ideologies are quite varied, but the political movement is more or less united by the idea of increasing individual women’s freedom of action.
If you ask in the abstract, “What should family law look like?” then different forms of feminism will give very different answers. But if you want to know whether the feminist movement will support or oppose a given change to family law, you can simply ask whether it will grow or shrink individual women’s freedom of action. Likewise, pro-life types of feminism are often closer to other forms than those forms are to each other, but opposing abortion runs against this principle and so gets one labeled an enemy.
I think that increased school funding is a similar rallying point for a different coalition. Depending on the issue, money may or may not address it. But money is always a socially acceptable reason to give for the problem, rather than criticizing your allies, and it’s something the coalition wants anyway.
People legitimately support school funding or women’s freedom as they understand it, so it’s more than toleration. But it’s not necessarily their terminal value, either. It’s more of a means that has been elevated by social dynamics to the status of an end.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
This seems super culturally mediated, though--I'm not sure I'm in a good position to just tell a pious Muslim or devout Amish that his feelings about bikinis simply don't count the way that a modern woman's feelings about wolf whistles does.
Women shouldn’t be allowed to wear bikinis in public, but neither that nor speedos nor the Borat swimsuit justify potential violence the way a particularly forwards/lewd catcall would.
You find life "viscerally" valuable, you find the fruits of your society enjoyable enough that you want to be alive for them. You clearly value your civilization and its continued existence. You just don't care if someone younger gets to or at least gets out before it all goes to hell.
I don't see why this would change anything about the pro-natalist/pro-civilization argument. Is it providing new information? This all seems like the prosecution's case being made for it.
People who benefit from a thing but refuse or are unable to care for its continued existence for whatever reason have always existed - usually people assume they're talking to people prosocial enough to not bite that bullet, invested enough in the common good to not benefit from doing so (what if you were twenty years younger and can't count on croaking before it gets really bad?) and agentic enough that they can impact the outcome if they're convinced. And it is also debatable if you can enjoy that standard of living without a concern for fertility.
The standard of living is good across the developed world, by definition, but there are also clear signs of strain due to the aging population. What if you're the one fucking up the math? Live a little too long, run out of money too soon before you croak? Assuming a safety net that isn't there? Your own logic should drive you to care.
Most people really don't think in thousand or even hundred year timescales. They think about what would stop them and their children from losing out on the sorts of fruits you enjoy and that's enough. Their grandchildren can run the same logic, ad infinitum.
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