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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

I think everyone who is not a radical pacifist will endorse the deliberate killing of other persons in some circumstances. Once you have conceded that, you are merely haggling over the price.

Fortunately, this is very moot in the contemporary US, because Trump can be easily voted out of office in about three years, which is a far better outcome than any violence could hope to accomplish. I also do not see him defeating the federal bureaucracy to the point where he can rig or suspend the elections, so even that hypothetical is not very relevant.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 2025

I haven't run into an any Anki decks specifically designed for this till date. I've made a few of my own, and I intend to go through them eventually.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Frankly, MAGA has a lot more in common with fascism than being right-wing nationalist.

Taking Eco's definition, I would argue that MAGA checks about half the boxes.

The points which apply IMHO from WP:

  • "The cult of action for action's sake," which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.
  • "Fear of difference," which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.
  • "Appeal to a frustrated middle class," fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.
  • "Selective populism" – the people, conceived monolithically, have a common will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he alone dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of "no longer represent[ing] the voice of the people".
  • "Contempt for the weak," which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate leader, who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.
  • Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak." On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
  • "Disagreement is treason" – fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.
  • "Obsession with a plot" and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society. Eco also cites Pat Robertson's book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.

I do not see the classic militarism (universal heroism, permanent warfare), Trump does not want his followers to die in Stalingrad for him, for the most part. The full rejection of the Enlightenment is probably limited to the retvrn crowd, and there is little embrace of (fake) tradition. Machismo is also rather absent, Trump has women in positions of power. Newspeak also does not seem a prominent feature, covfefe aside.

And of course, MAGA is also characterized by a denial of objective truth and widespread kleptocracy, and is ideologically too light-weight for classic fascism.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Exactly. Most of the peaceful era was with a relatively tiny population, the local arabs having fuck all control of their own composition due to the Ottoman empire (which was relatively peaceful so long as you paid the Dhimmi). The history of dominant muslim populations treatment of Religious minorities in the region trends a lot closer to an effective genocide than Israel somehow barely being able to make a dent in the Palestinian population over decades of supremacy.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

If you don't want your hospitals and civilian infrastructure blown up, don't use them as weapons caches in flagrant violation of the Geneva convention. I really don't see what's so complicated about this.

They didn't. Israel lied and just blew them all up anyway - I haven't seen any confirmation that these hospitals were actually terror bases. Rather, I've seen evidence that the fancy visuals they used to tell people those hospitals were terror bases were largely manufactured out of videogame assets https://www.972mag.com/israeli-army-3d-propaganda-animations/

When did I say that?

My apologies! My posts have been so popular and generated so many replies I didn't realise you weren't actually the person I was replying to.

How do you think Israel ought to have prosecuted a war against a combatant like Hamas? What would you have done differently?

Well, first of all, I simply wouldn't institute apartheid - I'd give the Palestinians equal rights and full franchise, giving them an actual path to peaceful and shared co-existence, giving them a stake in a shared society that could lead to mutual success. But assuming that's out of the question because my government coalition is full of bloodthirsty ethnonationalists and if I resign I'll just get killed... I'd either flee the country or kill myself rather than take part.

But if I had to prosecute it... I would implement incredibly rigorous conduct rules and make sure that the IDF became the most ethical and well-behaved army in the world. I'd make sure that there's zero opportunity for hostile propaganda, fill the waves with stories about our brave soldiers helping rescue people from dangerous conditions and improving their lives. Be as brutal as you want with the people actually taking up arms, deploy drones to the tunnels etc... but guerilla forces can only operate with the help and assistance of the people around them. Public perception and reputation is incredibly important to Israel and I don't think the country is sustainable without support from the west - so I'd make sure that whatever I did, there wouldn't be gigantic protest movements against my country all over the world.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 2025

Emily Dickinson

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

Ahh, so from this statement if I'm being honest, you come off as having these views and sort of faking incredulity when in reality you simply have disdain for Christianity and aren't really interesting in seriously understanding Thiel's points.

I agree that I was a bit uncharitable. That being said, I am unconvinced that I am entirely wrong. For example, calling Catholicism a doomsday cult would be silly. From my very laymen understanding, Early Christianity did have a bit of an apocalyptic streak (e.g. Book of Revelations, ca. 95 CE).

The general argument from stagnationists is something like, technological progress and increase in wealth keep the hoi polloi happy and sedate, if they stop getting their increase in goodies and wealth they will become angry, and eventually revolt. This revolt will effectively destroy technological society and take a while to build back up, if ever.

I guess his fears make more sense from the perspective of a billionaire. The current Gini index is only stable in periods of exponential growth. As long as every generation has a life substantially better than their parents, few care too much if the billionaires are owning more and more. One the cake stops growing, they will likely have strong opinions on its current distribution ratio, which might easily end the billionaire class and thus, civilization, from their point of view. ('Humans might survive, but without private helicopters and space tourism, as mere animals nesting in suburban homes' or something along the lines.)

I will grant you that the reading "perpetual technological growth is the only way to keep the present society stable, so anyone who threatens that (i.e. Greta, Eliezer) are agents of chaos, i.e. the antichrist." would be a self-consistent philosophical position.

Of course, the god of perpetual exponential growth is likely not Jesus Christ (who did not die on the cross to maximize shareholder value). For most of Christianity, technological progress was glacial slow. On the other hand, calling Greta the antimammon does not really have the same ring to it.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Not to be rude, but this feels like an unusually weak post for Scott. Those celebrating Kirk’s murder would obviously disagree with his third premise, “Political violence in America is morally unacceptable (at the current time).” In fact I’m having trouble imagining someone that would agree with his first premise, that most Americans are fascists, without believing political violence was acceptable. This post seems aimed at a constituency that I’m not sure exists, those that believe fascists are everywhere but are opposed to any political violence.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Yes. That's the point I was trying to get across. I believe we are in full agreement.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Having weak and marginal Jews in your community that paid the dhimmi tax and that you could coerce the beautiful daughters into Islam is nothing like brotherhood, unless you want to tell me that the European ghettos were similar exemplars of tolerance and understanding. The Jews don't want to be dhimmi. No one wants to be a non-Muslim subject in a Islamic country if they can help it. Even the most tolerant Palestinian wants the Jews to live in a box outside of the holy places and be milked for taxes by the bridge troll.

I'm sorry, but your historical read is just wrong. The leftist perspective is simply delusional: too focused, as it were, in the splinters in others eyes to mind the logs in theirs. Your romanticization of Muslim tolerance is historical revisionism at best.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

(the orthodox, who do not contribute to the economy in any real way and are exempt from military service)

Interestingly that exemption ended last year.

Their military additionally requires a vast array of inputs which they are unable to source domestically, and if their current imperial patron left they would be unable to maintain the military edge their security environment requires.

What, specifically, can they not make? And if they can't make something, why couldn't they source it from a non-patron power? The US declining to be Israel's patron doesn't mean, for instance, that the US stops selling Israel aircraft - but if they did, Russia, France and China would all be happy to source anything Israel couldn't domestically manufacture, don't you think?

But energy independent?

Ah, my mistake. They export LNG, but that doesn't go writ large for the rest of their energy.

Without the US empire giving money to all the other nations in the region to pacify them, supplying Israel with interceptor missiles/other materiel and engaging in various trade arrangements with oil suppliers, how does Israel maintain their energy security? How do they maintain their food security, given that modern farming practices also rely heavily on petroleum for energy and fertiliser? How exactly do they make up for that 95% reduction in available energy when the imports get cut off due to war? How much of their military supply chain is entirely domestic?

Presumably the answer to these questions is "the same way all other nations do." (Now, in point of fact, I think Israel sources their own interceptors - Iron Dome, David's Sling, and Arrow, since they have retired the Patriot.)

Who, specifically, is going to cut off their imports? And how?

Perhaps you tacitly assume that all surrounding countries will attempt to attack Israel again as soon as the US withdraws its security umbrella? I do not understand why I should assume that this will happen (let alone why the attempt should succeed) - a lot has changed in the Middle East since the Yom Kippur War. But if I should assume that, I would like to know!

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

He really didn't want to put out any concrete examples of what he considered 'fascist' even though he spent a lot of time talking about Stephen Miller. Things like this where he talks very carefully around certain subjects just reinforces the San Fransisco bubble that the lives in.

There seems to be this weird equivocation between right wing nationalist and fascist. Why doesn't this equivocation happen between member of the communist club at college and hardcore tankie pol pot enjoyer; used as justification for brown shirted McCarthy squads to give them a beating? This is of course rhetorical. Their rules applied unfairly.

Antifa and black block really do seem to be the modern equivalent of brown shirt thuggery. It never made sense how this was tolerated by the government except by sympathetic people giving them cover and support from inside the institutions.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

In the far past, emotions didn't exist, life competed in a purely material sense. Emotions (or more generally, qualia) came into existence because they out-competed agents without emotion.

This is a tremendous claim. I don't object, exactly, but I wonder if you can substantiate it without what amounts to post-hoc reasoning. How exactly does consciousness arise. More importantly, why would it outcompete an equivalent setup with the same output for the same input, i.e. p-zombies?

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Love, love this comment.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Yes but if the boot were on the other foot

Historically, when the boot was on the other foot, the Palestinians regarded the Palestinian jews as their brothers and lived together for centuries. It was the zionist immigration project which caused hostilities to erupt.

That said, I don't really disagree with you. When you look at the Palestinians and what they've suffered at the hands of Israel, I find it highly likely that they'd take revenge when they were given power - which is one of the reasons why I think that Israel should have actually tried to live and coexist peacefully with their neighbors.

without doing too much damage to civilian populations.

I've seen far too many confessions of deliberate targeting of children, as well as really nasty salami-slicing of exactly who counts as a civilian. I don't believe this is what Israel was doing, and neither do the Israelis if you read hebrew media sources rather than english ones.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

Your argument hinges on a rigid set of stereotypes - a sincere believer must be a rural fundamentalist, and a tech billionaire must be a secular rationalist.

My experience is that people who talk about the devil and the antichrist a lot are very likely to be fundamentalists.

I was raised Catholic-lite, I went to Church twice a year and attended one or two hours a week of Catholic education in German public school, before I opted out in favor of a non-religious ethics class (which was more interesting in the topics it covered) at age 14. This forms the baseline of my model of liberal (but not necessarily insincere!) Christianity. I think the devil only appeared as tempting Jesus in the desert, and even there was interpreted more like an inner drive than as an external, rational agent. We did not cover Revelations at all. There was no preaching of fire and brimstone, sex was not a topic. There was certainly no mixing of religion and politics, the god of my childhood did not endorse any candidates.

Rene Girard, who used the Antichrist to refer to the secular perversion of Christian ideals leading to mimetic crisis and the failure of scapegoating mechanisms, bringing chaos marketed as order.

You mean like a critique of Marxism as "the communists took the Christian idea of heaven and tried to make it a reality on Earth, which thus failed terribly?" I certainly had a (Catholic) history teacher who expressed such an opinion. Personally, I found it always rich that a religious institution which had been a steadfast ally of the ruling classes for most of its existence thought it had any moral standing to criticize people who thought that changing the organization of society might alleviate suffering (and were correct in the case of social democrats and terribly wrong in the case of communists).

I am still unsure what point you think Thiel is making when he speculates about Greta Thunberg being the antichrist, and if it is a purely theological point (which might be beyond an atheist such as myself) or a sociological point dressed in the language of Christianity. From the "secular perversion of Christian ideals" angle, I would imagine something like "Friday For Future takes the Christian ideal of humans being good stewards of creation and strips it from its Christian roots." But without the basis of Christianity, this idea becomes unsound?

It is my firm belief that human virtue significantly predates any religion known today, and that Christianity has no intellectual property rights on caring about the natural world (FFF) or trying to alleviate the suffering on Earth (EA) or equality (SJ) or trying to avoid bad consequences of technology-driven change (AI safety).

This series of lectures basically says 'there is something wrong with the world, and I think we should call that wrong thing the Antichrist, and here's why.'

I agree that there is something wrong with the world, actually. Personally I would mention negative externalities (the driving force of both climate change and AI x-risk) first and foremost. Then there is the increasing spread between capital and income, and the related rise of real estate prices, global poverty, and an increase of anti-liberal patterns both on the left and on the right, the related demolition of the concept of truth, social media induced loneliness, a military conflict in Europe and the total clusterfuck of the Middle East, to mention but a few. Interestingly enough, a lot of these are things in which Thiel is either in the position to alleviate the problem and does not or in which he is actively profiting from being part of the problem.

Frankly, if Thiel wants to make the point that Greta or Eliezer exemplify what is wrong with our world, I would probably give him two paragraphs of moderate length to convince me that he is making an interesting argument. I am much less inclined to spend the resources to try decipher a deliberately obfuscated argument on the off chance that it holds some insight instead of him being a MAGA weirdo who has found a new favorite thing to call his political enemies.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

I think this may be one of those things where you are looking into it from outside the medical community and going "huh that's interesting."

But what you are stumbling into is an appeal to the work of an alternative medicine practitioner whose work seems to be heavily cited by the "cluster-b but in denial of it" community to flatter their understanding of their own pathology despite clear instruction to the contrary by legitimate medical resources.

At the same time the reference seems to completely misunderstand the wide body of clinical and genetic research as well as basic understandings in terms as well effectively universal clinical consensus.

Attempting to fit some bullshit 2+2=5 stuff into an explanation of priestliness is a fools errand since what its looking to use is total crap.

Nothing about it makes any sense and ive rattled off several significant examples (that's not how mental illness categorization works, thats not how EDS works, thats not how allergies work....).

Additional people who work in the priestly cast do not have the personality attributes you associate with most of these line items.

Again none of this make any sense.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Why does Israel need an imperial patron?

Because Israel's geography and productive economy aren't able to sustain their population and current level of social complexity. Their incredibly challenging security environment necessitates immense military investment, and their internal politics require them to support and feed a growing population of useless eaters who just study the torah all day (the orthodox, who do not contribute to the economy in any real way and are exempt from military service). Their military additionally requires a vast array of inputs which they are unable to source domestically, and if their current imperial patron left they would be unable to maintain the military edge their security environment requires.

In the past Israel got along okay without the US (buying military hardware from, notably, France).

Do you mean when their imperial patron was the UK?

It looks like they are a net food importer but are energy independent. As others have pointed out, they have a growing population and an advanced military.

A growing population isn't a good thing when you are already importing food - but it becomes ruinous when you have an extremely dangerous security environment which would add significant difficulty and expense to those food imports. Currently, the US is spending a lot of money to make sure the Middle East is survivable for Israel and they can continue to import food, and Israel just isn't capable of stepping up to the plate by themselves to ensure that food security.

But energy independent? LOL

Israel currently produces 5% of their oil consumption domestically, with approximately 220 thousand barrels imported each day. Petroleum is currently irreplaceable as an energy source - there is no alternative with equivalent energy density or existing infrastructure investments that can take its place (i.e. even if they discovered a perfect new energy source which they had in abundance, it would take a long time and huge investment to set up the infrastructure required to distribute and use it). Oil is used in farming, transportation and of course in the military - so if those imports were halted due to a conflict, the food situation would very rapidly become extremely dire and the military would be hamstrung by lack of access to the fuel which powers all of their tanks etc.

Without the US empire giving money to all the other nations in the region to pacify them, supplying Israel with interceptor missiles/other materiel and engaging in various trade arrangements with oil suppliers, how does Israel maintain their energy security? How do they maintain their food security, given that modern farming practices also rely heavily on petroleum for energy and fertiliser? How exactly do they make up for that 95% reduction in available energy when the imports get cut off due to war? How much of their military supply chain is entirely domestic?

These are the questions which convinced me that Israel would not be able to survive without an imperial patron, and I haven't seen any convincing arguments otherwise.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Is that actually happening? Do you have any reason at all to believe that we're not going to lose that functionality? The budget request says:

CSB duplicates substantial capabilities in the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to investigate chemical-related mishaps. CSB generates unprompted studies of the chemical industry and recommends policies that they have no authority to create or enforce. This function should reside within agencies that have authorities to issue regulations in accordance with applicable legal standards.

But those agencies don't do that. Their recommendations are well-regarded by the industry (see also the quote from the American Chemistry Council here).

I note that EPA's budget is being halved, and OSHA's is being cut as well; they're also eliminating EPA's Office of Research and Development entirely.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Look, I don't doubt that some people get convinced they have diagnoses that, from your perspective or the broader medical perspective, they don't actually have. You seem to be really upset about that. I don't particularly care one way or another, because I have experienced first hand how ruinous it can be to your life to get debilitating, chronic conditions repeatedly misdiagnosed by the traditional medical system and spend a boatload of money for the pleasure.

The argument that the original article is making refers to a certain subtype of the population, often with some sort of serious chronic illness, that has a propensity to shift narrative frames more easily than others. I find that to be a reasonable argument that matches my experience in life.

From my perspective, instead of talking about this claim, you seem to be ignoring the original claim and zeroing in on complaining about cluster B women? Which is kind of confusing.

Tinker Tuesday for October 14, 2025

Working on a new project. There is an old out of print book about my family. "The [family name] and their kin". Old copies run for a hundred or more dollars on Amazon.

There is a free scanned version of the book too, but the scan isn't great quality. Adobe was able to figure out most of the words, but there are some glaring mistakes. Typically a mistake every 50 words or so, which is far too common.

I'd like to do a reprint. I just attended the annual meeting of the "[family name] society" and there was interest from everyone there in getting a new hard copy.

I've been copying and pasting the text from the PDF into a grok window and having it make corrections, re-italisize, and de-format the text. Might be another 20 hours to get it all converted.

I've looked up some print options as well and think with about a hundred copies I could get per book costs to $15-30. Depending on options I select. Color / hard back / images / etc.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

Since he said it in private

He gave a bloody lecture in front of a couple of hundreds of people. This is very different from having a private dinner with a couple of friends which was bugged by the guardian.

Thiel isn't going to be doing anything to the Antichrist.

There is a reason that western culture has evolved an allergic reaction to Christians accusing others of either being in league with the devil or the antichrist. The reason is that historically, most religiously motivated violence committed by Christians were preceded by such accusations.

If Thiel was giving lectures about the Eucharist and the guardian tried to spin this into "well obviously he is advocating for cannibalism", nobody would buy it, because while Christian beliefs about transubstantiation are definitely weird, Christianity also has an excellent track record as far as avoiding actual cannibalism goes.

From a stochastical terrorism perspective (which I personally do not like much), saying "X is the/an antichrist" is the right-wing version of saying "X is literally Hitler". Either has a mild priming effect on people who have a psychotic break and decide to murder someone, I would guess.

Suppose that instead of the antichrist, he gave a lecture on jihad. Would you go well, there is no way that a Western Muslim in 2025 would actually advocate for violence. Actually, what he really means is jihad in the sense of an inner struggle which brings you closer to god.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

I feel like that meetup is probably worth a separate post

Please do!

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

Yeah, I probably should have included "and six-foundationers were winding up raised Marxist and/or hippie liberal and tried to extend these to fill in the missing foundations".

Friday Fun Thread for October 10, 2025

I watched this one recently, too. A vibe indeed.

Good: Long, forlorn shots. Set design which may or may not consist of just finding shit lying around. Haunting use of silence and background noise. Getting the viewer to question the reality presented on screen. Surreality. This is a film where almost every frame is mundane, and yet you are certain that something else is at play.

Bad: incredibly long, forlorn shots. I can’t judge how much of each was actually necessary to achieve the good points. But my God, they just keep going. Much like the character monologues, some of which land, some of which don’t. The delivery is great, at least to my English-speaking ears. The actual writing is much less consistent. There are a couple bits of sound design that fall into this category, too, but I’m willing to forgive them.

Ugly: Anything resembling action. There’s not much of it, which is for the best, because it absolutely deflates the tension. The gate guards? The bomb dismantling? Honorable mention to the scene ten minutes in where the stalker’s wife writhes around on the floor.

I don’t know that I can call it good, but I recommend it.