domain:alakasa.substack.com
sun
11mo ago
I don't know where exactly the genuine belief in truth ends and the "get the outgroup" begins
We've stopped believing in truth and started knowing it was true?
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
11mo ago
· Edited 11mo ago
I haven't seen the show, but this rings true. The elitist-oriented contingents of the DR are aware that such a person gaining political influence would require elite patronage and support from at least some powerful institutions. Those things are so far out of grasp that nobody smart enough for that role would be willing to martyr himself in such a hopeless endeavor.
There is definitely a shift in the smarter corners of the DR towards skepticism of populism. The strategy is no longer "redpill the normies" it's "redpill some billionaires or influential figures who could really shake things up." As the mainstream center-right continues to collapse there's greater opportunity for the political radicalization of potentially sympathetic elites.
You only need a couple Tucker Carlsons to normalize radical political perspectives, and a couple billionaires to give a platform to taboo thinking to really change the landscape. That would have to happen first before any Jeryd Mencken worth his salt would try to lead a movement.
But if the DR got a few Tucker Carlsons and one or two George Soros, then a non-populist right could emerge and present an alternative to the defeated conservative movement.
HalloweenSnarry
11mo ago
Presumably Park, Lee, and Kagame also don't escalate to systematic murder. I would especially hope not in Kagame's case, as the Rwandan Genocide most likely gave his people the moral high ground of subjugating genocidaires, even when they started shit with Zimbabwe.
I'm gonna be honest, that's the level of quality I mostly associate with insufficient step and/or CFG values in StableDiffusion. You can get fairly similar images through imagegen, the same way you can use ControlNet to make sketches or similarly 'pencil-heavy' like work, but it's a lot less likely to get recognition because it's so facially akin to a common failure mode.
Though Midjourney in particular does tend to do the whole Newberry Award palette as a bit of a crutch.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11mo ago
I find myself going back and forth between "you've been mind-killed"
He's asking whether or not he's mind-killed because he thinks the Blues were in favor of teaching evolution because it benefitted them politically, rather than because they thought it's true. Is that what you're agreeing with, or are you focusing on HBD?
Ecgtheow
11mo ago
Was there a time in history when the art that was championed by elites was also popular with the masses? I genuinely don't know. Renaissance artists never had the chance for economic reasons. Picasso and Monet were successful in their time but were they successful among non-art snobs of their time? Was there some period where the mass public and the art establishment agreed or has the mass public just accepted the past judgement of art establishments from centuries ago because old things are classy.
I don't think the issue with the MLK sculpture is that it's meant to be transgressive or groundbreaking. It's Martin and Coretta embracing, it has a straightforward meaning. The artists just did a bad job of considering what their sculpture would look like from all angles and the people involved in the procurement process didn't push back. That one seems like more of an indictment of city purchasing processes than the art establishment.
That's part of the bargain to be a lifestyle brand. If you want people to value your product not just for its practical utility but for what that product says about the people who consume it, then they're going to be as insulted by the unfavorable brand implications as they are flattered by the favorable. It doesn't matter that the ad wasn't "aimed" at them. Lifestyle brand advertising works by influencing what other people think of the product's customers, not just the customers themselves. The whole reason you choose to become a customer of a lifestyle brand is because of what you expect it will make other people think of you.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
11mo ago
HBD is even weirder as probably at least sort of real science that Blue doesn't dare to acknowledge the existence of, and even Red mainstream shies away from.
Blues generally have a worldview that is very uncomfortable to reconcile with HBD, so that makes sense.
Reds' aversion to HBD is a little harder to figure out. My theory is that conservatives as "progressives driving the speed limit" is broadly true, but that mainstream conservatives don't realize that they've absorbed many progressive axioms and that, consequently, they have sabotaged many of their strongest arguments against leftist programs like CRT. When you're a conservative who believes in deeply in Equality, hates Racism, and believes in Women's Rights (but all "only to a certain extent and not as far as those crazy libs take it!") you've already given up the game.
So while a conservative from 1963 might have been comfortable with HBD, a conservative from 2023 has ceded too much ideological ground to feel comfortable with the idea.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
11mo ago
Accordingly, the HBD-Tards stated preference for politeness is a trap, there trying to convince honest actors to play nice while they play dirty.
Knock it off with "HBD-Tards."
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
11mo ago
Dude, that first one is a Patrick Nagel. If you think just anyone can "knock that stuff out" with Illustrator, well, give it a shot. You're just wrong.
The second link is indeed drawings that are assembled with fairly simple vector techniques (albeit still requiring some design skills).
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
11mo ago
Meanwhile the cynical bastard in my wants to believe that Id Pol is what people resort to when they are not secure in their own identity, which is why it's loudest advocates always seem to be some sort of sexual deviant (IE Gay, Trans, Furry, Pedo, Antinatalist, Etc...).
An absurd and unsupported claim, as per usual. Focusing only on white identity advocates, I find prominent figures such as Jared Taylor, a devoted family man with, as far as I’m aware, a spotless personal reputation and no signs of deviance - sexual or otherwise - whatsoever. Ditto for Taylor’s star writer at American Renaissance, Gregory Hood, who lives in rural West Virginia with his very normal family. Ditto for Peter Brimelow, Henrik Palmgren, and scores of other identitarian figures I could name. Not a sexual deviant among them.
And then expanding out to prominent black identitarian figures, I find guys like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi, who, despite any of the negative things I can say about them, are similarly devoted family men with normal wives and normal sex lives, as far as I’m aware. You can, of course, nut-pick the weirdoes and deviants in any movement - many here would gleefully oblige if asked for example of “Trad-Con” luminaries who have turned out to have scandalous secret sex lives - but I think an unbiased observer would find your claim mostly unsupported.
Eh, I'm under the perception that Blue Tribe is pretty damn split on alternative medicine and pseudoscience. On the one hand, large swathes of Blue Tribe go all in on it, but on the other, the rest are kind of horrified at the harm it can cause. The Blues are lucky that the political polarization over COVID shook out the way it did, because now they can jettison anti-vax from their memeplex (where previously it was an alt-medicine mainstay that was causing Measles to resurge).
Similarly for the Red Tribe/conservatives, I have to wonder if anyone even pushes Intelligent Design anymore; am I wrong for saying that it always seemed like a way to smuggle God into the secular realm? But now that Christianity has been on the backfoot for so long, conservatives and the like don't really care for whitewashing their beliefs like that.
John_Doe_Fletcher
anarcho-heretic, formerly DO_FLETCHING
11mo ago
Yes (suit) and no (haven't had a funeral or an in-person interview in a few years). I'd like to dress sharp more often but don't really have cause to, so I wear a lot of button-down shirts since the minimal effort still feels nice. I have a few ties I wouldn't mind pulling out, but I'm terrible at tying them so I don't bother - not enough time in the mornings to give a damn.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
11mo ago
The Cupertino Quarry is very close to all three, with direct freeway access (and a rail line) to them.
Come on, the quarry is 16 miles away from Palo alto. Right now without traffic it's a 30 minute drive and 15-20 minutes just to get to 280. You're easily looking at an hour plus during rush hour before you put a bunch of housing on the mountain with one road leading in and out.
Yeah, it's closer than San Francisco, and it's also closer than Seattle and Toronto. I don't know why you are repeatedly exaggerating the geography to such an extent but it really undermines your point. The quarry is marginal land and would be a shitty commute for any points further than, like, Cupertino. Which is not nothing, but it's not a panacea.
You'd have better luck talking about the yuuge Grumman facility that is literally, certifiably, 100% in the middle of Sunnyvale right next to Caltrain than pretending that a quarry in the mountains or a field on the way to Gilroy are in the heart of silicon valley.
jkf
11mo ago
The disks were probably not full of actual Patrick Nagel files, no -- but that's rather the point isn't it? In the 80s, clip art was imitating Patrick Nagel -- now we are imitating deliberate ugliness on every damn powerpoint deck.
If you think just anyone can "knock that stuff out" with Illustrator, well, give it a shot.
Again, rather the point -- when "just anyone" tries it it kind of looks like crap: https://www.lifewire.com/photo-into-nagel-inspired-vector-portrait-1077506
But someone who is decent with Illustrator (not me) will have a stab at it for 25 buck, so it can't take all that long: https://www.fiverr.com/ikhwantaripa/turn-your-pic-into-my-version-of-a-patrick-nagel-art
I don't think the globohomo is much faster to do -- if you are good with a stylus you can trace a photo very fast, drawing all those donut shapes seems at least as hard.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
We can test evolution in real time. How can evolution not be real if antibiotic resistance is real? If bacteria evolve, then so should everything else, just more slowly. I personally can't see how eyes might evolve for the first time but I accept that it happened. For that matter, I can't see how an AI can distinguish between male and female eyes with 97% accuracy given only photos of the iris, yet that too has happened. Reality doesn't need to sound plausible, it only needs to be true.
Indeed, you must agree that evolution is true since you follow HBD. It makes too much sense. We know genetics is a thing, we can edit genes and they control traits singly or collectively(though we can't perfectly link every trait to a genes). We know Pacific Islanders tend towards obesity. We know Europeans aren't going to outrun blacks in a sprint at the Olympic level. We know certain ethnicities have a weakness to alcohol, others are better able to handle certain diseases. Why else did Europeans struggle conquering Sub-Saharan Africa until the mid 19th century? Intelligence follows suit - we can observe the results (blacks collectively having fewer STEM Nobels than Ireland, promiscuity, STDs, school results, criminality, national strength, the pleasantness/unpleasantness of many US cities). I conclude that Europeans and Asians are better at running civilizations than blacks are. There are gradations in 'what precisely do you mean by European, Asian and blacks (what about Igbos)' but broadly speaking, this is a natural conclusion from analysing history. If there are ethnicities who are taller or shorter, fatter or thinner, faster or slower, better or worse at resisting disease, tolerant or intolerant of alcohol there should also be people who are more or less suited to civilization.
I also agree with your Schmitt interpretation though. CRT is there to help the left and hurt the right, as is racism generally. But that doesn't mean evolution could be wrong.
HalloweenSnarry
11mo ago
I think the (possibly weak) counter to this is "the Great Recession, the War on Terror, and Web 2.0 all provided enough force and upheaval to nurture the woke surge."
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
I do believe that an inclination towards academics is not the same thing as being smart or competent.
Is this about IQ? IQ doesn't measure "inclination towards academics." The relationship is confounded by all sorts of things, like agreeableness and conscientiousness.
Good IQ tests are inductive reasoning problems that can be given to naked spear-wielding tribesmen in savage jungles who have never heard of a school or university, without cultural bias, because they are testing aptitude in cognitive skills that are (a) common across humans and (b) correlated with capacity for other cognitive skills. An Amazonian wild man might not be able to read, but we can estimate his ability to quickly learn to read based on his IQ score in pattern-recognition problems.
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
the primary driver of differences in outcome between groups is cultural
I also suspect that this is true, but it doesn't require scepticism about IQ or even not thinking that hereditary IQ is a major determinant of academic or commercial success at an individual level. A large part of group differences is not statistically explained, and many explanatory factors (like agreeableness and conscientiousness) have a cultural aspect to them.
Of course, a HBD theorist might say that cultural differences are themselves largely genetic in origin, but I would want to look at twin studies, adoptee studies, and similar evidence before believing that.
curious_straight_ca
11mo ago
We know Pacific Islanders tend towards obesity
I don't think this is genetic. (Or, if genes contribute, it's not genes for hunger or nutrient absorption, but intelligence/behavior related genes that combine with their modern economic environment).
JarJarJedi
11mo ago
2023 World Science Fiction Convention is scheduled to happen in Chengdu, China - as I understand the first in-person Worldcon since the pandemic. The reason why it's in CW topic is because one of the guests of honor is Sergey Lukianenko, who, besides being a mid-grade SciFi writer (his early works are decent, his late stuff is IMO garbage), is an active supporter and propagandist for the Russian war in Ukraine, hating Ukraine so much that he prohibited translating his books into Ukrainian (I am sure Ukrainian-speaking culture is doomed now). If one needs somebody to embody a militant Ukraine hater, who denies the nation's right to exist, claims the whole national claim is fake, the language is broken Russian, Ukrainian government are Nazis, puppeteered by the West, the whole nine yards - he's the man.
Predictably, this did not sit well with everybody. Somebody, representing "Polish fandom", even started a petition to rescind the invitation. However, given as it is unlikely the Chinese organizers didn't know who Lukianenko is and what his views - which he is actively and loudly voicing - are, and general stance of China towards Russia, I do not think anything would happen.
I wonder how would this play out. I used to hold Hugo's in high regard a while ago, but given the wokeisation and politization of everything lately, I don't really care anymore. But I heard WSFS are pretty woke, and so I wonder how it would sit with some of them to appear on the same scene with an actual fascist for once. I am not sure what is the function of the "guest of honor", but obviously the distinguished position alone, in any other setting, for an US person of similar views, would trigger them immediately. And, for various reasons, being Ukraine-friendly is in fashion with the wokes for now. But, the wokes appear to be very deferential to China in general, and maybe they could just pretend nothing is happening. After all, Disney literally filmed a movie with the concentration camps as the background, and everybody pretty much just shrugged. The various Puppies have also a chance to point at this as an exposure of the hypocrisy of the wokes (as if we were short of examples otherwise?) - would they use it?
The other guests of honor are Cixin Liu (who earned the honor, I think, and being Chinese, probably is appropriate figure to appear in this position) and Robert J. Sawyer, a Canadian writer of whom I know virtually nothing, except watching Flashforward (did not read, but liked the idea), and praise by Orson Scott Card, which I value very highly (so maybe I should check more into him?). I wonder if he has had any thoughts on the matter either?
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
Hiring methods of top software firms are heavily tuned for eliminating false positives at expense of lots of false negatives. This works alright because there was also a massive boom in the industry which meant you could just apply to 30 high paying jobs and would surely get some offers if you knew what you were doing. If this system gets 10 times more competitive even the most competent engineer will suffer quite significantly.
Quite a few monstrosities there, but Frank Lloyd Wright is not exactly the first name I think of when I think "terrible modernist or postmodernist architecture."
Tom Wolfe had some appreciation of Wright, and while this was a rare lapse of good taste on Wolfe's part, it wasn't like people who say that this is "beautiful":
Two points:
Aung is probably still in the good graces of those in favor of democracy, given that she got couped by the military a little while ago.
She's not exactly responsible for the Rohingya's ethnic cleansing, she merely failed to protect them from their Buddhist neighbors.
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