domain:open.substack.com
No_one
4m ago
In the spirit of trying more things re: my problem with wandering attention and all that, I got my hands on something labelled "Concerta 18 mg".
Doesn't seem to do much for the problem with attention, however it does make me feel slightly more energetic as I've just drunk a liter of energy drink, but way 'smoother'. Also somewhat nervous and as If I had a constant weight pressing on my chest from outside. The nervousness ramps up, reaches a peak cca 6 hours after taking it and then passes.
Still not sure what to do with my tendency to delay doing things I don't like doing -bills that aren't on auto pay, cleaning that's not agreed upon, home improvement I need to do.
I keep putting it off and only do it right before the deadline, or even slightly after it.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
5m ago
That's fair. I was thinking more when the case originally blew up in the media and the facts that came out at trial (the injury details) weren't as clear.
SophisticatedHillbilly
13m ago
For what it’s worth, the Njal’s Saga post got me to actually read the Saga. By the time I had done so, the post was gone, though.
roystgnr
22m ago
it's unlikely anything really changed inside his head until his death.
Was this a deliberate choice of phrase, I hope? IMHO Trotsky ice axe jokes never truly get old. Just like Trotsky.
I think "left" and "right" are net-harmful concepts in that whatever minor useful explanatory value they have is more than counterweighed by the enormous confusion and thought-termination that they cause in political discussions. I have never seen a clear definition of either "left" or "right" that people in general can even vaguely agree on.
My politics depends on what mood I am in. I have a certain mood in which I am purely selfish in my politics and care only about whatever will bring me personally the most power. The advantage of this view of things is that unlike political ideologies, it is consistent as far as I know.
However, I am not a sociopath and so there is another side of me in which I do favor certain politics for non-selfish reasons. In this other mood, I am a classical liberal who is an extreme liberal when it comes to social issues like sexuality (I do not care in the least bit what people do in bed as long as it is consensual), a moderate liberal when it comes to economics (I do not think pure free markets are the optimal system, but I do think that regulated free markets are the best one anyone has ever come up with so far), and a libertarian when it comes to free speech.
I oppose the woke, the social conservatives, the alt-rightists, and the moderate political mainstream. Given that people who agree with my politics do not dominate American politics (since the four groups I mentioned in the previous sentence together make up the majority of politically-interested Americans), my political strategy is to play off other political groups against each other so that they expend their energies in futile fighting but without any single group ever gaining a dominant position over the others.
Wokism to me seems like a combination of ignorance about reality about various things like basic economics and HBD and willful refusal to engage with the reality of those things, plus I dislike wokism's censorious anti-meritocraticism and wannabe-authoritarianism. Social conservatism just seems bizarre, primitive, and distasteful to me, a modern relic of times when small groups of embattled villagers had to forge oppressive social structures and rely on traditions and religious nonsense in order to maintain stability in the midst of possible famines and foreign invasions. I view the alt-right as mostly made up of either whiny people with large victim complexes whose politics is mainly driven by sexual frustration, or white nationalists who would start fighting each other and denouncing each other as not white enough if they ever managed to establish a white ethnostate - and in any case, their anti-meritocratic and authoritarian views make them distasteful to me for the same reason as why I dislike wokism. And I view the moderate political mainstream as too contaminated by lies, corruption, censoriousness, "polite" taboos, and a desire for imperial world-spanning big government (no matter what it costs) to consider them allies.
MachineElfPaladin
35m ago
It might simply be a typo of meta-narrative, but if it's the intended word, then 'mesa' is sometimes used as the opposite of 'meta' (cf. here). So that would be, I think, the process of creation of stories inside the fiction - for example, a propagandist spinning events for consumption by in-universe peers or underlings, where we as a reader have a more complete view of the actual events being referenced and know what is being left out and what is being exaggerated.
What is internally contradictory about Hlynka's thought, at least in the sense that it is significantly more internally contradictory than all other political ideologies? (All political ideologies except pure selfishness are internally contradictory to some extent). I'm not very familiar with his ideas, but from what I've seen out of his opinions the one that is most controversial here is that the alt-right is a form of progressivism, and while to me that seems like it's going too far, the milder version - that the alt-right and the woke are very similar - seems obviously true to me.
Both alt-rightists and wokists are people who see themselves victimized minorities that are oppressed by an evil hegemony and are fighting a righteous political conflict against it. Both are obsessed with race, gender, and sexuality. Both primarily care about culture war issues and do not have much to say about more engineering-esque aspects of policy like, say, energy infrastructure. Both despise the liberal/moderate-conservative mainstream. Both are suspicious of voting and attracted to more direct kinds of political action. Both are attracted to various kinds of socialism, communitarianism, and redistributionism - wokes generally favor economic socialism for non-whites and non-males, whereas alt-rightists prefer economic socialism for "real Americans" (generally meaning "hard-working" middle-class white people). Alt-rightists often favor some sort of sexual socialism on top of that, they dislike the sexual free market as much as wokes dislike the economic one.
I edited my post because arguing about the possibility that one side can be correct and how the pardon might provide justice didn't sit as right with me the more I thought about it, and wanted to remove some pro perry sentiments which in second thought don't fully reflect my views when thinking over the case more. But my view about bothsidesism being convenient and wrong remains. It is just that I don't want on this specific case to take position for the pardon. If it was the Floyd case I would support pardon on the merits of the case.
In general, I just don't think it is healthy to treat the culture war conflict as something where it is both sides equally to blame, and respect that the disagreement between tribes is more important than the merits of the case, and cases in general. We should talk about the facts and then argue whether one, or both tribes are wrong.
There is an implication in your post where moves that offend one side, but could actually be potentially promoting justice are a bad thing.
This idea itself encourages bad behavior, when we ought to be promoting the merits of the case. Additionally, if the pardon was correct, then it would not be an escalation, even if the blue tribe was offended. Appeasement of the blue tribe, on the basis that however they react it is important for them to trust the system, gives them no incentive to argue over principle, when they can get their way through outrage. But I modified some of this because this case is one that they might have a point in thinking him guilty.
I asked you about what you think about the facts of the case because it is directly related about whether one can argue that the pardon could be an escalation. I actually don't think it is much of an escalation, even if Perry deserved harsher punishment than a year, when considering how biased the system has been by the blue tribe. When it comes to whether this encourages, or discourages further escalation, it probably doesn't. The reason is that much of blue tribe excesses aren't stochaistic, but the result of too much appeasement and too many cases of getting away with it, and also related to symbols such as pro BLM, or anti BLM. Some of it relates to current year obsessions that tend to remain as sentiments but become weaker, and replaced by new current year obsessions. BLM being something not as popular today than in the past.
Fundamentally, this idea of appeasement being the road to peace, doesn't work, and the system in various western countries has escalated in authoritarian far left directions due to the right wing failing to constrain the use of power by the left. And even sided with it/acted like it. There is this understanding that the value of democracy is about allowing counterweight to too much influence to one side, and yet there is a sentiment in favor of an impotent right and impotent identity groups of the right, that interprets any moves for them and their rights as inherently dangerous and extreme. This is even more absurd in nation states. But it isn't the case even in multiethnic countries. This sentiment is dangerous and ensures that you are going to get increasing double standards and abuse of regulations, laws.
Good compromise and mutual respect require the right to actually show up.
Throwaway05
54m ago
“Once you've got a task to do, it's better to do it than live with the fear of it.” ― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself
SSCReader
1hr ago
In Northern Ireland that punchline would be..uhh interesting. As we call that a stroke. Hence why Londonderry/Derry (Londonderry if you are Protestant, Derry if you are Catholic) is nicknamed Stroke city.
Glassnoser
1hr ago
I don't think that explains much of it. I don't find the women on there to be noticeably higher class on average than the ones on Hinge or Bumble, and despite there not being many East Asians here, most of the women on there are East Asian. The vast majority of educated upper middle class career having women here are white.
Glassnoser
1hr ago
I thought they'd wait longer than most people to ask that.
Glassnoser
1hr ago
That reminds me of some useless (for me) advice I've read online, where people say that, to socialize more, you should start accepting any social invitations you get. I and many other people already do that. The hard part is getting the invitations in the first place.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1hr ago
I didn’t catch Njall’s saga but I’m going to read it now. I think titles are key for eye-scanning and that probably made me think it was a fantasy book. Also I remember the dumbest thing I ever posted got lots of upvotes (how the MrBeast community responded to the transgender member coming out), although perhaps I’ve posted dumber, whereas one of my favorite thoughtposts sat at like -5.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1hr ago
filling the leviathan-shaped hole in the mod log
It is convenient and easy on contentious issues to take a stance that bothsides are unreasonable partisans. You don't have to take and defend positions and you present yourself as the superior referee and the others as culture warriors.
You have fundamentally misunderstood my post. I am not claiming that "both sides are unreasonable partisans, and they just need to be reasonable". I am claiming that our current system makes unreasonable partisanship the only viable policy option, and pointing out that anyone who expects anything other than an escalation spiral is lying to themselves. I am attempting to argue this from the outside view, ignoring any question of which side is right and which wrong, simply looking at the incentives. I obviously have my own opinion of who is right and who is wrong, and I've argued that further down in the thread. I am making this argument because it is common for moderates here to argue that the Culture War isn't that big a deal, that it's blown out of proportion, and that our existing systems are basically fine and simply need routine maintenance for everything to work out fine. I believe that such moderate arguments are dead wrong to the point of being actively dangerous, and I am attempting to communicate the basis for that conclusion across the tribal divide.
I have my own position, based on my own values and my own best interpretation of the facts. What I'm trying to show is that the larger pattern is obvious regardless of particular values or understandings of the facts: regardless of whether you side with Foster, Perry, neither or both, the situation is obviously unsustainable for our existing system. Rule of law requires common trust in the law and its application, and it, together with the rest of our sociopolitical systems, exist to constrain the scope and scale of civil conflict. These limiting systems have evidently failed, and those that remain are observably blowing out as the culture-war blast front washes over them in sequence.
As I see it, our current choice is between a near-total collapse in federal authority and semi-peaceful balkanization on the one hand, and large-scale fratricide on the other, with the latter being significantly more likely given our current social trajectory. I've been arguing this for a long time, this is just the latest data to illustrate the point.
If you think the pardon is wrong based on the facts of the case, I would like you to argue for this directly.
I don't. I not only support the pardon, but would be furious with any other outcome. I believe Perry's conviction was part of a pattern of nakedly-illegitimate prosecutions of armed self defense by Reds, while murder and attempted murder by Blues was treated with kid gloves. I've argued as much many times before.
I don't think the goal of the justice system should be to get different political tribes to agree.
The only point of the justice system is to get the population in general to agree. If it can't do that, it serves no purpose and will not survive. The whole point of the system is to constrain conflict, to get people to accept outcomes they don't like and maybe even hate, outcomes they consider deeply unjust, because it's still the lesser evil. If people stop considering the system to be a lesser evil, they will simply tear it down.
And if that is the goal, then it might require censorship, blacklisting, ideological selection.
Yes, obviously. Homogenous values are the result of these tools, and sufficient homogeneity for a sufficient amount of time makes it easy to fool ourselves into believing that the tools are unnecessary. We dispense with them, and as a result values drift apart until the homogeneity is lost, and then the need for them becomes obvious.
Coexistence, cooperation and mutual tolerance require coherent values, and cannot function in their absence. Values-coherence must be actively maintained, or it decays.
It should be ideally for cases to be decided based on their merits. By prioritizing agreement, wouldn't this encourage appeasement, realistically in favor of the blue tribe, even where it would result in people being unfairly prosecuted or not punished when they should?
I'll just quote myself here:
Stop pretending that the outcomes of orderly systems can be trusted. Justice is not, under present conditions, the presumed outcome of a process. Findings and verdicts and rulings do not settle a matter if the outcome is not just. Demand Just outcomes, and never, ever let an unjust outcome rest.
There is no reason I can see for Reds to not take the above stance. It is the objectively correct stance to take, given the realities of our situation. It is also true that this stance will not result in things trundling along as they have previously, with everything basically being fine. It is likely to lead to a fight, and that is again acceptable given the alternative of endless abuse without recourse. Those who value the current system and wish to see it perpetuated, though, should be warned that it is very clearly collapsing before our eyes, for reasons well outside the control of any individual actor.
If it is in fact biased in that direction due to the influence of the blue tribe, then the red tribe exercising pardons is not necessarily bringing escalation, but pushing the system in a healthier state.
As I am using the term here, "Escalation" doesn't mean "bad thing", it means applying additional force to the system in the hopes of changing the outcome. The system can only survive so much force, and past that threshold it fails completely. This threshold has no connection to morality and justice; being right doesn't grant the system additional load capacity. Embracing and facilitating mob violence was an escalation. confronting that mob violence with legal self-defense was an escalation. prosecuting the defenders and protecting the attackers was an escalation. Pardoning the defenders is an escalation. All of these escalations have been employed because people decided that escalating was preferable to accepting a loss. This last escalation will be no different: Blues will not accept it, and will look for an escalation of their own to top it. At some point down the line, the escalation for one side or the other will be unsurvivable to the system as a whole, and it will fail. Again, people counting on the system's survival should be made aware of this.
Seriously, this is the weirdest post I have ever seen on the Motte. I hope that this is some kind of elaborate joke of fellow Mottizens, that I don't understand. Especially since OP cannot respond, because he was just banned for trolling. Good night sweet angel.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
The pardon was not a unilateral act by governor Abbott. The Texas board of pardons and paroles recommended it and governor Abbott decided to sign off on it.
While I have no doubt that the board of pardons and paroles are republicans, they’re not national level political figures.
4bpp
このMOLOCHだ！
1hr ago
I don't know, I read some of Zeihan's books ("Disunited Nations" and "The Accidental Superpower") before this conflict and found them to consist more of riveting just-so tales than compelling reasoning. The idea that Russia will attack Poland next seems like another just-so story, which just happens to be very convenient for the current American agenda ("Why should you pour money and participate in sanctions to defend this unrelated country? Because if you let Russia win, they will come for you next!"). Do you, or does Zeihan, have a persuasive argument as to why Russia would do that?
The colourful "Ukrainians as cannon fodder" detail seems to go even further in that direction ("...and by the way, if any Ukrainian readers think that you should just stop fighting and make an arrangement with Russia because better red than dead, let it be known that the Russians will kill you anyway"). As of right now, even RFERL does not seem to go beyond the claim that people in already-captured territories are incentivised to enlist voluntarily. An implicit claim that they are pretending and the mask will come off once/if we let them win is basically unfalsifiable.
sliders1234
1hr ago
Russian Civilization doesn’t end if they lose in Ukraine today. The idea they would suicide themselves because they lost a little prestige feels off.
The trade-off is even worse for Russian elites. If they won the war I guess they could fantasize the history books will view them as like Caesar’s and Pompeii’s. Reinvigorating the Russian empire.
If they lose the war the choice is
- Everyone Russian dies
- We are rich guys and go off and fuck their mistresses on their yachts.
In Zimmerman's case we have abundant evidence that his story was accurate. We have testimony from Trayvon's friend who was on the phone with him shortly before the encounter that Trayvon made it all the way home and decided to double back to attack Zimmerman. We have an eyewitness who saw the fight from a distance who saw (based on the colors of the clothing he saw etc.) Trayvon on top of Zimmerman, beating him. We have the reports of paramedics and medical examiners showing injuries to Zimmerman consistent with him being grounded and pounded, while the only injuries on Trayvon's body (apart from the obvious bullet to the chest) were to his knuckles.
It was pretty much an open and shit case, and were it not for public pressure (and protests by advocacy groups funded by and working directly with Eric Holder and other members of the Obama DoJ) it would have never gone to trial, and rightly so.
Edit: source on the DoJ's involvement https://theweek.com/articles/462236/did-justice-department-incite-2012-trayvon-martin-protests
Morgenland
1hr ago
I just read the post about Biological Determinants and Homosexuality and while it is very informative article, it is just this - a dry summary of the knowledge about homosexuality. Nothing new or controversial there, even for someone who is only mildly interested in the topics of gender identity and sexual preference there is not much new knowledge to be gained. I think I was aware at least 80% of the facts covered in the article. However it is convenient to have such a summary in one place.
I have many other questions regarding sexuality e.g. "What's the difference between transsexuals and homosexuals on the biological level?" and "Which advantages precisely homosexual and transsexuals tendencies give?" which would be probably more novel and interesting, but considerably more difficult to answer.
There is no objective definition of "Justice", such that we can measure it with a ruler or weigh it with a scale. I believe that Justice is both real and fundamental, but I have no way of making you or anyone else agree with my understanding of Justice other than persuasion or force. Persuasion pretty clearly doesn't work at this point, and we are devolving toward less and less veiled dependence on force.
Do you believe that such arguments are generally productive? Do they tend to lead to consensus across tribal divides, even here? My observation is that the most "productive" outcome is the sort of Blue-Wins-By-Default both-sides-isms that you seem to be complaining about. For me, long-term, good-faith attempts to bridge the divide have resulted in deep cynicism and considerable radicalization. I think it's pretty clear that the tribal gap is currently unbridgeable, and rapidly getting worse. That's why I've written the OP the way I have; because the amoral, outside view of is and not ought is the only avenue for productive conversation across the divide that I can see.
See the edits above, as well as my arguments in the rest of the thread.
It doesn't matter if you think it's an escalation, any more than it matters if Blues think barricading roads, attacking motorists, and facilitating and protecting those who do is an escalation. Your assessment of their actions is what matters, because it determines how you'll react. Their assessment of your actions matters, because it determines how they'll react. There is no way I can see to get either side to accept that the other side's last action was legitimate, or that their own actions were illegitimate. The result is obviously going to be escalating tit-for-tat until the system runs out of capacity.
I never claimed it did. In fact, it not working in either direction is my entire premise. Blues will not accept the pardon any more than Reds accepted the conviction, any more than blues accepted the shooting, any more than Reds accepted the rioting, any more than blues accepted the justice system's delivered outcomes. For the purposes of this analysis, it doesn't matter which side is right. Neither side is going to back down. The conflict is self-sustaining and will likely continue to expand until things break which we cannot fix or even patch.
Good compromise and mutual respect do not seem to me to be options on the table. If you see evidence of them, I'd be interested to see it.
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