Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
"...Perhaps laughter will then have formed an alliance with wisdom; perhaps only 'gay science' will remain."
User ID: 342
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
8hr ago
Brazil’s dysfunction is due to a very high black population
Wikipedia says their black population is 10%, i.e. a smaller percentage than what the US has.
We have better institutions
But institutions are made of people. They can only be as good as the individuals that comprise them. There's no magic dirt, no magic paper.
If you import the population of Central/South America wholesale, the people who staff your institutions will increasingly resemble the inhabitants of Central/South America, and they will begin to reproduce Central/South American conditions.
and can function with a lower average IQ than we currently have
But why would we want to?
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
10hr ago
Lots of Hispanic blood in a future American population isn’t an HBD-wrecking catastrophe.
But you just acknowledged that the Hispanics are underrepresented among engineers and doctors. If the broader population becomes more Hispanic, would you not also expect that population to produce fewer people who are capable of becoming engineers and doctors?
An immediate corollary of HBD is that a Brazil-like population leads to Brazil-like conditions.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
16hr ago
If you’re 30+, that’s just a natural part of getting older, unfortunately.
I had covid, which really knocked me on my ass, and then my next cold after that a few months later was notably more severe than other colds I had had in the past. I wouldn’t be surprised if covid does have longterm impacts on the immune system.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
2d ago
self-driving cars are essentially banned.
I don't see why that's a problem, to be honest.
There has to be some sort of consequence for the manufacturer when self-driving cars cause an accident, same as how human drivers pay fines or go to jail. What's your preferred liability structure?
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
2d ago
I understand that that rule is supposed to be an elastic clause, and I agree on the practical necessity of having an elastic clause. But I think it's also good to minimize governing by the elastic clause as much as possible.
In this case we have identified something that is an explicit rule and can be phrased relatively unambiguously - either "don't backtalk to a mod" or "don't state your intent to violate the rules", whatever formulation you prefer - so why not just add it as an explicit rule?
(I also simply disagree that either of FNE's posts in that thread were egregiously obnoxious, although I think her first post that got the initial warning was an unambiguous violation of the rules on courtesy and low-effort posting.)
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
2d ago
nobody gets to just go "nah I'm not listening to you". That's not ok.
But why though?
Neither "backtalking to a mod" nor "statement of intent to commit another rules violation in the future" are explicitly forbidden by the current rules. If one or both of those are not allowed, then the rules page should be amended to make that explicit.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
2d ago
On the one hand, I think you raise valid concerns that are worth considering. On the other hand, people have been saying "pretty soon you'll have banned all the interesting posters" since like, 2020. And I think this place is still doing pretty ok.
Looking at the list of people who have been permabanned on the new site, the only posters on there who I consider to be serious losses are Hlynka, fuckduck, and we can add FarNearEverywhere on a technicality until she decides to come back. So that's not a huge list. Most of the accounts that get permabanned are literal trolls or spam accounts.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
3d ago
rape is an expression of power, not an act of lust
You know I used to think this was nonsense (along with its stronger and more generalized form, "sex for men is about power rather than lust"), but the more time I spend thinking about the way that different men conceive of and relate to sex, the more I start to think there's some truth for it.
If you look at any of the "redpilled manosphere" guys - Rollo, Andrew Tate, Fresh & Fit, anyone in that milieu - I think it's clear that they view women first and foremost as an economic resource to be managed and optimized, and the pleasure that they derive from their own status as an "alpha" is more central than the pleasure that they derive from the woman's body itself. In fact a man completely losing himself in the thrall of pleasure while in the presence of a woman would be viewed with suspicion - he's a simp, he's unmanly, he doesn't know how to control himself, etc.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
3d ago
what exactly do they imagine is to be done about the supposed epidemic of women being targeted for violence by men? Is there really a generalized belief that the problem is insufficient scolding or insufficient laws targeting this variety of crime?
Their response, if you could get down to the heart of the matter, would be: the thought that everything is stuck like this forever, that nothing will ever change, is too much to bear. So we have to believe that more education and more feminism and more shaming will fix all the problems, for the sake of our own sanity.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
3d ago
Women carry around a nagging anxiety that their own existential authenticity is always in doubt; there is an unresolvable neurosis over the possibility of being reduced to a mere biological function. The fear is that all the rhetoric about girl bosses and shatter-prone glass ceilings and a more egalitarian future really is, at the end of the day, just rhetoric, no matter how many Emmy Noethers and Angela Merkels and Jane Austens dot the pages of our history books.
A man may be a scoundrel and an outcast and a criminal, but at least these are proper symbolic roles - they require the attribution of human agency. If your identity is fully coextensive with the biological function of reproduction, then the worry is that this makes one more object than human - more like the scaffolding that supports the stage, rather than a proper player in the drama.
This is why the threat of "objectification" carries such a sharp sting. I would be so bold as to speculate that this is, in some sense, a trans-historical feature of femininity as such - the division between the human as rational agent and the human as embodied biological organism almost demands a group of people who fall on the wrong side of the divide - and therefore cannot be assuaged by any amount of empirical evidence that women are in fact capable of leading much the same types of lives and engaging in the same sorts of intellectual pursuits as men are.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
3d ago
I agree. She’s welcome to return at any time, but I imagine she might be too proud for that. If she doesn’t return, it’ll be a deep loss to the forum.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
3d ago
@FarNearEverywhere isn’t technically banned right now but she set her account to private. I think she’s chosen to leave of her own accord.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
6d ago
The recording industry managed to spread the idea that non-professionals singing is lame and embarrassing.
How did they accomplish this? What was the vehicle of delivery for this idea? Can you point me to specific sources?
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
6d ago
This is going to sound like edgy contrarianism for the sake of edgy contrarianism, so you'll have to take my word for it when I say that it's not:
I really don't care. And if you told me that counter-protesters were being funded by Israel, I wouldn't care about that either. In a conflict where moral fervor runs high, I am an advocate for the freedom to simply not care.
I'm just tired of the moral guilt tripping from both sides. If you want to criticize the protesters, criticize their tactics. There's plenty to criticize there. But their alleged ties to Hamas add nothing to the story for me. In general I have always felt that concerns over "foreign manipulation of political sentiment" were paranoia of the worst kind. If the governments of Russia or China or the US (organizations that have engaged in plenty of nasty unethical behavior in the past that could plausibly be classified as "terrorism") want to pay for a Times Square billboard and fund some student organizations to get their message out then I say let them. Free speech doesn't stop at our borders; I am for open trade in a global free market of ideas.
I can't reasonably bring myself to be invested in every ethnic and sectarian conflict that happens around the world, particularly when its direct impact on me seems rather limited. If the Sudanese Masalit want to organize protests in the US against the RSF then bully for them; whether they win or lose in their struggles, I'm not going to lose sleep either way. I view Israel-Palestine similarly: just another in a long series of ethnic conflicts in a region of the world that is known for being prone to violent ethnic conflicts.
In some sense I am forced to care, due to the generous financial aid that the US supplies to Israel. But my investment doesn't extend beyond that.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
7d ago
I mean, if the lab meat was literally identical in every way to real meat, then sure, I’d eat it. In practice though, I’d imagine it’s more like AI-generated media: the difference in quality is noticeable, but certain factions downplay the differences for political reasons.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
7d ago
He's saying that socialism can't create a perfect utopia, but it can make things better. This is a pretty common attitude across multiple ideologies. A standard American capitalist liberal might not think that we can create a utopia, but he does advocate for making things better through legal reform, scientific advancements, etc.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
7d ago
Here's a sentence out of that paragraph
But why did you ignore the other two sentences I quoted?
The institutions of a socialist society, even in their most democratic form, could never resolve all the conflicts between the universal and the particular, between human beings and nature, between individual and individual. Socialism does not and cannot liberate Eros from Thanatos.
Why do you think these sentences say "we know how to solve all our problems"?
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
7d ago
Has Zizek ever put out any idea that had any tangible effect on the real world?
You could ask the same question about the majority of academics in both the humanities and STEM and the answer would be "no". So it's not a very interesting question.
That being said, Zizek is reasonably well-connected and is e.g. friends with Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister of Greece, so I wouldn't be surprised if he influenced the thinking of someone in power at some point.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
7d ago
It's interesting how "thou shalt not take too much dick" is a universal prohibition for both genders. There's something of an asymmetry here.
Straight men having a lot of sex is praiseworthy, and society seems to have less of an intrinsic disgust reaction to lesbians than to gay men.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
7d ago
It's a bit odd to me that everyone is so confident in their answers (regardless of which answer they choose).
I don't feel like I have a good enough baseline intuition about how dangerous bears are to answer with confidence. How likely is the average bear to attack you? Is it possible to outrun a bear? This is far outside my domain of expertise.
I certainly understand why a lot of women would say "bear", even if they might ultimately be mistaken.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
7d ago
Wait, what?
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
7d ago
So if:
-
The AuthLeft and AuthRight are defined by a belief in the right to wield absolute power over all other humans without accountability or restraint - all members of the AuthLeft and AuthRight believe this, and furthermore members of other political ideologies don't believe it, and
-
This belief is the most salient factor in determining identity among political ideologies,
then sure, the AuthLeft and the AuthRight are the same. But this is less of a substantive sociological/philosophical thesis and more of a tautology. You're using these idiosyncratic concepts "AuthLeft" and "AuthRight" whose applicability to broader political discussions is questionable.
The space of possible political positions is much broader than you give it credit for. I would encourage you to read some of the original works by any of the thinkers we've been discussing lately - Zizek, Lacan, Marcuse, Derrida, Nietzsche, or Heidegger - and see if there's anything in there that surprises you.
Marcuse put it very succinctly:
The institutions of a socialist society, even in their most democratic form, could never resolve all the conflicts between the universal and the particular, between human beings and nature, between individual and individual. Socialism does not and cannot liberate Eros from Thanatos. Here is the limit which drives the revolution beyond any accomplished stage of freedom : it is the struggle for the impossible, against the unconquerable whose domain can perhaps nevertheless be reduced.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
8d ago
Hlynka reminded me that there is no solution, that there is no plan, that we are not in control of the world; all we control is ourselves; we make our choices and live with the consequences.
I'm in complete agreement on this point!
Anyway, I think one of the crucial issues is that, as I raised at the end of the previous thread, "we know how to solve all our problems" isn't a good criteria for partitioning equivalence classes of political ideologies. As an epistemic attitude, it can be mixed and matched with multiple different ideologies.
Suppose we have three different people:
-
#1 is a Marxist who thinks we know how to solve all our problems. He unabashedly thinks that the proletarian revolution will usher in a utopia.
-
#2 is a standard American libertarian who also thinks we know how to solve all our problems. Say the story is something like, free market democratic capitalism is the only ideology that will engender the type of scientific research and economic growth we need to develop ASI. And once we have ASI we'll have a utopia.
-
#3 is a standard American libertarian who is virtually identical to #2 on all substantive policy issues, except that he doesn't think we know how to solve all our problems. He doesn't think libertarianism will lead to a utopia, but he believes in it and advocates for it anyway, even though he acknowledges that the ultimate outcome of all our political actions is always uncertain.
So, who is identical with who? And who's the odd man out here?
Based on the importance you assign to the criteria of "knowing how to solve all our problems", it seems like you'd be forced to say that #1 and #2 are the same, and #3 is different. But this just seems wrong. The more natural classification is that the two libertarians are the same (and indeed, getting hung up on whether libertarianism can lead to a utopia or not would be a narcissism of small differences), and the Marxist is different.
I'm also skeptical that, if given the choice between living in a Stalinist regime ruled by #1, or a somewhat more libertarian version of 2024 America with #2 as the four year duly elected president, you would say "it doesn't matter to me, they both think we know how to solve all our problems, so I have no preference for one country over the other".
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
8d ago
the higher level stuff doesn’t seem that useful to me.
Sex isn’t very useful either most of the time, but that doesn’t diminish the appeal.
But there are already lots of places on the internet for low effort dumb fun stuff. /pol/. rDrama. Whatever floats your boat. I don’t need TheMotte to become those sites. It’s fine for them to remain separate.
More options
Context Copy link