domain:samschoenberg.substack.com
aceventura
7m ago
Adds 3 trillion to debt but simultaneously leads to millions losing health insurance.
Doesn't really matter how much money ICE gets because deportations are really hard to do in America, and anyway, immigration inflows, and thus demographic change, will not be altered even if deportations increase.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
9m ago
Will someone please make a Zardoz joke already?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
10m ago
No, of course. The telos of genitals and guns are not pair bonding or pleasure or killing people or having babies. The telos of genitals is sexual intercourse, the telos of guns is to fire bullets.
One efficient cause of genitals is the need to generate new life and one efficient cause of guns is the need to kill people more efficiently.
At least, that's how I see it.
aceventura
11m ago
Immigration is the only thing that matters until immigration is solved (AI matters too, but the state is powerless to stop that march of technological progress).
As I've pointed out elsewhere, nothing is fundamentally changing about immigration.
Maybe deportations will increase, but probably not. It doesn't matter how many "camps" you have because finding illegal immigrants in the US is not logistically feasible in large enough numbers.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
12m ago
I mean I think reading this it occurs to me that the post-modern are behaving very much like modern conservatives.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
26m ago
I really hope this was the entire intended post because that would be hilarious.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
32m ago
This is symmetrical to what Darwin is claiming with JK Rowling.
Still not quite. What's missing is the reasoning for this claims being justified by some passage from Biden's autobiography, the other poster arguing that said passages say no such thing, it turning out that the original poster hasn't even read the autobiography and is blindly repeating completely made up claims, and when that's pointed out he then says "it doesn't matter".
It's not false at all that at least some factions of the Republican party want to eliminate trans people, although this need not necessarily mean "death camps". For some it probably does mean death camps though.
There are some factions that want to ban the whole Gender Affirming Care thing, and abolish all the special accommodations given to trans people. Sure, this is often interpreted by the pro-trans side as eliminationist, though such usage of the word is unconventional, and any honest person participating in a conversation would qualify it properly.
If you actually truly believe that the second sentence is a reasonable thing to say about any non-negligable amount of Republicans, and if you really truly believe there's nothing at all egregious about this conversation, then please step me through some of the other examples of bad posts you've given. Why is it ok to say "JK Rowling
I don't mind Darwin's opinions, just his debating tactics, but you seem to be objecting to the content of people's beliefs, which is a weird approach for me in itself, but combined with saying the content of Darwin's post is fine, actually, it's incomprehensible to me.
Is it that he didn't explicitly admit he was wrong about the point on JK Rowling? Nobody every does this in debates
Absolutely false. Plenty of people do. I'm sure you do so quite often yourself. Just off the top of my head, you didn't react to the link where GuessWho admits he's Darwin by saying "pff, that doesn't matter".
What is more rare, and should not be expected of others, is changing your mind about your broader worldview during the course of the debate, but conceding basic factual statements is a prerequisite for having a reasonable conversation. If you don't have that, you're not even in a conversation, you're in Monty Pythons Argument Clinic
Is it that his original post had an offhanded bailey in it that he abandoned to focus on defending the motte instead? See my prior post: yeah, it's a bit annoying, but it's very common.
Is it that he didn't bother to defend the bailey even though that's a prime area where Amadan wanted to press him on? You mentioned him saying "it doesn't matter" was a problem, but obviously people shouldn't be forced to defend dumb positions if they'd rather give up and just implicitly accept an L on a given topic.
An implicit L would be just dropping the topic of JK Rowling altogether, not trying to claim he didn't actually mean her specifically when he said "people like JK Rowling", then claiming he has good reasons to believe she actually has more extreme views than she lets on, based on her portrayal of trans people in her books, and then claiming none of it matters when it turns out he was wrong about her books. An explicit L should definitely be expected from a reasonable person, when they make a mistake of this magnitude.
Also, the moment you call it a motte and bailey, you concede the entire issue, in my opinion. Motte and Bailey is a dishonest, bad faith, and manipulative debating tactic, that's just an objective fact. As to whether he should be forced to defend the bailey, no - there should be no bailey! The whole spirit of this place is that any position that comes out of your mouth is one that you should be willing to defend. It's in the website's sidebar:
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
It's in the freakin' domain name!.
If you're still thinking "what's the big deal?", it's that his wasting people's time. I don't mind drive-by trolls like AlexanderTurok or BurdensomeCount, because they're signaling clearly that 90% of their content is just bants. I roll my eyes and move on, or I join in on the banter, either way I know what I'm getting into. OTOH, If I'm joining what appears to be a reasonable conversation I want to take it seriously. I don't particularly care for how outlandish an idea is, how absurd and obviously wrong it seems, if it is held sincerely, I want to see what makes the person tick, or to see if I'm missed some critical facts about the world if my worldview is so distant from their's. When it turns out I'm not in a conversation, but a 5D word-judo fight where it can easily turn out that "people like JK Rowling" doesn't mean "a group of people that JK Rowling is a central example of", but "a tiny subgroup that is in the same cluster as JK Rowling, because said cluster is defined to span half of the entire society, if not more", then I'm going to feel like an idiot for jumping into it to begin with.
You claim this sort of behavior is very common, but this is clearly disproven by the fact that people we able to recognize Darwin under his new alt, specifically by his particular brand of dishonesty, bad faith, and manipulation.
hydroacetylene
36m ago
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘falling off the wagon’- they’re already doctors and lawyers(who, I’ll note, have from an objective perspective made large sacrifices to their standard of living to dwell in NYC, doctors in flyover live in mansions not apartments).
Maybe this is one of those things I don’t get and won’t get, like why neurotic strivers think they’re better than me without having the pedigree to back it up, or why people live together for five years without getting married.
hydroacetylene
42m ago
My keyboard is set to recognize English, Spanish, and French. I do not know, or want to know, why it sometimes autocorrects the to thé, but it doesn’t seem worth fixing.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
43m ago
Did you accidentally fire off this post mid-write? This seems a little thin for a top-level comment.
I at least can't fathom why this is "kinda important".
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
44m ago
I apologise for the faux pas but I'm posting two top comments in succession since this one's kinda important and I couldn't find it anywhere on the board.
Three days ago, Suhail Doshi posted a tweet about a programmer named Soham Parekh who was caught doing the most stereotypically Indian thing ever, scamming people, this time, it's young yc founders.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1hr ago
Book 4 of the Meditations of Marc Aurel:
32: Call to mind by way of example the time of Vespasian: you will see everything the same: men marrying, bringing up children, falling ill, dying, fighting, feasting, trading, farming, flattering, asserting themselves, suspecting, plotting, praying for another's death, murmuring at the present, lusting, heaping up riches, setting their heart on offices and thrones. And now that life of theirs is no more and nowhere.
Again pass on to the time of Trajan; again everything the same. That life, too, is dead. In like manner contemplate and behold the rest of the records of times and whole nations; and see how many after their struggles fell in a little while and were resolved into the elements. But most of all you must run over in mind those whom you yourself have known to be distracted in vain, neglecting to perform what was agreeable to their own constitution, to hold fast to this and to be content with this. And here you are bound to remember that the attention paid to each action has its own worth and proportion, only so you will not be dejected if in smaller matters you are occupied no farther than was appropriate.
33: Words familiar in olden times are now archaisms; so also the names of those whose praises were hymned in bygone days are now in a sense archaisms; Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus; a little after, Scipio too and Cato; then also Augustus, then also Hadrian and Antoninus. For all things quickly fade and turn to fable, and quickly, too, utter oblivion covers them like sand. And this I say of those who shone like stars to wonder at; the rest, as soon as the breath was out of their bodies were 'unnoticed and unwept'. And what after all is everlasting remembrance? Utter vanity. What then is that about which a man ought to spend his pains? This one thing: right understanding, neighbourly behaviour, speech which would never lie, and a disposition welcoming all which comes to pass, as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from a source and fountain like itself.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
1hr ago
Some notes on stuff I read and the work of Luke Smith
I have been binge-reading the essays Luke Smith wrote on his website, LukeSmith.xyz, and have also finished more than a quarter of Watership Down. It is slightly harder to start reading physical books again, as I am used to my Kindle and mostly read short form on my computer and phone. Great book so far, but the comment is about Luke Smith.
Some essays by Luke Smith I liked
- Why Modern Art is so awful
- Why People Do or Do Not Leave Religion
- Not Even Libertarians Believe in Libertarianism
In particular, I liked his podcast on the book against method by Feyerabend, and I have been trying to draft out a post that is not haphazard, concise and makes a novel point.
His critique of libertarianism ending in feudal states was probably correct. My main point, though, is an admission of defeat, weakness rather. How do I survive in a world where the heuristics people hold holy on both sides end up being wrong so often?
You have religious reactionaries on one side who stick to their beliefs just because they were born with them; on the other hand, you have the rest of the world, where you find shades of post-enlightenment thought. In his essay 'Not Even Libertarians Believe in Libertarianism', Luke quotes Friedrich Nietzsche, in a rather casual manner
Nietzsche, in I forget which book (probably Genealogy of Morals), noted that moral philosophy is kind of the opposite of other sciences. In moral philosophy, we know beforehand what is “right” and “wrong,” and its goal is not so much to discover new truths as to concoct a framework that helps us understand the system of why things are “right” and “wrong.” We do not “discover” new moral truths.
This later connects to his other podcast where he discusses Against Method, largely agreeing with Feyerabend's viewpoint of Epistomological Anarchism and in another podcast notes the gaping flaws with Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow with the help of Gerd Gigerenzer's books such as Simple Heuristics in a Complex World and later uses his other work Mindless Statistics to showcase the modern academic stat raindance.
I provide this context because I feel unsure of what to believe in as a person. I grew up seeing a bunch of superstitions that made no sense, did not care much about god and slowly became a reactionary when I realised the cathedral or the modern elite simply used the scientific method as a garb to justify bio leninism or values like it. The essays I read have, however, made me question the very means and sources of what I can even trust. Do you simply agree to go along with your maulvi who is fine with you marrying a girl who is barely done growing up or do you deconstruct everything and reach a point where you can later either deny the existnece of gender or worse, be an hbd obsessed online type who cannot see his own people as anything beyond iq scores.
The ancients here in India tried their hand at this problem with the Dharamshastras, before the lawbook of Manu, the Manu Smriti. These texts were not the word of god, something that is difficult to explain since the thinking and the people behind these ideals are long gone. I mean to simply ask how one can know what's right in a way that sounds dumb.
Is the world just humans trying to understand systems too complex for them, and all efforts are kinda wasteful, at least in the current model of the world? How do you decide what you think is wrong or right? The Maulvi example is helpful since people deny and outright ignore the existence of all religious mandates that are at odds with modernity. Modern banking and democratic values have dented a lot of orthodox people in parts that are not in the West. My post is terribly worded, but I cannot honestly tell people what is right or wrong in a consistent way, i.e. by seeing tradition as the all-knowing lindy culture machine fighting modern "logic".
This post will get downvoted badly, I cannot fully explain the entirity of my inability to grasp what is correct as both the opposing forces here are wrong in many ways, but I am unsure if you can live in a world that does not inevtibaly bend towards one and goes through pointless pain because of it. Marrying within your caste or race works; it worked before we understood IQ as a metric that has clear scientific backing, and the very ideas of genetic tests with coordinates and a detailed breakdown of your haplogroup. At the same time, man evolved from a primitive state where religion, even though it came after a certain point, was the new thing compared to the pre-agriculture past. Is the answer to just never think, meditate and go on with my life, should I break down only some things with arguments, or do I simply find the first old scripture that agrees with me?
I know that the Dharmashastras did try something in this regard, and like most things religious, I presume they were ahead of their time. But yeah, I am beginning to question some things, not because I am anti-vaxxer or something, I am not, I do lean towards modern meds being good in nearly all cases, I just don't know how many of these Chesterston fence issues we will face. Most religious preachers, popular ones, are mostly incorrect; my intellect can sense the outright stupidity and dishonesty in many things, and I hope I can get some personal anecdotes or any advice on how one deal with these issues. Learning philosophy to convince others of your preconceived notions, for instance, sounds dishonest, yet many do it.
This ties into culture war heavily, I know that having women not marry young, allowing heterogenous societies, and deconstruction lead to chaos, do I need to wait for science to approve of it, but conversely, how can I deny the existence of many modern phenomena that I know are true? Hinduism conveniently has sects that do not care very much about any of this, but I want to finally see reality for people reading this who know more about the world than me
Context: I wrote this some time ago when I was sufficiently annoyed with contrived drowning hypotheticals. I had a lot of fun writing it, but then didn't know where to put it. I've never really written a short story before (except way back as a teen, for other teens) so no guarantees that this is actually any good. But it seemed stupid to write it out fully but to not at least post it somewhere afterwards, so here it goes. @mods, if you consider this inappropriate here, feel free to move it, though I didn't want to start a thread on anything I'm not sure is any good.
It’s a beautiful morning. You’re wandering next to the river which serves as the natural limit of the city. You want to visit granny; Well, not your REAL grandma, but when you were a teen, she was there for you. She hasn’t been doing well, forgetting things, especially later in the day.
You pass by a bridge, closed off with a fence - though it's sufficiently damaged that one can get past if one wants to -, showing a sign that reads “trespassing will be punished by fine”. This used to be one of the most important, most used roads out of the city, but a year ago it has started to be plagued by suicide attempts, so the city decided to block access after a public pressure campaign.
A little further, a group of tall and athletic men is playing beach volleyball. A priest tries to shortly talk with them, is rebuffed & leaves, shaking his head.
You will probably not reach granny. Steve (that’s what you call him in your mind, at least, it’s not like you really know him) will soon jump of the bridge, as he does everyday, and you will jump in to save him. He will be taken to the hospital for the day, where you also have to wait until someone can take your report, which gets logged into the system, and you will get released, by which time it’s too late in the afternoon.
But something is different today: You’ve seen a policemen, in the wild, who isn’t already occupied! You go straight towards him.
You: Hello, Officer, do you have a moment?
Policemen: Yes, sir?
You: A man will soon go on the bridge and jump off. Could you arrest him for trespassing before he has a chance to jump?
Policemen: Sir, I can’t do anything just on hearsay.
You see Steve entering the bridge from the other side.
You: See, that’s him!
Policemen: Sir, according to our anti-escalation training we are not allowed to arrest a person for only trespassing.
You see Steve jump from the bridge. The group of men doesn’t care, the policemen pretends to be busy writing something and the priest just looks at your sternly. You sigh, and run to save him. When you leave the water, the policemen walks up to you and gives Steve a fine.
——
It’s a morning. You’ve had enough. Screw Steve, you’ll just walk faster, and then it’s going to be someone else’s problem. You pass by a masked man, looking off into the sky. The priest walks up to you.
Priest: Hello, son. You want to leave that poor person to his fate?
You: Why don’t you ask someone else?
Priest: You know they won’t listen. What do you want to do now, instead?
You: I’ll visit my grandma.
Priest: Just visit? You know a life is more important than a visit.
You: Do it yourself, then.
Priest: I’m old and frail. Besides, I’m saving many lives here; Anytime someone wavers in his faith, I restore it, so that they can save the needy. If I were to do it myself, I’d be taken in for the day.
You wasted so much time on the discussion that you see Steve jump from the bridge. The priest looks at you sternly. You sigh and run to save him.
——
It’s morning. This time you won’t get derailed; You put on headphones and pretend to neither see nor hear the priest and walk at a brisk pace. When you walk past, you notice that a small coffee shop has now opened up at the shore of the river, with the priest sitting at a table. After you passed by, the priest goes to the masked man, who was just looking at the sky again, and talks with him. He gets up, runs after you, catching up almost instantly, grabs you, and slowly drags you towards the water. You shout at him, but he just screams “fuck you” over and over, until he has finally dumped you into the water, where Steve is already flailing. You sigh, and swim over.
——
Morning. The headphones broke after getting wet. At the shore you pass by a journalist explaining something to a camera, with the bridge as a backdrop. Later at the coffee shop, you see the priest and the masked man sitting together drinking tea. Enraged, you confront the priest.
You: What the fuck? You can’t just tell someone to assault me!
Priest: Oh, I was just telling him about that poor man who will jump off the bridge. It’s not my fault that he reacted that way, and besides, I couldn’t have stopped him anyway.
You: But you could at the very least report the crime!
Priest: Of course I did, but the man had already left when the police showed up. You also have to admit he did it for a noble goal: To save a life. So I can’t say I’m too unhappy.
You stare at the man right next him.
Priest: This nice young man just told me that he can’t even afford a tea. So I invited him.
You: So you claim it’s not him?
Priest: How would I know? He’s wearing a mask. You know, Corona.
You, towards the man: Are you ?
“Of course not”, says the voice that screamed “fuck you” yesterday. You look at him, and flip the table. Tea sprays everywhere, both are cursing, and you take the chance to run as fast as you can. You run along the shore, but at the place where you could have sworn is the path to granny’s house, there is a fence instead. A sign tells you to just continue, which you do, until you reach a dead end between the shore on one side and the fence on the other. You see Steve flailing in the water, screaming. You sigh, and jump in.
——
This time you take a large cutter with you. At the coffee shop, the priest is now being interviewed by the journalist, which he visibly enjoys. The beach volleyball players, meanwhile, are back today and trying to garner the attention of the (admittedly quite attractive) journalist. The masked man is nowhere to be seen, so you just walk fast while looking back, making sure you’re not being followed. Carelessly, you bump into something, and turn your head around to see … the masked man. His eyes glimmer with anger. You look at him, then the cutter, then at him again, and swing it in a large arc. He gets an arm up, screams in pain and goes to the ground. You run past, not looking back, breathing heavily. You made it! Nothing can stop you now!
——
“REPORT: ANOTHER SUICIDE ATTEMPT AT THE BRIDGE Calamity struck just as our investigative journalist was taking an interview for a documentary about the suicide bridge: Another attempt was made. According to trusted sources, one particular local man, present at the scene, already knew in advance. But instead of intervening, he struck an innocent bystander down, breaking his arm, and fled the scene. He was later found nearby harassing an older woman, after he gained access to her home by cutting open a fence. The police is still investigating his motive and the connection he has to her, as she claims to have never seen him before. He is currently in custody on charges of assault, vandalism, trespassing and harassment. Fortunately, another bystander playing volleyball jumped into the water, saving the day.”
The priest takes back the paper he gave you.
Priest: You know child, I don’t think you’re so bad. So I put in a good word for you. The man you assaulted has also agreed to drop charges if you cooperate.
Do you take up the Priest’s offer and do community service at the bridge?
Corvos
1hr ago
Specifically it argues that the worms all boil to death as the compost heats up.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
1hr ago
Seething contempt is fine if it’s expressed politely, which Turok has done imo.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2hr ago
It is amusing that it starts with "(I think this is a pretty important article so I’d appreciate you sharing and restacking it—thanks!)", since I would imagine that most randos exposed to arguments like "utilitarian veganism means that eating honey is one of the worst things that you can do" to conclude that utilitarian veganism is stupid and must be resisted, rather than stop eating honey. In general I cannot recall any thought experiment style arguments on ethical veganism that haven't just ended up pushing me towards a wholesale rejection of animal rights as an ethos.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2hr ago
And there's a very large degree of difference between what seems to have been the historical reality in 19th and early 20th century Germany and what I assume most people would imagine when they hear "a legacy of democratic norms".
Botond173
2hr ago
As opposed to Russia, where the meekest similar attempts even at creating token institutions were likely to land you in a Siberian penal colony. Degrees of differences do matter.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
2hr ago
Nothing beats sleeping after a hard workout and magnesium. So relaxing its hard to get up.
Botond173
2hr ago
The "democratic tradition", the way the term is being used nowadays, of western Europe is more a result of the Cold War and it's alliance with the USA, than it does with anything that happened before the war. Even Spain and Portugal were dictatorships until the 70's.
Huh? France and the Benelux states had already been democracies for a long time before WW2, and France was already a republic to boot.
Spain and Portugal joined NATO only after those dictatorships fell, which I think bears mentioning here.
Estonia? Latvia? Lithuania? Poland? Romania? Bulgaria? Hungary?
To be fair, 4 of these didn't even exist as sovereign nations before 1918, which complicates matters. Regarding Hungary I already replied in a different comment. The Baltics used to be ruled by German/Germanized nobles for a long time and thus have a shared legacy of Western orientation; that much is certainly relevant in this case. The Poles have a bygone but long and cherished legacy of being a republic with a parliament which, for example, is very markedly different from the Russian experience.
I could imagine that if the reunification went well the east Germans could be bread-and-circused into complacency, and would be just fine with brilliant ideas like importing seven zillion Syrians and Afghans, putting people in prison for speech, but locking them in a women's cell after they declare themselves a woman, and fining people €10K for misgendering them, but it's not immediately obvious to me.
It could have probably worked but nobody even tried. East Germans have consistently been shut out from positions of power and influence in the 'reunified' German state to an extent that makes the past discrimination against African-Americans in the US pale in comparison. They were seen as hillbillies with poisoned minds who don't matter. The economic transition was also completely bungled.
Botond173
2hr ago
You even have to invent additional just-so stories to explain the relative "failure" of the democratization of the GDR
Yes, I argue that the democratization of the newly annexed Eastern provinces of the FRG after 1990 is at this point largely seen as a failure by the West German establishment and their supporters. I think this is pretty much bunk because it ignores that a new political synthesis should have been worked out in the first place, a process that should have made reunification real instead of just a BS word for what in reality was annexation.
even though they it should have been the most successful of all
No, I think the most successful of all democratic transitions should have been and did in fact turn out to be the Czech, because it was the sole Soviet satellite state that in fact functioned as a democratic pluralistic republic before it was Sovietized; and because the Czechs were influenced by Holy Roman / Germanic culture for centuries before that, which made the country ripe for Westernization after 1989.
FtttG
2hr ago
The Seinfeld is Unfunny effect.
The telos of a flathead screwdriver is to apply force perpendicular to the plane of the screwdriver. This works if you are using it as a pry or to screw in screws.
More options
Context Copy link