domain:astralcodexten.substack.com
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
15hr ago
Imagine trying to convince my 1800s great great grandmother that my great grandmother, who just kicked her from the inside, was not a baby.
Would be difficult. Fortunately nobody not made of straw would need to. All pro-choicers say is that if she wants an abortion she can get one.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
19hr ago
Obviously the market is distorted by access to illegal labor, as much as a market would be distorted if people were allowed to own slaves.
This reminds me of the "libertarian" on Twitter who thought "the government opening the border" was "statism."
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
13hr ago
That was me, and as we discussed at the time that's a horrendously inaccurate and uncharitable take on what I was saying.
Anyone can click through and see what you said.
Here's what TitaniumButterfly said:
women don't want to be forced to spend nine months pregnant
Then it sounds like either they're specifically upset about the extremely rare cases of rape leading to pregnancy, or else they have an accountability problem.
I've reported his comment and yours for mischaracterization and strawmanning.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
16hr ago
I feel like this discussion is the missing ingredient to lots of the topics du jour. Let's take the leftward drift of young women- well social conservatism today seems to have, uh, not discussed what other people owe to them, only what they owe to other people.
Yep. There was a commenter here who said women lacked "accountability" because they want to be able to f*** without risking being pregnant for nine months. I'm going to hazard a guess that that message won't be a particularly popular one among young women, as like with most voters they prefer politicians who will make their lives easier rather than harder.
That said, one should be wary of parts of the gender-divide narrative. Trump's performance among white men was actually worse in 2024 than in 2016, while his performance among white women improved. CNN exit polls confirm the same phenomenon.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
16hr ago
Why is a Mexican meatpacker hired over the American one?
Why are you beating your wife?
My whole contention here is that illegals are doing that work because both illegals and Americans do not want to do it but only the latter have the skills to do better jobs.
An American worker cannot compete with a Mexican agricultural worker for the same reason he can't compete with a Chinese industrial factory worker
Odd, then, that American workers make far more money than Chinese industrial factory workers or Mexican agricultural workers on either side of the border.
It's the woke left vs the woke right. The woke left demands affirmative action for blacks so they can work in business, law, medicine, and government. Envy is felt toward whites for their higher-paying and better jobs. "The test is culturally biased!" The woke right demands set-aside jobs for Americans so they can pick fruit in the summer sun, being envious of illegal aliens for some reason.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
21hr ago
Sewing bras is more conducive to wellbeing than stacking them on a shelf.
Then buy yourself a sewing machine. We shouldn't make national policy choices based on psychological theories like that.
In what world would “picking fruit” be pathetic? I think you are having trouble dissociating the image you have of these things now, with what they would look like if employers didn’t have a semi-slave class. There’s a farm near me where people — college-educated, white, smart — sign up to plant and reap for free. Because in return they get free room and board, and most importantly a social environment filled with other young white people. They work quite hard, then they drink in the evenings and dance and fuck and make music and so on. This is exactly what agricultural work was for nearly all of history.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
23hr ago
Why do you think it makes sense to say that the views of some random politician are emblematic of the "online racialist Right"?
She's a member of the United States Cabinet!
Lotta people have gotten used to being out of power. Now that Trump is President they're forced to either defend the administration they supported and voted for or criticize their own side, and they don't want to do either.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
21hr ago
So your answer to the question of how White Americans can compete with semi-slave illegal workers is
Why in God's name would you want to?
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
23hr ago
The truth is "American don't want to do those jobs for those wages" and that is what this is (and has always been) about, wages.The Plantation owners don't want to pay the help, and once again the Democrats (who have always been the Party of the Plantation Owners) are once again threating civil war if they are not allowed to continue importing and exploiting thier non-citizen underclass.
Whenever committed ideological conservatives* hear about a minimum wage worker complaining about his low wage, they talk about productivity and demand curves and all that jazz. But mention that the worker is an illegal immigrant and all that logic goes out the window and he starts sounding like Bernie Sanders saying that the employer has infinite resources (to pay an American, not the illegal) and that only malevolence and greed stops the lowest-paid workers from getting 65$ an hour.
And even if the government could arbitrarily order wages to increase, why not order wages to increase for the better and cushier jobs Americans are more likely to do? Seems to me like it's a weird fantasy where Americans are supposed to work Bangladesh-level jobs (crop picking, textile sewing, etc) but get American wages for it because I guess the Bengali government is too stupid to just order wages to increase.
Also, most farmers vote Republican and the CSA constitution forbade the international slave trade.
*Not to be confused with normie GOP voters
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
2hr ago
A lot of pro choicers also call it a “clump of cells,” not a baby.
A "clump of cells" can't kick its mother.
otherwise this false on the face of it.
Then give me an example of a pro-choicer telling a woman the late-term baby she wants to give birth to is a clump of cells, not a baby. Shouldn't be difficult if this is something they really say.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
4hr ago
slaves beat out sharecroppers
Assumes facts not in evidence.
You can tell yourself that we're all chuds
Not chuds. White collar guys, but IMO you've melted your brain with a political ideology that is all about justifying, sanewashing, and whataboutisming the views of the catturds of the world, in a parallel to how middle-class wokes justify, sanewash, and whatabout the dysfunction of the underclass.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1hr ago
Social conservatives in America decided to make that the centerpiece of their political project and then get mad when I bring it up in response to a thread about social conservatism in America.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
22hr ago
Whether "woke right" exists or doesn't, "The Right" surely does, and this US administration does rather effectively speak for the Right in the American context.
aldomilyar
1hr ago
If you're going to get a tattoo make it a commitment to an actual lifestyle or longterm bond. I'll respect the signalling of MS13 or Yakuza membership over random pop culture shit.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
3hr ago
Turok makes the mistake of then coming to this forum of actual thoughtful people and assuming the conservatives here need to answer for the worst Trumpists the engineers of X can serve. The conservatives here don't recognize themselves in the criticisms he levels at them and drama ensues.
I am not a newcomer to the SSC sphere, I've been posting on ACX and DSL for years, and I've won DSL's Diadochus award for my posts twice. (I'm also currently banned from both places.) I'm not attributing the stupidity of Twitter to this place, I'm just reading what people here write, like coffee_enjoyer:
Sewing bras is more conducive to wellbeing than stacking them on a shelf. Picking fruit is so Edenic that it’s the first recorded activity of humanity. In what world would “picking fruit” be pathetic? I think you are having trouble dissociating the image you have of these things now, with what they would look like if employers didn’t have a semi-slave class. There’s a farm near me where people — college-educated, white, smart — sign up to plant and reap for free. Because in return they get free room and board, and most importantly a social environment filled with other young white people. They work quite hard, then they drink in the evenings and dance and fuck and make music and so on. This is exactly what agricultural work was for nearly all of history. Not for the slaves, of course, but for the non-enslaved.
This, by the way, is what I mean by "poverty fetishism" and "third worldism."
anon_
17hr ago
Head-to-toe tattoos and piercings signal massive nonconformity with social norms
Not really any more. Just like beards, they used to be non-conformist now they're common enough.
shoeonfoot
20hr ago
Further, these people mostly aren't the MAGA right, and the Trump Administration cannot be said to speak for them.
Yeah, that's exactly the crux of the issue. Lots of these people have claimed that some Trump move - bombing Iran, not releasing the Epstein client list, granting amnesty to farmers - will irrevocably sunder the Trump coalition and that their position is the true MAGA position and anything else would be a betrayal to the voters, but I think MAGA is whatever Trump says it is.
If Trump announced some kind of amnesty for farm workers, that would be MAGA. If Trump announced that "mass deportations" never meant every single illegal, that would also be MAGA.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1m ago
You've distorted his claim that women should be accountable just like everyone else to imply that he says that only women need to be held accountable
No I didn't.
You probably mean minima.
No.
this is a.. novel definition
I suppose Jacques Ellul only died 30 years ago. But I would have expected everyone here to be long familiar with this ancient history given we discuss the philosophical implications of AI on the daily.
Care to reproduce such arguments in full instead of waving at them?
The section on medicine as a human technique is of course most relevant to this conversation, but I don't recommend skipping around if you are unfamiliar with philosophy of technology and the associated jargon.
Are you typing this on a "simple" device?
No. Semiconductors are arguably the most complex things mankind has ever made. Especially using this definition.
They could, in an ideal world, live short but tortured lives! Is that a tautology?
No, it's a non sequitur.
You seem to conveniently enjoy that particular fruit of modernity, while crying about this one.
I'm not sure what part of my writing evoked any kind of detectable emotion. I assure you it is purely analytic. I'm critical of modernity whilst living in it. What else could be reasonable?
Call me an ungrateful atheist for living in creation if you must. I can't help but look at what I'm doing.
Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder
So I was indeed right to believe you take the DSM-V to have the power to decide the meaning of a word that has existed since the 1500s.
I think the fact that you'd take Wikipedia's word over that of Oxford reflects poorly on your conception of the world, frankly. But this is a silly semantics exercise anyways. I have clarified what I meant beyond doubt. If my vocabulary irks you, so be it.
by that definition, one could be addicted to collecting stamps, to morning walks, or to breathing. You have diluted the word to uselessness.
No, I've used in in a way you don't like, which is common and in accord with its historical usage. There is a difference.
I have no "authority" over you
You misunderstand. It is the expert authority on your own language and thinking I recommend you remedy, not your authority on me.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
13hr ago
I was confusing tomatoes with other fruit-picking where there is a machine to scoop them up:
For example: https://x.com/TechInsider/status/1271322529362132994
I think that farmers (and businesses generally) are lazy and don't behave economically efficiently. It's creative destruction that raises efficiency, slowly and painfully. The British were notorious for not upgrading their machinery in the steel industry, you had steel chambers for early nuclear plants being forged in blast chambers designed for producing dreadnought armour, 40 years old. Or using gear they got from germany as war reparations from WW1 even in the 1960s and early 1970s! So the British steel industry got razed. It's basically gone. The German steel industry is going too but they did reap some counterintuitive gains from the wartime destruction meaning they had to rebuild and get leaner and smarter.
Capital investment and R&D is always good in my book.
Have you listened to MartyrMade's series on Epstein? I used to like his stuff a lot, but he's gone off the deep end recently when it comes to Israel and Jews.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
15hr ago
It’s crucial to understand why this isn’t the case. The mechanic competes in wages with the fruit picker (in an economy with an absence of illegal labor), not directly but transitively, because the mechanic competes with somebody who competes with somebody who […] competes with the fruit-picker. Increasing opportunity for the lower class increases it for the lower-middle, which increases it for the middle. Everyone’s QoL and wages increase. Food prices increase, but wages increase higher than they for the lower and middle. It won’t increase wages for the upper white collar professionals, because there’s a strict barrier where they simply would never consider entering a trade or working as a chef even if wages in these places rose considerable, which is because of the class association. (And remember remittance payments: 66 billion yearly just for Mexico!)
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
15hr ago
If it were viable to employ illegal workers as baristas, you would be shocked at how horrible the QoL for baristas is too. Have you seen how bad the QoL is for soldiers? It’s because they don’t have a choice!
Wow, horrible, picking berries. They are performing literally the same physical movements that a grocery stocker performs, except the objects are lighter, they aren’t breathing in microplastics all day, the ground beneath them isn’t concrete, they don’t hear horrible pop music 24/7… how could anyone do this?
Those two are not antonyms. Contemporary American Social conservatism perceives itself as being "timeless" "common sense morality," but it's very modern. Imagine trying to convince your 1800s great great grandmother that a fertilized egg that's barely visible to the naked eye is a "baby" or "person." It's something social conservatives believe they've logicked themselves into, much like leftists believe they've logicked themselves into "trans women are women!" I'm skeptical either "really" believes it, deep down.
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